One day in the town of Ghent
A businessman to his team sent
An email, not so long, that stated
His company’s website – man, did he hate it
Build me another, one that surpasses the rest
I know with this team, ours will be the best!

On one computer, the designer clicked “close”
And on another, the copywriter started crafting some prose.
Said the designer, “I’ll build the most beautiful 3.0 site!”
And the copywriter purred, “God, I LOVE to WRITE!”
So the designer built, adding navs and buttons
While the copywriter wondered what rhymed with “mutton.”

For days on end, they each boiled and toiled
Their respective ambition for their crafts unspoiled.
The designer crafted wireframes rivaling Frank Lloyd Wright designs
And the writer penned copy inarguably divine.
Alas, the day soon came where their assignments were due
Their client would be delighted, this truth they both knew!

Two emails were opened and to each were attached
And their respective masterpieces to the boss were dispatched.
With the click of a mouse, they each let out a sigh
Their mastery of their craft, neither could deny.
“I love what I do!” they independently exclaimed
And then reached for the phone, braced for their moment of fame.

“Are you there, Mister Copywriter? It’s me, the client.
I’m getting Mr. Designer on the line – will you hold just a moment?”
The copywriter held till the designer chimed in
Then with a cough and a swallow, they heard the reaming begin.
“Did either of you speak? Did you plan? Did you get in cahoots?
Because nothing that you gave me is of any damn use!”

“You, Mister Writer – your words – hey, they’re great.
But with the design from Mr. Designer, not a lick of sense they make.
And you, Mister Designer – what are my site visitors to do?
None of the copy I have fits – do I have to review?
I told you both once that this site must be supreme
And by your lack of collaboration, you’ve ruined my dream.”

“How do you write, Mr. Copywriter, if you don’t know where your words go?
And Mr. Designer, how do you design if you don’t know the word flow?
They both work together, the visual and the text
So my site visitors don’t get confused and know what to do next.
What I have from you two are two separate things
When they should truly be one – a marketing choir that sings!”

Speechless they were as the client bid them farewell.
Is there a moral to this story? Ah, yes – here’s the sell:

A website is a choir, not a series of one-acts
If it’s anything but, it looks put together by hacks.
No matter your role: SEO, writer or designer
No one’s more important, no single role finer.
If you think you’re the schiz and you don’t need another soul,
I’ll tell ya – you’re wrong and have a long way to go!

Words must fit boxes and boxes the words
Your SEO must guide you, else none of its heard.
If code is crap, the words won’t ever matter
‘Cause the search engines won’t find you among the cruddy code clatter.
And no SEO strategy? Well, just give up the ghost.
Words with no purpose? Yeah, your website is toast.

So Designer, Copywriter, Tech Professional – hear this!
Do you want a client like the one above? (pissed)
All it takes is the willingness to work as a team
To conjure-up a plan and build a collaborative scheme.
If this, you can do, you’re miles above all the rest
As they simply don’t get it…So why not work like the best?

Step one: start with wireframes. Where do words go?
How will visitors click though? How will they spend dough?
Step two: SEO research. What traffic do you want?
What words help them get here? Don’t be nonchalant!
Step three: craft the copy, SEO and design in mind.
It all comes together, your separate ideas now refined.

That’s a site to be proud of, no ifs ands or buts
A well-executed strategy with minimal fuss.
Your team? Essential. They make you look better.
So pick up the phone, drop an email – WHATEVER!
But hey – collaboration…it’s not for everyone, I know.
You can lead a horse to a team, but to collaborate? Perhaps no.

RedheadWriting.com is on a temporary template since I was hacked a week ago and my redesign is in the finishing stages (standby – we’re hoping for a March 1 launch! W00t!). One of the key things I sat down and asked myself during the UI (user interface) design process was: who does this website serve?

The answer was a bit startling: NOT ME.

A website is designed to do one thing and one thing only: exactly what you want your site visitors to do. If you want your visitors to wallow around aimlessly like a beached whale in the dead of summer, you can do that. But I’ll bet you’d rather have some things that look like the following:

• More signups for your email list
• More RSS subscribers
• Higher conversion rates from visitors to customers
• Email inquiries about services
• More blog comments

And less of these things:

• Where the hell is ______?!?
• I have no idea what this site is about. How did I get here?
• I can’t find anything on here.
• OK, read the blog post. I’m leaving now to go troll eBay for Disney memorabilia.

