Since I run into this often, I’m sure the average website owner does too.  If you’re trying to decide between updating your existing website or moving towards a full website design, I’d encourage you to ask yourself five quick questions.

1. Do You Have a CMS Package?

If you’re wondering what the heck a CMS package is, it means content management system. Which really refers to a user friendly way to update your website. And when I say user friendly, I mean easy enough that the average person could update page text, write a blog post, and modify an image.

Popular flavors of CMS consist of open source WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. I am a WordPress girl and have dedicated by firm to creating WordPress websites and supporting WordPress users. That being said, Joomla and Drupal are also good packages and both have their place in the market. Each CMS package have different niches they fill and each can be an excellent solution for creating a new website.

Do people really use CMS for website design? Yep and way more than you think. WordPress powers 14.7% of the top million websites in the world. And 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

I digressed a bit. The point I wanted to make is that CMS packages give you control over your website and your online marketing. If you’re stuck living with an HTML website that is impossible to update, then you have a problem.

2. Is Your Website SEO Friendly?

This is a huge factor if you rely on your website to generate traffic through organic search. One of the core reasons I love WordPress is because it is very user friendly. If configured properly, it will create search engine friendly URLs, alt tags, unique page descriptions and titles, XML sitemaps, and the beloved H1 tags and bolded text. All are needed for courting Google and Bing properly.  WordPress makes it very easy to stay compliant with search engine rules and helps guide you along the way.

If you can’t answer that question yourself, go to WebsiteGrader.com and see how they grade your website. My website is a 99/100. Most I query are a 50/100. If you’re less than 90, you have problems.

3. Is Your Website Functionally Robust?

Complete a list of functional desires and compare it to what you currently have in place. Can your website manage your wish list without consuming your entire marketing budget in code changes? Can you add to this functionality or do you have to turn to a high priced coder each week?

Now take your requirements list and compare that list to WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. One of these CMS solutions will meet your needs and all are excellent choices. Especially if you’re currently stuck with an HTML website.

Remember the usage numbers I provided for WordPress? You’re probably wondering why it’s so popular? There are over 15,000 plugins available for WordPress and that means 15,000 opportunities to add to the core functionality WordPress offers. Many of these are free and they usually have an easy one click install right from the admin panel. Good stuff for me and the million other WordPress users.

4. Are You in Charge of Changes?

Do you control your website? That may seem like a silly question, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t know exactly who created their original website, where they are, or how to reach them. Another frequent compliant I hear is the developer has a 30 day backlog and a simple text changes cannot be made for 45 days.

That, my friends, is a major problem. Internet marketing is fast paced. Last year Google made 500 changes to their algorithm, which means we webmasters needed to also adjust. If you can’t get a hold of your webmaster or if you have no access to the website, you’ll fall behind on search engine compliance and you’ll also be a lager to your competition.  The goal of CMS based websites is to keep you in control.

5. Is it Easy to Use?

Assuming you are in control of your pages and you can access the backend to make modifications, is it easy to do? Can you figure out how to update text, add a page, or create a blog post? Can you add images, products, or change your navigation structure? You should be able to if your website is built within a CMS solution.

But I caution you on picking your developer and making sure they fully understand the CMS package. Back in December I wrote a blog post about my sister’s experience with selecting a WordPress designer. The post Fifteen Questions to Ask Your Future Website Designer goes into how she had a pretty blog that didn’t quite the level she was expecting. Needless to say, my development team rebuilt the entire thing for her this month because the original designer did not code to WordPress best practices. He hardcoded a ton of functionality that should have used WordPress’ user-friendly menus and widgets. It’s been eight months since she received the original design and after months and months of frustration, she is just now capable to making changes.

My sister’s project was a worst-case scenario and this is typically not the case. Generally when you hire a reputable designer for WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal – you actually receive a very user-friendly website.

Conclusion

If you answered no to any of the above questions, consider moving to a CMS.  And don’t forget to locate a reputable website designer. Review WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal to see which CMS package you like best. Ask around and review some website portfolios. You’ll find someone you like and the money will be well spent. You’ll end up with a SEO friendly website, that looks modern, and that you can actually update yourself.  All very good things.

Make no mistake, internet marketing is a battlefield.  You’re going to war against a million other websites and you need to have sufficient weaponry to compete and to walk away unscathed.  You need to know your enemy, you need armor for proper defense and you need a clearly defined plan of attack to win the online battle.

