Many marketing departments have a cookie-cutter process for sharing content on as many platforms as possible. Fortunately, there is a better way.

We all know that it’s a good idea to be active on social media as part of our marketing efforts. But too often, the way we do that is like throwing spaghetti at a wall, hoping some of it will stick. Instead, more effective use of your marketing time and money is spent on the right platform. But how do you choose the right social media platform for your business?

Why Do You Have to Choose?

It might seem like more platforms are better for your marketing, but as in most business efforts, the Pareto Principle explains why you should choose 2-3 social media platforms rather than try to use them all. You are probably familiar with the Pareto Principle, commonly referred to as the 80-20 precept. It states that 80% of your outcomes result from 20% of your efforts.

The important takeaway for this is that you become far more efficient (thus profitable) if your figure out which efforts give you the most benefit. So focus your energy on those things.

Not All Social Media Platforms are Created Equal

For example, retirees, stay-at-home parents, and 15-year-olds aren’t likely to be on LinkedIn. Likewise, Tik-Tok isn’t the ideal place to look for employees. And Pinterest is a far better place to find craft ideas than Facebook.

As a social media consumer, you likely know which platforms you enjoy and for what qualities. Yet, many marketing departments have a cookie-cutter process for sharing content on as many platforms as possible. There is a better way.

What Audience Do You Want to Reach?

It’s essential to be very clear on who you are trying to reach. So, for example, if you are a fitness company for women over 50, and your goal is to find clients who want to take classes, you wouldn’t target men in their early twenties.  And who you are targeting matters because you can then use the social media platforms where they are most active. So here are some broad statistics on this demographic:

By Gender—Women

75% use Facebook

63% use YouTube

By Age—Adults 50-64

70% use YouTube

68% use Facebook

It’s important to use platforms on which your audience will practically stumble over you each day. For example, looking at gender and age alone would indicate that Facebook and YouTube are where a fitness company for women over 50 should be spending their social media efforts. But it is more complicated than that.

What is the Tone and Personality of the Platform?

Does it match the tone and personality of your company? And what are some of your company’s broader goals? For example, if you want to find clients who want to take classes, you can go the Facebook route, maybe posting an encouraging post or a mini-lesson each day to give potential clients a taste of who you are. But what if you want to build a community? You can start a Facebook group for that community. Or you could venture into the realm of Tik-Tok, which is known for its strong communities.

Do You Have the Skills to Match the Needs of the Platform?

Depending on which platform you use, you will need to have specific technical abilities to take advantage of its benefits. For example, to have a successful account on video platforms like YouTube and Tik-Tok, you need to have a charismatic personality that comes across well on camera, decent video taking abilities and equipment (newer smart phone’s work for Tik-Tok), and the ability to edit video well. In addition, LinkedIn requires the proper use of keywords. And for any social media platform, you should understand the unique algorithm that favors one type of content over others.

Need Help with Your Marketing?

Our Digital Marketing team has you covered. Find out how we can help your audience see more of you!

Contact us today!

The post Choosing a Social Media Platform for Your Business appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

At the kickoff meeting for every website development project, we ask the business owner where their domain is registered, and their DNS lives. I usually get a lot of blank looks, but we need that information to bring their website live. So in this article, I will share what every business owner should know about their domain and DNS settings, along with a drawing to make it all easier to understand.  

Your domain is not the same thing as your website.

Your domain, also known as your website address or URL, is how people find your website (www.myawesomecompany.com), but it is not the same thing as your actual website. Your actual website is made up of many different files that live on a website server, and that website server could be anywhere.

Your DNS is not the same thing as your domain.

DNS stands for Domain Name Servers, often referred to as just Name Servers for short. Name Servers are basically giant digital directories that tell the internet where to find stuff. For every domain, there must be entries on a Name Server somewhere that says, “Hey world! The website files for myawesomecompany.com can be found on this server over here!”