I think Brian Clark over at Copyblogger had it right with the first two points in his article 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers. While not about web design per se, the top two points on the list are Make it Easy and Obvious and Be Laser Focused. A website shouldn’t leave people wondering what to do or what you’re all about. So here’s the bitch slap:

Stop thinking like a business owner and start thinking like a site visitor.

Here are five questions to ask yourself about your current or future website (and shit howdy, I’ve asked myself ALL of these throughout my site redesign process):

Web Design Question #1: Who am I and what do I do?

If you can’t answer this, neither can your copywriter or your web designer. It should never be mistaken that you’re a plumbing company when in reality you’re an ad agency. Talk about your business going down the shitter.

Web Design Question #2: What do you want people to do on each page of your website?

And no – that’s not a trick question. You don’t want people to interminably stay on your home page, nor do you want people to leave your site for lands unknown (aka a website that’s not YOURS). You have to TELL them what to do on each page of your site. If it’s a blog page, maybe you want them to keep reading – show them more posts that relate to the current post’s topic! Maybe it’s the home page and you want their email address for your newsletter list – make it easy and obvious to subscribe! If there’s not a call to action (in web designer terms CTA) on most every page of your website, your website fails before it even begins. You’d have been better off going to get a taco than paying a designer a load to build you an online box with no tape to hold it together.

Web Design Question #3: How does your competition address the above two questions?

I know – everyone thinks they’re Gordon freakin’ Gekko. The competition should bow down to you because two simple words sums it up: you’re better. That may very well be, but if you consider them to be “competition,” they’re obviously doing something right, eh Sherlock? Find out what they know and use the CASE principle one you get it: Copy And Steal Everything. There’s nothing truly new under the sun, but there are innovative ways to make other people’s successes work for you. No one’s too good in this life to be above taking notes.

Web Design Question #4: What are you willing to do in order to get the job done?

Any zoo animal can have a website. But will your website separate you from your competition – or at least put you on the same playing field? I’m so tired of seeing Geocities bullshit ghetto websites and Angelfire rejects. It’s not expensive to have a solid website built (see Your Website Sucks) and whatever you spend will be worth it. Don’t walk into a Ferarri dealership asking what kind of mileage the thing gets. Seriously. Solid web design is worth what you pay. Check out Visual Adventures, Time for Cake, Judith Shakes Designs and Phases Design Studio. I work with all four of these firms on a regular basis. They’re the schiz and can build you a site that you can edit yourself without being afraid that clowns are going to crawl out from under the bed and eat your pretty design because you hit a wrong key. Stop hiring your friend’s daughter or boss’s nephew. If you do, please send me a fork with which I can stab myself in the eye. It’s a lesson I learned with RedheadWriting.com – WordPress templates can only go so far. I’m beyond a template and needed a full-fledged designer. It’s worth it. Amen/pass the salt.

Web Design Question #5: What are you going to do to promote your website once you build it?

It’s no longer enough to be online – you have to earn web rankings. And sugar, let me tell you: that ain’t free. If you’re not prepared to pay in reciprocal links, cash for a solid SEO strategy or invest a whole helluva lot in a social media campaign designed to drive backlinks, you’re making a huge mistake. A website is a marketing strategy. Any solid marketing strategy is supported by other strategies. It’s likely you found this post from a social media or social bookmarking outlet. That’s by design. It’s not my only means for encouraging traffic to the site – it’s a component. Any website design that doesn’t include the exploration of a SEO strategy is failing before it begins. Need more info on Search Engine Optimization? Check out seOverflow’s search engine optimization blog as well as SEOmoz.org’s resources section.

That’s it -tough love in the land of web design. Now I’ll throw the mic over to you, dear readers: what else is HUGE in the realm of web design? Lay it on us and make it thick, please. Like a milkshake that’s going to leave my lactose-intolerant self balled-up on the bathroom floor in cramps…awwyeah.

