Rebuild Website or Perform SEO? by Chris Genge

Rebuild Website or Perform SEO? by Chris Genge

Rebuild Website or Perform SEO... which should you do first?
A lot of website owners are interested in rebuilding their website and in performing search engine optimization (SEO), but can't. Budget constraints won't allow for both and so they struggle with which one to do first. Rebuilding a website is a great idea. Performing SEO is better.

The Internet is vast...truly vast. It is comprised of, at last count, over 8-billion web pages and that number increases daily. People need a map to chart this unimaginably large landscapes and search engines are the maps. SEO provides pointers to your business on the maps; rebuilding your website does not.

If you understand the following statement, then the decision is very easy to make - in order to become visible to their second audience (the visitors), websites must first receive adequate top rankings (the first two pages of listing results) by their first audience (the search engines).

Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is probably the single most important marketing technique that a website owner can do to increase visibility and visitors. Greater visibility and highly targeted visitors improve sales, which in turn, improves the bottom-line.

Numerous studies have proven just how important SEO is for online businesses:
-50% of those who bought from online retail sites arrived via the search engines (Aggrandise.com, 2002).
-Between 85 and 90% of people use search engines to find websites they've never visited before.
-The Financial Times reported August 2002, that every day over 340-million web users rely on search engines to locate new businesses (DISC).
-57% of Internet users search the web each day, making search the second most popular Internet activity next to checking email (81%) (DISC).

Studies have also proven that SEO has the best return on investment (ROI) of any form of advertising in terms of cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Savvy website owners who realize just how fierce competition on the Internet is use SEO to position their business ahead of their competitors. If you are not incorporating SEO as part of a website marketing/promotion strategy you are losing out, because your competition mostly likely is!

If done properly, the results from SEO are very impressive. One of our long time clients in the printing industry has been operating the same site for almost five years. Instead of rebuilding their website which has a very simple design, they decided to perform SEO. That same site now delivers so much business that SEO is the only form of sales and marketing they use (both online and offline). Another client now does as much business in one day as it used to in seven. And this
client originally wanted to rebuild their site first. And to this day, the site is still the same except for some minor regular updates. In the past, the client did a lot of print advertising, but because of great SEO results, they have cut their advertising costs in half and achieved sales growth of 700%! For more great examples, read the case studies on the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) website.

Rebuilding a website
Rebuilding a site makes it look nice, provides fresh content, and sometimes improves navigation. Will any of these lead to increased visitors? Most likely not. Making aesthetic changes does very little to increase a website's visibility on the Internet. It is estimated that 56% of ALL websites are "lost in cyberspace"! What is the point of spending money on rebuilding a site if no one ever sees it? It would be a complete waste of time, money, and effort - all of which translate into a very poor ROI.

Your website is competing with over 8-billion (at last count) other pages on the Internet. It will be "lost" by not having it visible to the search engines - akin to putting up a flashing billboard on a deserted island! It can be the greatest billboard ever designed, but because of its isolated location very few people will see or read it, and thus, it will be a poor source of revenue generation.

The fact is, there are lots of great websites on the Internet. So what? What's the use of having a great website if no one knows about it or can find it? And even if people do know about it, you are still not reaching the largest Internet demographic: the 85 to 90% of ALL Internet users who find what they are looking for by conducting searches on search engines!

The top-4 search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL (CyberAtlas, May 2003). How do they compare in terms of traffic? The info below shows the top 5 results of the Top-50 Internet Property Rankings for October 2003 (ComScore Media Metrix, Nov. 2003). Keep in mind that the table shows total number of unique visitors, not total number of searches. So while MSN is
tops in terms of traffic, Google is still the king of search.

Rank Property Unique Visitors (in thousands)
1 MSN-Microsoft sites 109,334
2 Yahoo! sites 108,673
3 AOL Time Warner Network 108,394
4 eBay 62,454
5 Google sites 58,209

The point of the table is that four out of the top five most-visited sites are search related sites. SEO is your mechanism for becoming visible to this group. SEO is critical to the success of your online venture. Rebuilding is also important, but it can wait.

Other considerations
-Ask yourself, what will deliver more results to my business: rebuilding or SEO?
-What is the purpose of your site? If you use it to bring in customers or sell products, then SEO is definitely the one to do first. If visitors and sales aren't important, but having a beautiful, stylish site is, then by all means rebuild it.
-To deliver maximum benefits your website has to be both people and search engine friendly. Will rebuilding accomplish this?
-Some owners think they'll rebuild the site first and then perform SEO, only to discover afterwards that their budgets won't allow for it. Ask yourself, do I want to be stuck with a nice looking site that delivers NO more traffic than its predecessor?
-Your website should be an asset, not an expense. It should be generating you income or leads, or providing useful information about your company. If it isn't then why have it?
-In the US, 13% of traffic to a website comes from search engines, up from 8% for the previous year. International figures were even more striking with some countries having search engine referral rates as high as 21%! (WebSideStory, Mar. 2003). SEO makes your site search engine friendly. Rebuilding it may or may not, depending on how skilled in SEO your webmaster is. There's far, far more to SEO than just inserting META tags (title, description, keyword tag).

