Of course if you have a terrible website design, your site is hard to navigate or looks amateurish, then you will lose the battle right there. However the most modern, accessible and attractive website design in the world will not compensate for bad search engine optimization resulting in your site being hard to find or effectively invisible. Due to this, there is an entire profession that has developed concerned with nothing but best practices for search optimization and making websites rank well in google searches.

Fortunately SEO professionals are helped by Google which gives frequent and detailed updates as to where they are going with their search strategy and what kinds of sites they are giving high marks to. Which brings us to this post, and the latest notification from Google. Those of you familiar with Cook Profitability Services website design and search engine optimization will know that we strongly favor websites with on-site blogging capability. This allows the website end-user to actively blog and keep his or her website “fresh” with regularly updated content. Well this function just took a huge step into the limelight with a new announcement from the Google development team that they are placing more emphasis on the “fresh factor”. So look lively people, you need to get onto your blog and start writing and posting.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, this blogging function is one that is best done by the actually business owner or employee. The reason for this is that hiring some guy from India to write articles about your medical or dental practice will get you content for your website but will never get you any kind of following. It’s like being willing to buy a ticket in the lottery, but only buying tickets for lotteries that have already closed. Yes, you are buying tickets, but you cannot win no matter how many times you buy and no matter how much positive thinking you do.

The internet is in the end, just a machine. Where it becomes a phenomena, it is a people phenomena, which means it is an interest phenomena. In other words where the internet seems to “give” huge fame and success to a cat playing piano, it is actually serving solely as a channel for human interest. When you are designing a website and doing search engine optimization you must ask yourself this question; “What am I placing at the end of my rainbow?”. If there is no pot of gold, you can be assured that there will never be a gold rush. It is common practice in cheap, low end SEO to load up a website with huge amounts of low quality, uninteresting, bumpf, that no person in their right mind would ever read.

Yes, it has the keywords and yes, it may even push the website up. But if you are going to take the time to create content, why not create great content that is interesting and truly unique to you and your enterprise? For sure there is no guarantee that suddenly millions of people will come rushing to your website to watch you ramble about some arcane detail of your profession – but they might. Certainly dull, repetitive garbage is a sure solid guarantee that you will never get any rush of interest.

Work with your website designer. Make sure you have a way to quickly and easily get new content up on your site. And then do it and do it steady and regular. If you make it unique and interesting, who knows, maybe one day with world will want to know exactly how you learned to trim toenails on a pet bobcat, and watch the video!

Search engine optimization

Search Engine Optimization- White Hat, Black Hat or Fuzzy Grey.

If you are in a competition, there are two well known ways of winning. You can compete and win because you are best, or you can cheat. In the world of search engine optimization, there are achievers and cheaters – and quite a few who hedge their bets by competing fairly and trying to cut corners at the same time.  My SEO philosophy is simple. Eventually cheaters get caught. If you want to be number 1 and stay number one, well don’t cheat, compete and win. My website contains more on Search Engine Optimization strategy.

In that regards, Google is very helpful. They don’t not say exactly the formula they uses to rank websites-but they do publish some pretty good signposts for the world to see. In fact the major google programmers often blog and try to make clear what google wants from your website to rank it well. They spell it out in great detail. They know that good ranking for a website can mean financial success and bad ranking through poor SEO can lead to financial disaster. So they have gone to great pains to tell people what do to.

Ask Yourself the SEO Questions.

One of the most educational articles in this regard is a set of 23 questions posed by Amit Singhal, a Google software engineer.

You can see the exact original 23 questions here- 23 Questions to Ask About Your Website, from the Google Blog

In summary, rather than use the latest SEO tip or trick, you are being asked to consider some very core aspects of your website’s content.

I was very interested to see the degree to which the questions posed by Mr Singhal concerned TRUST.

If you can look over your website and have 100% confidence that it would inspire TRUST then you are most of the way there. This expresses itself in many ways- the qualifications of the person writing the article, the quality and size of the article itself, the source material being referenced (if any).

Another huge factor is QUALITY.  Hastily prepared pages, with spelling errors and lots of repeating keywords will not help your cause.

Experience also tells me that well written, authoritative articles that bring valuable information or insights to the viewer are a sure fire way to bump up the ranking of a website. If you are interested in search optimization then you should take a look at the article referenced above.

That’s the real secret of great SEO.

“We see a number of clients who need help in pulling their sites up in search rankings,” said Baumgarten, owner of San Antonio website design firm Cook Profitability Services. “And in many cases, the first step is to undo problems the previous web developers or the clients themselves have created.”

