This isn’t a minor shift. Google reports that queries showing AI Overviews see 10%+ more engagement than traditional search results. Combine that with the rise of voice search — with 8.4 billion voice assistants now in use worldwide, more than the global population — and it’s clear: the way potential clients discover attorneys is being rewritten.

Nearly 1 in 5 internet users (20.5%) already rely on voice search to get answers, often with local intent. In 68% of local service searches, Google’s AI Overview now appears above the map pack, ads, and traditional organic results.

The consequences for law firms are clear: adapt to AI-driven search now, or risk being invisible when clients are making their most important decisions.

(Organic search is still important. Read out Ultimate Guide to Law Firm SEO here.)

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What Are Google’s AI Results and Why Do They Matter for Law Firms?

Google’s AI Overviews are summaries that appear above traditional search results, pulling answers from trusted content sources.

Rolled out in the U.S. in 2024 and now expanded to more than 100 countries, AI Overviews have quickly become one of the most visible parts of search. Instead of clicking through multiple links, users can see a concise, AI-generated answer at the very top of the page. That’s reshaping how people interact with Google. Most users now rely on the AI snapshot before they ever scroll.

The user journey once relied on clicking into a website and exploring related pages through internal links. Today, AI Overviews deliver concise answers upfront, anticipating follow-up questions and addressing them all in a single snapshot.

Google reports that queries featuring an AI Overview drive over 10% more engagement than traditional search results. For law firms, that means being included in these summaries offers a new baseline for visibility. If your content isn’t there, it may not be seen at all.

How Can I Get My Law Firm to Show Up in AI Overviews?

Publish authoritative, structured, and multimedia-rich content that Google’s AI can easily trust and cite.

That means:

FAQ-Driven Content

Google’s AI favors pages that give direct, conversational answers to common questions. Law firms that build FAQ-style practice area pages anticipate the way clients actually search, including through voice assistants.

A page that answers “Do I need a lawyer after a DUI arrest in San Francisco?” is far more likely to be surfaced than one that only says “DUI Lawyer in San Francisco.”

Reputation Signals

AI systems are designed to reward trust and authority. Most consumers still read reviews before hiring a lawyer, and more are checking platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram for credibility.

Firms with steady review generation, high ratings, and consistent brand presence across platforms give Google and other AI platforms stronger signals to feature their content.

Technical SEO & Schema

Even great content can get ignored without proper structure. Schema markup — like FAQ, Article, LocalBusiness, and VideoObject — tells Google exactly what your page is about.

Firms that skip this step make it harder for AI to parse their site, while competitors with schema earn the visibility. (Read more about technical SEO here.)

Diversified Media

AI Overviews don’t just summarize text from multiple sources. They increasingly incorporate videos, images, infographics, and other multimedia when deciding which sources to highlight.

A firm that offers both written explanations and short video summaries has more ways to surface in results, including video carousels and featured snippets.

On-Page Optimization for AI

While many of the above practices have been helpful in SEO for a few years now, AI platforms have their own way of “reading” a site or page. Adopting strategies caters to how AI both understands content and presents it.

Google’s AI extracts answers from pages that are scannable, structured, and user-friendly. That means short paragraphs, clear headers (often written as questions), direct answers, and easily skimmed content like bulleted lists and tables. Firms that follow this approach make it easy for AI to “read” their site and present their content in summaries.

Covering Multiple Layers of Intent

AI Overviews don’t just answer the first query. They bundle related needs like “What is it?”, “How does it work?”, and “What should I do next?” in one snapshot. Law firms that create content addressing only a single intent (e.g., a bare-bones service page) are overlooked.

Firms that anticipate follow-up questions, order them logically, and answer them all in one place are far more likely to appear in AI overviews. For example, here’s a natural sequence of questions someone injured in a car accident might search:

• What should I do after being injured in a car accident?
• Should I seek medical care after an accident?
• How long do I have to seek medical treatment after a crash?
• What damages can I recover in a Missouri car accident claim?
• Is the insurance company trying to lowball me in my car accident claim?
• How long do I have to file a lawsuit after a car accident?
• Do I need a lawyer for a car accident injury?
• How to find a lawyer for a car accident injury?

While a series of separate blog posts for each question can still rank well organically, AI overviews favor pages that can answer all these questions on one page.

Helpful AI Tools and Strategies for Law Firms in 2025

Law firms can win visibility by aligning their content and digital presence with how AI systems source information. These strategies combine technical precision with content that feels natural and authoritative.

What you can do:

AI-Voiced Video Summaries

Repurposing written FAQs and practice pages into short, AI-narrated video explainers gives your firm a second way to surface. Upload them to YouTube (a Google property) and embed them on your site. The payoff is real: 93% of marketers report good ROI from video, and over three-quarters of U.S. consumers watch video when researching local services.

Even better, upload the audio version to podcast sites, and put one of your attorneys on camera answering the same question. Now you’ve got four ways to appear in both organic Google results and AI overviews.

AI-Optimized FAQ Content

Clients often ask questions out loud, not in keywords — and 76% of voice searches are for nearby businesses. Writing content in a conversational tone, framed as FAQs, makes it more likely to appear in AI Overviews and voice search results. Think “What should I do after a car accident in Omaha?” instead of “Omaha accident lawyer.”

Structured Data & Technical SEO

AI depends on clarity. Adding schema markup — FAQ, Article, LocalBusiness, and VideoObject — helps Google interpret your site correctly. Just as important: ensure your site is fast, mobile-friendly, and accessible to crawlers like GPTBot. Without this technical foundation, even great content may be invisible to AI.

Intent-Rich Content Creation

SEJ’s research shows AI Overviews often blend multiple intent layers — informational, commercial, and action-oriented — in one snapshot. That means your pages should do the same. A winning practice area page doesn’t just explain the law and ask for a call. It will also compare options, answer next-step questions, and encourage action.

Unique, Non-Commodity Insights

Thin, repetitive pages are losing value. AI prefers original, non-commodity content that demonstrates expertise. Case studies, attorney perspectives, and data-driven insights separate your firm from generic competitors and increase your chances of being cited in Overviews.

Brand Visibility Across Platforms

AI Overviews don’t pull only from your website. They reference trusted names and content across the web — from YouTube to Reddit to social media. Building brand context and visibility beyond your own domain strengthens your credibility as a source worth surfacing.

AI Analytics & Monitoring

As Google continues expanding AI Overviews, monitoring when and how your content appears will be crucial. Track queries that trigger AI citations, see what they’re doing that your not, and refine your content accordingly.

AI Intake & Chat Support

Appearing in AI Overviews is just the start. Converting that visibility into clients requires an intake process that feels fast and human. AI-powered chat tools can help capture leads, but they should be paired with human oversight to ensure compliance and accuracy.

What Happens If You Do Nothing?

You’ll lose cases to competitors who adapt to AI-driven search.

Google is scaling AI globally, and it’s not going away. When a potential client searches for help, they’ll see more of the firms that show up in AI Overviews, and less of the ones that don’t. In legal, that means every missed appearance is a missed consultation.

The profession is already moving: 63% of attorneys are using AI in some capacity, and 67% of corporate counsel expect firms to adopt it. If your firm delays, your website risks falling behind and losing you clients.

The good news? It’s not too late. The steps you take now will determine whether your firm disappears from the top of search — or owns the visibility that brings in the next caseload.

What Happens If You Do Nothing?

You’ll lose cases to competitors who adapt to AI-driven search.

Google is scaling AI globally, and it’s not going away. When a potential client searches for help, they’ll see the firms that show up in AI Overviews — not the ones that don’t. In legal, that means every missed appearance is a missed consultation.

With AI Overviews reshaping search behavior, law firms can’t afford to wait. Firms that invest now will own client visibility for years to come. Firms that don’t will watch competitors capture the calls, consultations, and cases they should have won.

The good news? It’s not too late. The steps you take now will determine whether your firm disappears from the top of search — or owns the visibility that brings in the next caseload.

Why Hexxen Is the Right Partner for Your Law Firm’s AI Search Optimization

Hexxen helps law firms adapt to the new era of AI-driven search. We’ve guided firms through every major shift in digital marketing — from mobile optimization to local SEO to now AI Overviews — and we know how to turn change into opportunity.

What we deliver:

• SEO + AIO expertise: Content crafted for both traditional search and AI snapshots.
• AI-powered video: Scalable, professional video summaries that surface across YouTube, AI Overviews, and video carousels.
• Technical SEO & schema: Structured data and site architecture that make your content easy for AI systems to parse and cite.
• Reputation management: Review generation and monitoring that reinforce both trust and visibility.

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Take Back Your Firm’s Visibility With Hexxen’s AI Search Services for Law Firms

Google’s AI is already shaping which law firms clients see first. Firms that act now will capture that visibility. Firms that wait will lose it.

Hexxen helps law firms win in AI-driven search with content, video, reviews, and technical SEO built for today’s results.

Contact Hexxen online today or call (314) 499-8253 for a consultation and start showing up where your clients are searching.

Hire Us  

The post Why Your Law Firm’s Competitors Are Showing Up in Google’s AI Results (and You’re Not) appeared first on Hexxen.

We get it. Hexxen is your go-to law firm digital growth partner. We don’t just build attractive websites, we craft high-performance legal websites that generate qualified leads, build trust, and turn clicks into actual consultations. Want your website to pull its weight? Call us now at (314) 499-8253 or contact us online to get started today.

Blog Summary

Is your law firm’s website failing to turn visitors into paying clients? You’re certainly not alone. Many legal websites look fine on the surface but lack the SEO, content, user experience, and local visibility needed to generate qualified leads. In this blog, the Hexxen team breaks down the top reasons your site might be underperforming, from outdated design and weak calls-to-action to slow load times and poor mobile responsiveness, and explains exactly how our team transforms static websites into powerful client-generating tools. Discover what’s holding your firm back online and how to fix it for good.

Designing a successful law firm website goes far beyond good graphics and a contact form buried at the bottom. If you want your site to drive real client inquiries, every detail, from SEO to loading speed to your calls-to-action, must be intentional and executed by experts who know the legal industry inside and out.

Here’s exactly why your current site might be falling short—and how we fix it at Hexxen:

1. Your Site is Generic or Outdated

If your website looks like every other firm in town—or worse, like it hasn’t been updated since your last office furniture upgrade—visitors won’t stick around. Prospective clients judge credibility fast. A modern, professional, branded design signals trust, competence, and authority.

The Fix: At Hexxen, our law firm web design team creates distinctive sites that make your practice stand out from the cookie-cutter competition. Hexxen creates responsive, user-friendly websites that enhance user experience and support your firm’s SEO efforts.

2. It’s Not Optimized for Local SEO

Showing up for “criminal defense lawyer near me” or “family lawyer in [your city]” is essential for attracting local clients. A site without proper local SEO structure, like optimized meta titles, geo-targeted pages, and Google Business Profile integration, won’t rank.

The Fix: Our legal SEO experts fix that with location-specific content, backlinks, and listings that push your firm to the top of local search results.

3. Your Firm’s Content Isn’t Client-Focused

Far too many law firm websites talk about how great the attorneys are but say nothing about what clients actually care about: “Can you help me with my problem?” Great legal content explains complex topics in plain English, addresses common fears, and gently guides visitors toward calling or filling out your form.

The Fix: Our legal content writers craft clear, SEO-friendly pages that build trust and convert traffic into leads.

4. Pages Load Too Slowly

Nothing sends visitors digitally running away faster than a sluggish website, especially on mobile. Google says your site should load in under 2.5 seconds. Research suggests that over 40 percent of users will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. That’s a lot of potential traffic. Slow load times hurt SEO rankings, skyrocket bounce rates, and kill your credibility.

The Fix: Our developers fix slow sites with clean code, optimized images/videos, and reliable hosting.

5. Your Firm’s Calls-to-Action Are Weak

”Contact us” is just not enough. Effective CTAs should appear naturally throughout your pages, remind visitors of what they gain by reaching out, and make it easy to act—right now. It shouldn’t seem forced.

The Fix: We build persuasive CTAs and conversion-focused design elements into every page to remove friction and increase inquiries. Your firm’s website should be enticing visitors to call/click/connect

6. No Mobile Optimization

Approximately 60% of your traffic comes from mobile devices. If your firm’s site layout breaks, buttons are tiny, or text is hard to read on mobile, say goodbye to potential clients. You’re shutting the proverbial door on nearly two-thirds of your client base. No bueno.

The Fix: Hexxen designs responsive sites that look and perform flawlessly on every device, so clients can find you and call you—even on the go.

7. Poor User Experience & Navigation

If visitors can’t find what they need within a few clicks, they’re gone. Again, there’s that image of that proverbial door slamming shut on visitors. (Also, that semi-familiar sound of your founding partner’s voice is likely reverberating in your head.) Confusing menus, cluttered layouts, or missing pages frustrate users and lower your conversion rates.