Name servers have names like ns1.awesomeserver.com and ns2.awesomeserver.com. The individual entries are called DNS records, and you may have other records telling the world where other things associated with your domain live, such as your email. For example, website servers use A records, and email servers use MX records.

DNS records are often located at the same place where the domain is registered. This is why many people think of them as the same thing. But they don’t have to be at the same place, and in some cases, you won’t want them to be at the same place. In other cases, you will need to move some of these pieces to support your growing business needs.

Why should I care?

As a business owner, you can and should hire people to do things you don’t want to do or don’t have time to do. However, your domain and DNS are essential digital assets, and knowing where they live and how to access them is very important to protect the longevity of your digital footprint.

Often, business owners have tech-savvy employees or outside agencies register domains for them. Unfortunately, when you do this, you risk losing access to your domain if your relationship with them sours. 

Additionally, many DIY website platforms offer domain registration services. It’s easy to say, “Cool! I can just get my awesome domain here!” You don’t even have to hear the word DNS because when you register your domain through these platforms, they will automatically create the DNS entries that point your domain to your website files. 

That works fine until you graduate from a DIY website and want to build a new website that lives somewhere else. You must then go through the process of moving your domain and your DNS records.

So what is the best way to set all this up?

Ideally, you should register your domain under your own business name and address. However, you will want to use a separate email address that you will always have access to, regardless of what happens to your business and employment. Keep a detailed record of where this domain is registered and file it with other essential business documents. 

Suppose your domain is currently registered by someone else, such as a website platform like WIX or Squarespace, or is controlled by a website development company, freelance website designer, or ex-employee. In that case, you’ll want to transfer the domain to your own domain registrar account. 

There are many pros and cons of various domain registrars. You can certainly ask a professional in the industry for recommendations on where to register your domain or for help setting it up. Just make sure to keep a record of where the domain is registered and how to access it.

What is the domain transfer process like?

Transferring a domain is a multi-step process. 

1. First, the domain must be unlocked at the current registrar, and then an EPP transfer key is requested and sent to the email address associated with the domain owner. This is why you want to use a separate email address; if you lose access to your domain’s email address, it is difficult to get the transfer key. 
2. The new account receiving the domain enters the transfer key on their side. 
3. Then, an email is sent to both parties to approve the transfer. 
4. Once the transfer is approved, the domain is in the new account, and you can then set Name Servers or enter DNS Records. 
5. When transferring a domain, it is best to change only one variable at a time. So when the domain is transferred, you should utilize the previous Name Servers and keep all the existing DNS records in place for at least a week. 
6. After everything is humming along nicely, you can change the Name Servers.  

I know where my domain is, but not my DNS.

Often we meet with a business owner who knows where their domain is registered but doesn’t know anything about their DNS. Since all your DNS records are public (remember, they are the directory telling the internet where to find things), you can use directory tools to look up the Name Servers for a domain. 

If your domain uses the default Name Servers, moving from one website to another or one email solution to another is a relatively straightforward process. The proper DNS records just need to be updated. 

Changing Name Servers

If your domain uses Name Servers of another service that you no longer wish to keep, you will need to change Name Servers. This process is more straightforward than transferring a domain since both parties do not need to approve the transfer. The trick here, though, is to make sure that you move over all the records associated with your domain. For example, if you have MX records for your email, you’ll want to be sure to transfer those records. Some domain registrars allow you to preconfigure all the DNS records ahead of time so that all the records are already in place when you switch Name Servers. 

Is this article over yet?

If this all sounds complex and overwhelming, that’s okay. It takes years and years to fully understand DNS. You should certainly enlist a professional to make domain transfers or DNS updates on your behalf. Just make sure that they keep in mind what’s best for the longevity of your business and not what is quickest and easiest at the moment. Did I mention you should also be sure to keep accurate records of domain registration details?

Reach out to the team at Iceberg if you have any questions about the next steps for your domain or DNS during your new website development project.