WordPress Plugins Come in All Shapes and Sizes

In this final installment of Your Website Sucks, we’re rapping about WordPress plugins. By now, you’ve read about Three Reasons Your Website Sucks (and one simple fix), some awesome premium WordPress themes and the power that CSS brings to a WordPress-powered website (thanks to Jason Nelson of Visual Adventures Web Design, WordPress-powered site specialists).

A WordPress plugin is simply an add-on for any self-hosted WordPress installation. Like plugins for Firefox. They are the Legos of WordPress, adding virtually limitless functionality to a simple WordPress-powered website or blog. Today’s post will list the ones that I find critical for my own installations and I’d love it if my readers added their own must-haves in the Comments section below.

SEO Nova

If you’re not running the THESIS theme, you’re going to need a kickass SEO plugin. I was turned on to SEO Nova by @Trypnotik, who had previously turned me on to the Headspace plugin to meet my SEO needs. SEO Nova goes beyond both Headspace and the popular All-in-One SEO Pack plugin by leaps and bounds. You can code the page title, description and meta keywords, but you can also specifically code each post and page of your site to varied index/follow settings. Oh. My. Gawd. It has a savvy master control panel to set some universal settings site-wide as well. Visit the SEO Nova site and grab a look-see. This site and RedheadedFury.com both run SEO Nova.

SocioFluid

Every blog or website should have a social bookmarking application. My choice is SocioFluid. Simply stated, I like the rollover/grow-shrink effect that catches a reader’s eye. You can custom select which social bookmarking sites show up in the bookmarking bar as well as set the size of the icons and designate whether they appear at the top of a post or bottom.

Social Homes

Wanna encourage visitors to connect with you on your other social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook? I use SocialHomes. Pick your sites, enter your site-specific information, drop it in a widgetized sidebar and you’re good to go.

Akismet Spam Control

Spam blog comments suck serious nuts and Akismet controls them (albeit, sometimes too well) with ease. Akismet is already installed on every self-hosted WordPress blog – you just need to activate it with a WordPress API key.

Google Analytics for WordPress

If you’re not running Google Analytics as a component of your site’s metrics, for the love of God, why not? It’s the Google Monster, granted, but it’s pretty damn savvy for tracking your traffic, sources and helping you determine ways to generate revenue from your site through AdWords and AdSense. Google Analytics for WordPress is a simple plugin that requires the cutting and pasting of a tracking code and BAM! You’re off and running.

This week’s guest blogger is Jason Nelson with Visual Adventures, a web design firm that specializes in custom WordPress-powered websites and blogs.

First, I must apologize for the use of acronyms – nobody wants programming languages spelled out, though. I’ll use some silly analogies in this so non-dorks can understand what the hell I’m talking about. (I would loose all my street cred if I didn’t make it sound just a little techy though.)

Most of the acronyms in this article will be referring to programming languages. Programming languages are just like spoken languages. If you want to order some nice wine, better learn French or Spanish. If you want to get into manufacturing, Chinese might be your best bet.

Let’s go over just a couple of these to clear the air for this article. HTML is your basic web page coding. It tells the computer that certain text is a paragraph, or a heading, or to display a linked image. We’ll leave it at that for now so as to keep this simple.

CSS and style sheet will be used synonymously in this article. We’ll explain what they are in the next part.

What is CSS?

“CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.” Thank you, Wikipedia. Whew!

In other words, CSS is a language used to make web pages display a certain way. Now why is that important or interesting? Read on and find out.

What Can CSS Do?

With a style sheet, you can tell certain page elements to display how you want them to. For example, maybe we want the text to be white and the background to be black. We could do the same with HTML with font and body tags, but by linking an external style sheet, we can apply those styles to the whole website and leave our HTML coding simple and clean. Now why would we care if our HTML coding was a few lines shorter? Well, search engines read HTML coding, but they do not read the CSS.

The simpler and clean your HTML is, the better off your website will be for search engines. The fewer lines of code you have, the easier things are for those smart, yet very dumb search engines to deal with.