The Fix: Our UX experts streamline your navigation and site structure, making it effortless for clients to get answers and contact you fast.

8. Security & Compliance Gaps

Your law firm’s site must protect client data and meet legal industry compliance standards. Some company winging your web design on the fly, or an insecure/outdated site exposes you to hackers and privacy risks.

The Fix: We build sites with strong encryption, regular updates, consistent maintenance, and best-in-class security—because trust starts with protecting your visitors.

9. You’re Missing Conversion Tracking

If you don’t know which pages or campaigns generate your calls and form submissions, you’re flying blind. A blind squirrel might be able to find a nut once in a while, but this is no time for your firm to be guessing or gambling. Hexxen is your sure thing.

The Fix: We set up advanced tracking, call analytics, and goal reporting so you see exactly what’s working, and, perhaps most importantly, what needs improvement. Data-driven growth beats guessing every time.

How Hexxen Fixes It for Good

When you partner with Hexxen, you get a law firm marketing team that’s done this successfully hundreds of times. We build modern, fast, secure websites, write conversion-focused legal content, optimize for local search, and track everything, so your website doesn’t just look good, it generates real cases.

Stop settling for a static brochure site. Get a hardworking online presence that attracts, engages, and converts. Ready to get serious with the ultimate fix? Call our law firm web experts at (314) 499-8253 or reach out online today. Let’s turn your website into your best source of new clients.

The post Why Your Law Firm’s Website Isn’t Getting You Clients (And How We Can Fix It) appeared first on Hexxen.

That’s where Hexxen comes in. We’re your go-to law firm growth partner, designing high-performance digital strategies that generate leads, build authority, and create sustainable growth far beyond your referral network. Ready to expand your reach and increase your caseload without relying on your old contacts list? Call (314) 499-8253 or contact us online today.

Blog Summary

Referrals can only take your law firm so far. In today’s digital-first world, firms that rely solely on word-of-mouth are missing out on predictable, scalable growth. This blog from Hexxen breaks down why digital marketing is no longer optional—and how SEO, content, and a performance-driven website can create a steady flow of high-intent leads. We explore how building online authority, improving visibility, and moving beyond the limitations of referrals is the key to long-term success for modern law firms.

Law firms that take their digital marketing seriously consistently outperform competitors who don’t. And yet, many attorneys still treat online visibility like a “bonus,” not a business essential. That mindset is a growth killer. Here’s why the path forward doesn’t just include digital marketing—it demands it:

1. Your Referral Pipeline Will Eventually Run Dry

Referrals are reactive, not proactive. They’re great for maintaining, but terrible for scaling. You’re relying on someone else to send you business instead of building your own system to generate it consistently. When markets tighten, competitors get louder, or your referral partners retire, you’ll feel it fast. A healthy law firm has more than one stream feeding its caseload.

2. You Need Predictable, Scalable Lead Generation

Referrals are hard to forecast. But when your website ranks for high-value terms and your campaigns are dialed in, you gain predictability—like “we get 30 qualified calls/month from Google” predictability. With scalable campaigns, you can add practice areas, expand geography, or even open new offices. The firms dominating their markets didn’t wait for referrals to build momentum. They built engines.

3. SEO Is the Most Profitable Marketing Channel for Law Firms

You’ve heard it before: SEO takes time. But here’s what that time buys you—unmatched ROI. A properly optimized law firm website can deliver qualified leads for years without paying per click. That’s the magic of compounding visibility. If you rank well for “[your practice] lawyer in [your city],” you won’t need to chase leads—they’ll come to you. That’s why Hexxen builds legal SEO campaigns with deep topical authority, local content clusters, and conversion-focused landing pages.

4. High-Intent Traffic > Passive Referrals

A referral might say “hey, call my guy.” That’s passive trust. But someone searching “best criminal defense lawyer near me” at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday? That’s active intent. They’re already looking for you, they just don’t know your name yet. And when they find your content, see your results, and land on a fast-loading, high-converting website? You’re not selling—you’re closing.

5. Your Competitors Are Already Winning With Digital

We’ve reviewed thousands of law firm websites. Want to know the pattern? The top-ranking firms in most markets aren’t necessarily the best attorneys. They’re just the best marketers. While you’re waiting on a friend-of-a-friend to send you their cousin’s DWI/DUI case, your competitors are ranking for “DWI/DUI lawyer St. Louis” and converting leads directly from Google Maps. You have the skills. Let’s build the platform to match.

6. Digital Marketing Builds Brand Equity, Not Just Cases

Law firm growth isn’t just about caseload volume, it’s about long-term brand authority. With the right strategy, your firm becomes the go-to name in your field. Your content becomes cited. Your name becomes searched. And your online presence becomes just as powerful as your courtroom reputation. Referrals don’t build that. Content, local SEO, and consistent branding do.

7. Great Digital Campaigns Attract Great Clients

You know the feeling—you take on a case because it came from a friend-of-a-friend, but it’s not the kind of work you want to be doing anymore. Strong digital positioning gives you leverage. The clients you attract through search and content are qualified, serious, and often higher value. Want better cases? Start with better visibility.

8. Want to Grow? You Need More Than a Referral Mindset

You’ve probably said it: “We want to grow.” But growth requires a marketing system that scales beyond your network. It means treating your law firm like the business it is, equipped with analytics, campaigns, landing pages, and automated intake systems. Hexxen helps law firms stop relying on luck and start engineering demand. We’ve scaled solo practices into dominant local firms, and we’re ready to help you do the same.

Law Firm Growth: Why Choose Hexxen?

Why become one of the many law firms around the country that trusts Hexxen to grow their practice with proven legal digital marketing and SEO services? You want that competitive edge. We do, too. Here’s how we help drive growth:

• Client-Centered Approach: We put your satisfaction first with a hands-on, close-knit team. The experts you meet in strategy sessions are the very same people building and optimizing your site. When you call, you’ll talk to a familiar voice, not a stranger.
• Proven Results: Law firms partner with us because we turn SEO strategy into tangible outcomes—more top Google rankings and a steady pipeline of new clients.
• Experience with Struggling Websites: We get it—we’re probably not the first law firm marketing team you’ve trusted. What sets us apart is our focus on turning underwhelming sites into top-ranking, client-generating powerhouses. We know exactly where other legal SEO agencies fall short, and we tackle those pain points head-on, from day one.
• Professional Legal Content Writers: Our content team features seasoned writers who specialize in the legal industry and craft long-form, SEO-optimized, and legally sound articles. Your website stays compliant, authoritative, and positioned to rank—all with no heavy lifting required on your part.
• Advanced Reporting & Transparency: We provide detailed reports to track the progress and effectiveness of SEO strategies. You’ll see a full report of what campaigns drive the most traffic and conversions. We focus on what’s working for your specific law firm, not try to fit you into some pre-packaged plan.
• Comprehensive Service Offerings: Our services include everything you need to succeed. You won’t have to deal with any other agencies for any of your online needs. Here’s some of what Hexxen provides law firms looking to grow:
• Local SEO For Law Firms: Utilizing local geo targeting and other strategies to enhance visibility in local search results to attract clients in your geographic area and getting you in the coveted Google “Map Pack.”
• SEO Audit & Website Assessment: We offer in-depth analysis of your current website and SEO to identify what needs to be improved, and what additional legal SEO strategies need to be implemented to help your firm grow.
• Competitor Analysis: We analyze competitors to develop strategies that outperform them. By combining, emulating, and improving on all of your top competitors’ strategies, we’ll turn your law firm’s site into a legal SEO powerhouse that outranks all of them.
• On-Page SEO: SEO increases online visibility, enhances credibility, and drives more traffic to your firm’s site, leading to higher client acquisition.
• Web Design & Development: We can create a responsive, user-friendly website that enhances user experience and supports SEO efforts.
• Landing Page Conversion: We can design and optimize landing pages for any of your firm’s specialized campaigns or case types to efficiently convert visitors into clients.
• Media Production: We create engaging multimedia content such as videos and podcasts to enhance your digital marketing efforts and create a unified brand that potential clients recognize.
• Keyword Research and Strategy: We identify and target the most effective keywords for your firm’s practice areas, and create a comprehensive keyword strategy through high-level content, blog posts, media production, and more, using Google’s E.E.A.T principles.
• Link Building: Establish authoritative external links to your site (backlinks) in legal directories, media, guest blogs, and elsewhere to improve your site’s credibility and ranking.
• Technical SEO: We address technical aspects like site speed, mobile optimization, and crawlability so your law firm’s site doesn’t get penalized for poor development.
• Social Media Management: To bolster our SEO efforts, we manage social media profiles to engage with potential clients, boost your firm’s online presence, and increase brand awareness.
• Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization: We optimize your Google Business Profile for better visibility in maps and geographical searches.
• Google Ads Management: We manage Google Ads to maximize your law firm’s reach and effectiveness. While not part of organic search, Google Ads help drive traffic for specific campaigns or as you wait for SEO efforts to take hold.

Ready to Grow Your Law Firm? Call Hexxen Today

Referrals built your reputation, but digital marketing will build your future. If your firm is ready to stop relying on someone else’s word-of-mouth and start owning your own demand, Hexxen is ready to help. Our team knows what it takes to turn your website, SEO, and content into a true growth engine that works around the clock, not just when someone drops your name at a dinner party. Let’s build something bigger, together.

Call us at (314) 499-8253 or reach out online today to get started.

The post Beyond Referrals: The Digital Path to Law Firm Growth appeared first on Hexxen.

You shouldn’t settle. Hexxen is your go-to web development partner for creating a website that brings what matters most to your business—increasing revenue, forging new lead opportunities, and sustained growth over time. Call us right away (314) 499-8253 or reach out online to get started.

Creating a successful website goes beyond the price tag or simply trying to cut costs. The quality of your web design and development plays a huge role in shaping user experience (UX), driving conversions, and increasing long-term profitability. Choosing the lowest-cost options with inexperienced designers can significantly limit your website’s potential. Experienced web developers bring decades of expertise in creating sites that captivate casual visitors and turn them into loyal customers.

Here’s why cutting corners on your website can end up costing you more in the long run:

1. Poor First Impressions Lead to Lost Customers

Your website is often the first interaction prospective customers have with your business. If you have a slow or outdated site, it’ll also be the last thing they ever see of your business. Cheap websites often rely on cookie-cutter templates and lack customization, making it difficult to stand out from your competition. A professional, well-optimized website makes sure that your visitors stay engaged and convert into paying customers.

2. Poor SEO Means Low Visibility

A cheap website might look acceptable on the surface, but if it’s not built with SEO in mind, or built with cheap SEO also, your business won’t rank well on Google or any other search engine. Low rankings mean less traffic, fewer leads, and ultimately, lost revenue. High-quality websites incorporate SEO best practices from the start, ensuring better visibility and higher organic search rankings.

3. Limited Functionality Hurts User Experience

Cheap websites typically come with minimal features, making it hard to scale your business. Essential functionalities like booking systems, ecommerce integration, or even contact forms might be missing or poorly implemented. Without these features, your website might as well operate on a dial-up connection. It’s not meeting your business needs, no matter how cheap it was, leading to frustrated users and lost revenue.

4. Security Risks & Data Vulnerabilities

Websites on the cheap commonly lack security measures, making them easy targets for hackers. Weak security can lead to data breaches, loss of customer trust, and even legal liabilities. It’s simply not worth the risk. Investing in a website with strong security protocols built by a trusted web development team protects your business, customer data, and reputation from cyber threats.

5. Slow Load Times Drive Visitors Away

Speed matters. Cheap websites are built with bloated code, poor hosting, and/or unoptimized images, resulting in drastically slow load times. Ever been on a slow, bargain-basement website? Sure you have. You know the one, where there’s the laggy, spinning beachball of death and it’s 2004 all over again? Research shows that 40 percent of online users will abandon a website that takes longer than three seconds to load. Also, pages that take only 1 or 2 seconds to load have an average bounce rate of 9%, but pages that take 5 seconds or more to load have an average 38% bounce rate.

A professional website ensures lightning-fast performance, keeping visitors engaged and improving conversion rates.

6. Lack of Mobile Optimization Costs You Sales

With over 60% of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, a website that isn’t mobile-friendly will drive potential customers away. We’re not very good at math, but that statistic makes it seem like you would be driving more than 60% of potential customers away. Cheap website builders may not prioritize responsive design, making your site difficult to navigate on smartphones and tablets. A fully optimized website built for conversions ensures a seamless experience across all devices.

7. Lost Branding Opportunities

Your website is an extension of your brand. Cheap websites lack customization, leading to a generic, humdrum appearance that fails to reflect your company’s unique identity. A professionally designed site enhances brand recognition, builds credibility, and fosters customer trust. You can’t put a price tag on that and, if you could, it wouldn’t be on the cheap side.

