If you think this is the usual article where you want to sell something or you want to demonize someone, I will disappoint your expectations. Do you think perhaps I am telling you that it is impossible to make your own site for free? Again, you would be wrong: creating your own site for free by taking advantage of modern CMS platforms with ready-made templates is possible and many have done it.
Such solutions, perhaps even with the possibility of hosting one’s own pages for free, have been one of the driving forces behind the Web ‘s boundless expansion in recent years, not only from a “physical” point of view but also and above all as a social phenomenon.
But what if, instead of typing in your site address, I search for information on a search engine? How do you appear among the top positions and increase one’s chances of being clicked on?
If you’ve already happened to have asked this question to a marketing or communications consulting firm and come out of it having undergone an hour-long monologue without being clear about the “WHAT” of the story, in the following lines I will try to explain what a Web Agency is and why it becomes so important when it comes to investing in the future of your company.
Does a Web Agency do the Web-Things? A guide to new professions
A Web Agency is an agency specializing in the Web sector within which a team of professionals from different fields (especially strategy, development, marketing, graphics, and communication) provide their skills and experience to create and support a company’s identity on the Web.
But let’s take a step back.
- Probably friends, relatives, and perhaps some of your customers or readers to whom you have had your do-it-yourself site displayed will have expressed their appreciation; the question remains whether the praise you have received refers to an absolute value or to your ability to succeed in putting up a site regardless of the quality of the result you have achieved. Let me explain: the fact that you were able to assemble a piece of furniture from Ikea by following instructions will not make you a woodworker. Just as simply calling yourself a Web Agency does not mean that they are all the same and all equally prepared.
- most people who use the Internet start browsing by starting with a search engine, and 90% of the time it is Google. Typing in 2-3 words such as “weather Milan,” “train times to Florence,” and so on, a series of results will appear sorted in a list. From a statistical point of view, it has been shown that less than 9% of people find a result they find useful on the second page of what is technically called the SERP (Search Engine Research Page).
Building on these two premises, let’s try to explain what we do all day and why and how our business could help you by answering the question, “How did such a page get the first result in a list of hundreds of thousands of average results?” The first (obvious) answer is to say, did you engage the services of SEO professionals with whom he planned a strategy. But what does that mean in practice? What does a Web agency do that its geeky cousin probably doesn’t?
- strategic planning – before starting any operational phase in a web agency you will find a professional who will listen to your needs, study with you your needs and goals. The e-commerce consultant at this point will proceed with a step-by-step study phase at the end of which he will advise you which actions are best for you and which are the best technologies to use compatible with a number of variables;
- creation of an ecommerce or Web Site – a Web site, contrary to its apparent simplicity, hides a number of structural and architectural complexities without which it becomes an almost unusable tool (what do you do with a knife if the blade is not sharp?): it must be simple to use, intuitive, beautiful to look at, and respond to a number of technical rules that make it qualitatively better and appreciable from the point of view of search engines;
- optimization, indexing and ranking – Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is aimed at obtaining the best search engine rankings and includes a series of SEO optimization activities to be carried out both inside and outside the site itself;
- Web Design – if your site’s graphics leave something to be desired, or perhaps you have created your site yourself and realized that the “restaurants-super” template you downloaded for free was also used by one of your direct competitors, probably a professional solution that is eye-catching and effective could give your business an edge; do you know, for example, what colors attract the most attention and what messages they convey? and when a user looks at a Web page what is the maximum threshold of attention and where does the eye go? Where does he or she expect to find certain information? Answering these questions could radically change people’s approach to your site and increase your conversion rate!
- Web Writing – have you been told that you have to write texts in a certain way and use keywords? The Web Writer, working closely with the Seo will select together with you the most significant keywords with the highest potential to achieve your goals and draft ad hoc texts that are interesting, with high information value and easily “found” by search engines;
- Online reputation – what do people think about you on the Web? In the time of Social Networks collecting people’s feedback, what they say relative to your company, service or product is of crucial importance. In fact, we often rely on the opinion of other users or other people who have already tested a certain product before making our purchases or preferring one brand over another. In a Web Agency, a professional conducts daily screening to carp any information/judgment/opinion about you in forums, blogs or Web pages to monitor your Web Reputation and study the strategy to maintain and improve it;
- Social Media Marketing – Each Social Media is created for a purpose and has a certain type of audience and users: which ones to choose and what is the best combination? What to post and when? How to increase the sharing rate of your content? A Social Media Planner and Social Media Community Manager helps you to be present in the most effective way on the different platforms in order not to run into the most common mistakes or so-called #epicfails.
- Adwords and PPC – a great tool at your disposal is advertising on Adwords and more generally the Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC). If creating an ad, from a practical point of view, is rather simple to plan an advertising campaign that converts and gets the maximum results with the budget at your disposal is a task for professionals that requires a lot of skills and several time.
- Monitor results – how many visits have you received to your site? What are the times when most people browse your pages? What content is most read and shared? How do you increase the Number of Likes or views? A Web Agency delivers you a periodic report with a detailed analysis of your Web presence and what are or could be the solutions to make a quantum leap.
Professional or bricoleur: to whom would you put your future?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, nor is there the “secret to success,” which is nothing more than a combination of professionalism, expertise, hard work, timing, budget and a dose of luck. Be wary of those who promise miracles and claim to be able to reach the first position on search engines in a short time: a serious Web Agency will answer you that they will work hard to make sure that you get the best possible result compatible with a series of factors that you will go evaluating together, such as potential of your business, target market and available budget. If you have any doubts, we’ll gladly listen to your concerns in the comments box or by meeting you in person, but trust us, no-cost solutions are often worth their weight in gold!