You can even change out a style sheet linked to a document and voilá, your whole site has a completely different design! Check out csszengarden.com to see some amazing examples of exactly this. It’s the same webpage (HTML coding) with hundreds of unique versions created by changing the style sheet and some images.

Why is this Special? (and why should I care?)

Prior to CSS, web page layout was done with tables. Yes, those same tables you use to make a chart for something like financial data. Tables were put within table cells and it quickly became a mess of code (kinda like that last sentence if you don’t know anything about programming web pages in tables! Messy…). If you’ve ever had to work on someone else’s site that had a bunch of nested tables, you would know the disaster I’m talking about. For the non-dorks out there, nested tables = messy birds nest of code.

More interesting, however, is how it can be applied to a software system like WordPress (blogging and web page management software) or an ecommerce system. Most of these have been coded in PHP so that they can interact with a database. PHP coding has tendency to scatter HTML code like a toddler having a heyday with your recently completed 1,500 piece jigsaw puzzle. If would be very difficult to track down all the pieces and put in your own various bits of code for colors and layout. Future updates would be an equal challenge. PHP code talks to the database, gets what it needs, and cooks you up an HTML page that you see on the screen. With a stylesheet, you can then tell the cooked up HTML page to display the way you want it to. No need to sort through the jigsaw puzzle. Not so sure you’ll want to let the toddler still have his heyday, though.

Life becomes simpler and the possibilities with design are endless. Think of how much more productive you would be if you actually knew where that stuff you’re looking for every day is located!

CSS coding goes beyond the skill level of your Average Joe with a website. More importantly, it lets Average Joe only have to worry about his content while some over-caffeinated-latte-addicted-loft-dweller (read: web designer) can relax knowing that Average Joe isn’t going to try and put blinking text on his beautiful design. (A design that he feels really belongs more in a museum than on the web, but seeing as the web has a larger audience, this situation is acceptable.) Most of the WordPress templates that you can purchase are built in CSS (stylesheets). That’s why YOU can go into Mr. Web Designer’s design and drop your content in without fear of screwing-up the page layout and graphical elements.

If you’re looking for a custom WordPress theme, it’s simple for a web designer to either tweak an existing theme (remember CSSZenGarden.com?) or develop a new one for you entirely. The themes Erika talked about in her last post (especially THESIS) can all have a custom CSS Stylesheet overlaid to meet your particular demands.

See? CSS is good for all of us! Mr. Web Designer can now let Mr. Site Owner update some of his content. Mr. HTML now has a more successful relationship with Ms. Search Engine. The web can be a more beautiful place. Can’t you feel all the love in the air?

Feel free to drop me questions below in the comments and I’ll check in throughout the day. You can also email me directly at jason@visualadventures.com. Thanks for having me!

Well, installment one of this series (Three Reasons Your Website Sucks and One Simple Way to Fix It) garnered 16 comments and over 200 retweets. Damn. I guess you folks want me to write installment two. Let me get right on that!

We’re going to talk about WordPress themes, and not all are created equal. A theme is essentially a templated design that you can upload into your self-hosted WordPress installation (read more about those at Stop Being a WordPress Whore). It defines all your fonts, color schemes and the overall look and feel of your WordPress-powered website or blog.

But all themes are NOT created equal.

Most often, themes are built by designers interested in creating “pretty things.” They’re not SEO-savvy and bogged-down with code that keeps the search engines from finding what they need most (your info and keywords). However, we’re going to talk today about three themes that I’ve personally used (two of which I currently run) that are the hizzy of da schizzy when it comes to design, functionality and SEO. I’m confident that there are many more themes that web developers and site builders enjoy – so PLEASE: add them to the comments section below so readers can have a solid collection of themes from which to choose when looking to use the smartest themes on the market.

A note about WordPress hosting:

Think that installing a WordPress-powered website or blog is hard? Think again. There are several hosting providers that offer one-click WordPress installations:

• GoDaddy – This site and RedheadedFury.com are both hosted with GoDaddy.
• BlueHost – I’ve heard brilliant things about Blue Host’s
• An Additional List from WordPress.org of one-click WordPress install hosting providers

Things to Look for in a WordPress Theme

• Widget-Ready: is the theme ready to accept additional sidebar widgets and plugins? Ask before you buy (all themes mentioned below are widget-ready).
• Clean Code: send an email to the sales team if you’re unsure or do a Google search for feedback on a theme. A theme bogged-down with poorly written code that’s designed to make a pretty theme versus a search engine/user-friendly one isn’t a wise use of your money.