SEO sabotage comes in various forms, Baumgarten says. The most common include:

1)    SPEAKING THE WRONG LANGUAGE

One of the most common reasons for SEO problems is the failure to speak the language of the search audience. For both SEO and for internet advertising, it’s critical to do the research to find out which search terms are being used most to find the goods, services or topics relevant to a particular site. Unfortunately many sites – especially those operated by professionals – often use industry jargon or technical terms, rather than common language that syncs with the way people really search. A good place to start is with a program such as Google’s keyword tool – the one accessible inside Adwords. The first step taken by a good SEO consultant is to research keywords and help the client translate his “professional-speak” into “search English.”

2)    DOMAIN GAMES

There are many non-SEO considerations that go into a domain name – from existing bricks-and-mortar branding to audience retention to perceived image. But for businesses without an existing domain, SEO should be one of the factors. A search engine-friendly domain name isn’t necessary to SEO – there’s significant clout to owning a 10-year-old domain, for example – but it does count. Especially for local markets, geography is important, as well as product or service keywords. If you can snag FortWorthWidgets.com or Denver-Doodads.com, grab them quickly.

3)    IGNORING GEOGRAPHY

The changes and importance placed on Google Places in search rankings underlines how important it is that a site is clearly and prominently tied to a geographical area. If your potential client is searching for “Houston dentist,” the practices that have most closely tied themselves to the Houston market show up at top of the results, tied to the mapping. This year’s overhaul of the Places presentation blurs the line between old-style map listings and “organic” listings.

Claiming your business listing on Google Places is critical. As is prominent placement – in bot-readable text – of the business’s local phone number and address. Geography should also be included in the site title and description.

4)    GIVING IN TO THE DARK SIDE

Any website with contact information only has likely received one or more emails or call out of the blue from a company guaranteeing that its services can push the site to the top spot on Google. The proper response is “No thanks” or delete. This is the SEO equivalent of the Nigerian bank scam.

Google has a well-deserved reputation for dealing harshly with people and sites trying to game its algorithms, and a website desperate to move into stunts and end-runs may well find itself dropping to the bottom of the search results, or even blocked. Such bad practices includes keyword-stuffing (loading a page with repeated keywords), keyword cloaking (hiding repeated keywords with non-visible text colors or tiny sizes), keywords that don’t reflect the actual content of the site, backlink spamming and many others.

5)    LIVING IN A BAD NEIGHBORHOOD

No legitimate business should consider a site on a free host. The web equivalent of perverts, pimps and drug dealers use such hosts for everything from scams to junk backlink sites and unsavory operations of all types. Many legitimate sites have found themselves deleted from search rankings as search engines redline entire servers that host bad sites.
6)    BEING UNSOCIAL

With Google now indexing Twitter and other social media, there is more reason than ever to establish accounts and be active for SEO reasons. The activity is key, because anyone can create a social account in minutes. But creating a presence in any social media is about regular streams of content, whether status updates or newsfeeds or Facebook’s new Timeline. Google+ is also picking up steam, with more than 40 million users.

7)    DEAD CONTENT AND OTHER ONSITE FOLLIES

Google has said repeatedly that its goal is to present the highest-quality sites and pages that match a user’s search terms. Its algorithms are intended to look at on-site and off-site clues to the quality of the site. Most shaky SEO strategies hinge essentially on faking these clues. There’s another strategy: to actually create relevant, dynamic and compelling content, showcased in a site technology and coding that makes it easy for search engine spiders to navigate and index.

Do’s: Take advantage of all standard HTML tags, including image titles and alt text; create page and blog titles and article content that use relevant keywords; use content links to other pages on the site; use links that contain keywords, rather than “read more” or “related information”; use relevant keywords as high in the content as possible; blog frequently and share often.

Dont’s: Overuse keywords; use image-based headers and titles unless you know how to make them SEO-friendly.

8)    IGNORING OFFSITE SEO

Backlinking schemes are grounded in truth: In its quest to put high-quality content at the top of search results, Google considers backlinks to a web site. The more legitimate or authoritative sites that link back to your site, the better for your site ranking. Obviously this is part of the formula that’s open to gaming, and Google works to keep spammy links from interfering with its algorithm. Purchased links, link-trading and swarms of links generated by black-hat companies and backlink software are in dangerous territory. But good backlinks are another thing, and can be nurtured in a number of legitimate ways, from guest-blogging, social media, comment links and others.

“The best SEO is a commitment to a well-coded site with continually updated, value-added content that follows best practices for style, headline writing and keyword placement, along with ongoing outreach through social media,” Baumgarten said. “Taking shortcuts can be expensive, ineffective in the long term, and can even result in penalties.”

