• Better Once Every Two Weeks Than 4 Articles Uploaded All At Once •
• The Search Engine Spiders Like Consistency! •

I thought I’d make a quick mention about how often you “should” upload a new web page, or make a new blog post. This gets asked of me quite often by clients. My response is “on a regular, consistent basis.” Meaning, don’t keep putting off writing (as many people do, because many of us do have to struggle some with putting our thoughts down in the written word) and then at the end of every month, for example, slapping 5 new articles onto your site and feeling relieved!

Nope! It is much better to upload or post one new article every week, or every two or three weeks (if that is the best you can muster) than doing a bunch all at once. Though every few days would be something to shoot for, many of us can’t come up with fresh content as quickly as that. So again, even every two weeks on a consistent basis is better than nothing!

What’s the big deal about being consistent?   I’ll tell you. The search engine spiders will be visiting you more often because you are providing fresh content more often! This is just a good thing for any site. Plus, as time goes on and your website’s page count, or the number of posts on your blog increases substantially, you’ll reap the benefits of having what the spiders now consider a “content rich” site.

There is a little extra rankings help when you start reaching about 75 pages or more. So what are you waiting for? How long has it been since you added a new, fresh, interesting page or article to your site? Get writing now!

• Cheap Website Design Can Turn Around & Bite You! •
• A True Client Story •

Yesterday was a very satisfying day for me professionally. Damian and I provided a beautiful new (and properly SEO’d) website to yet another newbie to the world of online marketing. Now my client, whom I’ll refer to as “Jennie”, can start to really grow her work-at-home business.

I am always excited when I get a new client, especially one who has never marketed their products or services online before. I know how excited I was the first time I viewed my first website on the World Wide Web! It was an awesome experience. I enjoy sharing in that same excitement with my clients when they finally see their website uploaded and live on the internet!

But there’s more to this post than me gushing over how great I feel, and how happy my client is with her new website design.

It Didn’t Start Out All Rosy and Wonderful For Her

Jennie was referred to me about eight months ago by another very satisfied client. She and I talked about what is entailed to get a new website up and running; what it takes to get good rankings in the search engines; what she needs to know about maintaining the website; and of course, how much the website design and search engine optimization services would cost her.

I gladly offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation to prospective clients. I can make a quick assessment of your website’s design and search engine optimization status, or discuss what is involved to get your first website up and running.

Damian and I are very fair and quite reasonable in our design and SEO fees. We pride ourselves on over delivering  all aspects of our services. In our minds, we proposed a very fair price to Jennie for a “simple” yet user friendly and 100% SEO friendly website design.

“OK, Claudia … Let Me Think About That …”

If someone has never had a website before, and really has not done much investigation into the price points and fees that are being quoted for web design and SEO services, it is obviously quite hard then for a newbie to know what is a “fair” price quote and what isn’t.

Unfortunately, apples do not get compared to apples … too often shiny crisp apples get compared to rotting oranges. In other words … if I quote you $1000.00 for a custom  website design, which happens to also include custom header graphics; some special scripts needed in order that it performs as you wish; and keyword research has been performed and all your tags have been written and properly optimized; and of course there are many many more hours of hand holding and such involved before your new site finally goes live … but you find “someone who says they are really good at HTML coding” who can build you a website for $200.00 … and you JUMP at the $200.00 “deal” … what do you think you will end up with?

Hmmm??

Yup, You Will 99.99% Most Assuredly End Up With A Mess!

You guessed it. Because Jennie had no clue as to what constitues a solid, properly designed, properly coded, properly SEO’d and technically sound site, yes … she thought the price we quoted her was maybe “more than she needed to spend” (her words). Please note the price we quoted her happened to be less than my $1000.00 example.

So she thought “well gee … it’s just a website … $200.00 sounds fair to me”. And off she went and plunked down her $200.00 with that “really good HTML coder”.

But (and this is true my friends, I am NOT making this up) oh my! What she ended up with! That “HTML expert” used FrontPage to design the site. Mistake #1! Anybody involved in website design ought to know that FrontPage has been obsolete for a good while. And quite honestly, anyone who understands HTML knows that FrontPage adds a lot of code bloat, among other things.

In addition, the “design” of the site (if you can call it that) was tired looking. Maybe OK for 1999, but not up to 2008 standards. If you’re going to pay for a brand spanking new site, then please … at least make sure design-wise you are getting something that reflects current web design trends. Why start out looking dated?

