David Ogletree will be speaking at the upcoming Look at Me seminar about Search Engine Friendly Web Design. We sat down with David and asked him some questions about his presentation, along with a few about what he’s been up to lately.
I see you are speaking on search engine friendly web design. Why do you think this is an important topic for businesses in St Louis?
If you want increase sales from search engine searchers you need to make sure your website can be found in search engines. Most web developers are only concerned about how the website looks and not how a search engine looks at it. When you make a search engine friendly website you have a better chance of ranking at the top. It is not uncommon to be in a 3-way battle for the top spot. You may all be going after the same links. In this case the site that has better on page optimization will rank the highest.
My cousin’s girlfriend built my business website for a few hundred bucks. Is spending thousands of dollars on a SE-friendly website really worth it?
The answer is yes because in the long run you will make that money back. When you rank higher in the search engines you will get more visitors and more visitors means more money.
Let’s say my website has about 25 pages total. How come only my home page shows up in Google?
This can be due to many factors. If your website is new it may just be a matter of time. If your website is not set up with proper internal linking Google may not know that the other web pages exist.
I’d like to sell my products online. Is there SE-friendly ecommerce software out there?
Almost all modern ecommerce packages have the ability to be search engine friendly. No website is going to come out of the box completely search engine friendly. They all need a human touch. The main thing is to avoid ecommerce packages that create lots of duplicate content.
After creating a SE-friendly website, will the customers *just come* to my site, or is there still more I’d have to do?
Just like in cars you can have the best tires and the most aerodynamic design but you are not going anywhere without the engine. Search engine friendly design is just part of a complete SEO strategy. Links are what powers a website. The more links you have the better you are going to rank in the search engines.
Why do you think so many businesses don’t have SE-friendly websites?
Mostly out of ignorance. People just don’t know there is such a thing. A lot of people don´t really know how search engines rank websites. Some don’t even think about getting traffic from a search engine. There are quite a few people that just consider a website an online business card.
Tell me a bit about your background.
I have been working on the web since 1997. I learned about search marketing in 2003. I have helped hundreds of companies improve their websites over the past 6 years. I have worked with companies that sell services and products. I have also been a consultant on several social network websites. I have worked with national companies and local companies.
What cool projects are you working on right now?
Right now I am heading up the online marketing strategy for AmericanVoice.com. It is a social network for people that want to take an active role in making changes in the Government. We are working hard to use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to bring national attention to the website as well as SEO and PPC. One of the main functions of the website is the ability for people to send faxes to congress.