About Cook Profitability Services

CPS is a national full-service marketing, new media development and management consulting firm, based in San Antonio, specializing in comprehensive profitability services for dental practices and professional offices.

Here at the home of San Antonio Website Design we run some very large, very busy websites. Lets take a look at some specific numbers.

The largest and busiest vet website in San Antonio is the Becker Animal Hospital website. And guess what? They get 21% of all their visits through mobile devices.

Another busy website (over 20,000 visits a month) is a health website we manage specializing in Candida overgrowths and how to address them. This is a website where you would expect people to be doing more serious research from laptops or desktops, but in fact this website gets 15% of it’s traffic on mobile devices and this percentage is steadily climbing.

A large dental office here in San Antonio is getting 17% of all its traffic on mobile devices.

These are not vague general statistics, these are real business people with real websites and they are seeing 15% to 20% of their website traffic coming in on mobile devices.

Recently I wrote about the importance of eye trail in website design in my post Website Design Basics.  Well this becomes much more important when considering the 4 inch screen on a mobile device. What happens?

• The website takes forever to load. Even with 3G and now 4G, trying to load a full size website across a mobile line is noticeably slower than a regular line. Will your prospective customer sit and wait?
• Trying to view a normal website is that the user is scrolling all over the place trying to read information and the phone number and contact information is almost impossible to see. One again, will your user sit scroll through your now confusing website layout? Or will they move on?

Internet use is all about speed. You want to know what movies are out? A second or two later you are looking at them. You want to find a good restaurant?  A second or two later you are reading the reviews. Internet users are on the internet because they want to move fast and get information quickly. If they wanted to go slow, they would shuffle through the yellow pages. So rather than ask the question “Do I need a mobile version of my website”, instead ask yourself  ”Can I afford to blow off 15% to 20% of my new business?” My company does a lot of San Antonio website design projects and one for one we create mobile versions of our websites.

Please contact me if you would like a website design consultation.

1. Never Use Flash Animations (ipad and iphone can’t read them). Moving images and graphics on a website can be very attractive. However the main tool used to create this kind of design element has been a program from Adobe called “Flash”. This program is specifically designed to create animations for web, and was for a long time very popular. Even entire websites can be created using Flash. The problem is all about power. Flash animations drag lots of power, and so Steve Jobs made the decision that iphone and ipad would not read website content that was built using flash. If you have a website that is either entirely built in flash ipad and iphone users will not see a website, but rather a grey blob on the screen. Same for a website design that incorporates elements built from Flash- those elements show only as grey blobs. That is not to say you have to have a static website design with nothing in motion. There are several other ways to create attractive animations on your website. Ask your website designer if your website will be using flash graphics.

2.  No Call To Action (so visitors like the site but never do anything). Take a look at your website design. Is there a button to click to sign up for something? Is it visible and prominent? What about your phone number? Is that very clearly presented? Or is it in the fine print at the bottom of the page?    You can find more information on this important subject in our article on Website Design Basics.

3. Generic Content Written by a Copywriter. (Sounds fakey and false). If you are paying good money for a new website then take an hour of two and sit down and write about yourself and what you do. Nothing can replace the words of the real person writing about what they really do.

4. Small with Limited Content. To create a web page with a lot of written content costs about the same as a page with very little content. Provide your website designer with a lot of content- long pages, with full descriptions of what you do and how it works. Throw in a few extra pages with tips and ideas that come from your experience and training in your field. Small websites with little information have little impact. 

5. Not Listed with Google and Bing. It is quite easy to register a website with google, bing and yahoo- which covers over 90% of all search traffic. Make sure your website designer does so! Otherwise your website may never show up in any search and lose a lot of its potential value. Also signing up for google maps (now called google places)  is a very simple process. You can do that yourself and it will help your business and your website.

If you are interested an updated website design, contact us for a free, no-obligation  analysis and quote.  Also check out a small sampling of our many happy customers in our San Antonio website design gallery.

Design Your Website for Eye Trail

When you first start out to design your website, a vitally important step is the “wireframe” or simply drawn layout showing where things go. For example a quick sketch can show the position of your logo, menu, a main visual element (picture or video) , the body of text and the call to action. Without first doing a “wireframe” or sketch of your website, you risk ending up with a website design that does not use eye trail to position elements. Once you have sketched out the website, make sure you look at it from the point of view of eye trail- left to right, top to bottom- in which order do the various elements appear.

