That might seem like an acceptable trade to make, but it can be the quickest way to kill your search engine optimization campaign. To understand why, you have to consider two important facts:

Search engine algorithms are changing all the time. What Google loves today, it may hate tomorrow. This is especially true when it comes to keyword density – the exact number or percentage of keywords and phrases you can fit on your page before Google decides you’re trying to “beat the system” is a closely guarded secret. You could easily step over the line, and harm your business site’s search engine rankings in the process, without even being aware of it.

Your window of opportunity to interest potential customers is very small. In case you haven’t noticed, people don’t stick around and decide to do business with you simply because they feel like you’ve put a lot of work into your SEO plan. If what they find on your landing pages doesn’t tip them off to the idea that you are head and shoulders above your competitors, or that you fill a pressing need better than someone else does, then it’s a matter of milliseconds before they click away to somewhere else.

Given that the very best marketing copy, and the pages that convert into the highest percentages of leads and sales, aren’t the same ones with the most carefully selected keyword phrases and densities, going too far to optimize your pages for search is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Obviously, search engine optimization is and will continue to be an important online marketing strategy. Don’t forget who you are ultimately writing your SEO content for, however, or visitors will have clicked away and forgotten your pages before you get a real chance at turning them into customers.

3 Lessons in E-commerce From Internet Piracy

It might seem strange to think that the owners of online stores can learn anything from Internet piracy, a trend that so many in both business and government are trying hard to shut down. But, believe it or not, the fact that so many people think nothing of downloading things like movies and music illegally has lessons for anyone involved in e-commerce.

Here are three e-commerce lessons from Internet Piracy:

Online or off, theft is a problem. Whether you own a shop on Main Street or a specialty online store, it’s a safe bet that someone is going to try to slip something off the rack sooner or later. Be on the lookout for things like stolen credit cards, suspicious overseas orders, and volume purchases that don’t seem to make sense.

Protect what you have. Your content – especially in the form of product descriptions, blog posts, and other written material – has value. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t be so eager to steal it. Make sure you’re keeping an eye out for competitors who are trying to make a quick buck off your creativity and hard work.

Sell whatever has the most value. One of the easiest ways for the owner of an e-commerce site to worry less about theft and piracy is to simply give away anything that would be simple to copy or distribute. How could this be profitable? By branding it and becoming the source of information and advice, rather than hoping to make money off things like videos and e-books.

Obviously, this tactic wouldn’t work for every business, but if you can constantly draw visitors to your site through the information you offer, then it’s a good bet you can convince them to buy their products and services from you, rather than having to rely on the hope that they won’t steal your material.

Internet piracy is a huge problem, and probably won’t be going away soon. By studying it like any other business reality, however, the owners and managers of online stores can use its lessons to become more profitable.

“Debbie, and Blue Rose Design PDX, not only offered professional design and development solutions for our Nelson Architectural Stone website, but came at the project with a marketing mentality, finding tools and plug-ins, keywords, and layout of the site geared towards driving business and piquing clients’ interest. The goal was to get clients to contact us.

In addition, Blue Rose Design PDX built us a custom inventory system to present our products and taught us how to update and manage our site to the degree we could do so, creating flexibility and cost-savings for future editing.”

Erik Nelson | President
Nelson Architectural Stone Inc.
Phone: 971-255-0962

Web Design & Development: www.nelsonarchstone.com
Oct. 2011 – Feb. 2012

It was important to convey that my programs are not fringe craziness, but rather are professional, creative and very sophisticated psychology, healing, and self help. Self-hypnosis and subliminal learning programs require that the perspective buyer trust the creator of the programs. After all, they will spend significant hours, in a vulnerable state, being connected and listening to the writer and voice who created the programs. The site does a nice job of conveying that people can trust and be comfortable with these programs that I create.

I thank Debbie for her great work and look forward to what she creates for me in the future. I definitely need her inspiration and motivation to help me accomplish more in helping more people around the world”.

Dr. David Illig | SuccessWorld Audio Programs
Visit Site: Web Design
December 2011

“Debbie is very patient and easy to work with. I am so glad I found her!”

Susan Kuznitsky | Studio in the Woods
Portland Fine Artist
View Site: Susan Kuznitsky
Oct. 2011

What might surprise you even more is how easy it is for a mistake or miscommunication at this stage to damage or delay your chances at all the great things that come with the new business website.

Why? Because it’s so easy, when you’re getting to know a new company, to make assumptions that aren’t completely accurate. Without your input, your design team isn’t likely to know exactly what you do, where your profit centers are, what your design preferences are like, how your new website fits into your short long-term business goals, and so on. And because they’ve presumably been through this process dozens of times in the past, it’s only natural for you to assume they know what to ask.

Because this is so important, and to help you get your new business website on the right track from the very beginning, here’s a good piece of advice: only work with web design teams that take the time to get to know you, and when they do, come prepared. Think beforehand about what you’d like to see come out of your web design project, and then make some notes so you can be sure to bring these items up. Grab any literature, news profiles, marketing materials, or anything else you have on hand that might help someone better understand your company. And above all, be sure to ask and answer thoroughly.