The post What Business Owners Need to Know About Domains & DNS appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

New e-commerce sites are launching every day. Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the biggest e-commerce platforms powering millions of websites around the world. If you are considering starting a new site yourself or are making changes to your current site, you might be wondering what the difference is between Shopify and WooCommerce. Since each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, we will break down some of the key differences between them and help you decide which platform is best for your business.

Hosting

The biggest difference between Shopify and WooCommerce is that Shopify is a hosted e-commerce solution while WooCommerce is a self-hosted solution that requires a separate hosting account. 

Maintenance

Shopify manages all the core updates and security of e-commerce sites on their platform. WooCommerce on the other hand requires a much more hands-on approach to maintenance, updates and security monitoring. 

Cost

The cost of a Shopify site typically runs between $30-300 per month depending on plan. Custom themes and apps are additional one-time or subscription-based fees in addition to the monthly Shopify fees. WooCommerce is built on WordPress and is free to install but you will need to pay for hosting which typically runs between $150-500 a month depending on your resources and maintenance requirements. 

Payment Processing

Both platforms also require some form of payment processing. Shopify has its own payment processing plan but also supports other major payment processors such as PayPal and Authorize.net. WooCommerce also supports many of the major payment processors. Payment processing for both platforms typically costs between 2-3% per sale.

Features & Apps

You can add features to your site via apps in Shopify and plugins in WooCommerce. Each platform has its own repository of apps/plugins and you can also find free and paid apps/plugins on third-party party websites. 

Most of Shopify’s apps are provided by third-party app developers and are hosted on the developer’s servers. Shopify app developers are responsible for maintenance and updates of the app and have different levels of access to your store’s data. 

WooCommerce plugins are also primarily offered by third-party developers but the plugins are installed directly on the server or hosting platform running WordPress. WooCommerce plugins options include free, one-time fee or subscription based. 

You have a lot more flexibility with how your store is set up and it’s easier to add custom features to WooCommerce.

So, which platform should you use for your e-commerce website? 

The platform you choose depends on 

• What type of site you are building
• How many custom features you will be adding to the site 
• How you plan to support the site

Shopify is a great choice for standard e-commerce sites with high volume and not a lot of static pages. 

We recommend WooCommerce for sites with a lot of custom features, when clients are already familiar with WordPress or plan to have a lot of non-product pages and/or a blog alongside their e-commerce site. 

Iceberg Can Help

The e-commerce experts at Iceberg Web Design can look at how you plan to use your e-commerce site, which products you want to sell, and any requirements for custom features or 3rd party integrations. Based on this information, we can help you to decide which platform will work best for your e-commerce website. 

And when you are ready to build your e-commerce site, our specialists can work with you through every step of the process to ensure your site is exactly what your business needs.

Contact us today!

The post Shopify Vs. WooCommerce – Which Platform is Right for You? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Having an extensive website wish list isn’t a problem if your budget is limitless. But for most businesses, it’s important to keep the reins pulled in.

When business owners ask us to build a new website, they usually come with a wish list. Of course, they will want the usual pages and often features like a blog, search capabilities (sometimes sortable), galleries, integrations, e-commerce features, etc. The list can get long if you let it.

Consider Features that Make Doing Business Easier

Often people only think of websites as benefiting their marketing efforts. And they do increase your marketing prowess. But there are many other ways to use your website.

You can improve customer satisfaction through better communication and employee satisfaction by enhancing internal efficiencies with features like:

•         Optimized Sales Funnels for better leads
•         Careers Pages with applications for hiring
•         Member or Employee Portals
•         Scheduling Integrations
•         Fillable Online Forms
•         Document Library
•         Education information accessed by users via a password
•         Location Maps for your projects or business locations 
•         And more!

When You Want Too Much of a Good Thing

Having an extensive wish list isn’t a problem if your budget is limitless, but for most businesses, it’s important to keep the reigns pulled in.

Another reason we recommend breaking up extensive website wish lists into smaller ones is none of these features will help your business until your website is live. To give you everything on the list would take a lot longer than you want to wait to have the initial site built. So instead, we create the site with the most important features first, and then we immediately begin working on the remaining features. This allows you to use the site as soon as possible.