Woo Themes – Mainstream Theme

The blog you’re reading right now is powered by Woo Themes Mainstream Theme (and…it’s FREE. Dang.). Why did I select it? Because it has some very powerful built-in features that are essential to RedheadWriting.com and my presence in the social media realm:

• Social Media Integration: just key in your info for Twitter and Facebook and it has slick home page icons that link directly to your profiles on those sites.
• Built-in Woo Themes Twitter Widget: Yeah, lots of the Twitter widgets kinda suck for WordPress. I think the one that you see over in the right hand side bar is clean and easy to read. It also includes a hot link to follow me on Twitter.
• Navigation: Built-in ability to have header or footer Category navigation (if you wish – great for blogs)
• Widget-Ready: Many WordPress themes are NOT widget-ready. This theme is 100% widget-ready and able to accept any plugin I throw its way. (Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the upcoming post in this series about WordPress plugins!)
• Dynamic Image Resizer: On my home page, you’ll see every post is accompanied by a graphic. Mainstream allows you to upload a custom graphic to display and automatically resizes the image to work on the home page, eliminating your need (and mine) to be a freakin’ image resizing wiz. Oh yeah.
• Integrated Banner Ad Management: If you’re monetizing your blog with ads, a big WOO WOO for this Woo Theme.

While the Mainstream theme IS free, I’d recommend becoming a Woo Themes member so you can enjoy support from their forums and more. All of their themes are ALWAYS buy one, get one free. If you’re a developer, you can buy a package that includes a PSD file for additional tweaking.

iThemes’ FLEXX Theme

Quite possibly the most versatile WordPress theme on the market aside from Thesis (saving it for last), there are over 1,056 possible layouts with FLEXX. Perhaps the most simple plug-and-play, customizable theme out there, RedheadedFury.com runs on the FLEXX theme (in sassy Candy Apple). Available is 15 different color schemes (any of which are easily tweaked by a guy who knows CSS), FLEXX is web design-ready with all of its built-in functionality. For only $79.99 (or $199.99 for ALL 15 versions), I have no qualms that FLEXX is money well-spent.

I personally love the fact that iThemes offers video tutorials on how to make the most of your FLEXX theme. The ability for a complete newbie to go in and customize a complete website using this cleanly-coded theme is astounding. Their help forums are especially useful and provide hints for tweaks as well as instant answers directly from other users of the theme.

Want to find out more about the plethora of features that FLEXX offers (and I enjoy oh-so-much)? Visit the FLEXX theme online and see for yourself!

DIY Themes THESIS Theme

Yes, I own THESIS. While it’s not up and running on any of my currently live sites, I can assure you that it will be at some point in the future. I was turned on to THESIS by both Brian Clark (@copyblogger) and Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan), both of whose sites are powered by THESIS. If you’ve reviewed their sites, they really couldn’t be more different – but they’re both clean, easy to navigate and the built-in SEO functionality is unparalleled in any other theme on the market without installing a widget. Don’t believe me? Google’s Matt Cutts runs his site on THESIS (no shit).

If you’re not opposed to working with someone who is savvy with CSS of if you’re a web designer looking for the bomb diggity of WordPress themes to wrap your own CSS code around, take a video tour of what THESIS has to offer.

Key selling points for me:

• Unparalleled built-in SEO functionality, virtually eliminates many of the plugins most themes require!
• Likely the most developer-friendly theme on the market
• Lifetime updates, no matter if you purchase the Personal or Developer Theme
• Personal Theme is only $87 (one installation), Developer Theme is only $164 (unlimited installs for your clients)
• View the Developer’s Showcase to see all of customizations available with THESIS

If you have favorite WordPress themes, leave a comment below. Next Wednesday’s installment of this series is by guest blogger Jason Nelson of Visual Adventures. He’ll be discussing CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and how they’re used with WordPress themes. Whether you’re a developer or not, the blog is in plain English so everyone can benefit!