8. Frequent Maintenance & Redesign Costs

A cheap website will likely require constant fixes, updates, and redesigns due to poor coding, structure, and unreliable platforms. These ongoing costs are going to quickly add up, often exceeding the price of a well-built and maintained website from the start. Investing in quality web development ensures longevity and reduces the need for costly revisions. You deserve a website that lasts and doesn’t need to be overhauled in 3 months.

9. Inadequate Support & Customer Service

Many low-cost web development providers offer little to no customer support. They provide a cheap website and essentially push you out the virtual door. “See ya. Have fun. Good luck.” If your website crashes, has technical issues, or needs updates, you’re left scrambling for help. A reputable web development company wouldn’t be caught dead doing that, instead providing ongoing support, making sure your site remains functional and up-to-date with consistent tracking, audits, and updates.

10. Missed Revenue & Growth Opportunities

The bottom line? A cheap website can hinder business growth and your bottom line. Poor functionality, bad UX, and low search rankings result in far fewer conversions and lost revenue. A high-quality website is an investment that pays off in increased traffic, higher engagement, and long-term business success.

Don’t Gamble: Invest in Top-Quality Web Development for Long-Term Success

While a cheap website may seem like a smart decision upfront, the long-term costs far outweigh the initial apparent savings. Investing in a professionally built, high-performance website positions your business above the competition with better security, visibility, UX, and scalability. Don’t settle for or gamble on some bargain site—choose a website that supports your success from day one, and beyond.

Hire Hexxen today to make a sound investment. Call our web development experts today at (314) 499-8253 or reach out online to start seeing real results.

The post Why Cheap Websites Cost You More in the Long Run appeared first on Hexxen.

Conversion-focused web design is strategic blend of user psychology, data analysis, and design principles that guide users toward a specific goal. Whether you’re looking to increase leads, boost ecommerce sales, or improve sign-ups, this guide will break down what conversion-focused design is, why your business needs it, and how to implement it effectively.

Article Summary

By the end of this article, you’ll have actionable insights to optimize your website for higher conversions, lower bounce rates, and better business growth.

This guide covers:

• What conversion-focused web design is and why it’s essential.
• 11 core principles that drive higher engagement and conversions.
• Cognitive biases that influence website conversions.
• The link between SEO and conversion-optimized design.
• Practical strategies to implement conversion-driven changes on your site.

What Is Conversion-Focused Web Design?

Conversion-focused web design is a strategic approach to website development that prioritizes actions as well as aesthetics. While web design should emphasize branding and visual appeal, conversion-focused design is built to drive user engagement and encourage specific outcomes—like signing up for a service, completing a purchase, or requesting a quote.

How It Differs from Other Web Design Approaches

• Aesthetic-First Design: Prioritizes branding, visuals, and content presentation, often emphasizing creativity and storytelling over direct user actions. While your design team understandably wants to show off, those aren’t the only things to consider for a website meant to drive leads.
• Conversion-Focused Design: Centers on usability, psychology, and data-driven strategies to maximize conversions. Design elements such as calls to action (CTAs), layouts, colors, and messaging, works together to guide users toward a specific goal.

Core Elements of Conversion-Focused Web Design

• Goal-Oriented Layout: Every page has a clear objective, minimizing distractions.
• User-Centric Navigation: Visitors should find what they need within three clicks or less.
• Compelling CTAs: Call-to-action buttons are highly visible, action-driven, and strategically placed.
• Trust Signals: Testimonials, case studies, and security badges reinforce credibility.
• Mobile Optimization: Over 60% of web traffic is mobile—responsive design is essential.
• Fast Load Times: Speed matters. A 1-second delay can lead to:
  • 7% fewer conversions
  • 11% fewer page views
  • A 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• Data-Driven Testing: A/B tests, heatmaps, and analytics inform design improvements.

Why Businesses Need Conversion-Focused Design

A conversion-focused website turns visitors and clicks into customers. Here’s why it matters:

• Higher ROI on traffic – Get more sales/leads from existing visitors.
• Lower cost per acquisition (CPA) – A well-optimized site converts more efficiently, making marketing efforts more cost-effective.
• Better user experience – A smoother, more intuitive website keeps users engaged.
• SEO benefits – Google rewards user-friendly, fast-loading sites with higher rankings.

The 11 Core Principles of Conversion-Focused Web Design

Conversion-focused design follows 11 key principles that ensure visitors stay engaged and take action. Each principle is rooted in user behavior, psychology, and data-driven strategies to improve conversions.

1. Goal-Oriented Design

Every page should have ONE primary goal. Whether it’s signing up, making a purchase, or requesting a demo, the page should eliminate distractions that don’t support this goal.

Too many options overwhelm users. Studies show that reducing choices can increase conversions by up to 20% (Hick’s Law).

Example: Duolingo’s lesson screens are designed for one goal: completing the task. There are no unnecessary menus or links that could lead users away from finishing their lesson, and the next-step CTA (“Continue”) is always clear.

Screenshot from Duolingo.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

2. User-Centric Navigation

Visitors should find what they need in 3 clicks or less. Confusing navigation causes frustration and higher bounce rates.

Clear, structured menus improve engagement. Users should intuitively know where to click next.

Example: Shopify simplifies its sign up system by gradually revealing more details based on user interest, avoiding clutter.

Screenshot from Shopify.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

3. Clarity in Messaging

Your website should instantly communicate:

• What you offer
• Why it matters
• What action users should take next

Confusing or vague messaging kills conversions. Users leave if they don’t understand your value within 5 seconds.

Example: Stripe’s homepage states simply: “Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue.”—clear, direct, and benefit-driven.

Screenshot from Stripe.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

4. Visual Hierarchy

Users scan pages in predictable patterns (F-pattern, Z-pattern). Place key CTAs and content along these paths.

Larger fonts, bold colors, and contrast guide attention. Eye-tracking studies show users focus on bold elements first.

Example: Apple’s product pages use bold headlines, large images, and CTA buttons to direct users toward purchases.

Screenshot from Apple.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

5. Strong, Action-Oriented CTAs

A weak CTA = lost conversions. Your call-to-action should be clear, visible, and compelling.

Best practices for high-converting CTAs:

• Use action-driven text: “Start Your Free Trial” (vs. “Submit”)
• Contrast colors to stand out from the page background
• Create urgency: “Limited-Time Offer – Claim Your Spot Now”

Example: HubSpot changed its CTA button color from green to red and saw a 21% increase in conversions.

6. Trust Signals & Social Proof

People buy from brands they trust. 92% of consumers trust peer recommendations over ads.

How to build trust on your site:

• Customer reviews & testimonials (Real user feedback)
• Security badges & SSL certificates (Boosts credibility for payments)
• Social proof stats: “Trusted by 50,000+ customers”

Example: ClickFunnels features real customer video testimonials on their homepage and logos of partners, increasing conversions.

Screenshot from ClickFunnels.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

7. Mobile-First & Speed-Optimized Design

Over 60% of web traffic is mobile. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re losing leads and ranking power.

Google’s Core Web Vitals impact rankings. As mentioned, 1-second delay in page load can reduce conversions by 7%.

Example: Uber’s mobile-first design ensures fast ride bookings with minimal input, large touch-friendly buttons, and real-time location tracking.

Screenshot from Uber.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

8. The Psychology of Color & Emotion

Color impacts decision-making.

• Red = Urgency & excitement (used in e-commerce sales)
• Blue = Trust & stability (common in finance & healthcare)
• Green = Growth & eco-friendliness (eco brands, wellness)

Using color contrast increases CTA visibility.

Example: Netflix uses high-contrast red CTAs on a dark background to grab attention and drive signups.

Screenshot from Netflix.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

9. Data-Driven Decision-Making (A/B Testing)

Test everything. Assumptions don’t drive conversions—using data does.

What to A/B test:

• Headlines & CTA buttons
• Page layouts & forms
• Images & trust signals

Example: A case study found that changing a CTA from “start your 30-day free tral period” to “start my 30-day free trial period” increased conversions by 90%.

10. Reducing Friction in the Conversion Process

Complex processes = lost conversions.

Optimizations to simplify user actions:

• Reduce form fields (only ask for necessary info)
• Implement 1-click checkout for faster transactions
• Make pricing transparent (hidden fees kill trust)

Example: Amazon’s 1-click purchase button drastically reduces cart abandonment.

11. The Rule of One

Each page should focus on ONE primary action. More than one competing CTA confuses users.

Example: Spotify’s premium landing page focuses entirely on converting free users to paid subscribers, with only “Get started” or “View all plans” CTAs and no competing actions.

Best Practice: If multiple CTAs are needed, use a primary and secondary CTA with different emphasis.

By implementing these 11 principles, businesses can make their website an active driver of revenue instead of something that just provides information and makes you look good.

Screenshot from Spotify.com. It is used here for reference purposes only. No affiliation or endorsement is implied. If you are the owner of this content and would like it removed, please contact us.

10 Cognitive Biases That Influence Website Conversions

Cognitive biases play a major role in decision-making—including whether users convert on your website.

By understanding and leveraging these psychological principles, you can optimize your site to encourage more conversions.

1. Zeigarnik Effect (The Unfinished Task Bias)

Users feel compelled to complete unfinished tasks.

• Use progress bars to show checkout or sign-up completion.
• Step-based forms encourage users to finish the process.
• Show “X% complete” indicators for onboarding.

2. Loss Aversion (Fear of Missing Out – FOMO)

People fear losing something more than they value gaining it.

• Use urgency tactics: “Only 2 left in stock!”
• Scarcity triggers: “Sale ends in 3 hours!”
• Exclusive deals: “Limited-time VIP offer.”

3. Authority Bias

People trust experts, celebrities, and authoritative sources more.

• Showcase endorsements from industry leaders.
• Use trust signals like certifications and awards.
• Leverage influencer marketing for credibility.

4. Social Proof (Bandwagon Effect)

People follow the crowd and trust what others are doing.

• Display testimonials and case studies prominently.
• Show customer counts: “Join 50,000+ satisfied users.”
• Live activity notifications: “John just purchased this product!”

5. Anchoring Bias

People rely too heavily on the first piece of information they see.

• Compare pricing plans (e.g., show the highest-priced package first).
• Strike-through pricing: “$299 $199 (Save 30%)”
• Highlight premium options before the standard choice.

6. Hick’s Law (Choice Overload Bias)

The more options people have, the harder it is to decide.

• Limit choices in pricing plans (3 is ideal).
• Use clear CTAs that guide users to one action.
• Avoid clutter—simplify product pages.

7. Reciprocity Bias

When you give something for free, people feel obligated to return the favor.

• Offer free resources (guides, trials, consultations).
• Provide upfront value before asking for a sale.
• Gift discounts after sign-ups.

8. Endowment Effect

People place more value on things they already “own.”

• Free trials with “Keep Your Data” strategies.
• Virtual try-ons or customization tools.
• Saved carts and wish lists to increase attachment.

9. The Decoy Effect

People change their preference when given a “decoy” option.

• Offer three pricing tiers, with the middle one being the most attractive.
• Use strategic pricing to steer users toward the preferred choice.

10. The Peak-End Rule

People remember the most intense part (peak) and the last part (end) of an experience.

• Create an amazing final step in the conversion process (e.g., a fun “Thank You” page).
• Make high-impact moments stand out (surprise bonuses, rewards).
• Leave users with a positive impression to encourage referrals.

By integrating these cognitive biases into your conversion-focused web design, you can make your website more persuasive, intuitive, and profitable.

Want help optimizing your pages with these principles? Let’s talk!

The Link Between SEO & Conversion-Focused Web Design

A well-designed, conversion-focused website doesn’t just boost sales and leads—it also plays a critical role in search engine optimization (SEO).

Google and other search engines prioritize user experience (UX), engagement metrics, and page performance, all of which are core elements of conversion-focused design.

Here’s how SEO and conversion-focused web design work together

Google Rewards User-Friendly, Fast Websites

Page speed is a ranking factor—a site that loads in under 3 seconds ranks better and converts more visitors.

Google’s Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift) directly impact rankings.

Solution: Optimize images, minify code, use a content delivery network (CDN), and reduce server response time.

Lower Bounce Rates & Higher Engagement Improve SEO

If visitors leave your site quickly, Google sees it as a sign of low relevance or poor experience.

Conversion-focused design reduces bounce rates by improving navigation, content clarity, and CTA placement.

Solution: Use clear messaging, compelling CTAs, and engaging visuals to keep visitors exploring your site.

Clear Structure & Navigation Enhance Indexing

Well-structured sites help Google crawl and index pages efficiently.

A logical site hierarchy, clean URLs, and internal linking improve both SEO and user experience.

Solution: Use structured data (schema markup) and ensure all pages are linked properly.

Mobile Optimization Boosts Rankings & Conversions

Over 60% of web traffic is mobile, and Google’s mobile-first indexing means your mobile site affects your rankings more than desktop.

Conversion-optimized mobile designs improve both search visibility and engagement.

Solution: Use responsive design, prioritize fast-loading elements, and simplify navigation for mobile users.

Content Optimization Increases Search Visibility & Conversions

SEO content should attract visitors, while conversion-focused design should turn them into customers.

Well-structured blog posts, landing pages, and FAQs help rank for relevant keywords.

Solution: Integrate relevant long-tail keywords, optimize meta descriptions, and include compelling CTAs.

UX Signals & AI Search Prioritization

Google’s RankBrain algorithm prioritizes sites with high engagement, easy navigation, and relevant content.

AI-generated search overviews favor structured, well-optimized content.

Solution: Make content easy to scan with bullet points, headers, and clear value propositions.

Why Aligning SEO & Conversion Matters

By combining SEO and conversion-focused web design, businesses achieve:

• More organic traffic from search engines.
• Higher engagement with user-friendly experiences.
• Better conversion rates—turning visitors into leads and customers.

If your website isn’t optimized for both SEO and conversions, you’re losing traffic and revenue.

What Are the 7 Levels of Conversion?

The 7 levels of conversion outline the progressive psychological and behavioral steps a user takes before completing a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up. Understanding and optimizing each step helps increase overall conversions.

1. Awareness – The user lands on the page.

This is the first touchpoint where a user becomes aware of your brand, often through SEO, social media, or ads.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• SEO-friendly content & meta descriptions to drive organic traffic.
• Compelling, keyword-driven headlines that capture attention.

2. Interest – They scan for value (headlines, visuals, social proof).

Users quickly assess whether the site is relevant to their needs.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• Clear messaging that answers: “What’s in it for me?”
• Strong hero images, testimonials, and social proof to build credibility fast.

3. Engagement – They explore further (product pages, blog posts).

At this stage, users start interacting with your content, diving into blog posts, product pages, or services.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• Internal linking to guide users through relevant pages.
• Interactive elements like quizzes or videos to hold attention.

4. Consideration – They compare options (pricing, testimonials).

Users evaluate competitors, pricing, and features before making a decision.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• Comparison charts & pricing transparency to build trust.
• Case studies, reviews, and guarantees to remove hesitation.

5. Intent – They engage with a CTA (add to cart, sign up).

Now, the user shows strong purchase intent—they’re one step away from converting.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• High-contrast, compelling CTAs with action-driven language.
• Limited-time offers & urgency tactics to nudge action.

6. Action – They complete the conversion (purchase, submit form).

The user follows through on the desired action.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• One-click checkout & frictionless forms to remove last-minute barriers.
• Trust badges & secure payment options to build confidence.

7. Retention & Advocacy – They return or refer others.

The most overlooked step—turning a customer into a repeat buyer or advocate.

Key Optimization Tactics:

• Follow-up emails, loyalty programs, and referral incentives.
• Social sharing prompts & community engagement.

Practical Tips to Boost Website Conversions

Implementing small but strategic changes can dramatically increase website conversions. Here’s how to optimize key areas for better performance.

1. Optimize Your Messaging & Content

• Use Clear, Benefit-Driven Headlines – Your headline is the first thing users see. Make it compelling, direct, and tied to user pain points.
• Leverage White Space & Readability – Keep paragraphs short, use bullet points, and ensure text is easy to scan.
• Prioritize Above-the-Fold Content – First impressions matter. Ensure CTAs and key value propositions are visible without scrolling.

2. Optimize Calls-to-Action (CTAs)

• Use High-Contrast CTAs – Ensure CTA buttons stand out with a color contrast that draws attention.
• Make CTAs Action-Oriented – Instead of generic text (e.g., “Submit”), use persuasive wording like “Get My Free Guide” or “Start Saving Today.”
• Reduce CTA Hesitation – Pair CTAs with microcopy (e.g., “No credit card required” or “Instant access”) to lower resistance.

3. Streamline Forms & User Input

• Simplify Forms – Reduce required fields to only what’s necessary. Fewer fields = higher conversion rates.
• Use Smart Defaults & Auto-Fill – Pre-fill known information to make form completion effortless.
• Break Up Long Forms – Use multi-step forms instead of overwhelming users with too many fields at once.

4. Use Strategic Popups & Lead Capture

• Leverage Exit-Intent Popups – Capture users before they leave by offering a discount, free resource, or compelling lead magnet.
• Use Slide-Ins Instead of Intrusive Popups – Slide-ins provide a subtle way to capture attention without disrupting user experience.
• Offer Lead Magnets – Entice users with valuable content (e.g., free guides, webinars, discount codes) in exchange for their email.

5. Reduce Friction in Checkout & Signups

• Enable 1-Click Checkout – Minimize the number of steps required to complete a purchase.
• Allow Guest Checkout – For ecommerce, forcing account creation can hurt conversions—offer an option to check out as a guest.
• Use Trust Signals – Reinforce security with SSL badges, payment icons, and customer testimonials.

6. Personalize the User Experience

• Use AI-Driven Personalization – Serve tailored content, product recommendations, or custom CTAs based on user behavior.
• Leverage Dynamic Content – Change messaging based on visitor location, device, or past interactions.
• Show Returning Visitors Their Last Interaction – Remind them of abandoned carts, previously viewed items, or recent searches.

7. Create a Sense of Urgency & Scarcity

• Use Countdown Timers – Limited-time deals create urgency and drive immediate action.
• Highlight Stock Scarcity – “Only 3 left in stock!” messages encourage quick purchasing decisions.
• Offer Time-Sensitive Discounts – Flash sales and expiring coupon codes drive urgency.

Turning Traffic Into Conversions

A visually appealing website is great, but a conversion-focused website drives real business growth.

By implementing conversion-focused web design principles, businesses can:

• Increase engagement and reduce bounce rates with clear, compelling content.
• Enhance user experience by simplifying navigation, forms, and checkout flows.
• Optimize calls-to-action and trust signals to boost credibility and conversions.
• Leverage personalization and A/B testing to refine messaging and design based on real user behavior.

The best websites turn visitors into leads, customers, and loyal advocates. If your site isn’t converting the way it should, it’s time to optimize.

Need Expert Help With Conversion-Focused Web Design?

Hexxen specializes in designing and optimizing high-converting websites tailored to your business goals. Whether you need landing page optimization, UX improvements, or a full site redesign, we can help.

Call us now at (314) 499-8253.

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The post What Is Conversion-Focused Web Design? A Complete Guide appeared first on Hexxen.

SEO is still a vital part of any business or information hub that wants to find an audience online. While a greater emphasis on user intent, trustworthiness, and the rise of AI-powered search has rendered many outdated strategies obsolete, these very updates are what keep SEO alive.

What’s changed is how SEO is implemented.

So, is SEO still relevant in 2025? Absolutely. But keeping your site relevant means adapting to evolving search technologies and meeting the expectations of an increasingly internet-savvy audience.

How Many Times Has SEO “Died” Before?

SEO has died and come back to life more times than Jason Vorhees:

• In 1997, Richard Hoy, whose career in online marketing dates back to its inception, said that SEO is a “dead-end” and “a big waste of time,” noting that sites’ ranking decreases as businesses invest more in other online marketing channels (I wonder why.)
• In 1998, with Google’s founding and the advent of PageRank, off-page factors like backlinks became more important in search, leading many to believe on-page factors like keyword frequency were no longer matter (Spoiler: they still are in 2025).
• In 2003, Google released its Florida Update, its first major change to its algorithm. The update actively penalized sites for “black-hat” strategies like keyword stuffing and cloaking, leaving many SEO-ers clueless about how to maintain visibility. The Brandy Update in 2004, emphasizing quality and relevance, further contributed to this “demise.”
• The Panda Update (2011) targeted “content farms” with thin content duplicated among sites; the Penguin Update (2012) targeted spammy backlink practices; the Hummingbird Update (2013) prioritized pages that catered to user intent and more realistic semantics. No more keyword-stuffed “car accident lawyer” articles written in 20 minutes and linked …linked from a hobby blog about tea recipes showing up on page one.
• In 2015, Google introduced RankBrain, a machine-learning AI that prioritized user experience and relevancy over strict keyword matching. Some believed this marked the end of SEO as it moved away from traditional optimization techniques.
• With the rise of voice search in 2018, and Alexa, Siri, and their robotic pals taking over, some predicted voice search would bury traditional SEO. Turns out, SEO didn’t die—it just learned to speak conversationally and answer questions like, “Where can I get tacos at 2 a.m. near me?”
• In 2019, the BERT Update improved Google’s ability to understand the context and nuance of search queries. Marketers feared this would make optimizing content for search engines obsolete, but it only elevated the need for content that answers questions without sounding like a robot wrote it.
• In 2022, Google’s Helpful Content Update explicitly rewarded high-quality, user-focused content while penalizing content created solely for SEO purposes. Cue the panic: “Google Hates SEO Now!” (Spoiler: They don’t—they just hate lazy content).
• In 2024, the rise of AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard led to widespread debates about whether SEO could survive in an AI-dominated search environment. Many predicted AI would finally kill SEO. Instead, it gave us Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)—a sibling or subcategory of SEO and another fancy new acronym for making sure your content isn’t lost in the AI shuffle.

Yet, here we are in 2025, optimizing for the next wave of search behavior. The idea that “SEO is dead” largely comes from marketers who fail to adapt to emerging trends.

#1 Reason SEO is Still Relevant in 2025? Money.

For any business looking to find a marketing channel’s relevance, ROI is the first place they should look.

According to Search Engine Journal’s State of SEO Report 2025:

91% of survey respondents reported that “SEO positively impacted website performance and marketing goals in 2024.”

97% of organizations with robust SEO efforts said that SEO positively impacted performance and goals.

Organizations with low or medium SEO efforts are 5x more likely to lack visibility in AI search.

85% of digital marketers predict AI will positively impact SEO.

On average, organic traffic drives 40% of all site traffic.

According to additional sources:

49% of respondents said organic search had the highest ROI for them. Only 19% of respondents said paid search yield the biggest returns, 18% said social media marketing, and 14% said email marketing. (Source)

Many businesses report a range ROI from SEO from 550% to 1,220%. (Source)

Businesses that consistently invest in SEO often see significant increases in organic traffic, with some reports showing a 14.6% conversion rate from SEO leads compared to only 1.7% from outbound marketing.

Why SEO Delivers Strong(er) ROI

Organic traffic is free (almost).

While there’s an upfront cost to optimize your website and create high-quality content, and updates to a page should be made every few years, once you rank, you’re not paying for every click like you would with PPC ads. This means lower costs per acquisition in the long run.

Paid ads stop working the second your budget runs out. While pay-per-click advertising delivers immediate results, it’s expensive and unsustainable without a hefty budget. SEO, on the other hand, keeps working for you long after the initial investment.

Building a following on social platforms takes time and often relies on unpredictable algorithms. SEO, by contrast, gives you a direct path to users actively looking for your offerings.

How Can I Keep My SEO Relevant in 2025?

Algorithm updates and new technology can frustrate SEOs that are stuck in their ways. But they create additional opportunities for those willing to adapt:

The GEO-AIO-SEO Revolution

From Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) to tools like ChatGPT, AI is reshaping the way users interact with search engines—and how businesses approach SEO.

Truthfully, AI has been an integral part of search since 2001, when Google began using language-based machine learning to identify misspellings and adjust searches to the correct phrase.

Furthermore, advancements in voice search and AI search actually depend on organically ranked pages to give them the information they relay to users.

AI in the SERP

AI-generated summaries, like Google’s SGE, aim to give users direct, concise answers without requiring them to click on multiple search results. This has raised concerns about reduced click-through rates (CTR) for organic listings, but it also offers new opportunities:

• Content optimized with clear headings, bullet points, and schema markup is more likely to appear in AI-generated answers.
• AI prioritizes sources it deems trustworthy. As you work to make your site demonstrate expertise and authority, AI responses will pick it up just as much as new users.

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the SEO of the AI era. Instead of an SEO-killer, it can be best seen as part of a greater SEO strategy. Webpages can cater to GEO and SEO-AI and humans-alike without sacrificing rankings for either one.

Here’s how you can do it:

• Focus on long-tail, question based keywords and phrases
• Get rid of long paragraphs and walls of texts; scannable content with subheaders and lists is easy for both humans and AIs to read through
• Look at AI overviews for inspiration for your content and emulate (don’t copy) what they produce
• Ask ChatGPT or other AIs how to rank well in AI for specific queries

Avoiding Over-Reliance on AI

AI can enhance your SEO strategy, but relying too heavily on it has its pitfalls.

While AI tools can churn out content at scale, they often lack the nuance, creativity, and an expert perspective that human writers provide.

Google values unique content. As more sites rely on AI-produced content, it opens up opportunities for SEO-ers that are doing quality work.

Zero-Click Searches and Featured Snippets

Zero-click searches are becoming the norm, with users often finding answers directly on the search results page through featured snippets, knowledge panels, or AI-generated summaries.

How to Optimize for Zero-Click Searches

• Use bullet points, numbered lists, and concise paragraphs to answer common questions clearly and succinctly.
• Address user intent immediately in your content, especially at the beginning of articles or FAQ sections.
• Implement schema markup to help search engines understand and present your content.

While zero-click searches reduce traditional click-through-rates (CTRs), owning the featured snippet can still drive significant traffic and position your brand as an authority.

Upgrade Your Keyword Game

Keywords have always been at the core of SEO, but how we use them has evolved. Gone are the days of stuffing pages with exact-match phrases or including long lists of similar phrases at the bottom of a page.

In 2025, SEOs need to use keywords naturally and tailor their content to user intent and natural language.

• Voice search and AI have made conversational, question-based phrases more important than ever.
• Optimize for different types of intent (informational, navigational, transactional) to capture users at every stage of their journey.
• Prioritize keywords in title tags, headers, meta descriptions, and the opening sentences of your content. This is actually one of the aspects of SEO that hasn’t changed (and likely never will).

Multimedia and Voice Search

Text-based content isn’t enough for competitive industries. Search engines are increasingly prioritizing multimedia, such as infographics with easily digestible and information, and voice-friendly content, such as long-tail keywords (yes, they’re a common theme).

Optimizing for Multimedia

• Videos: Use descriptive titles, tags, and transcripts to ensure your videos rank in search results.
• Images: Optimize alt text and file names to improve image search visibility.
• Podcasts: Include detailed show notes and keywords to make your audio content more searchable.

Optimizing for Voice Search

• Focus on conversational keywords and questions that mimic how people speak.
• Create content that directly answers common questions users might ask their voice assistants.

Local SEO Is as Important as Ever

As more users search for services “near me” or and Google uses their precise location, old school-but not spammy-local SEO tactics in a search space diluted by AI content.

Local businesses should claim their Google Business Profile, keep it up-to-date, add FAQs, products, and services, and ensure NAP (name, address, and phone number) information and hours are consistent with other citations online.

Encouraging positive customer reviews is especially helpful as users become less impressed by spammy tactics or clickbait headlines.

With local searches accounting for nearly half of all Google queries, optimizing for local SEO is still paramount for businesses with a physical presence.

Future Trends in SEO for 2025 and Beyond

While the fundamentals of SEO—quality content, relevant keywords, and user experience—remain important, new technologies-beyond just AI-and user behaviors are transforming how optimization works.

Hyper-Personalization and Predictive Search

Search engines are moving beyond reactive algorithms and into the realm of predictive search, where results are tailored to user preferences even before they type a query.

• Smart assistants like Google and Siri use data like location, behavior patterns, and past searches to suggest results proactively. For example, suggesting “coffee shops near me” based on your morning routine.
• Ensure your content anticipates user intent and addresses potential needs. The more your content aligns with predictive algorithms, the more visibility you’ll gain.

The Role of Augmented Reality (AR) and Visual Search

AR and visual search tools, like Google Lens, are becoming a significant part of how users interact with search engines.

• Users can now search with images instead of text. For example, a user can take a photo of a product they want to buy and find similar items online.
• Ecommerce and local businesses can take advantage of AR by enabling users to “try on” products or explore spaces virtually.
• Use structured data and descriptive alt text for images. High-quality, engaging visuals that are AR-compatible can help businesses stand out in search.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content, such as reviews and testimonials, is becoming increasingly important for SEO as search engines prioritize authenticity and trust.

• Positive reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and industry-specific directories not only improve your visibility but also build trust with users.
• Participate actively in forums, social media discussions, and platforms like Quora or Reddit to showcase authority and connect with your audience.
• Highlight customer testimonials, ratings, and user stories on your site to create engaging, relatable content.

Search Without Queries

Search engines are increasingly relying on proactive recommendations, where results are delivered before users even enter a query.

• Smart assistants and search engines now recommend services or products based on contextual clues, like time of day or user location.
• Ensure your content is evergreen, engaging, and optimized for user intent so it becomes a top recommendation.

Practical Tips for SEO Success in 2025

Staying ahead in the ever-changing world of SEO requires a mix of strategy, adaptability, and focus on user experience.

Here’s how you can keep up:

• Create high-quality, user-first content that addresses specific needs and provides real value. Avoid generic or overly AI-generated content.
• Focus on long-tail and conversational keywords to align with voice search and AI-driven algorithms.
• Optimize for multimedia by using descriptive titles, tags, alt text, and transcripts for videos, images, and podcasts.
• Invest in technical SEO to ensure your website is fast, secure, and mobile-friendly, and meets Core Web Vitals requirements.
• Use schema markup to help search engines understand your content and improve its chances of being featured in snippets.
• Build high-quality backlinks through guest posts, partnerships, community engagement, and media opportunities rather than relying on spammy link-building tactics.
• Stay on top of algorithm updates and monitor your analytics to identify what’s working and where you can improve.
• Leverage AI tools for keyword research, content planning, and data analysis, but maintain a human touch in the final product.
• Encourage positive reviews and user-generated content to enhance credibility and local SEO performance.
• Be adaptable. SEO is constantly evolving, so flexibility and a willingness to learn are key to staying ahead of competitors.

SEO in 2025: Alive and Breathing

The truth is, every time someone writes SEO’s obituary, they’re largely writing about a search landscape that’s decayed by poor content. What worked five or ten years ago might not cut it today, but that doesn’t mean SEO is dead-or even middle-aged.

Want to make sure your site and business stays relevant to users, search engines, and AI? Contact Hexxen online or call (314) 499-8253. Our team of experts can help you stay ahead and keep your business thriving in 2025 and beyond.

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1. Scope and Purpose:

Website Maintenance: Involves managing and updating the content, design, and functionalities of a website to ensure it remains current and user-friendly. This includes tasks such as updating text and images, adding new pages or sections, optimizing for search engines (SEO), and ensuring compatibility across different browsers and devices. This is often less time-consuming than application maintenance, since the code to edit is more straightforward and not as complex.

Application Maintenance: Focuses on the ongoing support, monitoring, and management of software applications. It includes tasks such as bug fixing, implementing updates and patches, optimizing performance, adding new features, and ensuring compatibility with various operating systems and environments. Application maintenance aims to keep the software functional, secure, and aligned with changing business needs and technological advancements. This often requires more time than website maintenance, since the code can be spread across multiple areas, or buried deep in sub areas of the app.

2. Technological Focus:

Website Maintenance: Relies on web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. The emphasis is on maintaining the frontend presentation and user interface of the website. These types of code are of a more simple nature, and do not require advanced skills by senior development team members.

Application Maintenance: Involves a broader range of technologies including programming languages (e.g., Java, Python, C#), frameworks (e.g., Angular, React, Django), databases (e.g., MySQL, MongoDB), and integration with various APIs and third-party services. It focuses on both frontend and backend aspects to ensure the application functions correctly, securely, and efficiently. These types of code are more complex, and require the skills of a senior or specialized developer to complete.

3. Complexity and Functionality:

Website Maintenance: Typically manages simpler functionalities such as informational pages, blogs, contact forms, and basic e-commerce interfaces. The main goal is to provide users with information and facilitate basic interactions. Again, this is a more simple process, as a team member is not touching mission-critical code.

Application Maintenance: Handles more complex functionalities such as transaction processing, user authentication and authorization, data management, real-time updates, and complex business logic. Applications often support interactive user experiences and require robust backend infrastructure to manage data and operations. Updating these areas requires a careful hand, as mistakes can cause the entire app to stop working, errors, or slowdowns in performance.

4. User Interaction:

Website Maintenance: Focuses on providing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces for visitors to navigate, consume content, and perform basic actions such as filling forms or making online purchases.

Application Maintenance: Often requires continuous updates to enhance usability and adapt to changing user needs. These updates frequently involve changes to app permissions—like access to location, contacts, or the camera—which can confuse users but are often essential for functionality and data control. This helpful guide explains why apps ask for these permissions and how it ties into smart application maintenance.

As you can see, website maintenance is quite different from application maintenance, due to multiple factors involving complexities and different languages.

If your website or application needs maintenance, contact our development team experts today for a free initial consultation.

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Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

• Google Cloud Strengths:
  • Emphasizes data analytics and machine learning with services like BigQuery and TensorFlow.
  • Offers strong integration with Google’s ecosystem, including Google Workspace and Android.
  • Known for its network infrastructure and global reach, providing low-latency connections.
  • Provides Kubernetes Engine for container orchestration and management.
  • Pricing model is often considered more straightforward compared to AWS, which can get expensive quickly.
• Popular Google Cloud Services:
  • Compute Engine
  • BigQuery
  • Cloud Storage
  • Kubernetes Engine
  • AI Platform

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• AWS Strengths:
  • Widest range of services and features, catering to virtually every cloud computing need.
  • Pioneered Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with services like AWS CloudFormation.
  • Strong presence in enterprise solutions and government contracts.
  • Offers a vast network of data centers worldwide, enabling high availability and fault tolerance.
  • Well-established and mature platform with extensive documentation and community support.
• Popular AWS Services:
  • Amazon EC2
  • Amazon S3
  • Amazon RDS
  • AWS Lambda
  • Amazon DynamoDB

Key Differences Between Google Cloud and AWS

• Focus: GCP emphasizes data analytics, machine learning, and containerization, while AWS offers a broad spectrum of services.
• Integration: GCP integrates seamlessly with Google’s ecosystem, whereas AWS offers more extensive third-party integrations.
• Pricing: GCP’s pricing model is often considered more predictable and straightforward, while AWS offers a flexible but complex pricing model.
• Market Position: AWS leads the cloud market in terms of revenue and market share, while GCP is gaining traction, especially in data analytics and machine learning.
• Geographic Reach: Both providers have a global network of data centers, but AWS has a more extensive presence in terms of regions and availability zones.
• Community and Support: AWS has a larger community and more extensive documentation, while GCP offers robust support options and resources.

In summary, both GCP and AWS are industry-leading cloud computing platforms with their own strengths and weaknesses. The choice between them depends on factors such as specific business requirements, existing infrastructure, budget, and strategic goals.

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Identifying the various challenges and cost factors that go into design and development.

The purpose of this article is to help you understand how much should a website cost for your business. Or rather, how much should you be willing to invest in a website design for your business? This article is the best answer in the universe to that question. Read on to understand why. Grab a coffee; it’s a big read.

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Determining how much a website should cost is one of the most frequently asked but rarely answered questions in the web design community. In today’s world, even with millions of websites that exist online, there is not a single accurate(!) formula for calculating either the cost of a new website or the cost of a redesign (CMS-based or otherwise).

Strange isn’t it? You can go on any number of web design forums where questions about website design costs are common, but very few people are prepared to answer directly, professional or individual. What a website will or should cost is one of the most asked, and least answered questions. Why is that?

The hard truth is that websites are composed of hundreds of different factors and specific elements. Having all these variables is what makes website cost calculators pointless. Since there are so many individual elements that go into the planning, designing, developing and testing of a website, you cannot rely on the cost you receive through a calculator or a price range you are given over the phone to be 100% accurate.

Additionally, if your sole focus is cost, then you may be overlooking important details that will lead to the online success of your site. If money is the primary concern, there is no shortage of low-cost website design services such as WIX or GoDaddy. But to obtain true online success, your business and website should not be boiled down to a simple budget calculation. Many of these types of companies don’t take into consideration your starting point, your budget, your competition, your keyword difficulty, etc.

To help you better understand key factors that go into establishing a budget for your website design cost, Hexxen has collaborated to explain some of the most critical factors that go into a new web design or development quote.

Website Cost Factor #1: Website Page Count:

“A website is an online business card for your services or products, one that is often based on a limited amount of time to impress potential clients.” This cliched statement has been said many times in the web design industry (even I used to say it). The difference is, your website is interactive. It has multiple paths that can lead your users in many directions.

I bring up the business card comparison because, unlike a business card, your website has many different “cards,” meaning pages or introductions to your brand. You don’t have one chance to impress a user; you have many. In larger informational websites or e-commerce stores, thousands of opportunities. The difficulties that most businesses face regarding page count or do not take into consideration are:

• They do not think they have enough content or subject matter to create a large volume of pages, or do not understand why a larger amount of pages will be needed.
• They do not think they have the creative writing talent to write volumes of quality content.
• They do not have the time to create large amounts of content.

Simply put, don’t think of it that way. Instead, consider the following:

• Treat every page as a new entry page point to your company, and put in the extra effort to represent yourself well. Take a look at your site and ask yourself “does this answer all of the questions my potential clients have?” If you aren’t sure, do you get a lot of the same questions when people contact you? It could be due to your site not effectively answering those questions.
• You are the business owner. You know your business. Write (or have your web design company write for you) from the same stance that you use when explaining your services or products. Use the same tone and language you use when describing what you offer. Write naturally, and use keywords naturally.
• A second point would be to remember that each page should offer something unique. Education, exploration, resources, learning, think outside the box! Don’t just “create another page” because you think you need more pages to be able to compete in search results.
• Treat each visit as a new opportunity, don’t rush it! Use your time wisely if you are creating your content, meaning do it in bursts. DON’T try to create a 500-page website in one sitting. DO write out a bit at a time, or try to cover one small aspect of the problem that your business or products can solve. Write in “baby steps,” and eventually you will have the content needed to help your site be seen as a resource to search engines.

So at this point, you are probably wondering: “Why am I reading about creating my own content in an article that is about website costs? I would be paying someone to do this for me.” Exactly. When you hire a professional website design company that is worth their salt, you will get asked about content. You will discuss what makes your business special. Why you are different. What services or products you offer. Where you offer those products or services (National, International, or Local.) If your budget allows, the answers will be used to create tens, hundreds, or even thousands of pages of unique content.

Creating this level of content takes a LOT of time, especially if you want quality work. To create deeper levels of conversion-focused content someone would want to read (and that search engines would want to rank) takes even longer. When you are looking at what you should expect to pay for a website and how much it’s going to cost, you should take into consideration how much content you are starting with, how much you will need to achieve your objective or goals, and the budget needed to accomplish both of those. If you are unsure of how much content you need or would like to know more about our content creation services, please send us a message. We’d be happy to discuss and provide examples of why it matters. Oh, and and the consultation is free. (shameless plug)

Website Cost Factor #2: Style/User Experience/Level of Design:

I’m not sure if you noticed lately, but everyone’s face is buried in their phones for an extended period every day. Computer screens showing content and media are everywhere, whether that screen is mobile or a desktop device. If whatever they are looking at wasn’t easy to consume, easy to access, serving a need, entertaining, or informative they wouldn’t be.

“If the content of your site is considered to be the mind, the design is the heart.”

The design of your site is what gets people engaged. It’s what shows your business’ “face” to the world. It can also have a significant impact on how users interact with what you display, or how long they interact, based on how easy it is to consume. Think of your favorite apps or websites. Are they easy to use? Easy to find what you are looking for? Easy to convert once you have made your decision?

This level of “ease of use” doesn’t simply “happen,” it’s planned. And this level of planning and flow of information takes, you guessed it……TIME.

When we create a website, the design and user experience (commonly abbreviated as UX) is a major part of the proposal costs, and rightfully so. Content explains what you do or the product you provide, but the design gets you engaged. Keeps a user moving through the site, ultimately to the area you wish them to land on. This leads me to the next segment of this article, in how you want your business to be represented.

“The success of a web page can only be measured by one factor: Did the user do what you wanted them to do?”

Entry Level, Moderate, Industry Leader, World Class

A well-designed website accomplishes all the items I mentioned above, and can also help establish your brand as a leader in your segment. This design process involves a lot of webpage mockups, trial and error, review, and live testing. The skill of the designer, the understanding of the user, the knowledge of the business, all of these items come into play.

Ways to help you understand what “level of design” you should aim for:

• Treat every visit or site entry point as a new opportunity for conversions
• Aim to impress your users with each visit, whether that be through design, content, or special offers that your competition cannot or would not offer. Be unique, and don’t be afraid to spend more for long-term, sustainable, positive ROI.
• Try to understand the unique needs of each keyword phrase, and address it accordingly (or if you have no idea what I mean by this, have your SEO company do this for you)
• Design around your solution to people’s problems, and how your service/product addresses that issue (uniquely vs. your competition)
• Design for what platforms your audience uses (mobile first vs. traditional responsive design). How do people get to your site? Quick hint, you can check this in your Google Analytics account
• How many page templates or designs need to be created for all your “entry points” to be effective? Also, do you need to design landing pages for paid traffic that are strongly conversion focused?
• Ask yourself one honest question, would you convert from your site if you were a user, and had no bias towards a brand or product?
• How much does a website of this scope typically cost for your industry?

Website Cost Factor #3: Amount of Copywriting / Orginal Content:

As I mentioned earlier in this article, the content of your site is what explains what you do or the product you provide to a user. Website content can either make a user understand what you offer (harder than you would think), the value of what you are offering or selling, or make them confused and leave your site. The average time that a user spends on a website is not as long as you think and is generally less than one minute. (Source)

Think about that for a second (pun intended). The average user spends less than one minute on your site. Does every page that they could visit on your site add value? Does it get to the point? If the content is longer, does it engage the user and make them want to learn more? Or are you just creating “SEO filler content” to artificially boost your rankings?

A few things to consider when determining how much to budget for your new website’s content:

• Am I paying for filler content (I feel good because I am writing something) vs. conversion content?
• Hire a team that is writing for the best overall result vs. trying to gain “cheap rank.”
• Make sure your website design team researches the keyword volume of the phrases you are targeting. Avoid optimizing for keywords no one is searching for, or keywords that show little intent to buy or contact you, sometimes called “generic long-tailed keywords.”
• Do not have the website copywriting team write to appease you, the business owner. Make sure they are writing for your target audience aka the people visiting your site.

Creating great content is a similar process to creating a great design. There is A-B testing, trial and error, loads of proofreading, and research. This step should be handled with care, and can involve significant amounts of time to be successful.

Example: Recently, we created a large amount of content for a legal client of ours. The total bill for over 40 pages of 1000+ word articles was around $11,000. While this may sound like a lot of money, the pages performed exceedingly well when they were launched and often were number one AND two in search results for primary keywords. When you take into account the cost of paid placement for the keywords we were targeting, the client was able to achieve roughly $6,000 a month(!) in savings vs. Google Ads or other paid placements. Also, the ROI of a natural organic ranking will stick for years vs. having to “pay to play” forever (the benefits of which disappear after you turn off your ads). It also helped to establish the firm as a leader in the market they were targeting.

In summary, don’t skimp on the content of your site. It can be one of the most deciding factors of conversions and ROI. As long as the copywriting team has your best interest at heart, and is skilled enough to provide a high-level of conversion/SEO content, invest heavily. The potential payoff is worth it.

Website Cost Factor #4: SEO Ready or SEO-Dominant?

For many small and medium-sized business owners, SEO is still a very mystical, confusing thing. Often it involves buzz words, industry terms, technical and analytical details that are easy not to understand.

To keep this simple, I am going to compare your site and Google to a car show. Stay with me; this will make it easy to understand why your site does or doesn’t perform, and why this should be considered as a major cost factor to implement on your new website. For this example, try to think of your site like a car that is entering a high-level auto show competition. And Google is the head judge, deciding if you get a trophy or go home empty-handed.

Not Optimized.

Having a site that is not optimized at all would be like turning up to the car show with a dirty car. No washing, no vacuuming, just layers of dirt and empty soda cups in the passenger footwell. OR, like having a site that has no optimized content, no page titles, no metadata, no page speed optimization. Nothing. You built a site, or had a relative build it because “they build websites in their spare time.” Google the judge, glances at your car (website), sees how poorly it is presented and keeps on walking, not even bothering to assign your vehicle a score.

Basic Optimization.

Having a site with basic optimization would be like turning up at a car show with a car that has been washed and mildly detailed. OR, like having a site that has decent content, using a mixture of good keywords and bad, mild quality metadata using proper keywords and wrong, and a relatively small total website page count. It shows effort, but next to the cars that have hour after hour of detailing, it doesn’t stand out. It’s just another semi-clean car. Big deal. Google the judge, stops to look at the car, sees that it is clean. They stop to look because, at first glance, things look good (equivalent to having the Google bot crawl your site). But on a more prolonged inspection can see the swirl marks in the paint, dirt in the carpets, fingerprints on the windows, and a dirty engine bay. It shows minor effort, but is not enough to win an award or be anything special. You may get a mention (equivalent to a page two ranking), but anything beyond that (or anything that is a sustainable ranking, as sometimes you may rank high initially then drop dramatically) is going to be rare.

Advanced Optimization.

Having a site that has a considerable amount of optimization would be like turning up with your car washed, waxed, vacuumed, detailed, and gleaming. OR like having a site that has proper metadata, longer length of content, optimized page titles, keyword driven header tags, and loads relatively quickly. Our friend, the Google judge, sees your car and is intrigued. They stop and mull over the details, looking to see if your car is worthy of an award, or for the sake of the comparison, a podium finish trophy. Google looks very close (advanced bot crawl looking for errors) and begins to notice dirt in the seams, dust around the trunk and wheels (broken links, poorly optimized images, no canonical URLs, duplicate content, etc.). It’s a strong effort, and they can see that you tried. In some car show classes (or business industries) this may be enough for a trophy since there is not a lot of competition. But in the online world, this is often not the case. You have tons of competition. You can compare this to your car being 1 of 100 in the same car class, usually parked in the same row, all with a similar level of detail work (or SEO effort). If there are only a few cars in your row, you may walk away with a 1st-3rd place trophy, or a high page one position. IF you are one of many, chances are you are going to be near the bottom of the pack, and be near the bottom of page one.

SEO Dominant:

This is the cream of the crop. From the first glance, your car is impeccable. Your paint shines like it is still wet, the interior and exterior are spotless, as is the engine bay, wheels, interior, and trunk. OR your site loads fast, is mobile optimized, has perfectly optimized metadata using keyword research tools, and retains visitors for long periods of time (which Google can see in analytics). It has web-friendly images and lengthy content (with relevant internal and external links) that are both well written/researched/and cited. It is the car (OR site) that all others strive to be and are judged against. Google (the judge), just can’t get enough. They pour over your car (or site) looking for issues and don’t find any. They also call over the other judges (Bing, Yahoo, etc**) to see it for themselves. Your car (or site) is awarded “Best of Show” or a first place ranking position on page one. They do this since it is the utmost level of quality, and to show others what they should work to achieve.

**Little known fact: You will often see similar ranking positions in Bing and Yahoo, as those that are on Google. This is due to other search engines spidering (or using bots to crawl) Google’s search results to improve their own since their algorithms are not as advanced.

In summary, keep the following things in mind when budgeting for SEO in your new site build. Don’t add costs to be wasteful, but understand that when working with a trusted/ experienced web design agency, the long-term sustained payoff is worth the initial considerable investment.

Hopefully, I didn’t lose you with the car show analogy. SEO can be quite a bit to digest, and I intended to make it easier to understand by using something that is a real-world example using a situation you can relate to than fancy tech speak. If you would like an explanation to any of the terms used above, or a free analysis or website build estimate, please get in touch with our experts by using this link.

Consider the following factors when determining your SEO Budget:

• Are you aiming for the basics or what the industry leaders are doing? What is the goal of your SEO?
• Does your site budget allow for a site that is ready to be Marketed and submitted to search engines, or do you just going for the Basic (feel good) SEO?
• Do you fully understand the technical details behind why the industry leaders are the industry leaders? Why their site ranks the way it does? Or are you guessing?
• Have you (or the company you are considering to quote and build your new website) completed Keyword research, so you know what the big traffic driving phrases are?
• Is your target Local, National, or International? Chances are, if you were budgeting $10k for your new national site and SEO when the national industry leader spent over $80k on their site, you would lose.
• Do you understand Domain authority? How Google regarding overall quality measures (and assigns ranking to) websites?
• Are you budgeting for a solid foundation for success from the very first brick and setting your site up for long-term success? Or are you winging it, throwing some money at a new build hoping for the best result because you are jealous of your competition?

Website Cost Factor #5: Local vs. National vs. International Focus

The focus of websites that we develop differs so considerably that it is hard to put into works in an article. One of the common themes between them is the focus or service area. All websites have a target service area, and the levels of SEO and marketing that are required to get them to rank well will be as different as fire and ice.

Regional/National/International Focus:

Ranking a website Internationally requires a large investment of time, money, and well-placed effort. (If you are a local business reading this article, don’t worry, I will get to that in a second.) This can also be said for National, or regional focused businesses. Why? Because the larger your service area is, the more competitors you are going to have.

We get requests all the time from companies that have a new idea, a new website, or a new brand and want to rank across the United States or beyond. The most significant drawback that we encounter is; they do not have the budget to allow this to happen. Why is budget so important? Because the company that we are trying to rank has to go against power players in the industry that are already established. In the majority of industries, these companies you are hoping to compete against are going to have a large history of pages, backlinks, citations, articles, mentions, and long social accounts across the web. To keep it simple, they are a better “resource” of information on a given topic.

Local Focus:

Just because your business is local, that doesn’t mean ranking higher will be a cakewalk. For local businesses, you have the same problem (albeit on a smaller scale). In your local area, you will have the same people that have been the leader and dominate the local scene with ease. Due to the age of these local businesses and how long they have been “associated” in Google with specific keywords relating to a particular local area, it can be tough.

The good news is; it’s not impossible to rank against competitors such as these, either local or national and beyond. The “outrank” process will come down to how well your site covers a given subject matter, the completeness of your content, the optimization of your entire site (not just your top performing pages – don’t get lazy!). Also, look at the number of backlinks or people that credit your site via linked mentions or keywords, the design, and perception of your business as a “power player” in your industry, and not just “another business.”

The reason that budget comes back into play is that the cost of your website project plays a major role in how far the web design company or marketing company can take your build. They essentially need to outdo the existing efforts in place by the current industry leaders to get you to take over their ranking position. If your website/business if brand new (in the eyes of Google I would declare this to be anything under one year), or has a bad history of poorly done SEO, this will require a substantial investment of time and a killer strategy. These strategies don’t fall out of thin air, and the sites that you want to outrank are not going to give away all their SEO secrets at first glance. This process will take…..wait for it….TIME. The more ingrained the ranking position, the more digging it will take to see what is needed to beat them, and once the weaknesses are discovered, it will take even more time to build up your site to be recognized as an authority on the keywords in question.

This time is not just limited to SEO-related items, but also the overall level of design or the perception of quality. A good question you should ask is, does the depth and perception of your website design support the claims you are making? If you really can compete with one of the major players in the industry, will a consumer (and Google) be able to understand that? And further, will the web design company you hire be able to achieve that for your business?

Website Cost Factor #6: Responsive? Or Mobile-First Design?

(there is a difference!)

In the past few years, even if you are not involved in the web industry, you probably have heard of the term “responsive design.” This term essentially refers to whether or not your site design can “respond” to different resolutions while keeping the same overall look, feel, and usability. The most common three platforms accounted for are mobile phones, tablets, and desktop computers.

Many businesses are content with admitting that their site is responsive as if it is a bragging right. In its own way, it may be, as there are still many websites out that aren’t. Being responsive is even more critical now, as Google has declared that have a site that is responsive design is a ranking factor for organic search. If you are unsure if your site is mobile-friendly or not, you can test your site using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool.

However, this is not the only deciding factor in website design. The hard truth is, you need to have your site designed around the people that are using it, despite what Google says. Stay with me on this.

Designing your site around the user is key to having a healthy conversion rate. While it’s true this has much to do with how you explain your products or services; it has more to do with designing around the platform where they interact with your business. If the vast majority of your visitors come from mobile, you should place the majority of your website budget within that design. If the majority of your site traffic comes via a desktop computer, then make sure that experience is a positive one, while still making sure that your site is mobile-friendly.

At this point, I would like to introduce a term called “Mobile First.” Mobile first is a term that means that your site is designed specifically for mobile devices, ensuring a clean, easy, and usable experience. This type of design typically goes beyond your standard mobile-friendly design, in that it is designed from the ground up for mobile, rather than forcing a desktop design to work on a smaller screen. These types of website designs are very fluid on mobile devices, and emulate a native app design in the smoothness and “feel.” This is not to say that the desktop version of a mobile-first design suffers, quite the opposite in fact. Desktop versions are often cleaner and have less clutter due to removing many items that are not needed.

A mobile first site also focuses more on the basics of what you are trying to say, without having a ton of bloat. This can help with conversions, as your site is elementary to use, offers a simplified but professional experience, and gets right to the point of what you are trying to say.

Mobile first is not for every business. Again, if the majority of your traffic comes from other devices, it would be wise to invest more into the design for those platforms. Additionally, a mobile-first design can be more difficult to create, (meaning more time = more website cost) due to more specific mobile styling, designing with restraint and not overdoing it, and testing across many different mobile resolutions to ensure a consistent experience.

Ask yourself these few questions to determine if mobile friendly or mobile first is right for you:

• Who is your audience?
• How do they get to your site? Mobile or desktop?
• What are the basics you need to cover?
• Where do you advertise? From a mobile-dominant platform such as Facebook? Or are you sending people to your site from Goodle Ads desktop-only searches?
• How quickly and precisely can your message be delivered while still retaining SEO-effectiveness? Think smaller screen, less space, less attention span.

Website Cost Factor #7: CRM / ERP / Ecommerce Integration

Chances are, if you need database integration, or help to implement a CRM or ERP system into your site, you have moved beyond the typical needs of your everyday website. These types of builds are when your business is bustling, or offers a variety of services that require you to track orders, track leads, projects or other types of data. If you aren’t familiar with these abbreviations, let’s start by explaining what they are.

What is a CRM System?

A CRM System is defined as “Customer Relationship Management; A term that refers to practices, strategies, and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving customer service relationships and assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth.” (Source)

CRM systems can make it easy to keep track of clients, potential leads, interactions with your sales team, and much more. BUT, that doesn’t always mean they are easy to integrate into your new or existing website. With many different CRM options available, and many kinds of website platforms available, it can not only be challenging to choose which CRM system will work best for you, but which system will also work the best with your website. When you are looking to upgrade the functionality of your site with a CRM system, get in touch with our web development experts to see what option best fits your needs.

Some of the best CRM systems currently available include:

• Salesforce CRM
• Hubspot CRM
• Infusionsoft CRM

What is an ERP System?

An ERP system can be defined as “ERP stands for enterprise resource planning. It refers to the systems and software packages used by organizations to manage day-to-day business activities, such as accounting, procurement, project management, and manufacturing. ERP systems tie together and define a plethora of business processes and enable the flow of data between them. By collecting an organization’s shared transactional data from multiple sources, ERP systems eliminate data duplication and provide data integrity with a “single source of truth.” (Source)

A major ERP staple is the unified collection of data for large-scale distribution. Instead of having many separate databases with an infinite supply of disconnected data spreadsheets, ERP systems bring method to the data madness so all users use and access the same data derived through common processes (either through standard practices or custom development). By using a centralized data repo, all users are assured that the data being used is correct, up to date, and complete.

Sounds cool right? Having an ERP system can save a company thousands or millions of dollars per year, depending on the size of the data and the company. However, just like CRM systems, they are not as easy to implant as copy and pasting a line of code into your site. Often, these types of systems require vast amounts of custom code, depending on your needs. For example, if you are using Microsoft Dynamics AX as your ERP system, and want to integrate that into your WooCommerce store, this can take up to 100 hours or more of coding to get the systems talking to each other efficiently. This also raises the bar for the technical knowledge of your web design team and will affect the total cost of your website project.

For third-party ERP and CRM systems, these will both require a subscription, so keep this in mind when choosing what system is not only the best fit for your business, but also for your budget. You can view pricing for the most popular ERP and CRM systems by visiting the links below:

CRM System Pricing Comparison

ERP System Pricing Comparison

Some of the best ERP systems currently available include:

• NetSuite by Oracle
• Microsoft Dynamics AX
• Odoo ERP
• SAP ERP

eCommerce Functionality

Since we are on the subject of discussing CRM and ERP systems, it makes sense also to explain ecommerce functionality.

Compared to a basic informational website, an ecommerce website design is an entirely different work scope. Ecommerce systems have to deal with new products, old products, shipping, pricing, inventory, payment gateways, security and other factors to get your products into the hands of consumers. Your web design and development team will have to have advanced knowledge of the ecommerce system you choose and the better the web design or development team; the more expensive the labor is going to be.

When you are looking at the total amounts of revenue that can be generated (or lost) by having your online store setup and working (or not working) correctly, it’s best not to cheap out in the beginning. This can lead to you having to shell out thousands of dollars later on to have another web design company to fix the first company’s mistakes.

Additionally, when you have an ecommerce store, you may need to have it tie into a CRM or ERP system to track sales, profits, ROI, and follow up with customers after the sale. These tie-ins can lead to additional development time, and also further testing to ensure everything is working as intended.

There is also the complexity of setting up an SEO-ready store, with hundreds or thousands of unique SEO elements, but that is another article all on its own.

Website Cost Factor #8: Content Management System (CMS)

Ever heard of WordPress? I bet you have, as it is one of the most popular content management systems currently available. WordPress allows millions of business to have an easy way to update the content of their website with ease.

However, WordPress is not the only CMS in existence, and may not always be the best fit for your business. When you are looking at how much to pay for a new website, you should take into consideration what CMS is going to work best for your business, or if you need a CMS at all. If you plan on updating your content frequently, or have the need for specific add-ons (plugins), a WordPress web design will be a great fit.

If you need a custom admin dashboard, particular functionality, are hosted on a specific server type (Windows vs. Linux), or have another need not listed here, another CMS may be a better choice.

When you get into the realm of developing a custom content management system, the cost factor of your website will increase exponentially. Why? Because of the planning and design that goes into each detail. Think of a custom CMS like one of those “choose your own outcome” books, in which you get to choose which way the story progresses. A developer and design team will have to map out the entire process and admin user experience from start to finish, and also design what the user experience and interface (commonly called UX and UI) look like. This is a massive undertaking and will take a considerable amount of time. BUT, if the potential profits from a system such as this will benefit your unique needs, it can be well worth the initial investment.

When trying to discover what CMS is the best fit for your website, get in touch with our expert development team for a free consultation. If you are looking to do your research first, here is a list of the top 5 most popular CMS platforms:

1. WordPress
2. Joomla
3. Drupal
4. Adobe Commerce
5. Shopify

Website Cost Factor #9: APIs and Custom Functionality

While it’s true an existing CMS platform or custom CMS can take care of most of your content needs; sometimes you need to take things a step further to get the most from your online presence.

API stands for application program interface. An application program interface (API) is a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. An API specifies how software components should interact. Additionally, APIs are used when programming graphical user interface (GUI) elements. (Source)

APIs are powerful sets of code that allow different sets of information to “talk” to one another to help automate processes or to organize information. APIs can also be used to authenticate information and allow data to be accessed.

The most common two types of APIs are SOAP and REST. The primary differences between the two are that REST operates through a single, consistent interface to access specific-named resources. REST APIs are generally used when you need to expose a public API over the Internet. SOAP, by comparison, presents components of application logic as services rather than just raw data. Additionally, they both operate through very different interfaces. To keep this explanation simple, REST accesses data while SOAP performs operations through a more standardized set of patterns. However, either REST or SOAP could be used to achieve the same outcome (and both are infinitely scalable), but there would be significant variations in how they would be configured.

SOAP was originally created by Microsoft in 1998, but not made available to the public until September of 1999. Therefore the SOAP API has been around a lot longer than REST. Its age gives it the advantage of being established, (or legacy format) protocol. But, REST is also getting on in age. On the plus side, the REST API entered the scene as a way to access web services in a much simpler way than possible with SOAP by using HTTP.

Bored yet? Its ok, I understand. The reason for all the tech-talk is not to confuse you, but rather to help you understand the complexity of what a developer has to work with to get two separate pieces of data to work together. This process is often painfully complicated and has to be done manually. While its true that you can usually find “ready out of the box” API solutions for specific functions, a custom API can take many months to develop. This, in turn, will attribute significantly to the cost of a website that requires such functionality.

A few benefits of using an API are:

• Saving time through automation
• Decreasing manual involvement and increasing automation
• Building data lists for future expansions or follow-ups/upsells
• Scalable to meet different needs and scope
• Personable, and can be configured to individual tastes and functions
• Efficient and reliable, as automating processes saves labor and reduces the chance of user error

For further reading, BBVA has a great article that lists eight reasons why you should be using an API for your project. Check it out here.

In summary, the more complex a website project is, and the more lines of code that have to be developed (and an API requires A LOT), the more expensive the cost of your website will be. But, you can also save a HUGE amount of money by doing so.

Website Cost Factor #10: Landing Pages/Custom Experiences:

One of the things I find myself explaining ever more frequently is the importance of the user experience in the quest to gaining more conversions. The vast majority of business owners or decision makers struggle to understand why a crappy site from 10 years ago is not driving leads to their inbox, and why their paid (and in some cases organic) efforts are not sufficient, even with large budgets.

The effectiveness of a website or webpage can be boiled down to one simple truth; does the user do what you want them to do? If not, why? This is where having a custom landing page or a user experience that is different than the regular “flow” of your site can help.

Landing pages are called just that because they are where a user “lands” once they click a link in an email, organic search result, or an online ad. Theoretically, every page of your website is a landing page, but for the sake of keeping this simple, we will only discuss landing pages designed for paid traffic. These types of pages are usually more to the point than a standard, more informational page of your site. They also allow for more freedom regarding design, as since you are paying to send people there, you don’t have to be as word-heavy for the sake of better SEO scores.

Why is this a cost factor to consider when deciding how much to spend? Because depending on how many custom experiences you need, it can get costly. In a properly designed landing page, you start with research to see what the needs of the user are. You will then need to research your competition, to see how they are addressing the problem. If you are using paid online advertising, you will also need to research what the primary keywords are that users are typing to find similar products and services, and begin building your keyword lists. Once you have this information, it is then time to begin crafting a pleasant experience to help communicate how your product or service is superior, while making it easy to get in contact with your business.

