At this point in time, most website owners have at least a vague idea about what SEO, or search engine optimization entails. The goal of this article is to give an overview of the process web developers go through as they optimize a website.
SEO is considered a strategy because nothing in the world of SEO is solid ground or clear-cut in terms of action A yields result B. The ever- shifting sands of the google algorithm require a strategy that is equally flexible. We can track the results of our campaign with an application like Google Analytics, which measures site traffic and conversions, among other data. The proof is in the pudding!
There are two types of SEO, consisting of on-site and off-site strategies. On site SEO is accomplished in part by analyzing and adjusting keyword density and prominence, adding the correct meta-tags in the <head> section of the pages, linking and crosslinking in your text, implementing a logical and intuitive information architecture, the creation and submission of an .xml sitemap, and insuring semantic and standards-compliant mark-up (code). Off-site SEO consists of social media optimization (the construction and utilization of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn networks), video and/or audio production and marketing /sharing by Youtube or podcast, article writing, and various other strategies designed to increase traffic and conversions on your website.
The intensity of an SEO campaign is in part determined by the relative competition for keywords. A major company wishing to launch a brand and a product on a national or internation scale will be looking at a 5 to 6 digit SEO budget, easy. A small business, like many of the sites I manage for holistic practitioners, would require a much less extensive SEO campaign.
Holistic Web Design is offering a basic SEO tune up Spring Special for $200! Contact me for details.
Tags: search engine optimization, SEO, web design
“Holistic” Web Design?
I got involved with ”holistic” web design as an acupuncturist who was looking to learn a new skill, and also augment the status of my fellow holistic medicine practitioners in the world of business. All the sites I built at first were in the field of holistic medicine, such as acupuncturists, massage therapists, psychotherapists, and yoga instructors. I loved promoting the message of natural healing, but felt like something was missing from the way I was looking at web design.
Holistic web design gradually came to mean something different to me- I started looking at websites like I do patients in my acupuncture practice. I look at the WHOLE website- body, mind, and spirit. For example, many websites I looked at by other holistic medicine practitioners were very nice to look at, but not doing so well on the search engines. Other websites were, well, less than beautiful. And others were less than functional, or provided a less rich interactive experience.
I started to think in terms of providing a value for my customers by becoming more “holistic” in my web design and development. I decided that every project I worked on from now on would have to be” healthy” in all ways- body (correctly coded, based on current web standards), mind (rich css and javascript that attract the users attention), and spirit (interactivity that pulls the user into the experience).
Also, all the websites I create now are automatically optimized for the search engines with proper meta-tags, keyword density, and no duplicate content found anywhere else on the interent. I make sure all my markup is semantic and complies to current best practices.
My sites are a mix of looks, smarts, and proper behavior, like a good mid-western girl.
Tags: holistic, holistic medicine, holistic website design, web design, web development, web standards
Lately on the web, I have been seeing a lot of attractive website designs in the holistic health category. Unfortunately for these beautiful and often useful websites, they are on page 4 or 5 of Google and other search engines. Studies have shown that people are very unlikely to click on a search link even 3 pages deep. In order for you to compete effectively for business, your site needs to come up on the first page. There is evidence that most internet searches culminate in the searcher clicking on one of the first 3 links on the search results page.
Why is your professionally looking website not attracting more business? The reason is that the designer who created your site was just that, a designer. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a whole seperate field to some designers. Many of the sites I have seen are built with an old-school table layout, or are made primarily of flash or javascript. Flash (animation) and javascript (making “calls” to the web server to provide interactivity) are great if used sparingly, but they are not well indexed by search engines. I have seen websites that are completely made of these two types computer code, and there is literally NO indexable information anywhere!
To grok how sites get on top of google searches, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of the algorithm used to determine a sites search placement. One of the reasons Google is so popular, is that it attempts to weed through the useless, irrelevant information out there on the web. It determines a site’s relevancy to the search terms by analyzing a few different factors. It looks at the information architecture of your website as well as the text and other content of your site for prominence and density of keywords.To take advantage of this new knowledge, you should make sure that your website is correctly coded.
In addition to the variables I mentioned earlier, there is one other very important factor. It’s content. Content that is useful, unique, and draws the user’s interest is what you want. Websites that are simply a digital brochure aren’t going to be well-trafficked. Think about the sites you visit on the internet. You are looking for easy to find information, an easeful user experience, and novelty, if I am not mistaken. That is also what other potential visitors to your website are looking for. Give them what they want- content is king, or queen if you prefer. When they find it on your site, they are going to call you, or at least bookmark your website, which will create an inbound link.
Why are inbound links important? Google’s algorithm takes into account the number and quality (pagerank and relevance) of inbound links to your website, as part of the way it develops a picture of your site’s popularity. It also looks at the number and quality of outbound links, as a measure of how potentially useful your website is to visitors. A campaign to build good inbound links, through online networking with other relevant websites (link exchange), to social media and social bookmarking, should be undertaken immediately after a website goes online. This campaign needs to be continued and refreshed at periodic intervals, just as you should update your website regularly (another variable in the Google algorithm).
Many SEO firms charge a lot of money. A good percentage of them will charge you for an assessment of your website. Holistic Web Design is currently offering a free SEO evaluation for your website. Call us today for a free consultation, or drop us an email.
Don’t let your beautiful web design go unseen any longer!
