A solid website project consists of three main phases. Each of these is optional, but builds upon the previous component so that to get to phase 3 you must do phase 2, and to get to phase 2 you must do phase 1. Below is an outline of the phases or components
Phase 1 - The Website
rate: basic website packages start at $1100 - $2000 for an initial build out.
Any good home needs a solid foundation, this is also true on the web. The website is the primary tool from which you manage your business online and launch marketing initiatives. The website should have all the appropriate tools to meet your goals and be easily expandable as the business grows and new plans arise.
My primary software of choice for websites is the Joomla! CMS (content management system). Joomla is an extremely versatile and powerful piece of software for building websites that allows us the power of enterprise applications previously only possible with very large budgets. Joomla provides all the tools we need for any projects we may launch during the life of the website, is easily expandable, and the templating system lends us great flexibility in the styling arena.
Phase 2 - SEO (search engine optimization)
rate: $750 + additional $299 for Yahoo! Submission.(optional)
$50/hour for additional work and adjustments over the lifetime of the website.
SEO is usually a 30 day process in the beginning, however it deserves some revisiting as time goes on. Any good SEO project starts with a solid analysis of your keywords, your market, and the competition you are up against. We do diligent research in this area and generate a report to guide the project.
With our tools set up and ready to go (the website), we can now properly launch into search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization is not just submitting the site to search engines and entering some meta-tags and keywords. Though it does include that, there is much more to it.
Every article and image is optimized, the directory structure of the site is also considered for optimized for search engine crawlers. Search engine friendly links are implemented for the site. Images are also tagged with content appropriate keywords (this is often skipped by many designers).
We also handle redirects by modifying the htaccess.txt file so that we avoid duplicate content in Google, something they don't like. We modify your robots.txt file so that pages that will just confuse Google do not get indexed. Usually, many designers overlook this issue. As the website grows and we observe the indexing by Google, we can further adjust the robots.txt file for best performance.
If a blog is used, and we highly recommend this part, we will set up the RSS feeds. Google loves RSS feeds and fresh content is your best tool for climbing the ranks. Automatic blog submission will ping all the top blog directory services automatically every time a new blog is written and published on your site.
Submissions to various directories, social bookmarking sites, and other relative site is also handled for you. There are many and most are free. An additional fee is required to submit your site to the Yahoo! Directory. Their fee is $299 per year and while this is not necessary, it can help your rankings.
During this phase, we will generate reports on where we started, where we ended, and also some initial analysis on your keywords and phrases. We will be able to see how many times your keywords are actually entered into Google and what other keywords or phrases those searchers used to find what they wanted. This information will help us identify the most effective keywords and keyphrases for the site, and also identify additional keywords and phrases that we may want to target in our blogs and social marketing campaigns.
Phase 3 - Off-Page SEO and Internet Marketing
rate: an average campaign would start at $400 per month and include some or all of the following:
Social Web Marketing:
Social media marketing is an ongoing process, much like a traditional marketing campaign. The way it works is always changing, so to be effective a marketing campaign must be cutting edge and focused. This portion consists of an initial setup period and after that, time and energy can be applied to it as desired or needed. We can custom tailor a campaign on the social web to meet your desired public relations in relation to your budget
To oversimplify it, social marketing is about using social networks including various blogging and micro-blogging platforms like Facebook and Twitter. There are hundreds of these, too many to list. Blogging is a big piece of the picture and that is where most of the time is spent. The blogs cans take many forms, they may be similar to press releases about your business, or they may be announcements of specials or sales you are holding, they also may be reflections on industry trends. The forms that blogs can take are many, but the goal is to create a plethora of links back to your website.
Search Engine & Affiliate Marketing:
Search Engine Marketing refers to page impressions on search engines and includes Google AdWords management and various other pay-per-click or pay-per-impression affiliate programs. There is a wide variety of affiliate marketing programs and we can help you find the ones that are right for you and manage those programs.
Link Building:
Building links on the Internet that point back to your website is perhaps one of the best way to improve your Search Enginge Rankings (SERPs). There are a variety of strategies which include social bookmarking, blog commenting, blog networks, paid placements, article listing and article spinning. Depending on your websites needs, a custom package will be developed to laser-target your audience and get your message heard. Not to mention bump your competition down below you in the Google search results for your target keywords..