When was the last time you performed a marketing recognizance mission?  Have you looked at your competitor’s website recently?  Or even their general internet activity?  I’m always surprised that many small business owners, CEO’s, or marketing executives do not make this part of their overall marketing strategy.  I do this with my own company and with ever client that contracts me to design a website or engage in an SEO project.  I want to know the websites they compete with so I know how to best position them.  I want to understand the battlefield so we can plan an effective attack.

If you are a website design client of mine I expect you to take the time to perform your own marketing recognizance mission.  Since I will be doing one for you, I expect you to do one too.  I want you to look closely at your enemy and I want you to be prepared as we enter into battle.  Why does it matter?  You need to intimately know the enemy.  Your website visitors will know your enemy, so you should too.

In previous blog posts I’ve mentioned my client questionnaire.  I ask clients to complete this before we begin our engagement.  In many cases, I email prospects the document with the proposal so they know what they are in for and so they have realistic expectations of my marketing philosophies and me as a website designer.  The vast majority of these people don’t “get” why I require this step until they review the questionnaire.  It then becomes crystal clear that internet marketing is a war and that they are currently going to battle with a toothpick and not a armored tank.

So do you have a toothpick or an armored tank?  Most likely you cannot answer this question yet, so take the time to evaluate your armor.

Review the Website Battlefield

• Identify your key direct competitors
• Identify benchmark companies within your industry
• Review competitors’ websites
• Review benchmark companies’ websites
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of the competition
• Identify strengths and weaknesses of the benchmark companies

Evaluate Your Armor and Prepare to Plan Your Website Attack

• How does your current website and online presence compare to that of your competition and the benchmark companies?
• List elements of your competitors and benchmark companies’ websites that you would like to incorporate into your new website design and build.
• List gaps within your existing content that need to be addressed and consider the timeframe and resources required to develop said content.
• Evaluate your internal resources and their ability to create a website that can address your gaps and weaknesses.
• Evaluate your budget for obtaining outside assistance for web design, build, and optimization.

Review the Online Battlefield

• Is your competitor using pay per client (PPC) ads and if so, what keywords receive the largest portion of their ad budget?
• Is your competitor’s website designed around a set of core keywords?
• How does the competitor score for these core keywords in organic search results (i.e. natural search not attributed to paid placement)?
• Is your competitor active in social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, or YouTube?
• Is your competitor actively blogging and/or guest blogging on other websites?
• Is your competitor utilizing content marketing strategies for lead generation and potential sales?
• Is your competitor actively engaged in inbound link building?
• Is your competitor utilizing a drip marketing campaign or regular newsletter campaign?
• Is your competitor active on local search directories and are their profiles optimized?

Evaluate Your Armor and Prepare to Plan Your Online Attack

• What competitor keywords best align with your organization?
• What other keywords should you consider and target?
• Can you afford a PPC campaign?
• Do you have the knowledge and staff for organic search engine optimization?
• What changes to your existing social media activity needs to take place to level-set you and your competitors?
• Do you offer any unique and authoritative content to help differentiate your from your competitors?
• How does your blogging efforts compare to your competitors?
• Are you utilizing content tagging websites and RSS feed automation?
• Do you have the knowledge and staff for a link building campaign?
• Do you have a newsletter and would this apply to your target market?
• Have you claimed your local profiles and are they optimized?

As a website designer and SEO expert I cannot completely prepare you for battle.  This is a joint effort and we need to collectively prepare for and fight the battle together.  I can help in your internet marketing war, but I’ll need you to help in this effort.

One of my first website clients was a referral from a friend.  This client was going up against some savvy competitors and I knew he had a steep climb.  I built him a WordPress website and tried my best to prepare him for the battle that lay ahead.  With his new SEO friendly website I gave him armor.  Unfortunately he failed to plan his actual attack and he didn’t even walk onto the battlefield.  He sat in his little bunker doing the same things he had done for years.  He did not take the competitive analysis I had done seriously, nor did he believe in social media optimization, inbound link campaigns, or virtually anything outside his existing practices.  One year later my friend keeps asking me why the website did not grow in search traffic.  What?  Really?

In that same time-frame I launched a website for another client who did go to battle.  In his battle he was fighting against some of the biggest companies in America who had huge internet marketing budgets and a large number of internal employees dedicated to reaching page one search results.  This client not only went to battle with my armor, he kept me on to help him plan and execute his attack.  We were a force to be reckoned with and we beat the snot out of his competition.  Everything we did had purpose, we planned our attack and executed it as planned.  His search traffic grew almost 500% in one year and he even stopped spending hundreds of dollars each month on PPC ads.  But he reinforced the armor I provided, he prepared a strategic marketing plan, he went to war with eyes wide open and he fought and fought hard.

