Freakin' Genius Marketing is busily working on content and optimization for about 4 new websites along with the optimization of 2 existing sites this week. In all the hub-bub, what I’ve realized as the main point of contact at our agency is that I’m spending a great deal of time explaining the process to so many clients that I found myself channeling this as a blog post today.
There are three main development specialists each with multiple jobs in the development of a website. All of the web specialists are both integral to the final product and the sum of its parts. These specialists are: The Designer, The Programmer, The Marketing Strategist/Content Writer. Let me explain.
The Designer (Note: sometimes the programmer is also a designer, but mostly a designer is an artist- while a programmer has a more technical background)
The designer is key to the look and feel of the site. We call this the User Interface (UI) which is the pretty part, all the colors, the logo, the layout, the template and the way the whole thing comes together. All this pretty stuff works with the programming and often goes into separate hands. The greatest inventions have been templates of previously designed websites you can purchase so you can visualize what your “website” will look like before it’s built. The templates sell for very little, which is so exciting, but need much programming customization. It’s like buying the empty bear skin at Build-a-Bear. You still have to stuff and dress it for it to be a proper bear.
The Programmer:
So after the designers develop the UI, the programmers then develop the supporting programming that makes it all work like a website instead of just a pretty picture. They are the behind the scenes guys who are the wind in the sails as it pertains to writing the html or developing the Flash (images) that make the site work as an integrated “location” on the web. They program the databases if your website collects information also. They are really all the function while the designer is really all about the form.
The challenge with building a website is that the User Interface (UI), programming, and much of the navigation depends on the content and the goal of the site. Are you looking for a static site to convert a visitor to a certain page to give you their email or call or potentially to get to your shopping cart to purchase something? It takes much collaboration of the offer, the look, the timing, and the ease of getting around the site to accomplish that.
Ok, on to what the site actually says.
The Marketing Strategist/Writer:
Not only does your website’s content have to be descriptive, clearly introduce and cohesively sell what your company’s service and products are all about, but the mapping of it needs to be intuitively navigable, meaning, it has to be natural to move around in it in a logical way. And oh yes, it needs to written with important keywords and key phrases so that prospective clients will find you based on the search engine spiders seeing your relevance to their search. This is called on-page search engine optimization (SEO) and is integral to success as it pertains to your website’s goal of reaching your prospective customers. Writing search optimized content is sometimes counter intuitive. It can be repetitious and lastly doesn’t believe in pronouns. There are many rules to writing for SEO and of course those rules are always changing as the search engines keep us all hopping so we don’t figure them out.
Ok, so now we take one more go round with the programming because, once the UI is working in conjunction with the on-page optimized content, the off-page SEO needs to be developed just prior to launching the site. The writer has coordinated this while writing the on-page content.
The off-page SEO includes the titles, metatags, keywords, and descriptions that go in the body of the programming (off-page) but are in keeping with the final content on the site itself (on-page). In other words, the off-page keywords have to coordinate with the content on the page so that the search engine sees the html language and then confirms the words are indeed present on the site and as such, will send a search prospect the name of your website and the page address and description that is most in keeping with the search term used.
Does this whole thing sound complicated? It's not if you have someone keeping their finger on the pulse. Ask our Smartysite clients, at Freakin’ Genius Marketing, we keep our finger on the pulse of your whole project. We have the 4-star programmers, we have the award winning designers who develop the UI, and we write fantastic optimized content, ready to roll! Turnkey Website Development! Could you even have imagined it to be this easy? SmartySites! It’s Freakin’ Genius!
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