Subscribe to RedheadWriting today via either RSS feed or email at the top right hand side of this screen – don’t miss this ongoing series about WordPress and web design or the new series on web content (next installment: Tuesday, September 1!).

Holy hell. Look at your website.

It sucks. No, seriously: it really sucks. The chrome off a Studebaker’s fender type of suckage. The kind that it took someone who knew just enough to be dangerous to achieve.

Houston: we have a crap website. That is confirmed.

The first reason your website sucks? I have no idea what it’s about or what your business does when I get to your homepage. I mean, thank god someone posted a bit.ly link on Twitter or else I never would have come here on my own. All I’m seeing is a boatload of words and a tiny stock image at the top of the screen. I could be reading a pamphlet for interstitial cystitis for all I know. It’s possible you’re in real estate because there’s a little picture of a house and your big, shiny mug all over the screen. Then again, you could be an animal shelter because all I see is pictures of a woman surrounded by dogs. Personally, I’m lost.

The second reason your website sucks? The search engines can’t find you. It’s pretty obvious that when you put your website together you felt that any ol’ words on the page will do. When I pull your site’s source code (go ahead, blink…I know you have no idea what I’m talking about), there’s no meta data, your pages are all named www.mywebsite.com/afbijkaf6^&()^%^#$, or everything on your site is in Flash (which is totally brutal for search engines and site vistiors alike). If Google can’t find you, good luck on generating traffic. Aren’t you glad you paid that cheap (or maybe not-so-cheap) web firm $249 for your site?

The third reason your website sucks? I have no idea what I’m supposed to do when I get to your homepage. Your site’s navigation is so confusing that I would probably be able to come up with a bipartisan-approved solution to the heath care question in this country before I can find your “Contact Us” page. That is, if you even have one. So, I quit. I’m going to work as a lobbyist for the American Medical Association because it’s an easier gig than trying to find anything on this digital abomination you call a website.

But there’s a simple way to fix all that ails you. And it’s called WordPress.

Not WordPress.com…I’m talkin’ WordPress.org. If you’re thinking about redirecting a WordPress.com-hosted blog to your own URL, I’ll issue you a pre-emptive bitch slap now and tell you to read Stop Being a WordPress Whore.

“But that’s for bloooooooooooooooooooooooooogs.”

Really?

RedheadWriting is powered by WordPress. So is RedheadedFury.com.

So are www.copyblogger.com

www.chrisbrogan.com

www.ourayicepark.com

Yup. All powered by WordPress.

The beauty of a self-hosted WordPress-powered website is that everything you need to be successful is available in a simple, easy-to-use, and FREE package! Just think: you can have the website you always dreamed of for your business (or blog, or whatever) and if you have opposable thumbs – YOU can manage your entire website yourself! Soup to nuts.

This blog is the first blog in a series that will cover WordPress as a tool for website development. Here are the topics of the next installments in this series:

• WordPress Themes – Out of the box and onto your site solutions that are more than just pretty pictures. We’ll explore the genius behind DIY Themes’ THESIS theme and those available from Woo Themes and iThemes as well. Themes can single-handedly help you avoid the perils of poor navigation design and are easily tweaked (yes, that IS a technical term) to meet anyone’s aesthetic demands.
• The Power of CSS - What the hell is CSS? My guest blogger, Jason Nelson of Visual Adventures Web Design (and WordPress CSS Style Sheet guru), will tell you in plain English and show you how a friendly web developer can take your WordPress-powered site from blah to BAM!
• Plugins: they’re not just for lamps anymore – WordPress plugins are like Legos for your website. You literally plug them in and watch them go. We’ll cover some of the cool things they can do for your website and how these and wise theme selection will solve that pesky SEO problem once and for all.

Subscribe now via either a reader or email updates (look on the right hand side of this screen) and don’t miss the rest of this awesome series. I hate to see websites that suck and there’s really no reason for them. If you ever wondered about the power of WordPress, here’s your chance to learn the basics…and for FREE.

I never said I was easy, but WordPress is…and my advice is the right price.

