One of the first people I connected with in the web development and SEO world said this to me when I asked about his website. He was a brilliant coder and SEO guru whose website looked like a late 90’s remnant. When I asked him why he said, “The shoemakers kids have no shoes man… I have no time to rebuild my own site… I have clients.”
I laughed and thought… “I’ll never let my business site look that bad or be that outdated.”
Two years later… I was staring at my outdated website, that looked bad…wondering when… if ever, I would have the time to make it look as good as it needs to be. Your website IS your business in the 21st century. If it looks bad… so does you business. Not just to your potential customers… but to Google as well.No, Google doesn’t look at your design and grade it. Google does look at your internal code and how well your site is built in terms of SEO. It is using old coding methods? Does it load fast or slow? These are technical SEO factors that are important for your ranking.
Your website is the most important part of your business success in the 21st century. It’s your storefront, it’s your marketing core, it is your credibility.Your potential customers look at your site and if it looks outdated, runs slow, or is difficult to navigate… they won’t read anything you have to say. You lost them before they got to know who you really are.At the time.. the PID site code was still pretty good. WordPress is awesome for that. The custom coding we had was still working fine and our rankings were fine. So we refaced the site and moved on.
Another two years later…I was staring at my again outdated website wondering how we were going to redo it while in the middle of about 12 site builds for clients. At that point.. we needed more than a reface.. we needed a clean start. Code had changed so much that our rankings were suffering from slower load times and some outdated mods that no longer worked as well as they had 4 years before.
We started from scratch, redid everything… including refocusing on new target keywords and crafting static copy to support the new terms. Six months later, the new Portland Internet Design is live. Still running WordPress and Thesis… with a bad ass new design ( Thank you Judith Espino), fresh content, and a new focus. We’re still crafting high performance SEO websites, and providing economical search marketing for business. We’re pretty damned good at it. (IMHO). However, after 5 years we realize that education is essential. Small business owners need to know the true power of the web. Most have no idea what can be done, what it really costs, and how much of it they can do by themselves. So we now offer Search Engine Marketing Consulting. We’ve been consulting with our client’s since the beginning. Explaining the basics of what SEO is, what the web really is, and how it all works has always been a part of our development pitch. It’s hard to sell a high end website to a client who sees no need for it. After an hour of “consulting” most potential clients “get it”. At least enough to realize that a $500 web design is not an SEO web platform for business. The point of all of this…? Your website is the most important part of your business success in the 21st century. It’s your storefront, it’s your marketing core, it is your credibility. If you’re not sure what you need or where to start… contact us. Let’s talk. The first hour is always free. Getting the facts from a Search Engine Marketing Consultant is the best thing you can do for your business.