Put Visual Impact on your Website’s Call to Action

Whatever you are trying to get people to do – call your phone, enter their name and email address, or click the “buy” button, your website needs to us visual art and graphic design to put visual impact on that part of the website. How this is done is up to your graphic designer. But your graphic designer must understand that this element must stand out. Normally this means some white space around it to give it separation and some color and design aspects that set it apart. It must catch the eye.

Put The Call to Action Where People Can Find it

There are different ideas on where the call to action should be.  Upper left, upper right, all the way on the bottom, etc. The main thing is that people can easily find it, and normally that means placing it in more than one place.  I believe the call to action should always be “above the fold”.  In the early days of the web, websites were displayed on screens only 600 pixels high. That meant that you did not have a lot of room to play with before the person would need to scroll down.  As of Jan 2011 research shows that 99% of internet users are viewing websites on a screen 768 pixels or higher. So if your call to action shows within the first 768 pixels, then you are in good shape.

Please contact us here if you are interested in a website design consultation

As a dental or medical practitioner, you’re likely aware of Search Engine Optimization – the art of moving your site up in search engine rankings through an array of strategies.

One major factor affecting search engine rank is quality “backlinks” – a link back to your site from another credible website.

One legitimate strategy is to combine a well-written, compelling news release that will be read for months, or even years. And distributing it on a service such as PRWeb, which offers extensive SEO and multimedia tools. A good article can be picked up by thousands of web sites, including major media sites that provide extremely high-quality backlinks.

A press release get’s it’s own internet listing, creating more on-line visibility for you. It also impacts your search engine optimization by referring visitors to your website.

A good example of a press release impacting search engine optimization is a press release we did for a dentist who had spent considerable time and care to create an eco-friendly office. This release was picked up by some of the major “green” oriented news outlets in the United States and resulted in considerable traffic being generated, a lot of positive feedback, and of course increase search engine optimization for his main website.

Cook Profitability Services includes a Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran newspaper journalism who can craft compelling releases – 210-646-8944.

• Internet advertising is by far the best method of dentist marketing for new patients. In the past two decades, most prospective customers have come to depend on the internet, not only for online shopping, but for researching, discovering, and comparison shopping of real-world service providers, such as dentists and professional offices. Especially effective is “Pay per Click” (PPC) search advertising, when it is set up professionally.
•  PPC advertising is very cost-effective and inexpensive compared to broadcast and print media advertising – you only have to pay when someone clicks on your ad.
•  Search targeting delivers ads contextually – your ads are seen only by people specifically searching for “(your city) dentist” or “cosmetic dentist.” And these ads are seen above and to the side of the search results.
•  Search ads can be targeted closely by geography, and in some cases, by age, gender and interests.
•  More than any other media, search ads can be tracked and analyzed. Results can be continually tracked and integrated with analytics, allowing quick monitoring of ROI. This means your ad performance can be tightly controlled and adjusted on the fly.
•  The internet is always “on” and accessible to customers. It doesn’t depend on a customer being in front of a television or listening to a radio at the time your advertising airs. It also does not depend on a customer turning to a particular page of the newspaper.

You can set your monthly budget at whatever level you want and it won’t overspend.

Find out how internet marketing can make a difference in your practice with a free internet marketing evaluation.

Second best is direct mail, which traditionally has a high response rate, and is relatively inexpensive. Direct mail can also be tightly targeted to a specific geographical area. Direct mail however has to be well done, or your postcards and brochures simply slip into the mass.

Pro-Active Public Relations

Fierce competition among internet consumer review sites this summer underlines the growing importance of online customer reviews to consumer researching products and services.  Small businesses can avoid being ambushed by reputation-damaging posts by adopting a five-step strategy, according to Cook Profitability Services’  social media consultant. More on Public Relations Strategy.

Increasingly, consumers head to search engines and review sites before deciding on purchasing products and services.  Customer reviews often provide the first – and potentially strongest – impression of a business and product reviews and ratings provide the first impression for potential customers. The growth of Google Places and its reviews, and the growing complaints of rival review sites that the search giant was stealing review content to boost Places, recently led to Google’s decision to eliminate outside reviews from its own listings.

Unfortunately, many business owners have not done the same research as consumers, and are shocked to discover what people are writing about them.

Public Relations Expert Wayne Baumgarten

“Many of our clients are stunned the first time they Google their practice,” said Baumgarten. “What they often find is a series of customer reviews stretching back months or years.  And the bulk of reviews are often bad – even vicious.”

Consumers’ power tools

Today’s consumers have  powerful tools, to have their say and even strike back by posting reviews and ratings on  Google, City Search, Yahoo Local,  Yelp and hundreds of smaller or local directory sites, bulletin boards and online forums.  And the ability to read and post reviews on the fly is enhanced on rapidly spreading mobile devices, with some apps and sites even encouraging interactions while at the business.  A customer upset about a long wait may well spend the time complaining about it online while sitting in your waiting room.