Watching your new website move through the development process and eventually go live is an exciting thing. But if you want the best possible outcome, remember that the most important step comes a lot earlier when you sit down and talk.

Navigation and usability are two of those things.

If you’ve never stopped to think about either one in specific terms, you certainly aren’t alone. And yet, there are undoubtedly sites that you like visiting more than others, not just because of the way they look, but also how easy it is to find and access the information you’re looking for. In other words, some small business websites are just easier to use than others.

Obviously, you want clients to think of yours as falling into the easier to use category – even if they never really bother to think about it all. Here are a few quick tips to help you out:

Use a common, consistent navigation system. It’s great to decide to go with the new, alternative look for your site, we recognize that people are used to finding pages and navigation bars in a certain way. If you’re just too unusual, then visitors (and new potential customers) might become lost or confused.

Draw a flowchart of your site. Depending on the number of pages you have, this might seem like an aggravating thing to do. But what you’re looking for isn’t just the structure of your small business website, but how many clicks it takes to get from one area to another. Important destinations like the FAQs, contact information, shopping cart, and customer service policies should never be more than one screen away.

Make additions and deletions in an orderly way. A content management system can solve a lot of these problems, but if you are not using one, make sure not to leave broken links on your small business website… or important new pages where no one can find them. Often, a site can start out with great usability and a clean navigation system, only to end up being confusing months or years later.

Here are three SEO-related reasons to add contact information – including your geographic location – to every page on your small business website:

One out of every five web searches has a geographic component. More and more, searchers are turning to sites like Google instead of the Yellow Pages, and so having your location on each page can be a great way to boost your local business. In fact, some may even call to find out your retail location or to get driving directions.

Google and the major search engines factor location into their results anyway. That’s right, even if your potential customers aren’t entering geographic keywords in their searches, Google will still factor them into the sites they see. So, the more places you put your address, phone number, and other contact information, the easier it’s going to be for local buyers to find you.

You can’t control which pages people end up on, or how they get there. Regardless of how visitors come to your website, or which pages they see, after visiting a search engine, it’s important that they be able to get in touch with you to ask questions, get more information, or place an order. The easier it is for them to see how to do one of those things, the less chance there is they’ll get distracted (or frustrated) and click away to the next search result.

Obviously, the high number of samples and testimonials to be found on web designers’ pages means that you have to take each one with at least a little grain of salt. But how much, and what to pay attention to? Here are three quick tips on what to read into any web designer’s former client testimonials:

Look for feedback that’s specific. Lots of testimonials are going to say things like “great job,” but how much does that really tell you about the designer or firm in question? See if you can find something specific, either about what made their work so great, what their rates were like, or if they provided over the moon service. These are still only clues, but at least you can see how well they match up to your experiences so far.

Are the testimonials verifiable? This is a tricky one, because few of us want to put the names, e-mail addresses, or telephone numbers of our best clients online, so that competitors and telemarketers can hassle them endlessly. At the same time, you don’t really learn anything from seeing that “Tony F” liked his web design. Try to find out whether you can actually track down the contacts in question if you really need to, or consider asking your web design team for a few references.

Try to find a consistent pattern. Even if the first tip holds true, there’s no guarantee that just because the web designer did a great job for one client, that they did fantastic work for every client. With that in mind, try to match up projects and dates to piece together a strong work history. If you can, there’s a good chance you found a web design company that’s going to be great to work with.

Those are great ideas all around, but they miss one important step: stop, take a breath, and have a look at how you’re doing with search engines right now.

The quick answer, of course, is “not nearly as well as you’d like to be,” and that’s understandable. Every day you’re not ranking near the top of Google or the other major search engines for your most important keywords represents the loss of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of new customers. So why bother to sit back even longer?

The reason is that it’s a good idea to run baseline for a week or two, taking careful measurements. At the end of that period, you might not be ranking any higher, but you will have a better understanding of where your site is now, what terms you actually have done well with in the past, and where your biggest areas of improvement are. This is important for two reasons: first, because you’ll want to know, with some certainty, just how much you’ve improved down the road. Good SEO is never cheap, regardless of whether you’re paying in time or money, and so it makes sense to know exactly what you’re getting for your investment.

The second reason is that search engine optimization isn’t much different than anything else in business; when you change one thing, you usually (and often unintentionally) change other things, too. In other words, optimizing your pages for certain keywords and phrases can have unplanned side effects. You might not know what those are, or whether you should even worry about them, until you’ve taken stock of your current position.

It’s tempting to rush straight into an SEO campaign, but try to resist the urge and figure out where you’re actually starting from first. It might not be the most exciting part of the process, but it can make everything else a lot more effective.

Website Grader is not a bad start to see how your website is doing. By all means remember this is only one form of measurement.