So, it is often a good idea to build a website that meets your needs and then add on the other features you want later. We often call this planning out your website into phases.

We may also recommend building a website in phases if your business is in a period of growth. You might anticipate the need for a particular feature during that time, but you aren’t quite sure how it will fit into your business plan yet.

How to Choose from Your Website Wish List

The first step is to meet with our salesperson, Shane Bader. Shane will talk about your business goals and what you want to get out of your website and digital marketing. He can help you sort through what features are essential now and which ones can wait until you are ready to add them later. Our goal at Iceberg Web Design is to serve your business in the way that will best help you grow now and in the future.

Contact us today to see how we can help fulfill your website Wish List!

The post What’s on Your Website Wish List? appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Most brands don’t have a famous narrator to keep audiences waiting in anticipation for their next ad campaign. But they should all have a voice—even if it is an imagined one.

Are you branding your company for the first time, rebranding, or just defining a brand that has never been clearly communicated before? One of the first things you need to do is to find your brand voice.

What is a Brand Voice?

If you want a literal example, there is none better than Ving Rhames. He has had an impressive career as both an actor and a voice actor. Since 2014, Ving has been the voice of the Arby’s commercials which tout “We have the meats!” Enjoy this “Try Not to Laugh” compilation of his ads.

Most brands don’t have a famous narrator to keep audiences waiting in anticipation for their next ad campaign. But they should all have a voice—even if it is an imagined one.

How Do You Find a Silent Voice?

A lot of imagination is a great place to start. But first, you have to know your audience. Who is your ideal customer? How do you speak to them in a way that is relatable and genuine? What kinds of language would you use or avoid using?

If Your Brand was a Person

What would your brand say? How would your brand move, dress, act? This is where imagination comes in. It can also be helpful to see how others within your company see your brand.

We recently did a simple exercise where everyone was asked to privately message me five words they would use to describe Iceberg Web Design and our services. It was interesting to see how many people had in common. And nearly everyone included the word “Responsive” as one of their answers. Other common themes were: reliable, friendly, and authoritative.

What are Your Brand Differentiators?

You don’t want to be just like all the other guys in your industry. But you also don’t want to be different just to say you are. So, what makes you different, and why does it matter? What are the things that you are—and are NOT?

Have One Person Write

As you are defining your brand voice, have one person do the writing until it becomes solidified. After that, anyone marketing or joining the writing team should get very familiar with that voice. Otherwise, you will be putting out marketing material and blog posts that don’t sound “on-brand.” Don’t worry. It won’t take long for the entire team to be able to emulate your brand voice.

Do You Need Help Finding Your Brand Voice?

From websites to branding, Iceberg Web Design knows how to market your business online. We have solutions to your business problems and can help you grow! We are just a phone call away, 763-350-8762.

The post Finding Your Brand Voice appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

At Iceberg, we can often find affordable website-based solutions to your business problems. It can help to have a conversation with our team every couple of years so that your website can grow along with your business.

We recently looked at how to have a website built on a budget. But there are even more ways to save money while still getting a professional website.

What do you need on your website?

When building a website, it pays to sit down with a website consultant and decide what you need on the website versus what you would like to have. Get the bare bones down and the features that will benefit your business most now.

Scale Up with WordPress

One of the great things about a WordPress website is that it is so scalable. You can start with your immediate needs and then add features on later as you can afford them or need them more. You might add:

•       Newsletter Integration
•       Scheduling Integration
•       Custom Forms
•       Special Calculator
•       Online Payment Feature
•       Any other feature that would make your site more effective!

At Iceberg, we can often find affordable website-based solutions to your business problems. It can help to have a conversation with our team every couple of years so that your website can grow along with your business.

Be Responsive

The easier the developer can reach you, the faster the process will go. Good communication with your developer will aid in the project’s smooth progress, which can help you avoid hourly additions and late fees.

