To compliment her branding and on-line needs, Devin selected our Basic Web Design Package. We integrated her amazing photography and current branding into one of our custom ZakGraphix templates, customized the look and feel to match her business style, and launched in onto her own hosting account with GoDaddy.com.

To help in regulating and conveying your post criss communication, it really helps to have a solid branding and visual presence with the clients you already have, a dynamic marketing strategy for those you are trying to reach, and a powerful on-line presence that you can use to counter-balance your critics and potential negative publicity. Large corporations have many crisis management strategies in place to deal with the inevitable crises that will arise, but most smaller businesses never even give it a second thought. Let’s look at the two items you will need to setup before a crisis happens to help counterbalance negative opinions:

1. Passive Criss Management
2. Active Crisis Management

Passive Crisis Management is everything you do to protect your reputation PRIOR to any crisis. If you work solely off word of mouth, this is going to be difficult for you to do because you’re most likely going to retain a good majority of your current clients, but without a good public image negative opinions can easily drive off potentially new clients, especially when they’ve heard good and bad and are not sure which to trust. A strong web presence that keeps itself up-to-date with your most recent service projects or clientèle/marketing communication, including a strong, dynamic website with current/achievable content, social media accounts with active postings, and regular email/mail communication with any ever-growing communications database is a perfect foundation for building a solid reputation on top of the terrific customer service you and your company provide your clients.

Active Crisis Management is everything you do IMMEDIATELY after a crisis takes place. Jonathan Bernstein of Bernstein Crisis Management recommends to attack a crisis head-on. “In the absence of communication, rumor and innuendo fill the gap. Either you communicate or other people will communicate for you.” Bernstein recommends that even the small business should invest in a crisis plan to prepare them for a sometimes unrecoverable attack from unexpected and harmful critics. Ironically, about 50% of the Active Crisis Management requires the investment in the Passive Crisis Management. By creating “points of presence” – through your website & blog, external blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc, you will give your business an immediate and powerful voice during the onslaught of the crisis. It’s really all about being optimized for the Search Engines.

Be ready to stick to your plan. Sometimes it take take up to half a year to truly have a positive impact on your reputation, but in the end it is worth the investment.

Often times we are torn between marketing between a specific location and marketing the product we are trying to sell. Using LLPs will remove the main focus of your pages from a multi-city/key phrase orientation to a simple, more refined context. I recommend extending the size and weight of your website by integrating your LLPs with a easy-going backlinking strategy.

Another use of a Local Landing Page is targeting key phrases that have little to no search volume, but when searched for are going to generate more potential leads than more general key phrases. An example of “St. Louis Web Designer” as a large search term contrasted with “Swansea IL Web Designer” is a terrific example. Though the later key phrases picks up little to no traffic, when someone does search for it, having a website presence for that key phrase will be more effective in return on objective than a larger term like the initial phrase.

Local Landing Pages are actually an integral part of standard search engine optimization. When combined with backend meta and alt tags, backlinking, and regular posting any website will benefit through increased Page Rank and SEO “weight.”

ZakGraphix - “Raising the Standard of Design, One Website at a Time.”

Micah Zak
St. Louis Web Design – ZakGraphix.com

We’ve updated our Packages, adding the EZWeb Design to our lineup, and expanded our Hosting and SEO services. We’re especially excited about the SEO services with the success we’ve been having recently with our Natural SEO Techniques. Since Google and Yahoo were originally designed, and currently look for the latest new content, our approach follows their lead and uses keywords, proper SEO linking, and consistent new website content to give the search engines what they are looking for – the right way.

Additionally, we’re adding an Web Education area. This is to assist businesses and new web designers with simple to complex website and web design issues. Each article is written by us in a way that we communicate, helping our clients and friends understand the web in a easy to understand, user-friendly manor.

ZakGraphix - “Raising the Standard of Design, One Website at a Time.”

Micah Zak
St. Louis Web Design – ZakGraphix.com