Initially the client I feel was a failure crushed me.  At first I felt like I failed him.  But then a fellow and very wise WordPress consultant reminded me that I cannot fight a battle for a client who does not want to go to war.  There are potential clients and situations where I have to retreat because I’m trying to win a war with someone who simply wants to spend his days sleeping in his bunker.  It was a hard lesson, but a valuable one.  I try to identify those people early on and I avoid them at all costs.  We are not well matched and we have two totally different views of internet marketing.

Don’t let yourself fall asleep in the bunker.  Rise up, go on a marketing recognizance mission, plan your attack, build your armor, and go kick your competitor off of page one search results.  It is possible.  You just need to decide if you have the fight in you and then you have to rise up and fight.

Flash forward twenty years and I now claim to be an Internet marketer who spends many hours as a WordPress designer and an SEO expert. I love what I do, yet still miss my first love of Psychology. Recently my two loves collided as I remembered Swiss-born psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her book On Death and Dying. She outlined the five stages of grief a person and their loved ones go through when presented with death. I was reminded of this recently as I spoke with a business owner that reached out to me concerning his outdated website. The discussion and the desire to hang on to something beyond repair reminded me of the book I read so many years ago.

While letting go of your old, outdated website is not as traumatic as losing a loved one, it does represent change. Many of us tend to hang on to what is comfortable and easy and avoid a voluntary jump into the unknown. The small business owner is no different. While he may know his ten-year-old website is horribly outdated, the desire to change it seems overwhelming, unimaginable, and unnecessary. He steps into the first of five steps of grief.

A Review of the Small Business Owner’s Website and His Five Stages of Grief

1. Denial – My website is fine. No one comes to it anyway, so I’m not going to waste any money changing it. Who really cares about what is looks like? It’s my product (or service) offering that makes a difference, not my website.
2. Anger – If people don’t like my website than I don’t need to do business with them. I’m not spending thousands of dollars to have some web designer try and communicate my marketing message. I know what’s good for my business, not some graphic designer who spends his entire day on Twitter. SEO, local search, and Facebook. Who are these people and what the heck are they talking about? I don’t need any of that stuff.
3. Bargaining – Okay maybe my website is a little dated. I think I’ll update it myself and tweak it a bit to freshen it up. If I update the pictures from 1985 and put in a few keywords, I’ll be good to go. My cousin built his fraternity’s website ten years ago, so I think I’ll take him to dinner and ask him to help. It shouldn’t be that hard. I’m sure I can just make a few changes and get a huge impact without spending any money.
4. Depression – Oh my gosh, this website project is a nightmare. I don’t know HTML, I can’t locate the original website designer, and I have no idea how to strong content that people will actually read. I can’t tell the difference between CSS, PHP, and HTML. What do they mean Google doesn’t look at meta keywords anymore? I have no idea what meta is, let alone if Google reads it. What is black hat SEO? I don’t even know what SEO means, so how am I supposed to know if my website uses black hate SEO practices?
5. Acceptance – Yep, completely over my head. Need some help and need it now. My competition is killing me, prospects don’t know what I do or when I’m open, and anyone I do get to look at my home page runs away laughing. The time has come to get a professional web designer to overhaul the website and start fresh. 2011 is the year of my Internet debut.

While this list may be praised by some and criticized by others, it is a reminder of why so many small businesses struggle with their web. In the Unites States, 55% of people use the Internet daily with Americans spending an average of 60 hours online each week. With the growing availability of broadband and the increased popularity of smart phones and devices like the iPad, the level of Internet usage will only continue to grow. Small businesses cannot ignore the need for a strong web presence and that having a marketing plan now means reaching prospects and customers through the Internet.

Five years ago I would have agreed with most small businesses owners. Internet marketing was still difficult and not an easy task to accomplish. While I’ve been working with SEO and website design for years, technology didn’t really get small business friendly until the world of open source kicked it up a notch. Websites were expensive, you needed a graphic designer, and you needed an SEO expert to help guide you along so someone other than your employees would find your website.

