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You have arrived at the right place if you are looking for affordable web hosting, website design, ecommerce websites or search engine optimization services.

When you choose Ponder Consulting, you are not just hiring a company to perform a specific job, you are forming a business partnership with a knowledgable, reputable and dependable web company.

View our affordable web solutions, and our testimonials and you will realize why so many have chosen Ponder Consulting to lead the way.

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I am often approached by companies wanting  “search engine optimization (seo)” services for their website. Some might wonder what seo services are and at times, even I do. Once you get a deeper understanding of what seo entails, it will forever change the way you think about a website. In addition you might even change your website. SEO WILL change your sales forever.

The biggest mistake I see companies make is trying to get the cheapest website available, even to the extent of using Godaddy’s Website Tonight.  I’ve heard people claim “Hey, my son can build websites.” And that very well may be true, but can he build a website that will generate customers? That’s a brutal question, I know, but it can also cost you your image. You’ve heard the saying “It takes a lifetime to get a customer’s respect and a second to lose it.” A website should be more than just a billboard of services.

In fact, a bad website can hurt your future sales deals. Out of proportion graphics, cross browser incompatibilities, an archaic site architecture, poor sales copy, grammatical errors, no contact form, etc. It makes me want to ask “Does a 17 year old understand all of that?” Probably not. I know at 17, I didn’t know the first thing about sales, about marketing, or anything about branding. I guess my point here is “a website is more than just some html pages thrown up onto a server.”

It’s your brand.

And if you care anything about your image (which most of us do even on a personal level), then you will at least consider what I am saying. Instead of having a website created for $0-$1000 and then figuring out - it really matters what it looks like to a professional and that now you need SEO, get a SEO website designer to begin with.

Understand the process of SEO now: Site design DOES matter.

1.) The First Step to SEOing Your Website: Keyword Research

Keyword Research - Probably the most important of the beginning steps. It’s the foundation of your SEO campaign. I use Google’s Keyword Tool, but I also use common sense, logic and focus groups to define the appropriate keywords.

Setting up Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics is a must!

2.) The Second Step to SEOing Your Website: On Page Optimization

On page optimization - Make the page meta titles descriptive and clear, optimize the meta keywords and the meta description (for a later post), tidy up each page to 450 words respectively, make sure there is a good internal linking structure, etc.

3.) The Third Step to SEOing Your Website: Backlinking Campaign

Backlinking Campaign - Absolutely essential to any successful SEO project is a backlinking campaign. Here’s my only plug, we offer an initial campaign for $249.00. It will get your website off it’s feet.

Here’s some tips for the DIYer: generate links at a moderate pace, use varying keyword anchor text, get links from a variety of places, etc. This is the hard part.

Here’s where most people fizzle out but keep reading!

4.) The Fourth Step to SEOing Your Website: Analyze Traffic

Once you get 1,000 visitors (not a magic number just a good amount of traffic), look to Google Analytics. Not only will you find how many visitors your site had, what keywords they found your site with, what site referred them to your site, what pages they viewed but it will also tell you how long they spent on your site.

It can be brutal at times…no doubt. You look at your stats only to find out no one spends more than 10 seconds on your site. That hurts.

5.) The Fifth Step to SEOing Your Website: Increase Traffic Levels and Add Content and Fresh Content

A high traffic ranking is a must for a truly successful website. This leads website owners farther into the usability aspect of a website and into creating more of a resource instead of “just a billboard of services.”

For a usability example, it’s hard to believe that in 2009 that there are websites with no contact form. This is an SEO must! NEVER have I ever had a customer call me (or any of my clients) when finding our services on the internet, they ALWAYS use our contact forms. And many requests my clients and myself have received because we are:

• easy to find
• our website’s are organized
• we have an easy way for people to contact us

In fact, I wouldn’t even bother with a website unless I had a contact form. Once you have a contact form, you are welcoming the potential client and making it easiest for them to reach you.

Other Tools to Increase Your Traffic Level

Oh there are so many to choose from, let’s see:

• Social Networks (a la ning.com where you can create your own)
• Forums installed on your domain
• Any Interactive Game/Quiz
• Videos
• Anything else useful to your target audience

Be creative. Set yourself apart and up for good times ahead for you and your company.

The Easiest Way to Increase Your Traffic Level, Add Fresh Content and SEO all at the same time is:

A blog! Did you get it right? A blog implemented by an SEO professional  of course (it’s only $100-$500 one time fee - every article you write gets generated for the search engines - sorry, plug I know).

A blog is the only way to compete with the larger sites. It creates an equal playing field for all. For each article, it’s another page in the search engines. Every category…another page and every tag is yet another page. The pages end up multiplying and within a year, you have a library of information you can package into an ebook, etc. You also have hundreds of pages in the search engines. You have made your website the authority in your niche (see lower right image).

This is the main reason why Ponder Consulting™ (that’s exciting my first time “tm”ing Ponder Consulting since being trademarked…more to come on that when the papers arrive) designs/creates all non ecommerce sites in Wordpress, because we know it’s best for the customer, their future and our success. There are many more advantages (for another post), but to sum it all up: Wordpress is a search engine magnet, a website and blog all in one, oh and it’s updatable by a novice computer user. Have I convinced you yet?

Become the Authority of Your Niche with a Blog

This article is by no means an all inclusive list of SEO steps, but it does create an outline that may help you make the right decision if you are considering a new website, a website redesign or SEO work.

In over 10 years as a marketer, from direct mail to internet marketing, I have never seen a better return on investment (ROI) than a wordpress website (set up by a seo professional), a backlinking campaign, and a faithful blogger.

I am going to leave you with one last thought: if my business was in trouble (thankfully it’s not), I would be blogging my happy tail off. I do it anyway, because I know it’s good PR and good for SEO. Besides that, if I KNEW it would attract potential clients for my business then I would do it! It’s a no brainer and I am telling you it will produce a positive ROI if executed correctly.

All of the information up there, it’s true. If you have any questions, comments or arguments about my theory I would love to hear them. Please, please share in the comments below.

In case I don’t get back by the weekend, have a Happy 4th of July, full of barbecue’s, fireworks, friends, families and memories, I know I am. We are hosting the first ever “Ponder Consulting™ Summer Bash” at the cabin on the lake in Cheboygan if anyone’s going to be around, contact me for directions.

From the Blog

• Air Charter Westchester New York HPN · July 1, 2009
• The Importance of Vision and Leadership · June 11, 2009
• For the Love of Bing - Microsoft Might Be Onto Something · June 2, 2009
• Flash vs. Silverlight · May 15, 2009
• Impact: The Power of One · May 7, 2009