Website Design, Website Development, ECommerce, SEO, SEM, Internet Marketing

I’ve heard so many times over the past few months, from different website owners, that they paid individuals or firms for SEO services and they did not get a return for the money they invested. Additionally, they could not see any results. Just because these SEO people have google logos on their websites, doesn’t mean that they work for google or that they will not rip you off. With a little bit of studying and passing some paid tests, google will give anyone an “adwords certification” or “analytics certification”.

Over the last two years that I’ve been providing SEO and SEM services for different websites, I learned that SEO is indeed a time consuming process and, in order to see results, one has to spend a minimum 8 hours a month on optimizing, promoting, submitting, updating a website. However, one should be aware that there are numerous “SEO sharks” out there that are charging customers like lawyers are. If you are a website owner, you should expect to pay for at least 8 hours of SEO work per month in order to see results. SEO is not rocket science and if you have that extra time and little html knowledge, you can do the SEO yourself. However, as a beginner, you may find yourself spending 16 hours instead of 8, and that can be precious time taken away from running your business.

How much should you pay for SEO? You can budget it based on the above information, starting from a minimum 8 hour work for basic SEO. If you are a small business owner that provides services to one local area, the basic SEO of 8 hours work to promote your listing to the top of local directories will be the number one source of customer calls. If you have a website that targets world wide or country wide audience, more work may be required and more advanced SEO plans will be needed in order to promote your website in search engines. As an advise, make sure that the SEO you are paying for is done for keywords or keyword phrases that have some monthly traffic. Otherwise, what good will it do for your website to be at the top of search engines and local directories for keywords that nobody is searching for? An SEO specialist should be able to provide you with google traffic stats for the keywords that he/she will be targeting for your website.

SEM is short for Search Engine Marketing and refers to online paid advertising, such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Cost-Per-Click (CPC) or CPM (Cost-Per-(thousand)Impressions). PPC/CPC/CPM is widely provided by major search engines, social bookmarking sites, online directories, etc., such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Facebook, YellowPages.com, etc… PPC listings can be seen in “Sponsored Links” zones on websites…

SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization and refers mostly to promoting a website/listing in search organic (no PPC) and local listings found in google maps, yahoo local, bing maps, etc…

SEO also involves optimization of a website content and meta and title tags and link building, while SEM does not require such tasks to be performed.

CMS (Content Management System) is a great option if you work in the website design/development field, as it may save you some time creating new pages. However, we learned over the years that website owners who have CMS installed (non e-commerce websites) are not interested in maintaining their websites and most of them did not even know how to use their CMS. 90% of site owners wanted to hire a web developer to maintain and update the content of their website. As a website owner, if you choose to have CMS installed, you should hire an experienced coder or web programmer that have server side scripting knowledge and who is familiar with your CMS, as in many cases customization of such websites require modifying the script.
A less expensive option for a small business owner who wants a professional, custom designed website, that is not e-commerce and that can be fully customized for his/her needs, is to have a html or basic server side scripting website. Most of the web designers or developers can only install templates for CMS websites and they do not have the knowledge to make the changes that a site owner may require. Therefore, a coder or web programmer will have to be hired to complete the job and the website owner will end up paying much more than was initially quoted for a CMS website in order to satisfy their needs and requirements. We have seen that, in some cases, designers/developers, due to lack of knowledge maybe, converted such CMS websites into basic html.

Visit our current customers websites:

We have been working on promoting our client’s website: www.lasvegasrerelocation to the top of search engines and local listings. With our Basic SEO Plan, most websites will take 4+ months to show on page 1 of Goole Search Organic for high traffic keyword phrases. However, besides the search organic results, we are focusing on promoting local listings for our clients and we’ve seen results in some case within 3 weeks.

Therefore, because the keywords targeted for our client’s website are also targeted by numerous advertisers and website owners, as the Real Estate industry is vast, www.lasvegasrerelocation.com will take more than 4 months to be displayed in the top 5 pages of Google Search Organic with our Basic Plan. However, the Yahoo! Local and Google Maps listings have already been promoted to positions 2 to 31 in Yahoo! Local and to pages 2 and 3 in Google Maps and our client has already received several calls from customers. See below the keyword phrases targeted, the monthly searches in the USA as presented by Google and the listing positioning. Please note that when we started the SEO process the local listings could not be found in Google Maps or Yahoo! Local for the keyword phrases listed below.

For the keyword phrase las vegas real estate agents, the monthly searches on Google are 40,500:

Google Maps: page 2 position J.

Yahoo! Local: position 16

For the keyword phrase las vegas realtors, the monthly searches on Google are 74,000,

Google Maps: page 3 position D.

Yahoo! Local: position 22

The SEO process was started on March 1st, 2010 for lasvegasrerelocation.com

A custom designed website is one that is created from scratch based on each website owner’s needs and requests. A custom designed website starts with an analysis of the requirements that the owner of the website has, a graphic design is provided for review and approval which later is converted into web-pages. The number of web-pages may vary from one website to another, based on each one’s needs. The scripting used for each website can vary and is based on the type of website and operating system installed on the server. All web-pages that form a website should contain common elements, such as header, footer, menu area, background, etc. so a visitor will not feel like he/she left the website when navigating from one page to another.

With a custom designed website, the positioning of certain common elements can be chosen freely by the website designer, when in a template, such elements are fixed and, in order to be re-positioned, it requires a re-do of the website design or modifying the script, in most cases. When customizing a predefined or pre-designed template for a website, some changes requested by the website owners are not always possible, especially if no direct access to the website files is available. However, if full access to the hosting, and therefore to the website files, is available some changes to the templates may require modifying the script and that may result in additional charges that may bring the cost higher than having a new custom designed website. That is why the analysis part in building a website plays an important role in choosing between a template or a custom designed website, or between simple html or server side scripting.

Las Vegas Website Solutions provides custom website designs starting at $390, with full access to the domain name settings and hosting files. Domain name registration from $1.99* per year and hosting from $4.59** per month (up to 100 smtp email addresses included)

__________________________________
* Limited time offer with hosting purchase only. ICANN fee of $0.25 applies
** Limited time offer. Minimum 36 months purchase

Las Vegas Website Solutions is dedicated to bringing you the best website services at affordable prices. Our web designers and developers have extensive experience in all aspects of website design and development, search engine optimization and search engine marketing. We are working hard to assisting our customers in succeeding in their goals for acquiring new customers via a professionally designed website, as well as, by promoting it to the top of the search engines.

As every customer’s needs are different, our goal is to provide customized designs and services that will fit within our customer’s needs and requirements. We will take the time to listen to your needs and provide the best ways to accomplish your online goals within your budget.