By Victor Rhee


Every single day, some of the best SEO companies in the world answer questions from local businesses about search engine optimization. Usually these conversations include explanations about "on-site" and "off-site" SEO. Search engine optimization typically involves a detailed analysis of website text content and HTML code. Of course, off-page SEO will always include some form of back-linking. Although search engines are always changing, one constant has been that successful strategies include back-linking, social media interaction and references from trusted websites.

It's no surprise that the web design process is still very much a design-driven industry. This is because most web design companies are owned and managed by web designers and as such, the main goal of the design process is to create a great looking design. A web designer's main goal is not usually, however, to create a website that is designed to achieve high organic search engine rankings.

It takes at least three different types of talent to create an SEO-friendly site. You need a great designer that can deliver an outstanding design. To stand out in the market place, a company needs a unique design that will make an instant impression. Second, you also need a skilled website developer that can take the creative design files and convert them into best practices computer code. The third is the SEO expert. Your partner needs to be able to analyze the user search data and work with the programmer incorporate the strategy into to first line of code.

In practice, however, the designers still drive the entire process. When this happens, the company gets a great looking new site that is hacked together on the back-end. These sites almost never get search engine rank for competitive search terms. The client company then searches for Internet marketing assistance, but the new consultant starts at a disadvantage because they have to try to rank a site that is poorly structured and coded.

Then the company gets the bad news: they have to re-code the new website from scratch to get search engine rank - which is what motivated the company to re-develop the site in the first place! As SEO's we need to be able to explain in clear and simple terms why brand new (and often costly) websites do not rank. The following are some popular anecdotes that have been used by a leading Kansas City web design company:

1. The Race Car Driver: This is an effective SEO analogy and may be among the best. To excel on the search engines, you need to have an optimized website that is well structured with search engine friendly coding. Your website is the race car. No matter how fast your car is, it still needs a driver to be able to compete. A skilled driver cannot win with a substandard car, and a poor driver cannot win with a the most advanced race car. This is an ideal analogy for search engine optimization - you need a great driver and a great car to win the race, just like you need a great website and a great Internet marketer succeed with Google. The only difference is that with Google and the other major search engines, the race never ends.

2. Home Building: Another great analogy. The web design process is a lot like working with an architect. This is the time when the blueprints can be easily be changed and updated. Once the construction plans are approved and the concrete foundation is poured, it becomes very difficult to moved a wall or change the floor plan. Web development is the same way. Designers can manipulate digital artwork quickly. Once the design is committed to the coding process, however, many design and layout changes can be difficult and time consuming to modify. In terms of search engine optimization, the home building process is similar to the role of the home builder and city inspectors. In web design, the search engine optimizer should be managing the design and development stages so that the site is constructed with the end goal of looking great and ranking as highly as possible.

3. Sharp Shooting: The analogy of the sharp shooter is another good one. This one is simple and makes the point clearly and concisely. The world's best sharp shooter is powerless without a great firearm, and a the best firearm on the planet cannot shoot by itself. The same goes for SEO - a perfectly coded website cannot rank itself and a the world's best consulting firm can't do anything without clients and websites to rank.

4. The Landscaper: The landscaping analogy plays into the nature of SEO as an ongoing strategy. Just like search engine optimization, you need a plan. Then to execute the plan, you need upfront effort to prepare, grade and prep the soil for installation. In most cases, a property with a new landscape will not have value as a property that has a properly maintained and mature landscape. SEO is VERY similar. We work hard in the initial months, and most often this effort does not yield ranking results several months later. Further, just like your home's landscape, routine maintenance yields the best results.

5. Fishing: Second to the race car driving analogy, Fishing is one of our favorites on so many levels. The best angle to use for this analogy relates to net fishing. Think of recreational fishers in an area using chum and other luring techniques to draw fish into a body of water. Fishermen use specialized lures, bait and equipment to catch fish one-by-one. This is akin to traditional marketing where companies use mass marketing to target a relatively small group of potential buyers. In SEO, we call this: offline demand creation. As fishermen use all their fancy methods to attract fish, think of a commercial fishing vessel that comes by and scoops up all the fish. This is EXACTLY what SEO does. Consumers see the demand creation by companies on TV, print and radio...then then run to the Internet to research when they are actually ready to make a purchase decision. SEO, when done effectively, enables your company to steal this market share created by your competitors.

If you are an Internet marketing professional and run into trouble explaining SEO and web development to a prospective client, try using one of the above analogies or even creating a new one of your own.




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