The Questions You Should Be Asking ...
The Answers You Should Be Receiving
When interviewing webmasters, don't let price be your
deciding factor. Among webmasters there is a split between those who are
skilled in the fine art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and those who are
not. To obtain high rankings for your site on the major search engines,
multiple SEO Marketing tactics must be included within the design of your
website. As an online business owner you should be concerned with the depth of
SEO Marketing knowledge possessed by the person you hire to design and build
your website. Do you know the right questions to ask a potential webmaster to
ensure that you are doing business with the right person?
The process of hiring a webmaster may appear to be as simple
as contacting a few designers and getting price quotations for their services.
In the end you select the lowest bidder and move towards getting your new
website built. Do not confuse price with function. Typically, a very low price
indicates a finished product that will not be capable of competing for business
online. Additionally, there are some designers who can accommodate you not only
with design services, but with hosting services as well. They will charge a very
small fee for the design services, which looks great on paper, only to hit you
hard with a high monthly fee for your hosting. In the end you pay far more and
your website is still not ready to compete on the search engines for any volume
of business.
How important is SEO Marketing to the design and development
of your new website? Remember, if your site cannot be found in the first three
pages on the major search engines, it won't matter what you spent or how lovely
your website is; no one will ever see it, and therefore, no one will be able to
do business with you. SEO Marketing should be at the core of your entire web
design process.
The Obvious Questions:
May I view your portfolio?
A webmaster should be ready and willing to show off their
past projects to you. If they have nothing to show you ... run.
Do you have a list of references?
A qualified designer should not only be proud of their work,
but so should their clients. Contact a few of their clients to verify their
overall satisfaction with the design and the process involved. Keep in mind,
good designs cost money and also take time.
What software do you use to design?
To the untrained eye this question may seem ridiculous. The
truth be told, there are vast differences between webmasters and their skills.
As it stands there are a small handful of great design programs which would
qualify your potential designer as possessing the experience required to get
the job done. However, there is one design program that will immediately
disqualify your designer as someone who knows what they are doing; Microsoft's
FrontPage®. If they say, "FrontPage®", say something polite as you
hang up the phone.
The Not So Obvious Questions
Do you have any SEO experience?
While some designers cannot even spell SEO, others will
readily admit to their lack of expertise in such matters. Obviously you are
seeking out a designer who claims to be well versed in the practices of SEO
Marketing. How can you tell the difference? Ask them to show you some of their
top ranking sites on Google, Yahoo, MSN or other major engines. The search
phrases they use to find their client's websites should be commonly worded
phrases that people would actually think to type on the engines, and not some
cryptic, uncommon mixed-up set of words which many so-called SEO Marketers use
to justify their poor work. Remember, we can all rank high by typing in our
company name, it's the sites that rank high when you type in the nature of
their product or service that makes for good SEO.
Do you incorporate SEO into your designs?
Many designers will offer SEO services to you 'after' your
site has been completed. For some, they must outsource these services as they
are not qualified to perform SEO page optimizations during the design phase. A
good SEO job requires that the majority of the text on a website be completely
rewritten. So if you're not including this with the design, you'll be paying a
whole lot more for it down the road as the SEO Marketer must take your nicely
written content, tear much of it apart and rewrite it so as to appeal to the
engines for higher rankings.
How much text will you include on my web pages?
While this question will obviously have a different answer
for each page of your site, a smart SEO Marketer knows that a minimum of 300 to
400+ words per page will assist your site in obtaining and more importantly
keeping higher rankings over longer periods of time. To the search engines text
content is king. Text is "essentially" the single largest factor in
helping a search engine determine your position in the rankings.
What else you should know . . .
Flash and Graphics are not text.
While search engines are slowly becoming able to read the
text content for some types of Flash presentations, such presentations are
still mostly what the name implies ... "Flash". The sparing use of
Flash to enhance the look and feel of your site is never a bad idea, as Flash
can add a very professional visual aspect when used appropriately. However,
there are several site architectures which are fully encased within a Flash
presentation, where the entire site is Flash. Such sites will be hard-pressed
to ever gain any ground on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), as Flash
content simply does not contain the same relevance as standard HTML based
pages.
Graphics, on the other hand, cannot be read at all.
Graphics, even those with text on them are simply rectangular voids to the
engines. None of the content from a graphic image can be read or used for the
purpose of optimizing your pages for the search engines.
Frames aren't as bad as they used to be.
The use of 'frames' in web design are no longer posing the
obstacles they once did. Like some types of Flash, many of the major engines
can now decipher frames-based websites and deliver visitors to your site based
on the content of framed pages. There are a few tricks that experienced
webmasters use to ensure that the frame structure remains in tact no matter
what page a visitor is initially delivered to on your site.
In closing, beware of the webmaster that tells you that they
will 'SEO' your site by submitting to the major search engines. Submitting a
website is not at all part of the intricacies involved in performing true SEO
optimization on the pages of your website. Don't let anyone convince you
otherwise. Submitting your site could certainly be included as part of your SEO
services, but submissions are not themselves SEO Marketing.
Kevin McElligott owns and operates iTech Developers, a web
design, web marketing and web hosting company. With over 15 years of
experience, Kevin is moving in the direction of "consumer advocate"
by taking his technical background and applying it toward helping to protect
the online business owner. He worked through most of the 1990’s as a Novell NetWare and Microsoft NT network technician. During his
final years as a net-tech, he taught MCSE certification courses for a short
time before completely changing his focus to the Internet in 1998. Starting in
1995 he began developing websites, and by mid 1996 had started a second company
which focused solely on website design, hosting and marketing services which is
his current company, iTech Developers. Working in and around web development,
he's discovered several trends in the industry which consumers need to look out
for.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment