Intuit has launched television commercials promoting a free web site development tool for small businesses. The advertisement caught my attention for a few reasons: The basic web site development market is now dead. But there’s still room for managed service providers to add considerable value in the market. Here’s how.
First, a little about Intuit’s effort. The company’s free online tool allows you to develop a five-page web site that’s free for 30 days, and $4.99 per month thereafter. It sounds like a tempting offer but Intuit’s marketing materials don’t mention search engine optimization (SEO) at all.
That’s too bad. Your site (or your customer’s site) is worthless if Google doesn’t automatically find and index it. And that indexing only happens with proper SEO tools.
Free, basic site development systems like Drupal and WordPress have built-in SEO capabilities. And solutions designed especially for the MSP market — such as Kutenda — meld site design, SEO and paid search capabilities into a single user interface.
I can’t endorse one tool over another. (Full disclosure: I live in the WordPress blog engine so that’s what I know best.) But here’s the heart of the matter: If you’re an MSP dabbling in customer site design, you need to push beyond the “look and feel” of a Web site. Instead, choose tools that get your customers’ sites noticed by Google. Otherwise, you’re not earning your keep.
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Tags: Intuit Web Site | Search Engine Optimization | SEO | Small Business Web Sites
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I heard a commercial for Intuit on the radio and thought it would impact web development as well. It may, but SEO is extremely important. Adobe recently purchased Business Catalyst and I am curious to see how that will impact the web development world. You are right on the money though as far as content and SEO. A beautiful site is great, but if no one knows about it, it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is to provide fresh relevant content, and seek to help your target audience find what they are looking for… even if it means not bashing your readers over the head with jargon about your product. MSPMentor does a great job of providing relevant helpful content.
Jason: Thanks for the feedback. I must concede: When we launched Nine Lives Media Inc. (MSPmentor’s parent) I assumed most of my job would involve content development. In reality, SEO occupies just as much of my time.
My biased opinion is that SEO is extremely important for every website (I’m an SEO – which is where the bias comes from).
However, sometimes we must remember that not all websites have the same purpose. I offered to do some SEO work for a friend’s business but was told that the website is just a good place to point word of mouth referrals to and finding the website via the search engines was not necessary.
So, depending on your needs, SEO may or may not be important for your website.
HeySmartGuy.com is a easy to use on line business platform built on top of Adobe technology and the SEO the hooks are there . Of course hooks and tools do not make an SEO strategy, but they are there for the people who understand what they are doing. We have seen a lot of platforms that totally forego in the to keep things simple, but with people typing URL into google before their address bar everyone needs to at least consider SEO.
There’s a simple but very effective SEO tool, you can use that you will attach to your homepage, it’s YouKidsClub games, because there are millions of kids playing games in the internet everyday and it’s a good idea to have a share of that traffic by putting games in your homepage to drive visitors that can boost your PR, YourKidsClub provides different games that can promote your niche.
Jane: MSPmentor welcomes reader comments and your suggestion is intriguing. But I hope you don’t mind this question: Are you a real person or comment spam promoting YourKidsClub?
The reason I ask: Many MSPs would find that type of messaging to be inconsistent with their own branding and target markets, I would think…
-jp
Just thought I’d mention Joomla has so many SEO tools, from automation for lazy designers (creates tags and descriptions from content automatically)to full management with apps like iJoomlaSEO. It’s awesome.