There is no "magic bullet" in web design to get visitors

You have a choice between "pay now" or "pay forever"

If you want a website that consistently ranks on page 1 of SERPs (search engine results pages), you have to invest. As I see it you have a choice between "pay now" or "pay forever."

Google leads in search engine market share in the United States. 63.2% on desktops and a whopping 93% on mobile.[1] So I'm going to focus mainly on Google in this post.

Google has over 200 criteria it uses to evaluate a website to determine where it will be displayed in SERPs. No website will meet all 200 criteria, and I would posit that it would be futile to try. But that said, many companies can meet many of them. You can read the comprehensive list here.

And as you can see "awesome graphics" and "expensive videos" are not on the list. The list says videos and graphics are quality indicators. This means you should have them. But Google doesn't judge :) My point is that "awesome" graphics or videos are not where you should invest, if you have a limited budget. Awesome graphics and videos engage your web visitors when they get to your website. But how will they get there if they don't find you on Google first?

And this is where the "pay now" or "pay forever" proposition kicks in.

"Pay now" is to invest in a web designer who delivers a professional front end (the visuals) AND focuses on the back end (the SEO). Once you have a strong SEO foundation, you can, and should, continually monitor your website and tweak it as market "lingo" changes. THIS is what you should be analyzing when your web designer sends you a Google Analytics report (most web designers don't do this, but Bizzistance does this an integral part of our web design services). What pages are people visiting? What words are getting them to your website? How can I tweak my site content and SEO to capture the clicks that I didn't get?

And this brings us to the "pay forever" part: Google's "gotcha." Google used to provide the "search words" that people searched on when they clicked your website link. When Google developed AdWords, they STOPPED providing the search words for free. You had no idea of the search words used to get to your site UNLESS you bought into an AdWords program, and THEN Google would provide them to you. However, Google seems have to walked back that policy and are now providing search words via their "queries" section in their Analytics.

Google is a brilliantly Machievellian capitalistic organization :) To be fair, they also provide a substantial amount of quality "freeware" in the form of their Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drive, and Google Photos. All of which I partake. And the trade is Google has access to all my online activities through that freeware. Google is aggregating my data to serve to someone who is willing to pay for it. I have nothing to hide, so this tradeoff doesn't bother me.

But I digress...

And this is the essence of the "pay now" or "pay forever" litmus test. "Paying now" means you spend the time to develop the content — the words — that describe your products or services in the way that people search for them. Let me repeat. You need to develop content for your website with the WORDS PEOPLE SEARCH FOR  —  NOT in the way your company wants to "push" the product. This mindset is NOT intuitive to people who own the products or services. And it goes against all the marketing training most marketers learned in college. With the internet, SEARCHERS often dictate your marketing strategy. You need to give searchers what they want. Because if you don't, you'll be locked into "paying forever."

What do I mean?

Think about it.

Let's say you're selling a new kind of car. Made from a new alloy that you developed. You named the alloy NewAlloyForCars . And you trademark it. And you write in your website copy:

At XYZ company we spent the last 20 years developing our NewAlloyForCars™ product. It is magical. It changes colors to match your mood. If you want to be invisible, the car will turn invisible. If you want to stand out, you think the color you want and it becomes the most amazing shade of that color the world has ever known! Our NewAlloyForCars vehicle can fly or swim at your discretion. It's yours for $2,000,000!

Unless someone happens to search for "flying cars," "invisible cars," or "cars that change color to match my mood," Google will not put your website on page 1 of their SERPS. No one searches for "amazing alloy" or "magical cars" (well maybe a child might, but they're not your target audience, right?).

So, how do you write about your NewAlloyForCars product? Exactly. Much harder when you're trying to pull instead of push, isn't it? And that is where a web designer who focuses on SEO is the one you want to hire. An SEO web designer thinks like Google (understands how algorithms work) AND loves words (understands how people do web searches) AND understands strategic use of images. For an SEO-focused web designer the art is in describing your product, not the graphic that displays your product. Remember, Google spiders don't care if your graphics are gorgeous or hideous. Google spiders care about the words you use to describe your product or services.

But the problem is that MOST graphic-artists-turned-web-designers don't understand programming and don't love words. Great graphic artists are great because they are great at communicating VISUALLY with images, not words. This is not to say that graphic designers aren't articulate. Far from it. Graphic designers are often great oral communicators as well. But they tend not to think like a computer. Fair?

This means when you hire a great graphic designer that doesn't know how do SEO properly to design your website, they're going to try sell you on AdWords before launching your website. And if you don't ever spend the time to develop the right "searcher-oriented" or "pull marketing" copy for your website, you'll HAVE to spend money on AdWords for a long time, if not forever. (Read this).

Now remember, AdWords only get visitors to your site. There is no guarantee your site will convert them. So you are paying for the CLICK, NOT the conversion. You need to have a great product or service, with persuasive and easily understood copy on your website to help convert a visitor to a customer. Or you need the best (or close to best) price if you're selling a commodity. Just remember, AdWords can disguise bad, or non-existent SEO. So be wary of those who push AdWords along with their web design. Do your due diligence.

You have to write great copy for your website, first to get Google to serve your website up in their SERPS; and secondly, so that once a visitor gets to your site, they understand what YOUR value proposition is.

And since you need great copy anyways, doesn't it make sense to get the copy written now? Of course, if your budget is unlimited, you can do it all: a content-rich website, with wow 'em graphics and wow 'em videos, with brilliant SEO. But small companies rarely have unlimited marketing budgets. Good for you if you're one of the lucky ones!

But for the rest of us regular folks?

You know a website has great SEO if they come up on page 1 or 2 of SERPs and you never see them in any AdWords ads. This could be your company if you work with the SEO web designers.

The only caveat is that non-AdWords, organic SEO websites will take time, usually 6 months, to rank in SERPs. So you have to have patience. Yes, you can get on the first page of SERPs almost instantaneously with AdWords. And you may stay there indefinitely with AdWords. That's your prerogative. But is it smart or fiscally responsible? Or are you robbing Peter to pay Paul? Does that mean you have a great website? Or does it mean you have a great budget?