What matters more...Time, Quality or Price?

It is one of the laws of the universe that when it comes to producing goods and delivering services somewhere somehow something has to give. Wouldn't you agree that when price and quality matter most it typically takes more time to get what you want? This is where some individuals get confused by the own impossible expectations. Although everyone wants the highest quality for the lowest price in the fastest turnaround time the reality is that one of the three value components that add up to create the final product must inevitably be sacrificed so that the other two higher valued expectations can be met.

Whether building a website yourself or paying a professional to develop your site you need to think seriously about the following. What are the two most important elements to consider when planning and developing a marketing media strategy?

Within every service industry the Cost-Time-Quality matrix can be applied to the people that are providing exceptional service to their clients. When time and price demand the lowest cost delivered in the shortest possible time you can bet that the quality of the final product will suffer.

The fast food industry is a perfect example of this. You are hungry and you want some cheap food you will get what you pay for, just don't expect a fine dining experience when you hit the drive thru window. By the same token a seven course meal in a fancy restaurant may be served up within a reasonable waiting time after ordering, but there is a premium that is paid for the quality of food that is prepared to order.

Simply put if you expect quality at an affordable price then you should expect the project to take some time to complete. If you prefer a fast turn around and want a fair price the quality of work might suffer from where it could be so that a demanding deadline can be met. And finally if you put speed and quality ahead of pricing you can expect to pay a premium for the services you request.

Whether developing a website, building your online reputation, or maximizing your SEO strategy you must to consider what you are willing to sacrifice to get the results that you really want. For most of us the quality of backlinks that are being added to a website are more important than the time it takes to add a massive amount of poor quality links over a short time. Because SEO offers the best ROI of any marketing effort available it is already a high priority for every business and website owner.

So the question is what is more important--building a lot of backlinks in the shortest time possible and hoping they will affect the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) or adding quality links over the accepted 9 to 18 months that will lead you to the top of the search engine directories for many years to come?

Although social media content requires a certain amount of speed in developing and a video, the quality may be compromised to meet a low budget. This is where the quality of the final edit might lack the visual effects or sound clarity of a professional production, but the cost will be worth the sacrifice. On the other hand a high quality piece of film is worth the added cost if its produced for an audience that appreciates the high end finish of HD picture quality or the audible quality of professional sound mixing.

When considering your optimization efforts and social media campaigns think about the intended audience and what they are expecting as you choose between the quality of your work and the costs involved in developing quality links and posts that will be added to the Internet forever. If you remember that what you end up with comes down to your choice of picking from the three values of Time, Price and Quality your expectations will be met and you can have exactly what you want when dealing with service providers in online marketing or any other industry.

Optimize Page links for better SEO Placement

In writing content for different clients I have noticed that certain website have very long and complex links that take the website visitor from one page of the site to the next. Instead of using the common link for the pages home.html; about us.html; and contact.html, the links provide some important information to the search engines and aid in the overall creation of an optimized website.

To the casual visitor that is viewing the page the button that is clicked is a normal looking icon that can be found on every website. Simply noting the different page names that are of interest to someone browsing the site the navigation buttons provide the link to another page appear to be colorful additions to the design of a layout.

Like this one is...

However, when clicked on the navigation bar at the top of the screen reports back an elaborate string of words that are related to the company, the page or a particular service or product being promoted.

When building a web page it is now common practice to identify the page title that appears in the browser above the site content. Adding a small logo and name to the page tab makes it possible for the search directories to store more information related to the website, but what is remarkable is that the same "robot" programs that are gathering and indexing a website's written content are also looking at the links and names that are being used by some designers to aid in the optimization of the entire site. 

Allow me illustrate what I mean. For one company a link from their index or home page might look like this http://www.MarketingMediaStrategy.com/services.html, which is perfectly acceptable and will do the job of site navigation, but with some tweaking the same link is optimized when it is written like this: http://www.MarketingMediaStrategy.com/services-writing-graphics-strategic-planning.html

The difference is that while the same page appears on the screen the indexing of that page is unlike any other website. That means that when someone is searching the Internet and types in writing, graphics or planning there is a greater connection to the site that is offering those services. In addition to adding page descriptions that are unique for each page on the website the descriptive navigation link name may boost the ranking of the website within the individual search parameters of an online inquiry.

