COMMENTS
Getting ready to take our site to the next level and make it even more content rich. Think you just saved us from making some dumb mistakes. Thank you!
This is a great article. We hear horror stories every day at our company from clients who have hired an SEO shop where the programmers have no business experience. You can really get burned this way. If they have no business knowledge then you need to find someone who does and gets what you're trying to accomplish.
While SEO is a huge component of site design it can't be valued at the expense of other things the site needs to do. All too often I see sites that try to cram in keywords at the expense of usability and a professional aesthetic and while it may appease search robots it's a turn off to humans with wallets. The other really important driving force for a lot of site designs should be a sales funnel, especially with B2B sites or site selling services. Thinking about the different personas coming to the site or pain points a site visitor may have and designing your site to address those is just as important to consider as SEO. If you neglect this you may bring the people to your site but not get as many conversions once they arrive.
@brandtorrent
I am in the process of writing a broader post about business goals and how they affect web development and internet marketing activities.
If you'd like to contribute, please email me at firstinitiallastname at hubspot dot com.
Brandtorrent, I would agree with you that SEO isn't everything -- but, it should be the first thing.
You state, "All too often I see sites that try to cram in keywords at the expense of usability and professional aesthetic..." I would argue that if you come across a site that is doing this, it most likely won't rank well for the primary keyword. If someone is keyword stuffing, search engines tend to devalue the overall effectiveness of that page. So, I wouldn't necessarily categorize this as best-practice SEO. When done properly SEO actually simplifies a page and in my experience this increases usability and aesthetics and I know this because I see increasing conversion rates.
SEO is incredibly necessary as a foundation for a site so that "the other things" can be put to use.
Great points, PK. Agree completely. SEO provides the underpinning and has the most effect on the way a site is built. However, if the company wants to invest time & $ into PPC, social media, blogging, there are obviously some important things to consider. So, their overall marketing strategy should be taken into account when designing and building a site.
I think that's what @brandtorrent was mostly saying and that's a valid point too.
Good Information. I don't know how many times a day I come across a nice looking website with nothing but the company name in the title tag. Good content and SEO should be the basis of a redesign, not a getting a new "flashy site".
Getting ready to take our site to the next level and make it even more content rich. Think you just saved us from making some dumb mistakes. Good Work!
Hope you guys "who were about to make some mistakes" are subscribed to the blog. I'm planning on writing a post that painstakingly details the steps involved in this process.
Thanks for your help good blog
Thanks for your help
This is really a great article. My problem is that I am so overwhelmed with all that there is to learn with SEO. I have some sites up but the more I study the more I get confused. And it seems as if there is twenty new techniques everyday. What resources would you recommend to learn the SEO basics / fundamentals? I have decided to give a intern program a shot in hope of actually learning some real income producing strategies (ref: OnlineBusinessInternProgram.com)
@Tony Edward. There's only one SEO strategy. It's just that most people don't know it. We don't do a great job at marketing HubSpot's training program, but each client goes through a guided self paced learning process to learn internet marketing.
I'm a big believer in a one page overview of the business goals of the website circulated amoungst the senior level management team and agreed upon by everyone.
Do you want
brand awareness
increased traffic
more qualified traffic
more sales leads
and then evaluate what ISN'T working on your website. A good way to get the facts is to log statistics for six -eight weeks and look at the numbers (especially against your competitors) or other sites you benchmark against.
Ssshhhh. I wish you wouldn't keep telling all of these secrets to my competition! Seriously, what happens when everyone starts doing it right? Then what?
@Jean. As long as you keep posting those photos from the "go topless" events on your HubSpot powered well-SEOd blog, you'll beat the competition. :-)
Let me know if I can help with anything eg link building, etc: first initial last name at hubspot dot com.