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In the last post we discussed 5 reasons why website maintenance is critical to the success of your web strategy. You may be thinking to yourself, “Sure, I know keeping my website up-to-date is important. But who has time to keep their website updated?”

Can you afford not to keep it up-to-date? Let's look at another option...

Read more: Why would I want to outsource my website maintenance?

Is your website living up to expectations? Is it driving traffic and revenue for your business? Are you getting a solid return on your website investment? If you answered no to any of these questions, read on. This prescription may be just what the doctor ordered.

Read more: The Importance of Maintaining Your Website – 5 Reasons To Show Your Website Some Love

Search engines such as Google will use over 200 factors in determining what pages to show for a given search. While they are very secretive over the exact factors they use and how much weight they give to each one, they provide clues as to what they deem most important.

Read more: Five Key Factors In Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines

Businesses are increasingly recognizing the importance of a quality website in reaching their customers and achieving their marketing, sales and business goals. Partnering with the right web design firm makes a huge impact in the success of your online strategy and in getting your desired return on investment.

We have developed a blueprint for how we have created Katalyst Creative Group to best meet the needs of small and medium sized businesses. We hope this helps you as you consider which firm to help you with your online strategy.

Read more: Finding The Right Web Design Firm: 5 Areas to Consider

We’re going to begin a short series to help you learn more about search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a critical component to any website that depends on traffic from search engines to grow and expand its reach. This is especially critical for businesses that depend on a steady flow of traffic to sustain their pipeline. Today, we’ll look at:

Read more: Search Engine Optimization To Grow Your Business

So, you've decided its time for a new website. Doing a little bit of homework before you talk to your web designer can make a big difference in how your web project goes. Here are 10 questions to ask yourself to help have a more successful website project

Read more: Preparing for a Successful Web Project: 10 Questions To Ask

Great news for businesses running their website with Joomla! The brand new version of Joomla – Joomla 2.5 - was released on January 24. Joomla 2.5 offers many improvements and is very exciting to the Joomla community. However, this creates a decision point for website owners currently running on older versions of the platform. Should you upgrade now or not?

So, we’re going to explore that question and help provide you with the information you need to make a sound business decision. Here is what we’ll explore:

Read more: The Business Case for Upgrading to Joomla 2.5

It is no longer a question of if social media affects search engine optimization, but how? Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past few years, you have seen social media grow into increasing importance and near ubiquity. From the early days of My Space to the meteoric rise of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to the recent new comers such Pinterest, social media is here to stay. But the question is how does it play into your overall SEO strategy?

Read more: Social Media and Your SEO Strategy

Be sure to include a call to action. Encourage your visitors to call, or email, or participate in an upcoming event. You want to be warm, inviting, and welcoming to your visitors. Provide them with a way to connect to you and then ask them to connect.

Read more: Secret Seven: Include a Call to Action

As we discussed last week, it is critical to not only track your website statistics, but also put that data to use. One of the most popular website analytics packages available is called Google Analytics.

This week, we’ll give you a quick primer in Google Analytics terminology to help you understand the basic terminology to help you make sense of what you are looking at.

Read more: A Quick Primer In Google Analytics – Understanding Your Data

You want people to find you. Here are five primary areas to consider in promoting your site.

Read more: Secret Six: Design to Increase Traffic

One of the most often overlooked components to your online strategy is your on-going SEO maintenance. It is common to think of SEO as a one-time project and it can be tempting to skip the maintenance. But search engine optimization is a gradual and strategic process. It is a way of life if you want to be successful online. Today, we will look at what it is, why it is necessary, and putting your traffic data to use.

Read more: The Missing Ingredient: SEO Maintenance

When looking at the mechanics of your site design, there are several areas that are critical to keep in mind.

Read more: Secret Five: Streamline Your Design

As a locally oriented business, it is vital that you rank well in searches for your local area to reach your target market. To accomplish this, you want to look at a specialized form of SEO called “local search engine optimization.”

Read more: Off-Site SEO: Local Search Directory Optimization

Your web presence is a reflection of who you are. In many cases, it may be the only thing that your website visitors know about you. You need a professional quality web site that expresses who you are. It should reflect your own professionalism, quality, and personality in a way that is relevant to their needs.

Read more: Secret Four: Express Your Inside Reality

You always want to start your search engine optimization campaign with a solid foundation: a quality website with high-quality, relevant content. Optimizing your own website is often called “On-Site SEO.” But the story does not end here.

Search engines are always looking for clues as to the best websites for a given search. They look at not only the content and other important cues from the website itself, but they also consider “Off-Site” factors as well.

So, what are these “off-site” factors? Let’s take a look at three important areas: inbound links, local search directories, and social media engagement. Today, we’ll focus on inbound links and link building.

Read more: Off-Site SEO: Link Building - Inbound Links to Your Website

Sites need substance and your target audience should drive content you provide. What is important to them? What do they need to know? What are they looking for on your site?

Read more: Secret Three: Focus Your Content

Once you have your basic keyword research complete, you are then ready to take a look at your competitors. Competitor analysis is the process of deconstructing a competitor’s online marketing strategy to discover their strategies and techniques for ranking well.

Read more: SEO Competitive Analysis: Learning from your Competitors

Once you have defined your goals for your website, you need to clearly understand whom you are targeting. Your primary audience will drive many of your decisions and priorities for your web site. The more you know about your audience, the more relevant you will be able to make your website and the closer you can align your site with their needs.

Read more: Secret Two: Target Your Audience

A successful SEO campaign will always start with a solid foundation built on quality research. Ideally, you will do two types of research at the beginning of any SEO campaign: Keyword Research and Competitor Research. This week we are going to take a look at Keyword Research, which forms the primary foundation for optimizing your website.

Read more: Keyword Research – Laying The Foundation For A Successful SEO Campaign

As the Internet becomes more prevalent in our society, it has become commonplace to turn to the Internet for shopping, finding directions, researching products, and even to find a church or seek answers to spiritual questions. As businesses and other organizations begin to understand this dynamic, they are increasingly beginning to recognize the importance and the need for an effective web presence – not just a web site, but a real presence on the web.

Read more: Seven Essential Secrets of a Successful Web Presence

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“Don Cranford and Katalyst Solutions are excellent collaborators. They bring a wealth of knowledge and are a pleasure to work with. Katalyst Solutions are truly experts.”
– Dorothy Banzon
Owner/Designer
D Banzon Design

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