Is It Time for Your Company to Get a Mobile Website?

If you are getting ready to market your website to the mobile minions, you need to take some time to decide if you simply want a mobile application, or if you want a full blown interactive website for your visitors.  Of course, the end point is what you are after, so the choice between mobile applications and mobile websites is a paramount one; it all depends upon the goals you have for your company and the budget you have to make it happen.

You are first going to want to identify who your target audience is.  If you want to reach a large amount of individuals, opting for the mobile website is most likely your best bet.  Mobile applications are great; but, they only work on the device for which they have been created, such as the Blackberry or the iPhone.  So if you decide to work on a Blackberry application, you must remember that it will only work on the Blackberry, and that cuts out many potential customers who are iPhone or Android users. 

However, if you decide to create a mobile website, this can be accessed by any device, thereby opening up your targeted audience to iPhone users and prepaid cell phone users alike.

So, after you have decided your target market, you can begin to formulate your goals.  In this process you must decipher who the end user is that you wish to captivate with your site.  Sites are much better when it comes to being able to utilize SEO to pull in traffic.  Applications will be housed in an app store where the individual end user will have to perform the search him- or herself, whereas a website can use SEO marketing tips to submit the site to the search engines which do all of the searching for the individual.   Not to mention that sites are simply less expensive to develop.  This makes branding your company with a mobile website the most obvious choice.

Before designing, find out if the site that one has can transition to a mobile device and still be readable.  If so, then you are in business already; but, the fact of the matter is that most sites do not transition well if at all to a mobile device.  In order to take advantage of the mobile web’s ecommerce opportunities, your mobile site should be configured to allow for individuals to either pay their bill or make purchases.  This has been reported as the single most relevant reasons that individuals will surf the web on their mobile devices.

Finally, figure out how you want your site to be presented.  There are several ways of accomplishing this, and a couple of the major options are outlined below. 

Find what it is about your home website that makes it so attractive to its visitors.  Then, begin building a scaled down version.  The mobile device user will still be able to experience the feel of your regular site, only in a smaller version.  This option works well for companies that have a strong online clientele.

Your second option could be a site with just your company’s basic information, such as contact information.  This will scale down the costs you have to pay, as well as give users the choice to contact you via the contact form or to be taken directly to the regular website.  This works well for companies that simply want to highlight their services rather than open a portal for customers to shop.

In short, 2011 is definitely the year of the mobile device making this the best time ever to consider investing in a mobile presence.

5 Easy Ways to Promote Your Website

Many people are of the notion that simply creating  a website and getting it online is the end of their work.  This is simply not the case.  One’s site will not obtain any visitors if it is not listed with the search engines or directories.  There are a variety of services available to an individual or company, but these can cost hundreds of dollars.  Social networking is also a great way to promote one’s site, but that can also cost the individual money if he or she has to hire another person to do all of the tedious legwork.  In other words, the best way to promote one’s site should involve as little work and have the least amount of money involved.  The following is five easy ways to promote one’s website for free.

Google is the most popular of all search engines.  For many people, this is the only search engine they use on a regular basis.  People of all ages use Google to find what they need, and if one’s website is listed with Google, he or she has a much better chance of reaching a wider audience if his or her site is listed in Google.  Doing research will enlighten one as to how to submit his or her site to multiple search engines; just remember, not all search engine listings are free.

Another great free way to publicize one’s site is by adding an email signature at the bottom of his or her emails.  Adding a signature is easy, and instructions can be found easily within one’s email service provider.  The individual’s email signature should include his or her name, all of his or her relevant contact information, and the domain name of his or her site.

Writing a keyword-rich title page is very important to ranking high within the search engines.  In fact, it has been shown that over 70% of people do not search much farther than the first three or four listings on the results page.  Writing a descriptive title for each page on one’s site will help it rank higher, thereby sending more traffic to one’s site if he or she is providing an in-demand product or service.  Using descriptive words on one’s homepage is also a good idea, because the title one creates will be what people see in the search engine rankings.

Creating a descriptive META tag is also a very important step in this process.  This is the description that will be included below the hyperlinked title of one’s page in the search engine results. It is not a good idea to use keywords in this space that do not appear on one’s site, as this could be considered spam, and will not be judged very highly by search engine representatives.

Once one has performed all of these steps, he or she is ready to progress to the final step, which is learning how to optimize his or her site with SEO, or search engine optimization.  This simply requires keyword-rich content to be placed on one’s site.  There are professional SEO writers that specialize in this type of web promotion.  It is a good idea to have hired the SEO expert in the beginning of one’s bid for placement, as an SEO expert can help one with his or her keywords throughout the entire process.  Also, this way the SEO professional will understand what the client’s site is all about well before it is time for him or her to begin writing the page content.

Atlanta Website Design and the Importance of Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, or SEO as it is known, is the process by which a website is given the optimum chance to rank as highly as possible in the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing.  If a website is designed with certain SEO techniques, it will be much more likely to achieve a higher ranking in a shorter time.  To begin, you must start with the planning and the actual design of the website first.  This can be done by choosing the main descriptions, or keywords, that will let users know what your site is about. 

Over 75% of websites receive their traffic from the major search engines.  This is also known as natural traffic, as the user has typed in certain keywords to use in his or her search which brings them to the page of results.  This is basically free traffic.  By typing in keywords that are associated with your site, the user may land on your page.  This is why SEO is so  important; however, once at your site, the website’s design must be user-friendly enough to keep the user there to convert him or her into a customer.  The better and more relevant the keywords, the better quality of visitors one will obtain.

There are several different strategies that one can implement in his or her SEO campaign.  The best search engine optimization will create a site that is search engine friendly as well as user friendly.  There are steps to take to create the best possible user friendly experience, and they are as follows:

*On page optimization: in the on-page optimization process, web pages are created with the absolute most relevant keywords to the company’s site.  There are several different tags that must be placed on each page within the site to obtain the most relevant hits, or visitors.  By internally linking pages with the use of a menu bar is especially important in the navigational aspects of the site.  The creation of a robots.txt file, along with the use of HTML and XML is also very important.

*Off page optimization: another quality way to obtain visitors is by relevant link building, which is known as off-page optimization, meaning quite simply that you are optimizing your site by using another’s site that is relevant to your own.  This is possible through the use of marketing tools, such as article directories and social media platforms.

When a website is designed by Atlanta website design in such a way that it will support all of the major and minor search engine optimization factors, your chances of moving up in the ranks on the search engines increases manifold.  Visitors will be more comfortable in the navigational aspects of the site, meaning that conversion rates will increase as your ranking increases.