Once you have agreed on a design, it then has to be coded and tested in all major browsers, or if your landing page experience is on mobile only, all popular devices at various resolutions. Now that you can see all the different steps involved, it becomes apparent the time that is involved in creating something successful. These steps are critical in making your landing page convert, and if steps are missed, it can wind up costing you a ton in wasted clicks and lost conversions.

A few things to consider when deciding to implement landing pages:

• How are you sending visitors to your website? Paid Traffic such as Facebook and AdWords. Or are you relying on Organic (natural Google algorithm) ranking positions?
• What is the message you want to convey? (think in terms of 20 seconds or less)
• How do you want them to contact you? Email? Phone? Text? What is preferred based on your current ability to handle leads?
• How are you tracking your successful (and unsuccessful) traffic?
• Do you have a plan for following up after someone does not take the desired action on your landing page?

Closing:

Congratulations! You made it through the entire 7000-word article. Hopefully now you can see from this list that correctly quoting “How much should a website cost” is not as simple as “how many pages” or “how many graphics” do I need? For your website to be effective, the goals of each website have to align with the unique needs of the user. By allowing a developer, content writer, and designer more time, you allow them to create something that is directly catered to the functionality you need, or message you want to display while focusing on the experience that a user expects to have.

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Cheap SEO and marketing packages are a dime a dozen. There are quite literally millions of agencies designed for just that; to provide inexpensive, low cost SEO and marketing packages aimed directly at businesses. Unfortunately, these packages take advantage of your lack of SEO and marketing knowledge, and often cost you more in the long run. Low cost SEO has many pitfalls, including long-reaching effects that could cost your business thousands of dollars to repair. Let’s take a look at why your cheap SEO package isn’t working, and why you should consider focusing your hard earned dollars in a custom-designed marketing plan. By the way, the term #growthhacking is a buzzword. It means nothing. It delivers nothing. You’re welcome!

Table of Contents

• 1. Marketing Agency Structure is Based Off Quantity, Not Quality
• 2. Not Having The Labor To Optimize and Analyze
• 3. Too Many Reports, Not Enough Action
• 4. Too Many Marketing Efforts at Once
• 5. Unreasonable Expectations vs. Spend
• 6. Focuses Only on the Little Things (That Don’t Make A Difference)
• 7. You Got Baited into a “Good Deal”

1. Marketing Agency Structure is Based Off Quantity, Not Quality

Agencies that focus their efforts on maximum return only care about one thing, lining their pockets. If you have called multiple agencies pricing SEO and marketing for your business and gotten high quotes there may be a reason. If you came across a company that was significantly cheaper, there is also a reason. True SEO packages that build up your brand and increase your ranking are in-depth. There is no “simple and easy” way to increase your ranking, albeit many companies (and clickbait blogging sites) would like you to think so. Ranking your online identity higher in search engine results is a carefully planned combination of local and nationwide directory submissions, backlink building, content building/creation/marketing, social popularity and indicators, and data analysis.

“You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” Zig ZIglar

Inexpensive SEO packages are designed to package the least amount of hours and amount of services, all wrapped up in an enticing package for your consumption. These types of packages are designed to make it seem like you are getting a lot for your money, and in some cases it may be true (at least in the advertisement). You may see items mentioned such as:

• Complete Site Evaluation
• Weekly Traffic Reports
• Increased Ranking in Search Results
• Location Listing Management
• Regular Phone Communication
• Custom Link Building Campaigns
• Site Enhancement for Search Engine Performance
• Guaranteed First Page Placement
• Content Marketing and Creation
• No Annual Contracts

On the surface, it sounds like a pretty good deal. Increased ranking? Alright! Guaranteed first page of Google? Whoo hoo! No annual contracts? Sign me up! All these services in a perfect world would provide increased business and operating capital for your company, allowing you to expand and eventually dominate your industry. What could go wrong? Well, a lot. These marketing plans are designed to sign up as many people as possible, keep them on board and profit for a few months, then wash, rinse, repeat. It is a fundamental principal built directly into the structure of their business. For every 20 people that get smart and leave, there will be 100 to replace them, all getting suckered into the same scam. “What about all the testimonials you see on their site that include photos? They have such great reviews.” You might want to do a quick Google image search. Most are fabricated testimonials, that use stock photography posing as real people. (I’m looking at you bad marketing people)

2. Not Having The Labor To Optimize and Analyze

As the saying goes, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”. The sales pitch sounds great. You get a lot of services for a small amount of money. Any business owner wanting to increase their online business would be foolish to pass on such a bargain. Sadly, the simple facts are; the labor to complete what you need is not available at that price point.

Citation submissions, quality content creation and establishing backlinks takes time. SEO agencies have to analyze your existing online company relationships, see what citations exist in your local market, target national citations that are within your industry, target your content to your area of focus and set up a short and long term marketing plan that falls in line with your goals and expectations.

3. Too Many Reports, Not Enough Action

Many of these low-budget SEO and marketing companies prey on the fact that you don’t know anything about SEO and Marketing. The idea is simple; provide enough company-branded reports that show a ton of data, and it will look like your campaign is successful. We recently had a company come on board that was using a $400 a month SEO package from another provider. In the entire year that they stayed with the service, they received an analytics PDF report each month. No punch line, that’s the story. They paid $400 a month for a whole year, waiting for results. The analytics account was not set up for the client, and they had no access to the analytics account to verify the claims. They also received a keyword report the first month to get them excited, on board and looking forward to improvements, which unfortunately for this client never happened.

Understandably, the client should bear some responsibility for not looking into the issue further once they didn’t notice an increase in new traffic, but why should they? As far as the client was concerned, they hired a company to manage the online traffic, and they expected to be provided with results. They were busy managing the business and not with babysitting the marketing company’s efforts. There was a slight increase in rankings (Google page 3 to page 2) over the year period, but this could also have been related to a Google update, increased domain age, or other external factors. The owner started setting up his own citations across a variety of profiles. It was definitely not enough of an increase to recover a $4,800.00 annual expense. When he decided to cancel service he had no logins to any of his accounts, no links to any new profiles, no nothing. Oh wait, he had 12 months of analytics reports which he could have gotten for free.

4. Too Many Marketing Efforts at Once

As any business owner knows, the busier you get the harder it is to focus on any one given task. Most companies begin online marketing for two reasons; either they are at a low point and need more business, or they are doing quite well and have the finances to begin the expansion of their business. In either situation, the business owner is going to be spreading their efforts across many different platforms. The poor company in need of new clients is going to begin investing in a variety of media to attempt to drive more sales. The rich business is go to do something similar either through evaluating existing sources of advertising to entice return business or beginning new marketing campaigns to attract new clients. Again, in either situation it’s going to be much harder to analyze the success of any one advertising effort when you have your hands in so many.

Businesses that focus their marketing efforts in low-cost SEO and marketing packages are at a greater risk of falling into this trap. The primitive idea revolves around the thought of: “We want to attract new business. How can we diversify our budget of $XXXX a month into as many avenues as possible?” I can only think of one saying that fits here. “Jack of all trades, master at none.” A better short and long term strategy would be to have an agency analyze your existing efforts and clearly define what works for your industry, where you have the most opportunity for growth, and what platforms are just wasted expenditure. DON’T spread your marketing budget across multiple platforms and hope for the best success. DO look at your existing marketing efforts and see where you can stand to make the most improvements from your increased investment. If you don’t have any investments, have an agency worth their salt see what type of advertising works for your industry. Most importantly, have them show you examples of their past success using the methods they are trying to sell you on.

5. Unreasonable Expectations vs. Spend

“I want my brand to compete with the big boys. I want to be bigger, have more clients and be feared by my competitors.” Sounds like a great goal. When your company begins showing up higher in search results you should be proud. You should be proud when things are going well and you are getting additional sign-ups, contact requests, and conversions. You should also be willing to invest appropriately to get there. Below you will see a great quote from Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com

You can’t convince people to pay for SEO who don’t understand SEO or its value. You can certainly try to educate them, but it’s likely you’d be wasting your time because this client seems to be basing his decision on price alone. It sounds as if the client might not be a good fit for you if he’s prepared to go with an extremely low-end solution…believe me when I say that they will likely end up costing you much more than the $250 a month you would charge him — in both time and aggravation. – Jill Whalen

This ties into everything else listed on this page. When you begin looking for a new marketing company, take a few moments to see what you are getting for your money. Read between the lines of the distracting graphic design elements and long line-itemed lists of all the things included in your marketing agreement. Questions you need to ask yourself should contain:

• Do you REALLY need social media marketing?
• If so, do you REALLY need an external company to handle that for you?
• Do you need additional reporting besides the free reports available from Google?
• If so, is this type of reporting included (and actually useful) in your marking agreement?
• What is included in their “link building campaigns”?
• What keywords are “Guaranteed First Page”? The most competitive, or just low-competition, long tailed queries no-one searches for?
• If setting up backlinks and citations, will I be provided with a full list of who, when and how often?
• Will I have full control and logins for all my online entities and profiles?
• What happens if I decide to discontinue service with this marketing company?
• Should I have to pay for someone just to look at my current online status?
• If considering signing up with a big brand like YP or Yelp, how large of an audience will your ad or featured profile actually reach?
• For platform-based marketing: Do people actually shop for my services or products within this platform?
• How long is the required commitment? Am I going to be locked into an agreement for an extended period of time?
• THE BIG ONE: Am I getting everything I need from this “marketing package” to fully accomplish my goals?

6. Focuses Only on the Little Things (That Don’t Make A Difference)

Before typing this section, I did a quick search for “SEO providers”, and came up with 2,780,000 different links. That is a lot of results, many of them claiming to be experts in the field. A brief blurb: I have been doing online marketing for over 20 years, at many professional levels, for over a thousand different clients with tens of thousands of keywords on page one in first position…and I still would not consider myself to be an expert. Does that mean I couldn’t get a site to page one quickly and keep it there? No, it just means I’m still learning new things every day about Google and the search engine infrastructure. In my opinion, only the masterminds at Google and Bing that create and control the rules behind search engine optimization are true “SEO Experts”. Think of it like a car engine. Just because you are a mechanic and can fix an engine, you will never know as much about that motor as the engineer who designed it.

The success of a page should be measured by one criteria: Does the visitor do what you want them to do? – Aaron Wall

Tying back into the “Quantity over Quality” rule, every company has its own set guidelines and procedures for optimizing a brand or website. Cheap SEO is focused on the elements that sell easily and quickly, with little to no regard to any elements that fall outside of their work scope. For example, almost all the SEO companies I researched offered some type of “Local Optimization” service that included citation setup and creation, along with submitting your domain to various “Highly Trusted Directories.”

What concerned me is that what if you already had listings that were incorrect? What if I moved my company or changed the name? What if I had been working on our company’s SEO for the past 6 months and seen no results and had no idea why? Under the packages I found most just seemed to approach this element from a position of “What old listings? You will have brand new ones! The old ones won’t matter!” Not true. Having accurate, consistent, and well cited information about your business is key to having search engines “trust” what you say on your site. This particular example applies mainly to local SEO, but can also be applied to national or worldwide SEO in the existence of blacklisted directories or exorbitant amount of backlinks. You have to know what problems exist or areas to fix before potentially adding to the problem, something that most budget SEO packages never address. Why? Because there isn’t enough labor available. (remember “Not Having The Labor To Optimize and Analyze?”). Scale the items mentioned in this section across your whole internet presence and you can see how quickly cheap SEO can create more problems than it repairs, and often result in more expensive fixes needed down the road.

7. You Got Baited into a “Good Deal”

We are all guilty of it. Impulse buys, quick decisions made in the heat of the moment, uneducated purchases. It happens. It’s a bit easier to absorb when we are talking about a silly purchase at Walmart because the end cap was eye-catching, but not when you commit thousands of dollars to a destined-to-fail marketing agreement. Simply put, there is a reason many of the successful marketing companies charge thousands of dollars a month for marketing services. Because that is what is needed to make your SEO plan work. It is also because they want to make sure if anything needs additional adjustments or there are forks in the road that the labor is available to quickly address and repair when needed.

Even the best SEOs are not magicians. They can’t simply place a site at the top of the engines when there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others that offer basically the same thing, and provide basically the same information. If they could, you’d see a whole lot more millionaire SEOs.

“Good deal” SEO services can be compared to that end cap in Walmart. Cleverly designed to make you take notice, and take the desired action. (It’s marketing!). These types of packages only offer the reporting just so you, the busy business owner, can feel confident in your purchasing decision and that things are being done to improve your ranking in search results. The reality is that little to no work is being done to improve your site, or at the very least, work that could have the opposite effect of what you are trying to achieve. The one question to ask should be: Would the SEO provider use this package to promote their own business or product? Probably not. They would use an in-depth optimization and backlink campaign to allow for the best success in search engine results. The big question to ask is, then how come they aren’t offering that to you….?

Keep these things in mind when deciding what route to go with your SEO and marketing and you can’t go wrong. We hope you enjoyed reading this article, and if you did please don’t forget to share!

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