SEO first, rebuild second
It really is a much wiser choice to perform SEO first. Later if the results indicate the need to make improvements, then proceed with rebuilding your website. Involve your SEO in the rebuilding process - their input/ advice will be invaluable!
About the Author
Chris Genge is the President of 1st on the List Promotion Inc, a website promotion firm that
specializes in search engine optimization and pay per click management. Chris writes on current
and emerging search engine marketing theories and has been involved in the SEO industry since
1997. He and his team focus on researching and implementing the most effective search engine
optimization techniques. To learn at http://www.1stonthelist.ca/

When CMS Met SEO - Using the Power of Content Management Systems by Gobala Krishnan

When CMS Met SEO - Using the Power of Content Management Systems by Gobala Krishnan

Search Engine Optimization revolves around providing useful, unique content on your website and making sure that search engines can find and understand it easily. 'Organic SEO' as it is called, puts emphasis on optimizing hundreds of keyword rich content pages as 'spider-bait' for search engines, with Google being the most popular target.

While organic SEO in itself boils down to a few simple techniques and a lot of hard work, the most tedious of those is always adding and managing content. If you're a webmaster lost in a world of dead links, missing pages, distorted images and a site structure that beats any maze, you're not alone. Such is the nightmare that many Dreamveawer-and-Notepad type of webmasters hide.

What is CMS?

CMS, or Content Management Systems, is a great alternative to using manual WYSIWYG HTML editors, website builders, and all the others kinds of expensive website tools in the market. CMS applied solely to the purpose of creating and managing websites are also knows as Web Management Systems. A short excerpt from StepTwo.com on the definitions of CMS:

" A content management system (CMS) supports the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information. It covers the complete lifecycle of the pages on your site, from providing simple tools to create the content, through to publishing, and finally to archiving. It also provides the ability to manage the structure of the site, the appearance of the published pages, and the navigation provided to the users."

Advantages Of Using CMS for Your Website

Here are a few often overlooked advantages of using CMS for your web project, from a search engine marketing point of view:

1) Easily Create, Publish and Manage Content

With page editors that resemble a word processor program, adding content with a CMS interface is simple and fun. Most CMS software also allows you to change the location of your content pages and links easily, while the back end processes takes care of updating the links throughout your site.

Done manually, reorganizing a website's content, particularly a large one, can cause a webmaster some pretty restless nights.

CMS also allows the website owner to outsource content remotely from willing contributors. With built in access level hierarchies, users can register as Authors and start submitting articles and news. This is then automatically sent to the next in line, the Manager, and on to the Editor and finally the Publisher or Administrator, and then it can be automatically published on the front page as new content.

And SEO specialists know that search engines love new content, above everything else.

2) Create a Solid Website Structure

While search engine spiders can maneuver your website like a human being can't, they too are fond of websites with good structures and easy-to-find content. Most CMS software can automatically create menus and navigation from categories that you set. Once you create a new category or subcategory, you can instantly publish it on all your pages, with the click of a button.

According to popular SEO wisdom, search engines spiders do not index pages more than 3-4 levels deep on your website structure. In response to this, some CMS software also allows you to put all your content on the first level, for example "http://www.yoursite.com/article236.html'. However, using the CMS' control panel, you will still be able to see all content within their respective folders and subcategories.

3) Search Engine Friendly Capabilities

This is perhaps the most significant development in Content Management Systems. As more businesspeople and SEO begin to dig deep into CMS, the need for spider-friendly pages has taken center stage. Recent advancements have enabled CMS users to install modules (sometimes already built in) to make it appealing to search engines. The latest CMS software can create keyword rich pages, titles, meta tags and even anchor text.

That, coupled with advanced search engine spiders being able to go deep into databases to index pages, is set to turn Content Management Systems into the next big organic SEO tool. In fact, search engine friendly CMS even makes organic SEO specialists, sad to say, sort of 'obsolete'.

Make CMS Work for Your Web Business

Most content management systems are available for free, or at a minimum costs, under the GNU General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/). While there are literally hundreds of available CMS out in the market, these websites are a good guide for choosing a right one for your website or internet business:
Compare various CMS : http://www.cmsmatrix.org
Try a CMS: http://www.opensourcecms.com/
Search-engine Friendly CMS: http://pss.sfidreamteam.com
 

About the Author
Gobala Krishnan is a writer, internet business entrepreneur and marketer. Visit http://www.home-business-association.com today for important and unique tips on building an Internet Business.