Tags: beautiful website design, holistic medicine, holistic website design, search engine optimization, web design
By now, if you’ve been following my posts, you would have noticed that wordpress is a bit clunky and hard to customize when you have a blog hosted on wordpress.com. The free install-it-yourself version is available at wordpress.org, for you to download and install on your server, control of which is enabled by a hosting provider.It’s a bit hard to install it yourself if you have relatively no experience working with a file manager on your host’s server. If this is the case, I reccomend switching hosts to someone like godaddy.com. Large hosting providers like godaddy provide applications like wordpress, among others, which are simple to install, and are free. If you want to do it yourself/ have a learning experience, wordpress provides you with an installation manual.
Click here for more on the differences between wordpress.org and wordpress.com.
Once you have wordpress installed on your server, you are ready to go to town. Now you can start installing plugins to expand the usablilty and features of your blog. You can add a whole new theme (template) to your site, changing it’s entire appearance and functionality. There are tons of free templates out there to choose from. Plugins are mostly free as well, and allow you to do things like display RSS feeds from other blogs, display a Flikr photostream, display your blogs recent comments, your twitter or facebook posts, and countless other things. These add value and functionality to your blog and attracts traffic, which converts to new clients for your business.
I also reccommend adding a snippet of code to your blog that allows users to bookmark it on various social networking websites. By far the easiest and best way to do this is to utilize the free service at socialmarker.com and simply add the following code to a “widget” you have dragged to a sidebar on your site, called “arbitrary text/html”. In the drop down box for this widget, insert the following code by copy and paste:
<a href=”javascript:window.location = ‘http://www.socialmarker.com/?link=’+encodeURIComponent (location.href)+’&title=’+encodeURIComponent( document.title);”><img src= “http://www.socialmarker.com/bookmark.gif” border=”0″ alt=”share” /></a><noscript><a href=”http://www.socialmarker.com”>Social Bookmarking</a></noscript>
There is a plugin for this, but I currently have found it impossible to access. Let me know if the above solution doesn’t work for you. It should generate a button like this:
What this will allow users of your website to do is to bookmark your site on as many social networks as you would like. Why? Increased traffic and free inbound links.
Stay tuned by subscribing to my RSS feed, the orange button at the top of the blog! By the way, this feature comes for free with many of the open-source wordpress themes. Nice!
Tags: acupuncture website, holistic medicine, holistic website design, how to blog, wordpress
A Time Consuming Start
If you are a holistic medicine practitioner looking to get into Blog writing, you have come to the right place. This blog is focused on translating the technical nature of the “blogosphere”, so you can save time figuring out how to blog and get to blogging.
The first thing I recommend you do is go to wordpress.com and set up a free blog. This should take about 5 minutes or so, after you wait for the confirmation email and log in. Once you have done that, you go to your dashboard, which is the interface you will use to make blog posts, and control everything else about your blog. Some users may find it useful to view a detailed tutorial on wordpress before they begin blogging, while others may prefer to jump in and learn as they go. Now you are basically ready to go. Start writing! What about? Well, that’s easy. We as acupuncturists, massage therapists, reiki practitioners and so on, are used to translating rarified fields of knowlege and expertise into common speak. Our patients ask us questions, and we have become skilled at answering.
Start with commonly asked questions about your field. You could also start off posting information from an older article you have written, or a newsletter. The idea is to make the information valuable, so people will read it, and follow links back to your site. Make the stuff you are writing as fresh as possible, always including your own ideas and content as opposed to content already published somewhere on the net. Do add links in your text to other relevant sites, as this helps your readers and increases the users experience on your blog. Always add a link to your own site! This is an instant search engine optimization strategy.
I would have compiled a list of blog writing resources, but Neil Patel over at ProNet Advertising has already nailed that list. Check out his 50 favorite blogging resources, for anything from blog writing tips to ideas for marketing your blog. I recommend you browse around on the links therin, and make a plan about what you are going to write, then GO FOR IT, start writing for an audience. Then go to a website like technorati.com or blogcatalog.com and start getting familiar with the blogosphere- find out what people are writing about in your field, and most important what they are reading about. Later you will use these sites to add your blog to a directory for better findability.
Stay tuned for more info on blogging for holistic medicine professional. Please visit my website, Holistic Web Design.net for more info on blogging and other web design topics.
Tags: acupuncture website, blogging, holistic medicine, holistic website design, how to blog, website design
Hello and thanks for visiting the Holistic Website Design blog! Our intention here is to create an ever-evolving guide to the world of website design and development for those involved in the field of holistic medicine or natural health products. Our assumption is that you know very little about the internet, marketing, search engine optimization or other issues that deal with bringing your message to the world through the web medium. Our goal is to provide regular blog entries that pertain to manging your own website, written in plain english.
We will start with an explanation of blogging itself, what it is and why you would want to do it.
In general, a blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. For more information on blogging see the page about it on my website.
Why would you want to join in this wildly popular craze? The answer is quite simple. Do you want more clients for your business? We thought so. Blogging is a very good way to optimize your website for the search engines, by sharing something of value with others. It is also a great way to start establishing yourself as an expert in your field by self publishing your views and opinions. With social bookmarking the craze that it is, you may find yourself with 1000 new visitors to your site in one day, provided you are offering something of value that people are looking for.
In the field of holistic medicine, we as practitioners have access to knowledge that can help other people. If you want to share this gold, offering bits of natural health advice for free in blog format is a great way to both attract clients and simply be of sevice. As you know, offering and putting your energy out there will always yield a result, coupled with correct intention.
Stay tuned next week when we offer a primer for holistic medicine professional on Wordpress, the open-source blog platform.
Tags: holistic medicine, website design
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