Enter WordPress, the fast growing, open source CMS package that is launching everything from blogs and small business websites to fancy portals for stars and magazines and television networks. WordPress is my passion and the software that liberated me and countless other small business owners. We are now empowered to take website design into our own hands. Or, at least outsource the creation of the website, then manage it internally if we choose. We have an option. We can create a great new website that is search engine friendly and pleasing to the eye and for a much lower budget than we could ten years ago. We have choices.

If you are a small business owner who is stuck in one of the five stages of grief, visit wordpress.org and learn more about WordPress website design and your options. WordPress will allow you to create and manage your web presence in the same software as CNN, Katy Perry, Carnival Cruises, Lexus, and The New Your Times. Best of all it is free and you only need to locate a good WordPress designer to help get you started.

This week I was preparing my slide deck for a webinar I’m presenting on Tuesday for my friends over at Lurn. The webinar is titled “Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic”. The preparation for this webinar reminded me of wrapping paper and my ultimate love for Christmas. Yes you read that correctly, in my mind I think of titles and meta as wrapping paper.

Here is why. Line up two presents of equal size and cost. One is wrapped in a brown paper bag (earth day was this week so let’s recycle) and the other is wrapped in beautiful shiny paper with perfect corners and exquisite ribbon to match. Which one do you want to open? Unless you have mental issues, you’re going for the one I wrapped. That would be the pretty one. Blog entries and website pages are the same. Visitors and search engines lunge at the page or post that is wrapped perfectly. This means well-written content that is accompanied by a fabulous title, concise meta description, and relevant keywords (if you are targeting search engines other than Google). These three elements are the teasers that make you want more. Just like the perfectly wrapped present.

Unfortunately, blogger and “wanna be” webmasters are a dime a dozen these days and everyone thinks they are the next great publisher of content on the Internet. They are not. I am thankful the folks over at Lurn feel the same as I do and they are trying desperately to education these up and coming Internet moguls with some good old fashion SEO expertise. Once you get past Lurn’s glitzy landing pages, you’ll see they have great content on SEO and Internet marketing. So much so that I wish they’d been around seven years ago when I entered into the world of SEO and website design. This isn’t a push for Lurn, it is an education. I 100% believe they provide great content for the SEO newbie. Below is a list of best practices I’ll be discussing Tuesday. Lurn believes in these just as I do, which is why I believe in Lurn.

Ten Best Practices for Writing Headlines, Descriptions and Meta Data That Get Traffic

1. Write an eye-catching, well-written headline
2. Use your headline, descriptions, and tags to gain traction
3. Use your keywords in the title
4. Build keywords into your alt tags
5. Include headlines and descriptions that will resonate with those readers
6. Include information you want your visitors to see when they see your link in search engines
7. Watch your character limit
8. Don’t overdo it
9. Utilize the H1 tag so it helps both the reader and the search engine
10. Pick the right header for the job

So my SEO friends, I will leave you with this thought. When crafting your next blog entry or web page, ask yourself this – is your wrapping job good enough to give to your mother (aka Google)? If you aren’t pleased to attach your name to it, rewrap it and make sure the presentation is as good as the page content itself.

Ugly or Just Confusing?

Some may question if a given URL can be ugly, but to Google and other search engines, a URL can be as ugly as the shirt your grandmother gave you on Christmas. More importantly, designing a website with friendly URL’s is key to making a website easy for search engine spiders to read and index. They are also important to the actual website visitor, because the pages are easily remembered and shared.

Here is a classic example of SEF versus Ugly URL’s:

UGLY = www.web-savvy-marketing.com/cgi-bin/gen.pl?id=871&view=basic

SEF = www.web-savvy-marketing.com/internet-marketing/search-engine-optimization-seo/

The first URL provides little information. The second URL tells the search engine spider and visitor that the page “Search Engine Optimization” is indeed about search engine optimization and that it is a subset of the category “Internet Marketing”. Visitors and search engine spiders like to see clearly defined pages and easy to follow website structures. Such use of SEF URL’s help both a physical person and a virtual process digest the information conveyed by the website’s designers.

Flipping the SEF Switch

There is a time and a place for “flipping the switch” on SEF URL’s. Typically a new site or a complete website redesign will utilize the ugly URL’s until right before launch of the new website. This will allow the website development process to change dynamically without the need of creating the SEF URL’s or worrying about the URL’s changing as the project migrates through the build process. Good website designers will stress this caution, because large scale websites can dramatically change as the design and build process unfolds. Once the build is complete and the site is ready to launch, the migration to SEF URL’s is fast and relatively painless in mainstream open source CMS packages like Joomla or WordPress.