Plus, when you communicate well with the team working on your site, you develop a relationship with them. Often, people will go out of their way to help those they genuinely like to work with.

Invest in a Maintenance Package to Save Money

It can often be challenging to understand the benefits of a maintenance package and why they cost as much as they do. That’s because a maintenance package is a little bit like an insurance policy with added benefits. With an insurance policy, you might wonder why you are paying for it each month, but you are thankful to have it when an issue arises.

Monitoring for Downtime

There is a lot more to a maintenance package than just taking care of a downed website. However, this is an aspect of maintenance that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Several things can result in downtime for your site:

•       Problems with the Server
•       DNS Issues
•       CMS Failure
•       Cyber Attacks
•       A Lapse in Maintenance

When you have a maintenance package in place, your site will be continually monitored for downtime so that if it happens, we can get your site back up and running as quickly as possible.

Content Updates

One of the most important things you get with your maintenance plan is regular updates to your site’s content by a professional developer. These updates will help you avoid broken links, outdated information, and dead pages. The developer can also make SEO recommendations and marketing.

Updates to CMS, Theme, and Plugins

These might be monthly or quarterly updates, depending on the maintenance plan you choose. Updates to your site’s CMS, theme, and plugins will prevent many issues since outdated themes and plugins increase your site’s vulnerability to attacks. In 2019, over 56% of all CMS applications were out of date when hacks happened. (Source: Sucuri)

Do You Have a Budget and Need a Website?

Iceberg Web Design has options that can make a professional site affordable.

Contact Us

The post More Ways to Save Money on Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

The Halo Effect

A well-established, positive brand identity will give your company a competitive advantage over companies that are inconsistent with their image and reputation. This is referred to in marketing as the “halo effect.” In addition, the halo effect increases your mindshare. “Mindshare” is another marketing term used to describe the brand awareness and popularity of a product, service, or company. It is when people know that something will be high quality because a particular brand makes it.

The Horn Effect

The horn effect is the opposite of the halo effect. When a company does a poor job of managing customer expectations, social media, or public image, people will have a negative impression of the brand rather than a positive one. For example, what do you think of when you hear Monsanto, the NFL, Sprint, or the Trump Organization? These companies once had glowing reputations eventually tarnished by scandal, poor public relations, or lousy customer service.

Can You Overcome a Negative Brand Identity?

Yes! But whether you are trying to establish a brand identity for the first time or overcome a negative one due to a public image disaster, you must be intentional. Remember, your brand image isn’t what you say it is. Instead, it’s what others perceive it to be. Shaping it or reshaping it takes time and diligence.

Amazon recently began a campaign to improve its image as an employer. Whether or not it will work remains to be seen. However, the fact that they are concerned about this despite thriving economically shows they know how fickle the public can be and that even they could be toppled if they don’t repair their image quickly.

But brand identity is just as important for smaller companies as it is for gigantic ones. So how do you go about establishing a positive brand identity?

Make the Core of Your Business Brand Known

First, you must establish what the core of your business brand is. What’s your:

•       Purpose: Why do you get up and do what you do every day as a company? What is the Goal you are all working toward if you had to boil it down to one main thing?
•       Values: What are the guidelines that you work within? Do you value family? That means valuing your customers’ families and your employees’ families, as well. Values are a big responsibility because people know whether you are living up to them or just talking.
•       Vision: What is your vision for the future? What steps are you taking to make that vision a reality? You can’t say you want to lower pollution without actively changing how your company uses energy and deals with waste. Walk out your vision with precision!
•       Mission: Write a mission statement that encompasses your purpose and your values to show how you will make your vision for the future a reality.

Consistency

Then you must consistently deliver on your promises to your customers. Go above and beyond. Your reputation is your most valuable asset, so hang on to it tightly.

At Iceberg Web Design, we’ve built a reputation for excellence and accessibility. We are web developers who answer the phone. We’d love to help you with your business and website needs! So give us a call at 763-350-8762. Contact us today!

