Enterprise Technology Services in Phoenix specializes in network design and IT support services for businesses, as well as other computer, network and printer support services. When a company outsources the management of their IT systems to another company, this is generically referred to as “managed services” and that is one of many IT services offered by the company. In the summer of 2009 we worked with a local design firm to completely redesign the Enterprise Technology Services web site from the ground up.
Prior to the start of this project, Enterprise Technology Services, also known as ETS, had a web site that was built with a pretty much unknown website content management system (CMS) that was not designed with search engines in mind. The original web site contained over 50 pages, but the code created by the CMS generated old style HTML code that utilized HTML tables. The code was also extremely bloated with unnecessary HTML formatting code. To further complicate the issue, the web site was hosted on a Microsoft server in Canada, even though the company had no presence in Canada. The design itself was outdated, so there wasn’t very much that was salvageable from the old site. It was time to start over.
Aside from the need for a complete redesign of the site, the web site contained very little content, had almost no presence in search engine results pages and received very little traffic. The Phoenix area has a large number of companies offering network support services, and is therefore very competitive. It was important to build the site using search engine friendly architecture to drive as much free, organic traffic as is possible.
Although we do some design work, that is not our specialty. The ETS president wanted a high-end design and therefore brought in a local professional design firm known as The Richard Carl Design Group to handle that part of the project. We found The Richard Carl Group to be very accommodating and easy to work with, which helped the project to progress rapidly.
The first phase of the project called for developing the overall look and feel of the site. The design selected by ETS is fairly complex, but visually appealing. It clearly makes the web site look much more professional than the original design.
The second phase focused on keyword research. The original site did not have very much focus on any particular targeted search phrases. Furthermore, the site was not localized and therefore was theoretically competing with web sites in similar industries around the world. Whenever a business focuses on a local market, it is imperative to localize the content, which places an emphasis on searches using local geographic names, such as Phoenix or Arizona. The idea with localization is to focus a site on targeted search phrases such as “Phoenix managed services” rather than just “managed services”, and IT support services Phoenix rather than “IT support services”. This gives the site an advantage whenever a user adds geographic words to a search phrase, which is what most people typically do when searching for local services.
The third phase of the project focused on code structure and site architecture. For the code structure we decided to use a pure CSS design. A pure CSS design can dramatically reduce the amount of HTML code on a page, which tends to make web pages load faster and more efficiently. It also reduces the amount of code relative to content and makes it easier for search engine spiders to find and extract the content from each web page. A PHP code template was developed that separates common elements, such as the header, footer and menu, and expedites the building of the site.
The new site was moved to a Linux server with a USA hosting company. Part of the localization process for web sites is to make sure that a web site is hosted in the country that is the primary market for their services. Search engines use the IP address of a web server to determine the country where a company is located. The fact that the former web site was hosted in Canada was very likely a further hindrance to achieving a presence in search results pages for Google, Yahoo and Bing in the USA.
The fourth phase assembled the work from the previous phases. Content was provided by the site owner with coaching provided by Top Rank Solutions to help assure that the proper focus was placed on the list of targeted search phrases developed in phase two. Developing unique, focused content can be the most time-consuming aspect of any web development project, but when done properly it pays dividends over the long term.
The new site was launched in July of 2009. The following is a sample of some of the rank positions achieved by the new site as of June 2010.
network design Phoenix – #1 in Google
network design Phoenix – #2 in Yahoo
Phoenix network design – #5 in Google
Phoenix network design – #5 in Yahoo
Phoenix managed services – #1 in Google
Phoenix managed services – #9 in Bing
managed services in Phoenix – #4 in Google
managed services in Phoenix – #5 in Bing
IT support services Phoenix – #5 in Google
IT support services Phoenix – #1 in Yahoo
IT support services Phoenix – #4 in Bing
IT support services in Phoenix – #1 in Google
IT support services in Phoenix – #8 in Yahoo
IT support services in Phoenix – #4 in Bing
Phoenix network management – #5 in Google
Phoenix network management – #9 in Bing
network management in Phoenix – #3 in Google
network management in Phoenix – #9 in Bing
Phoenix network support services – #6 in Google
Phoenix network support services – #6 in Yahoo
