Truly Customized Web Designs to Maximize Exposure
If you don’t know much about search engine optimization (SEO), that’s okay—that’s what SEO experts are for. However, no matter how big or small your e-commerce business, blog, or any other web presence may be, SEO matters. Summed up, it’s the talent (and art) of maximizing your online presence. When someone Googles your key words, whether it’s “doggie daycare in Austin” or “learn swing dance Seattle,” where you show up in those search results are a direct result of your SEO—for better or worse.
This is also where the downside of shortcuts, like website templates, come into play in all the wrong ways. Templates simply can’t maximize your SEO potential, because that’s something that needs to be 100 percent customized for you and your business. SEO isn’t just about original content with organically placed key words, although that’s a big part of it. It’s also about visualization and the nitty gritty of web design.
Yes, This Counts as SEO Fodder
Increasingly, visual content such as infographics and videos are “counting” as SEO tools. Google algorithms can read visuals and know which are considered good SEO via file names, titles, descriptions, tags and categories. Many of your visitors are also going to prefer checking out an infographic or watching a short clip rather than reading blocks of texts. Visuals for SEO are a win-win for everyone.
Links have long been one of the strongest pillars of SEO, and having quality inbound along with good internal link structure is paramount. That’s something else you’re not going to get with a quick and dirty website built from a template. Linking to the right, complementary social channels such as YouTube strengthens your SEO and hopefully drives more traffic to your site. Naturally, you should be getting more visitors the better your SEO is, but increasing your click through rate from well-placed links alone will only bolster your online rankings even more.
The Right Place at the Right Time
In an ideal world, SEO puts your web presence in front of the right audience. If you operate a completely organic house cleaning service in Miami, what good is it doing your business if localized SEO isn’t part of the picture—and people in Nashville are stumbling across your site? Along the same lines, if you’re an e-commerce business that ships products nationally, your functionality tools will play a big part in just how much business you drum up.
A customized website offers more than SEO best practices. Everything from functionality tools, like quick credit card payments, to clean galleries and responsive design should be part of the package. Custom website design is the foundation for website engagement, increasing sales and click through rates, ranking on the top page of search results for your unique key phrases, and overall improving your website ranking.
It’s All About Diversity
SEO best practices are constantly changing, which is why your website will never be “done.” Not all that long ago, keyword stuffing was considered the best way to bump rankings. Now, improving SEO is all about diversifying—diversity in traffic sources, marketing, links, and anchor text are what move you up the pages of Google search results. There’s no shortcut for getting to the top, or at least no shortcut that will last, so slow and steady really does win the SEO race.
Now that you have a sampling of just what goes into improving your SEO, it’s easy to see why an alleged one size fits all website template just doesn’t work. If all you want is a personal website to share details about your upcoming nuptials, bundle of joy, or simply to wax poetic about your dreams, then a template just might work. But if you’re a business owner or seriously need to up your web presence, you deserve personal attention.