Web Development services by SJK
SJK offers web development services from the ground up including
target market research, maintenance and ongoing marketing efforts.
Here is a basic schematic of the flow to any proper design:
Prepare to launch a website
The first step in creating a successful website is to prepare! Even before running out and registering the domain name, you want to consider all angles first; as picking your domain name with a key word or two will help your SERP rankings. The first thing we would do in this process would involve meeting with the prospective client, developing an understanding for their business as well as understanding the competition in their market. Once we understand the market for the client, we would work with the client to determine a simple key word phrase suitable to the client. Knowing the client's business and goals as well as researching companies with websites in competing markets will help give us a good idea of where to start. The next step in the preparation process would be to discuss with the customer the website's purpose, target market and presentation tone. Is the website's purpose simply informational? E-Commerce? B2B? Intranet, Extranet? Also what kinds of demographics will we be targeting towards? This will lead in to the overall tone of the wording. You will want something that appeals to your target market but also sets the tone for who you are as a company. Do you want your tone to be more business / professional? More personable? Or just facts and figures? All of these elements are important in playing a role to determine your key term that your site will be revolved around marketing which we will get to later. Once we have decided on a key term together that captures the client's business, similar but in a niche to their competition, the website's purpose, target market and presentation tone, we can move on to the next step. Design
Design a website
This is the part where you would decide with the client on a suitable domain and register it. It would be advisable to incorporate one of the words from your key term selected in step 1. The next part of the design phase is to decide on a website language. There are many different forms, most often this step flows naturally if a firm purpose has been defined in step 1. Many businesses want something simple with W3C validated HTML or XHTML. Others want dynamic content or E-Commerce with a PHP/MySQL driven site. Once we determine the framework that the client would like is to develop we consider the theme; as in the "skin" of the website. This would involve selecting an overall layout design: colors, graphics, navigation. We normally select a framework design from templates as it gives us a quicker jumping off point. Then based on the customer's requirements we completely reform everything to produce custom suited results for the design. Whether we need to create customer JavaScript to induce mouse over effects or popular gallery background fading effects, or DHTML for replacement menu navigation, or XML for news feed aggregation, we offer all the options to get the proper design for the desired look and feel for the client. The last step in this process, which is usually pretty quick, is to determine a web page naming convention. Sometimes it is good to use a key word or two in the actual page name of the web page document. Sometimes customers prefer not to go this route and it is still ok to do so, but we will discuss this and give the customer the information on it's benefits in order to make an informed decision. Now that we have the framework, layout and naming convention decided on we are ready to create the website. Once the website is created according to all of the above specifications and all the kinks are worked out; it is now ready to go live. Now that the site is live, it is important to not forget it still will need to be maintained.
Maintaining a website
Now that we have a new website it is important to maintain it. Search Engines are constantly crawling your website and if there is never any fresh content it will eventually fall in the ranks for your target audience. Also, for your customers and potential customers it is always good to keep up with the appearance that stuff is "happening" with your company. For these two primary reasons it is important to keep your content fresh with some new items every so often. It is easy for companies to get wrapped up in their business and forget about the ROI from their website. Keeping up with maintaining the website will keep the return steady from your internet marketing efforts. Some of the things that can be done to keep your website fresh with new content and help with the "buzz" would be:
- The company creates a news release or initiates a PR effort
- Will be releasing a new product or service
- Will be appearing at a local event or sponsoring a local event
- Opening a new facility
- Partnering with another company in the industry
- Sales initiatives such as pricing discounts
There are many more but those are just a few examples. There are also other considerations to make when it comes to maintaining your website. Many businesses think that just because the website is up there, it's done and that's it. There are many things you can do "behind the scenes" to keep up with the trends of your website and make sure it continues to drive visitors to your site. These are a few things that should always be included in your maintenance plan:
- Updating content (of course)
- Usage log, site hit, keyword referral, referring sites, referring search engine review
- SERP (Search Engine Results Page) review
- IBL (Inbound Link) review
- Text link exchange request review and implementation
- New PR and website promotional initiative review
Some of the above items will be covered in the next section - Internet Marketing, SEO and Link Building. The above items are all optional but it is recommended to have all in your maintenance plan to maximize your ROI for your website. We offer maintenance plans to customers we build from the ground up as well as new customers with an existing website. We would need to conduct a review with new customers to make sure we are marketing their website effectively, but in most cases we do not have to completely re-develop a website to maintain what a prospective client already has invested in. Now that we have covered the things to do to maintain your website, let's delve a bit more in to the actual marketing, SEO and link building efforts.
Internet Marketing, SEO, Link Building
There is a lot to cover in this topic but we will try to cover as much as possible in a short burst. First of all, there is no 'quick fix' when it comes to getting your website to the top of the search engines and driving traffic to your site. It takes a moderate amount of effort over a duration. The reason for this is that all the major search engines have refined their algorithms over the years such that they deliver quality content to you when you search. There are many different factors, we'll start with SEO at the internal level, here are some things internally that need to be considered to keep your website optimized for search engines:
- Site content, valid parseable W3C coding, website text that matches your target key term
- Internal links to all pages from all pages. Some with key word anchor text.
- ALT tags with keyword rich terms on all your images
- Reciprocal linking program
- Lots of WebPages (content is king)
- XML sitemap indexing
- Create an Affiliates program
- RSS content feeds
Now that we have covered the internal things that can be done to optimize your website, here are some things that can be done externally to keep your pages marketed well on the internet:
- Consistent IBL (Inbound Links) initiative with keyword rich anchor text
- Press Releases and syndication with keyword or key term rich anchor text
- Free major directory submission to the DMOZ/ODP
- Paid priority submission to the Yahoo! directory
- Exchanging links with websites competing for related key terms or free directories
- Listing your ads in PPC programs such as Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing
- Listing your products in shopping product syndicates such as Froogle
- Email marketing (we recommend using a reputable, paid service for this initiative)
- Audience retention (print or email newsletters, email specials or promotions, ect)
- RSS syndication
- Plain old print media advertising!
With all of these things in mind, keeping up with this kind of
initiative can easily become a full time job. All of these
things can be very time consuming. One of the most important
items is inbound linking. Just to clarify the importance of
inbound linking with valid keyword rich anchor text, here is an
example: Michigan Web
Hosting by SJK Hosting Solutions. In this example, when we
have this text link's anchor text specify two key terms - the first
is the most important "Michigan Web Hosting." That would be
the target market key term. The second has the company "SJK"
but still makes use of two more key terms embedded in the company
name "Hosting Solutions." When this link is appearing in
directories of other "web hosting" companies or "Michigan business"
categories, the search engines index the link and associate the key
word text from this. Also note that the domain which the link
points to has one important key term from the target phrase
"hosting." Adding that link to as many static external pages
as possible with relevant content on a consistent basis will give
rise to your target SERP rankings. This takes time. All
of the items above take lots of time but the key is to do little
here and there but to be consistent. We recommend spending at
least a couple hours a month working on marketing initiatives.
A full day of this kind of work per month would be recommended.
We go over all the options with the client and based on the budget
and desired ROI we come up with a solution together. Call us
to set up a site review or new site discovery and we will help you
get on the right track to having a successful web presence!