Whether you are designing you site yourself or having a professional company develop you domain for you it is a beneficial to have them make the page links more usable for the search engines by choosing the words that describe the page and enhance the relevant terms that are being incorporated to optimize your website. Used as covert yet appropriate marketing media strategy when building the pages of a website the lengthy navigation links allow additional optimization work to be done on the website as it is launched and is first scanned and indexed by the "search robots" and "spider programs" that crawl through a website and index the information for the search engines.

SEO 101: The basics of Website Design

When designing a new website it is important to include the components that will allow the site to gain momentum within the search engines once it has been indexed by the spiders and robots. (Keep in mind that spider or robots refer to the search engine programs that crawl through a website and mark the content that can be extracted and read by the search engine). 

One buzz word that is thrown around by designers and programmers is "site architecture." Basically site architecture is the layout of the pages of a website and should be in a format that is easy to read and follow. Using logical pages that guide a visitor from the home page to other pages on the site, the architectural elements of the code should be easy to navigate. (This means that page frames are out.) Including a site map in the design of the pages allows the spiders to quickly index the entire site and draw out the relevant content that will be on file with the search directories.  No matter how many pages are being added to the site the map page is one of the most important elements of internet marketing and is very often overlooked by people that feel it is not necessary to break down their site. However this is a mistake that can cost the website brownie points when it's time to go live with the launch of the new site.

Within the source code of the HTML are Meta Tags that allow the programmer to add a series of keywords invisibly to the site. Although the search engines allow programmers to include keywords in the code the rule of thumb is to limit the keywords to no more than 20. Stuffing the site with keywords will only get the site into trouble and may get it banned from the more popular search engines. Along with the tagging of keywords Meta tags also allow for unique page titles to added to the site. About 10 years ago the pioneers of SEO realized that instead of marking their pages "home," "about," and "contact" they could actually say something that distinguished a website from every other page on the web. Using the Meta tags to create a unique title for each page and add a description allows the site owner to put up a sentence or just a few words that can be indexed and remembered by the search engines. Keeping in mind that the wording of the Meta tags should reflect the keywords that are used in the written portion (the content) of the website, programmers that are building a website can ensure that the relevance of the content is aligned with the offerings of the company. This brings me to the next point I want to make.

Because the search engines look for content that is the same as what a person making an inquiry is asking for, it is important to keep everything on the site relevant to the work that is being promoted by the keywords. Choosing the right words to say makes an impact on what the search engines will naturally link back to the website and return in the results of a search. With the philosophy that more is better some people overload their site with text that rambles on and goes nowhere. Keeping the content of the site to no more than 500 words per page will help to narrow the results and make the site easier to find. Using between 300 and 400 written words is the optimal amount that can help the spiders to index a site, but again the relevant content that relates to the offering of services, products or information is the most important thing to consider when writing for the web. Using the keywords naturally within the page content is also considered vital to the success of a website. However keywords must be limited to only a two or three uses per page. Any more than three uses of the keywords and the search engines might think that the site is being stuffed and drop the site down in the rankings instead of moving it up.

Finally, I want to address photos, pictures and Flash animation. If used in moderation each of these can aid in the promotion of the website to the search directories, but to make them stand out they must have a written description in the coding of the site. As the spider and robot programs are reading text only they do not see pictures and only note an image file is in use. Without a description that can be indexed pictures have no meaning in optimization and are lost. Likewise animation that is attractive and clever is not marked and sites that built entirely in Flash can only be tagged on their homepage. Therefore animation is not a preferred source for building a website. If you are looking for an animation it is best to embed it into an HTML coded site and tag the file so that it can be indexed for search optimization.

With these basic tips for building a website that is optimized for the web you can start making an impression on the search engines, but there is a whole lot more that still needs to be done in the way of online marketing before any website will reach the top page of a search result.

Until next time,