Public Relations and Social Media

“This is social media too,” Baumgarten said. “It’s powerful, with real-world consequences, and it may not be warm and fuzzy.”

“Social media strategy isn’t just about having a Facebook page or Twitter account,” he continued.  “Social media is the whole range of tools that help people share ideas, information and common interests online.  Some things you can control, some you can’t.  A company may not need a Facebook page – although I strongly advise it – but it can’t opt out of social media.  A business almost certainly already has a listing on a review site, whether they asked for it or not.”

“Even big companies have been blind-sided by social media, and most now have some type of social media strategy and dedicated people to monitor, respond and use social media in their customer relations,” Baumgarten said.  “The big hurdle for our small-business clientele is to convince them that they involved, whether they know it or not.  And if they don’t participate, angry customers may be in charge.”

Five-point public relations strategy to control internet reviews:

While they may not have the budgets to hire social media/reputation management experts, Baumgarten says, small business can work on their own reputation with a five-point strategy:  acceptance, awareness, analysis, approachability and avoiding shortcuts:

1)      ACCEPTANCE – Accepting  the reality that your company is on the social media radar, willing or not,   is the starting point in addressing online reputation problems.  Denial and failure to act is devastating.  On the other hand, it doesn’t have to mean surrender – for those that engage, there are positive aspects.  Many companies – even those initially smeared online – have learned to turn social media into an important company resource that has dramatically improved their customer relations.  A dedication to being transparent online can build your reputation for paying attention to customer concerns.   And unhappy customers may be more inclined to talk things out.

2)      AWARENESS – An essential first step is   an immediate inventory of major review sites to find out what people have already said about you.  Then you must develop a plan for  monitoring of your listings regularly.  It’s important to know about any new bad reviews immediately; the more quickly you can take action, the better.  At some sites, you have the option of subscribing to any new comments on a listing.

3)      ANALYSIS – It’s natural to get angry or panic when someone blasts your company in an online review.  But it’s important to be dispassionate and to do “triage.” Your only options for action on a particular review are 1) let it slide, 2) post a response, or 3) appeal to the review site or take legal action in extreme cases. (This is a long shot; review sites generally don’t have the inclination, resources or legal liability to verify or review customer opinions.)  Questions you should be asking include:

• Is the criticism valid? Many have discovered real problems in their office by reading bad reviews.  If the complaint is valid, set things right.
• Is the criticism bogus?  Do you recognize the complainer, and feel the review is just out of spite? You may need to set the record straight,  in a professional manner.
• Is the reviewer blasting your business on one site, or across multiple sites? Are you the victim of an organized campaign
• Is the review visible?  If it’s extremely old, or is buried, it may not be worth effort.

 4)      APPROACHABILITY – Often people turn to an online review site because felt they couldn’t speak out at the business, because they were intimidated, embarrassed or were dismissed.  ”Rude staff” is a very common complaint online.  The best place to deal with customer dissatisfaction is at the office, where the customer  should be encouraged to share their feelings and handle disputes on the spot.  Customers should also be invited to share feedback on the business website.

On review sites it’s critical that businesses respond publicly to as many reviews as possible, good or bad, valid or not.  Many review sites allow businesses to “claim” their listings, and then reply to reviews as the owner.  Or at the least, the business can create a consumer account clearly labeled and transparent, and use it to participate on the forum.  The message to people reading reviews is that your business is transparent, welcomes feedback, and pays attention to what consumers are saying, even if they don’t always agree.  Even on a site with multiple complaints and low rankings, this gives your business credibility.  While peer reviews are a powerful influence, most people understand that every business has a certain percentage of dissatisfied customers.  A business can deliver an overall impression of credibility and care for customers on social media sites, even if it doesn’t please everyone

5)      AVOID SHORTCUTS – The real solution to online reputation management is a long-term commitment to customer service, and a willingness to create a social media presence that puts individual complaints into perspective.  For those unable to devote the time, a social media strategist can analyze the current situation, set up monitoring, and even handle ongoing customer interaction.

But businesses should use caution in hiring reputation management consultants promising quick and easy fixes.  While many use legitimate strategies, others use questionable methods, misleading sales tactics, and even actions that may backfire on the business.  Companies promising to remove bad posts or post large numbers of good reviews to drown out bad reviews through special relationships with review sites often are misrepresenting what they can do.  And both review sites and the growing number of  verified and trusted regular reviewers are quick to identify and take actions against businesses faking accounts or reviews.

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