The post Brand Identity for Small Businesses appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

When we consult with a new client, we talk about the content for their site. How will the content on your website be organized? We begin by planning out a site map that will help us plan the menu and be a roadmap for the developers as they assemble the various parts of the website. In WordPress, your content is either put on a page or a post.

What is a Page?

Pages are static, permanent parts of your website. They aren’t affected by the date, and while they can be edited, their overall structure doesn’t change. Pages are listed in your site’s menu and include your home page, about page, and contact page, among others.

What is a Post?

Posts are more like newspaper articles. You frequently update them with new content to keep your readers coming back. They can be displayed in chronological order or reverse chronological order. You can also customize the way they are displayed. For example, some people like to keep one post pinned to the front of their blogs. This is called a sticky post.

When people think of posts, they usually think of blog posts. But there are other kinds of posts. For example, many businesses share press releases on their website using a custom post type.

On e-commerce sites, products’ sales pages (which are actually a custom post type) are organized into categories, just like they would be in a brick-and-mortar store.

Organizing Your Posts

Recently we met with a client who is a prolific writer—and a good one! He has been adding content to his blog for years and now has hundreds of posts. In planning his new website, we discussed ways to make it easier for readers to access the specific content they search for on his site. We came up with several solutions that would create an appealing, well-organized website. But the first job was to put the content into categories.

Organize Your Website With Categories

If you put the posts from your website into a book, you would want to do it in a way that makes sense. You would organize it in whatever way works for your business, and the names of those categories would be the table of contents, showing readers the main topics you would be covering. If they prefer to get right to the matter, they are interested in, and they can bypass the chapters that don’t pertain to them and read the one that does. That’s what categories do.

Don’t Let Your Website Be “Uncategorized.”

All WordPress posts must be categorized. If you don’t organize your posts, WordPress will do it for you, placing them under the heading “uncategorized.” By the way, it is a good idea to change that to something else like “other.” “Uncategorized” looks like you didn’t finish the details of the post.

If you have a health and nutrition site, your categories might be:

•       News
•       Nutrition
•       Mindfulness

These are Pretty Broad Topics 

That’s why you can also use subcategories to organize your website posts.

 News

COVID-19

Nutrition

Vegan

Keto

Gluten-Free

 Diabetic

Weight Loss

Mindfulness

Mindfulness Apps

Mindfulness Techniques

Even the subcategories are broad, but at least they will get your readers pointed in the right direction (of course, you don’t have to use subcategories).

Limit Your Categories

Try to limit your posts to one category (occasionally two). At the same time, limit the overall number of categories to no more than ten. Keep the number of subcategories to a minimum, as well. This is better for SEO and the overall organization of your website.

There are, of course, exceptions. For example, large e-commerce sites often have many more categories.

Leave it to the Experts

At Iceberg Web Design, we create unique custom websites. We also offer hosting and maintenance packages that will give you security and peace of mind. Contact us today!

The post Use Categories to Organize Your Website appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

Because of how these virtual crawlers work, many people call these bots spiders, crawling the world wide web. It is their work that allows us to retrieve information so quickly when we search the internet. It’s pretty mind-blowing when you think about it.

Managing Bot Traffic with robots.txt Files

There will be times when you won’t necessarily want everything on your website to be found by everyday people searching the internet. These would be pages meant for employees, thank you pages, and other internal business-use-only pages.

You can usually manage to keep search engine bots out of these pages, at the directory level, by using a robots.txt file. The robots.txt file is just a request. Even though Google’s crawlers are generally respectful of these requests, there is no guarantee that their bots or those belonging to other search engines won’t ignore your request.

Robot Meta Tags

Robot meta tags (also known as robots meta directives), like other meta tags, are pieces of code. They tell the search engine bots that crawl websites how to index web page content. Unlike robots.txt files, these meta tags aren’t suggestions. And rather than trying to keep bots out of your site, they tell crawlers that a page should not be indexed.

