No matter how clear designers and Web-related firms try to make it, some people think that just getting a Web site, particularly if it’s from a company that also does Search Engine Optimization (SEO), means a free lifetime supply of Google hits. There seems to be no end to the assumptions that people make about the process, especially if they are not tech-savvy types. “All you have to do is push the right button” is something computer professionals have heard for years. Incredibly, you can find people complaining on the Internet user forums about their $99 Web site package or $10-a-month hosting plan not making them first in line in the search results. This reveals an amazing lack of knowledge about the process.

For a low, low cost, small businesses can get a search engine-friendly design. If they want, they can pay an extra sum, ranging from hundreds to many thousands of dollars, to achieve additional goals. Most any designer, whether an individual or member of a big firm, can create a site that is close enough to existing standards to ensure that Google, Yahoo and (more recently) Bing can find and index it. Making a site “findable” by these search engines is an entirely different matter than undertaking a comprehensive SEO plan.

What’s in a design?
Every professional Web site builder should be delivering sites that Google and the others can “read.” Any pages you add yourself will also be ready for indexing and listing in results. This is the basic, “SEO-friendly” or “SEO-ready” Web site design that is pretty much a worldwide standard now. If companies delivered sites that did not get indexed and ranked, they would soon be out of business. However, website design does not constitute some kind of “SEO agreement” between a design firm and a company unless the deal is spelled out and extra work (often a great deal of it) is undertaken to attain the goals. Some SEO clients pay tens of thousands of dollars for companies to promote and tweak their sites continuously to generate leads. Any SEO deal, therefore, is completely separate from simple Web site creation.

SEO is all about competing in, between and among the search engines on the basis of particular keywords, a process that requires constant analysis over a long period of time. If you are thinking of getting a new site built, or have purchased a small business Web site “package” from someone, and have not specifically paid for SEO work to promote your domain and your content, you and you alone are responsible for the levels of traffic to the site after it is launched.

Some SEO details
SEO is an ongoing process, and means ongoing work on your (or someone’s) part — the addition of fresh content, continuing modification of existing content, changes to the underlying architecture, link building and other activities. Together these can generate new traffic and solidify existing relationships with users, and a constant stream of promotion, linking, strategizing and more than a few late nights are required. To put it simply, once your site is launched, it is yours to build and refine, so you need to work at it for leads, links, reviews, referrals and rankings. Your project is hardly finished on “site launch day,” and you cannot sit back and just wait for leads to pile up, especially if you are not doing everything you can to promote the site online — and, just as importantly, offline, as well.

There are some small business packages that help customers add appropriate “rich content” to their sites, and even offer some free SEO advice to maximize the Google relationship and get some of that “free traffic” that the buzzword-soaked “organic listings” always promise. However, absent any “Web development agreement,” site builders, whether individual designers or large firms, are not responsible for writing new content, optimizing current material, performing keyword analysis or otherwise developing, promoting, pushing or perfecting your site.

Simple SEO
Web service clients are bamboozled all the time and spun in circles by the different jargon in the industry, but reputable firms will try to be clear, honest and transparent in their approach. If you have purchased a small business package and do not want to pay more for optimizing your site, you need to assume those responsibilities yourself. The most basic things to do are these:

* Promote the site yourself, with every available means, once it “goes live.” This means everything from e-mail promos (not spam), press releases and forum postings to telling everyone you see at the grocery store.
* Get links to increase your Google “trust” level, starting with the most relevant type and working out in concentric “circles of interest” from there.
* Add good content to your site regularly. High quality, original, timely and fresh content is as close to a guarantee of traffic from Google as you can expect to discover. Google loves useful and original content, especially material that its spider has not yet found.

Summing up
Simple, straightforward and effective SEO is still possible, and can be done by most anyone with average intelligence. The reason many site owners don’t do it is not lack of brains, but time. Find the time (or the money) to get it done and you will definitely get leads from your site. If you do nothing to promote your site after you launch, you have no reason to expect traffic to find you magically. A Web site simply cannot generate free traffic by virtue of its design. Web design is not SEO.Moonrise Productions is a web design company specializing in custom web development and design. Whether you need web application development or a flex website, contact us and we’ll get it done right. If you are in need a a good web host for your websites, be sure to check out Low Cost Hosting