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How Much Does A Web Site Cost?

This is a real email from an old friend and colleague of mine – Chandler Turner

Tom, I think you told me that you were looking for e–business sites in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, is that right? I have talked to a 75 year old company here with loyal clients that IS NOT cross-selling its divisions at all and one manager who ″gets it″. However, they really do not need an e–business site but moreover; they would NEVER agree to spend that kind of money.

Here is my response

Well, first it would not necessarily cost them a do–over price. Actually it will not necessarily cost them anything at all – not if they currently have any budget allocated for generating sales. Most of what I do is strategic – not building the web site –but getting people to go there and then do something (like buy or call). If they spend money now on marketing or branding or advertising or public relations then all they need to do is shift some allocations around and get a better return on investment by using the web properly.

That said – it’s not a build it and forget it deal. In fact it is the exact opposite. I can’t tell you how many companies I work with that tell me their web site does nothing, only to find they built it three years ago and have not updated a single word. For me it’s about results. Like measuring visitors to the site, determining where they came from, and why they went to a particular page. It is counting how many sales came from the web and figuring out what works with their particular target market. It’s not about graphics; it’s about conversion from visitor to customer. Besides, these days just about anybody can build a web site. The thing I bring to the table is what happens next.

Sounds like that manager friend of yours could use a lunch with you and me to put perspective on his particular issue. What do you think?

tom

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Google Video in Local Business Center

I just read a report in a feed from Web Site Magazine about an incredible announcement made by Google this week.

Google Maps has a section for business owners allowing them to update and enhance their listing. Before this week you could use Google AdWords to advertise when someone looks up your business category in your geographic vicinity. That cost is determined by a budget you determine in advance and on a per click basis.

For no cost you could correct your listing or add information – like store hours, or what category your business belongs in. You could also upload up to 10 photos showing off your business. For example if you go to local.google.com and type in gym 23454 you should see Face the Pain Gym near or at the top – with a picture. You can click on more info and see an overview of the business – reviews and photos. And starting this week you can view videos if they are there.

What an unbelievable opportunity to feature customer testimonials, product demonstrations or how about a personal invitation from you the business owner to visit your store?! I have not actually tried it yet, but it is described as being similar to the process of adding photos, businesses are allowed to display up to five videos in their Maps record and pull videos directly from YouTube. I like where this is going.

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Podcast review: Diggnation: I just don’t Digg it

I posted this review in iTunes

Sounds like a group of goofy high school girls talking mostly about themselves. Oops – the hosts are named Alex and Kevin. I guess I just don’t Digg it. Diggnation is billed as a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top news stories from digg.com – a (web 2.0) social bookmarking site. That would be great if it were true! I like the digg.com website, however, and in my best Simon Cowellvoice, hate, hate, hate the Diggnation podcast presentation. Alex and Kevin; How about actually talking about digg.com? Reader – my best advice: Skip it. Please!

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Podcast review: The SEO Programmer’s Podcast, as posted in iTunes

Forgotten Good Intentions

This podcast falls under the category of forgotten good intentions, which I must admit also describes my first Podcasts in iTunes. (I have three of them – search on Tom Anthony.)  Here is the link to one of them.  Like the host of this show Raj Choudhury I posted a few files a while back and never updated the show. Originally I just wanted to make sure I knew how to do it. Raj sounds like a bright guy, but there are only nine of these posted and no updates Since November 2007. The program length of around two minutes makes it not worth downloading.

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Podcast review: NPR Science Friday, as posted in iTunes

I have been a fan of the radio program Talk of the Nation: Science Friday for quite a while.  The host is National Public Radio science correspondent Ira Flatow, and he brings a genuine enthusiasm for the sciences to the program. This is worth listening to. To find it in iTunes do a search for NPR Science Friday, or visit their website at http://www.sciencefriday.com/ or click here to directly Subscribe to the podcast feed

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Podcast review: PCMag Radio Podcast, as posted in iTunes

This is a great podcast for geeks – and yes – I am somewhat of a geek.  One of the regular commentators is Sasha Segan, who reminds me very much of the comedian Ant. I think it would be really easy for Sasha to get on your nerves. It’s hard to dislike the guy though, I usually agree with his opinion.   The guys who do the show obviously like what they do, and its fun to listen to.  If you are not really, really into technology this podcast will probably make your eyes glaze over.

• Subscribe to PCMag Radio Podcast in iTunes
• Subscribe to PCMag Radio Podcast Feed

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iTunes U and the opposite Podcast

I have been listening to lots and lots of podcasts on iTunes. Most of them pure crap – but some very worthwhile material is available.

Head and shoulders above the pack for my taste are three files I found on iTunes U featuring Author Thomas L. Friedman. First if you have not purchased the book “The World Is Flat” you are really missing the picture of how and why the world is transforming into a global economy. Do a power search for Friedman and you’ll find those files and a great talk about his new book, Green is the new Red White and Blue. This is Very worthwhile material.

Second, what the heck is iTunes U? › link‹  One of the most remarkable resources on the internet. Apple accurately describes it this way: iTunes U puts the power of the iTunes Store to work for colleges and universities, so users can easily search, download, and play course content just like they do music, movies, and TV shows.

Now the crap.

Here is the verbatim review I posted in iTunes. I think it speaks for itself.