Two Kinds of Robot Meta Tags

There are two kinds of robot meta tags:

•         Directives that are part of the HTML page
•         Directives that the web server sends as HTTP headers

These directives tell search bots how to crawl and index specific web pages on your site. Even though these are directives (meaning they are orders), bots can still ignore them.

Why Wouldn’t You Want Something Indexed?

•         To block an element on a page, such as an image or a video, rather than the entire page.
•         Content not written in HTML, like flash or video, should not be indexed.
•         If you can’t access the <head> section of a page’s HTML
•         When you can’t change your site’s global header

Since bots need to crawl your site to read robot meta tags and follow them, having robots.txt files will be counterproductive. The robots.txt file will keep the bots out, so they never see your directive. If you are unsure which one you should use, opt for a meta robots tag with “noindex, follow” parameters over a robots.txt file.

Beware!

Even if you correctly use a robots.txt file or meta tags to allow or disallow search bots from visiting and indexing your website, you will want to get your website set up in Google Search Console. This will let you see what is being indexed. It will also allow you to request that Google remove specific URLs from its search index.

Never count on either of these to keep private information out of the public eye. For that level of security, you will want to keep your data under password protection.

Always be careful when using these files. They have their place, but occasionally, people will inadvertently make their entire site inaccessible to Google’s bots which is no good for your SEO at all.

Your Best Bet with Bots

Iceberg Web Design builds custom websites every day. We also have SEO services available for new and existing sites. Are you looking for your next website-based business solution? Contact us today to see how we can help.

The post Robot.txt Files & Robot Meta Tags appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

The Structure of a URL

You should structure your website’s URL in a way that helps Google and your site’s users make sense of what they are going to find on the page they are opening.

The first part of the URL is the protocol.

This is the URL for Iceberg Web Design’s SEO Services page. You can see that the website is using HTTPS protocol.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/seo/

The next part of the URL is the subdomain.

This is the URL for Iceberg Web Design’s E-Commerce Development page.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/ecommerce-development/

The third part of the URL is the domain.

Notice that on all of these URLs, the domain is the same. That is because they are all on the same website, listed under the same domain.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/website-development/

The fourth part of the URL is the TLD

This stands for “top-level domain.” The most common is com, but you will also see org, gov, and net, among others.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/website-design/

The fifth part of an optimized URL is the subfolder

All of the URLs we’ve looked at so far have fallen under the services subfolder because they pertain to services offered by Iceberg. Subdomains should be organized by topic rather than by keyword.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/website-hosting/

But this next one is categorized under a different subfolder- the about subfolder.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/about/our-team/

Finally, we come to the lowly slug.

It actually isn’t so lowly. The slug is the name of your page or post.

https://www.icebergwebdesign.com/services/reputation-management/

How to Optimize your URLs

Always think about the subfolder and the slug when you name your pages. Put the content into the proper subfolders so Google and your readers can easily find what they are looking for. Avoid using dates and other meaningless information in your URLs because this doesn’t show how pages within your site relate to one another.

Start organizing from the beginning.

It is so much easier to plan your sitemap out from the start than have it evolve. By planning it, you will know how your site will be structured. If it is an evolving process, you will soon have a mess to deal with in your URL structure. Not only will it take a lot of time and effort to clean up, but it will also cost some of your hard-earned SEO as you restructure.

How to make Your plan

The first thing we do when we build a website at Iceberg is to plan the sitemap. We talk about your business goals and how your website can help you achieve that. Even if we aren’t immediately implementing some parts of the site, we still plan for them (for example, a blog that will be added later or a porch page for a home construction company).

As we build your site, we plan for internal links (links that connect two different pages on your website together). Internal linking helps site users naturally discover other pages related to the one they are already reading. This allows pages deeper within the site to rank better over time.

How to Ensure Your URLs are Correct

If you need a new website or SEO services, Iceberg Web Design will have everything in the correct order, optimized for Google and your customers. Contact us today!

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