You, you, you…

Guess what folks – it ain’t about YOU.

A recent webinar by HubSpot reminded me of an often overlooked, yet extremely key point when it comes to web design and website copy: IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.

You being the company, being the person writing the checks to your web designer, SEO firm and SEO copywriter.

It’s about YOUR CUSTOMER.

If you’re designing a website to be pretty, flashy, cool…because you have a new corporate look and feel…because you feel “it’s time.”  You’re redesigning for all of the wrong reasons.

Seth Godin was right when he said there’s nothing that hasn’t been done before and why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? Why not take something that works and use THAT to drive business?

If there’s anything I can impress upon you with this week’s blog it’s that when you consider strategies:

1. On which to spend your marketing budget
2. That will produce marked ROI
3. To increase brand visibility
4. To raise brand awareness
5. That justify the reason you’re spending money on your company at all…

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) coupled with a functional, easy-to-navigate website should be at the top of the list.

When visitors come to your website, a clever intro will catch their attention once, but do they really want to see it again? Likely not.

However, if a visitor comes to your site, finds exactly what they’re looking for, and is faced with a call-to-action to poop or get off the proverbial pot…they’re probably going to come back. Why?

You took the thought process out of the sales process by giving them exactly what they asked for.

Brilliance. Pure marketing brilliance, I say.

Think I’m wrong?

Contemplate for a moment the last website you went to that:

• ticked you off because you couldn’t find what it is you wanted, or
• let you find what you wanted and didn’t make it clear how to act on that want.

It’s not cruel to take the thought process out of the sales process. It is, however, cruel to torture your potential customers.

By working with both your SEO and web design professionals, you can create a website that not only guides your prospective customers/patients/penguins to exactly what they’re looking for, but encourages them to contact your business to complete the sales process.
Crazy thoughts, I know, but here’s a few bullets to sum it all up in a nutshell:

• Pretty websites don’t sell products: smart companies sell products with smart sales processes
• SEO coupled with smart, functional web design keeps development budgets down, website visitors happy and dollars where you want them: in corporate pockets
• Nothing is new, everything’s been done before. It’s all in how you choose to make it work for your business.

Hug your web designer and SEO professionals today. We’re not talking foolish — we really do want you to be repeat visitors on OUR websites. Just like you want customers to be repeat visitors on YOURS.

Email questions to erika [at] redheadwriting.com

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1. Brakes on my car
2. Proper installation methods for rebar for structural reinforcement
3. Zoning ordinances
4. Marriage (apparently)
5. Why my puppies like to chew on my underwear (especially in front of company)
6. Why my cats only barf on my expensive clothes and carpet, not flip flops and tile

Though I strive to expand my horizons every day, I’m not an idiot when it comes to SEO and the value my clients place on website copy that will help them drive traffic.

Today’s the day where I open-up my treasure trove and share with you a few tools that anyone can use to get a glimpse of the power and method behind the madness when it comes to SEO.

Wondering if your website is up-to-snuff?

Have a gander at HubSpot’s Website Grader. This free online tool allows you to key in your website’s URL (web address) and see how your site rates with regards to key SEO elements. It’s also an excellent tool to make sure your web designer is doing his/her job and building you a search engine-friendly site.

Google’s Free Adwords Keyword Tool

Wondering what search terms you should include in your web copy or why your site isn’t drawing the traffic you think it should? Prepping for a PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaign? This free online resource from Google will let you key in terms that you want to use, terms you think people search for and more and give you search volumes for each keyword. It will also let you know the comeptition rates for keywords if you’re considering a PPC campaign. Helpful for budgeting purposes if you’re going after high-demand keywords.

Checking Backlinks

Backlinks are an important consideration in search engine algorithms in deciding where your site ranks. In other words, the more sites that link back to YOUR website, the more legitimate and worthy the search engines view your site. While there are several ways to check backlinks, here are my two favorite (and the easiest):

Google Backlinks Checker

Yahoo Back Link Checker

Those are a Redhead’s thoughts for a Tuesday. And a fine, hot Tuesday it is in Las Vegas. Heat advisory at 112 degrees.

“But it’s a dry heat.”