Turning my Design Business site into a site to promote SEO
-
I need advice on retooling my website for my SEO biz. I have shifted my business model from graphic designer who does websites, to "internet marketing consultant who does graphics too". My main website and domain name is over 10 years old, so I've made the decision to keep it, even though it has no keywords in the name. The name works well for the new business, otherwise.
The site has a PR3 and I rank well for small business advertising terms, which gets me graphic design business. I intend to keep doing graphic design, but that is a smaller part of my income.
I had considered making 3 satellite sites with keyword domain names to cover my offerings of graphic design SEO, website development, and internet marketing. But am leaning against it for several reasons (that all of us SEO's know) but mainly the fact that I cannot keep up with both working for my clients and blogging on multiple sites and link building for multiple sites.
So my question is (you knew there was one coming, right?), what is the best approach to building categories of web development, internet marketing, and SEO into my existing graphic design/advertising oriented website?
This is slightly embarrassing to ask as an SEO, but given the multiple approaches possible, and knowing the importance of doing it right the first time, it's best to get an consensus perspective on the BEST approach.
My main concerns are the navigation system and the links from the homepage into the site. I have too many pages I've identified as essential to link off of the home page and navigation menus? (Website development, social media marketing, link building, keyword research, pay per click, online advertising, graphic design, brochures, catalogs, Logos, Branding, SEO, keyword research etc.)
I've always tried for the ratio of one link off of any page for every 100 words of content. Do I create a home page that is of monster proportions?
Do I just have the 4 basic areas linking off the home page then create a "landing zone" of 4 folders and create down from that? I am concerned about URL length as I go deeper with that approach.
Or, does it make more sense to have a dozen second-level pages, and not link them all off the home page, and build from beneath (and relying on external juice).
Next issue is the nav system. It will be huge. Am I best off just keeping it to 4-6, and creating subnavigation on everypage within the site according to section (PITA)? I've read dozens of blog opinions on how much nav systems do or do not hurt link juice.
I've always thought footer links were right next to worthless to pass any juice, but given this situation, does it make sense to make a footer link for each major page (about 20)?
Thanks for your opinions.
-
Good luck to you! I plan on opening an SEO/ Internet Marketing company in about 2 years. I don't plan on going global either but it is a nice business to be in.
-
I agree... and it made it a tough decision to use my main site for seo promotion (ie taking valuable title and tag space from less competitive terms). Luckily, I'm a one man shop with no aspirations to go global!
Therefore I can use a little more long-tail, and local terms because I don't need 20 new customers every month. Those terms do use more title and url space though...
-
I'm not really sure how you would go about the whole process of redeveloping your site. IMO, I think having everything locally centered on one home-page with maybe drop down menu's to the other sub-categories within the main category would be good. I would look at what some other SEO companies have done and how they've developed there website. I can say that obviously ranking for an SEO company is pretty difficult given the competition.
I think traditional sales and business to business marketing strategies are very effective. Also, PPC is a great way to drive business.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Magento 2.1 Multi Store / SEO
This is quite technical but I'm hoping a Magento expert can clear this up for me. Currently my company has two websites on separate Opencart platforms. What I'm doing now is building a Magento website and using the multi store function as well as a few modules to combine the two sites, the aim being that the link juice is shared and I can focus my SEO efforts on the one site instead of two, thus reducing my workload while maintaining the benefits. This is the intended layout: www.domain.com www.domain.com/us I have created a sub-folder (not a subdomain) as this seems to be the best way to share link juice between the new, combined sites (as well as 301s from the old, redundant site). At the moment I have created 2 separate websites, stores and store views (see attached) and have configured it according to the Magento guide, so I know that technically this is correct but I need to make sure that I have done it correctly in relation to SEO. Is the sub-folder set up correctly for instance? Currently the only files to populate that sub-folder are a htaccess, error log and index.php (see attached). Also, is there anything I could be missing in relation to SEO within the parameters of what I am trying to achieve? Additionally, only one store view appears in the "change store view" section of the home page. This is causing me to question if I have set it up correctly, because I had assumed both store views would appear even if they were under different websites (attached). OR do I simply use the same website and create two stores and store views? Do I also need to create a separate database for each website/store/store view? I would very much appreciate if someone could help out here. Thank you. In1Gi7t pyfM03y nUQoMz1
Web Design | | moon-boots0 -
How do you influence the default site title?
Hi, We have noticed that on brand searches, a site's page title is replaced with the name of the site or the business, we can understand that this is due to the fact that a CTR enticing title is not as important when the customer is looking for a certain brand. What tells Google what company name to display in this instance? We're having trouble with our French site displaying the page title, we are moving the position of the title code earlier in the page, but can't see why a) Telefleurs is not displaying the title chosen and b) why it is displaying EuroFlorist when our French brand is Telefleurs. Any advice on this would be much appreciated! Thanks, Sam JgLwnGV.png
Web Design | | seoeuroflorist0 -
Does an age verification home page hurt SEO?
There's a microbrewery in our area that just launched its first website. It has the "verify your age" homepage (which is not really their homepage, but I don't know what it's called) before you can enter. It looks like this: http://angrychairbrewing.com/ Anyway, does this hurt them at all from a rankings standpoint? Also, assuming bots/spiders/ROGER can crawl sites like this, (which I think they would have to be able to do) how do they get around this verification? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Is WP okay for E commerce sites?
Do any of you out there use wordpress for an ecommerce site? I'm getting some mixed reviews on it (but it's the internet, so that's bound to happen). Is there any sort of site traffic or page limit that would make using wordpress a bad idea? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
The Best Wordpress Templates and The Best SEO Plugins??
Hey guys, I am a newbie and after so many painstaking hours of building my new site using the WIX platform, I just found out that WIX is not SEO friendly 😞 So referring to (copy n pasted) the old post below posted in by Big Bazza back in June 2011, does anyone agree or have any updated information they can assist me with so I can get my new site started ? Cheers 🙂 www.studiopress.com - excellent templates and support is first class! EDIT: These all support WP 3.0 and are SEO friendly too! (They have modified the SEO functionality) However, the framework also allows you to run Yoast Wordpress SEO - which is generally considered the best SEO plugin for WP. http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
Web Design | | Giorgio680 -
Critique a site I'm working on please
Hi guys, I have a list of things to do on this website that is longer than my arm but thought I would gather a few more thoughts on the site before moving on further with it. The site is here. It went live a couple of days ago for live testing. I have a news section coming very soon at theworkplacedepot.co.uk/news - it is in live testing now. One glaring issue for me is that some of the products simply aren't "buyable". What I mean by that is that the options are too vague and too vast - as an outsider I wouldnt have a clue what I was buying! Other issues: The banner at the bottom of the HP is a test - its design will be changing. The sitemap has some issues and will be addressed. There is no area yet to "log-in". However, critique for me pretty please! 🙂
Web Design | | MattJanaway0 -
Any discussions on the actual web page design and how it might affect SEO?
Are there any links to previous discussions or tips, techniques for how creative design has any impact on seo??
Web Design | | theideapeople1 -
Seo for flash home page?
I have a client who insists their home page be a single graphic image of their logo with php menus linking to all of the other pages up top. This appears to me to be an seo nightmare. They seem to be unwilling to have anything to do with changing the appearance and want to rely on seo for "all the other pages" on the site. What's an SEO to do in this situation? Is it possible to have a flash image that lands on a "homepage" for google to crawl, rather than a single image? What's the best seo approach here?
Web Design | | peaceland0