So, to make a long story short, I received an email from Jennie a few weeks ago. Her first words were “I should have listened to you to begin with …”. And she was saying “please Claudia, how much will you charge to clean up this mess and get me online with a website?” She provided the URL to her “new” site in the email.

After one look, it was clear there wasn’t going to be any “cleaning up”! That website was a design disgrace. No ethical SEO consultant would even think of optimizing a site like that, either. That would be stealing money from the client.

First things first was to design her a technically correct website and one that was also properly SEO’d. I told her if she was willing this time to do it right, and spend the money necessary to start out on the right foot … then we’d be more than happy to take her on as a client! She agreed.

And remember folks, you are also paying for the knowledge and expertise the web designer or SEO consultant brings to the table! That is worth a whole lot to the ultimate success of your website project, too.

Moral of the story … you usually DO get exactly what you pay for! As I told Jennie, “I guess you can look at that $200.00 as a valuable learning curve and maybe if nothing else, it did get you motivated to write the content for your web pages!”

• How Many Words Make Up A Proper Web Page? •
• My New Client’s Misconceptions Are Worthy Of Discussion! •

I have just been hired as an SEO and online marketing consultant by a real newbie. Bless her heart … she has absolutely no idea about what it takes to get her business online. Because of her naiveness, which of course ANY newbie would have, she got suckered in to paying someone $100.00 to design a website for her. Oh yes … what a “deal” she thought she was going to get!

Without going into the whole story here, let’s just say she got exactly what she paid for! A very crappy poorly coded antiquated-design mess of a site, if you could even call it a “site”.

As a matter of fact, this $100.00 design job was supposedly done by someone who really understood HTML coding. HA! What a joke! Let’s just say anybody could have done a better job by going online and researching basic HTML coding structure.

If I seem like I am going off track here with the topic at hand, that being “Web Site Content: How Much Content Comprises A Web Page”, well I am … sort of. But I’m telling you this first part about the website design fiasco because this same “expert” gave my new client some of the most ridiculous information about web site content and how much you should write for each page that I’ve heard in a long time, that I thought “hey — this will make a good post for today”.

My New Client’s Understanding Of Proper Content “Length”

My client had provided carefully written content for the 5-pages she wants on her website that will promote her business. Part of my job is to research the keyword phrases to target for her niche, and to properly SEO the tags. Along with this, I coach my clients on how to tweak their content so that it incorporates the keywords into each web site page of content.

Her pages definitely need to utilize the keywords I’ve chosen for her, but I also mentioned she needed to flesh out the content a bit more, too. That I felt the website visitors would be more prone to stay on her page and hopefully place an order with her, if she wasn’t so sketchy with the on-page information.

In regard to this conversation she said:

My understanding of a “page” was what you could see when strolling [sic] down before the page ended, and I was told that it was better to have it all on one page.

Ummm … okay … say what?

I think what she meant by “all on one page” was that a web page’s content ought only to be visible above the fold. In other words, only enough to be visible on a computer screen without needing to scroll down.

Wrong! (Like I said before, bless her heart! She was trusting this other ill-informed person to steer her in the right direction.)

So, to straighten her out, here was my reply to her:

About web page length … I am still not quite sure what you are trying to explain to me about “what you can see when scrolling down before the page ends” … whomever that person was that told you that is quite ill-informed … please know that a web page is however many words of content and/or images it takes to complete that page and to make sense to the person reading it!

Think about it … how many darn websites do you go to that you do indeed keep scrolling down to continue reading the content? It is very rare that we land on a website that has just a couple of short paragraphs on each web page!

So, if you are brand new, or even more than a little new to getting a website up and running, please know that each page of content you write should be everything and more for your visitors! If a short page is all that is necessary and does the trick, then fine. If it takes many many words and images to provide a great web page, then fine! Scrolling down a page to keep reading the content is NOT even an issue!

I believe whole-heartedly that it is much better to over-deliver in the information you provide on each page. I personally maintain this attitude for almost everything I write for my websites and blogs. I do not take into consideration it’s length. I focus on quality of content!

I suggest you adopt this same attitude, too. You can’t be wrong by doing so, and your web site content will be all the better because of it!

Not sure if your website could use a little tweaking or a major over-haul in order to better promote your products or services to a larger target group of customers? That is why I am happy to offer a free 30-minute SEO phone consultation to you. to learn more or set-up a call with me, please go to: SEO-Innovation.com Complimentary Consultation. I look forward to seeing if we can work together to help you achieve all you desire via your website and online marketing efforts!