Big Seminar Live Podcast is DOA

O.K. –I know this is a brutal review – but I believe it is accurate. This is not even thinly veiled as an infomercial for what promoter Armand Morin calls the “Big Seminar”. Oh wait there’s more… from the promoter’s web site, “The Big Seminar promises New 2008 Strategies and An Incredible 3 Days Filled With Jaw-Dropping Income Boosting Information Which Can and Will Skyrocket Your Business to the Next Level.” It sure sounds like a get rich scheme to me. You can skip this one.
Click – Delete

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a Search Engine Optimization white paper

Before I was made the Vice President of Client Services for our company I served as the Senior Web Consultant.  That was no accident; begin part of the “boomer” generation makes me pretty senior.  I have also been in the internet business from the beginning and have developed some pretty strong opinions along the way.  Here is a white paper I prepared for the Clients of Web Teks around the beginning of 2008. While a lot of it reads like a commercial, it is based on some lessons learned along the way. It is my hope you will gain a better perspective on Search Engine Marketing by engaging this White Paper.

Search Engine Optimization

A White Paper for Design Clients

By Tom Anthony, Senior Web Consultant, Web Teks

From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tags

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry–specific vertical search engines.

Many books are devoted to this single topic. A range of  software programs from free downloads to Enterprise Level packages priced in the tens of thousands of dollars are available to monitor various aspects of the optimization process. Obviously on many levels SEO is far too big a topic to discuss in a non–technical white paper such as this one. The goal of this white paper is to give the uninitiated at least a starting point of reference.

Our company offers multiple levels of Search Engine Optimization Service. Basic Search Engine Design is incorporated as a fundamental component of all design projects, including yours.

As part of our Standard Procedures our company will ask you to consider and provide three components known as “Meta elements” for each page of your web site.  They are Page Title, Key Word Phrases, and Description.

These Meta elements are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site. They provide information about a given webpage to help search engines categorize them correctly.

While Meta elements have significantly less effect on search engine results pages today than they did in the early days of the World Wide Web, the inclusion of such information is widely accepted as a “best practice”. The reason Meta elements, especially key words, have less of an impact on search engine rankings as they once did is simple.  The search engines have become smarter over time.

Thus other considerations should be made in determining what content appears in any particular web page. In a nutshell if the text on any given page adds detail to, and most importantly is RELEVANT to the behind-the-scenes Meta elements such as Title and keywords, the search engine will rank the page higher. It has everything to do with a consistency of relevance.

Basic Search Engine Design

Our company will ensure the following basic SEO items are either considered or implemented on your website. Implementation of specific elements will depend on the scope of the project (i.e., number of pages to be optimized) and the current architecture employed.

• Your website should have a clear page hierarchy and text links.  Every page will be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Our company will work with your content provider to create a useful, information-rich site with pages and copy that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Our company will work with your content provider to develop a list of words users would type to find your pages, and further ensure that your site actually includes those words within it.
• We will encourage the use of text instead of images to display important names, content or links.  The Google crawler does not recognize text contained in images.
• We will check for broken links and correct HTML.
• We will encourage you to limit the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).
• We will work with your content provider to create and implement the minimum required Meta tags throughout your site. (This does not include custom page by page tags as outlined in the Advanced Search Engine Optimization)

Advanced Search Engine Optimization

Our Advanced Search Engine Optimization service builds on the basic steps outlined above.  These strategies are much more complex and often require ongoing maintenance to ensure the best opportunity for continued success.  Our Advanced Search Engine Optimization plan includes the following steps:

• Our company will ask the following three questions:
  • How are people searching for your products and/or services?
  • Which sites are winning for those searches, and why?
  • Which searches can we win?
• We will create both text and XML sitemaps of your website.  Text site maps larger than 100 links will be broken into separate pages.
• We will submit your XML sitemaps to Google and request indexing.  Our company will monitor this submission and adjust as necessary until all pages have been indexed.
• Defined pages on your site will be updated with a unique title tag, Meta keywords tag, and Meta description tag.  In addition, all other relevant Meta tags will be applied but are not required to be unique for each page.  These additional tags define the type of site and content and may be carried over throughout the entire site.
• We will convert dynamic URL’s to Search Engine Friendly URL’s to aid in search engine indexing.  This includes removing “&id=” as a parameter since Google specifically does not allow any URL containing this text to be indexed.
• We will analyze your entire site using Lynx to “view” your site as a search engine spider would.  This may result in recommendations to remove certain features that are minimizing the spider’s ability to crawl your site.  These features include items such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML or Flash.
• We will implement the necessary programming to both allow and encourage search bots to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site.  These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different.  Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.
• We will create and implement a robots.txt file on your web server.  This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled.
• If your site utilizes a content management system (CMS), modifications will be made if necessary to allow the system to export content thus allowing search engine spiders to properly crawl the site.

Advanced Search Engine Optimization – Monthly Maintenance

Ongoing review of each of the above items is paramount to ensure the highest probability for ongoing search engine success.  As part of our monthly support program, we will provide the following services:

• Monthly update of all site maps.
• Monthly submission of the current XML sitemap to Google with ongoing index monitoring.
• Monthly update of the robot.txt file as necessary.
• Detailed review of new elements added to the site by Our company with appropriate optimization techniques recommended.
• Monthly URL submission to Google and other relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites.
• Detailed report of specific page index statistics and rankings.

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I encourage you to join the dialog by offering questions or comments.