How To Buy SEO Web Design Services

Introduction
At the moment there does not seem to be any guidelines on how to buy web site design services, while there is plenty of advice on how to get out there and build your own web site from scratch. This state of affairs contains an inherent assumption that everyone has the time and energy to learn how to design and market a web site for themselves; something simply not feasible for the small business. Rather than preaching to you the basics of constructing a web presence, this whitepaper explains how to specify exactly what you want from a web site design company that is bidding for your business, and the right questions to ask to reveal how good they are.

Questions to ask your designer
Do you have your own professional web site?
Any web site design firm with credibility should have their own web site that is shows off their web site design skills. This site should be updated at a minimum of once a week, and should also have high ranking in all major search engines for their chosen criteria. While this area is open to conjecture, it can also accurately reflect the level of commitment and knowledge that the design firm has and can therefore bring to your web site. It is an excellent gauge of their skills and view of the Net, and how enthusiastic they are about the medium - and also how enthusiastic they will be about your site.

How important do they consider a web presence to be found via the search engines?
Their response should be that it is one of the most important things about the entire web site. If no one can find the site then there is no point in creating it at all, and all of the time, money, and energy that has been poured into the creation of the site will have been wasted.

There can be nothing more important than being found in the search engines. Users simply must be able to find your site via well chosen keywords at the biggest search engines - anything else is unacceptable.

How do they design their web sites to rise in the search engine listings?
The way that a site is designed will actually affect to a large degree where in the search engine listings a site will rank - and as stated above you need to be as high as possible in the search engine listings to drive traffic to your site. There is a world of difference between being in the first page of a search engines results and being on the twenty-first page, as your own experience will probably tell you.

The reason that this question is so important is that it is these search criteria that the web site creator must embed within the site that will determine how the site will be found. Also, the designer of your web site is not going to be an expert on the content of the site. You are the expert, and it is from you and your company that the search criteria should be derived. The design criteria that the designer must design into the site in order for its ranking to be as high as possible in the search engines include:

• creating links in text, not graphic format
• ensuring that the keywords accurately reflect the content
• ensure that the keywords are mentioned in the proper density in the page content, the page title and the first few paragraphs of text.

More information on what is necessary to design into pages in order for them to rise in the listings can be found by reading our Search Engine Optimization Whitepaper located in the optimization section of this Web site.

How many of their previous sites have ranked on the first page of a search conducted at Google?
This will give you an accurate idea of how good they are at not only designing a page for search engine listing optimization, but also how good they are at actually submitting their sites to search engines and then monitoring them over time. The reason that this is such a good question is that it is very hard to get onto the first page of results at Google for popular keywords, but also very important that you do so.

How do they propose to update your site?
A good designer should make you aware that the web is a fast moving medium and any web site should be updated as frequently as possible. Would you buy a new magazine if it had the same articles this month as last month? There should be a section in the proposal for web site design which outlines the method your design firm propose to update the pages on your behalf, but it is good business practice for them to provide you with templates in order for you to update the pages yourself. They should also be competent enough to train you on how to maintain the web site yourself. The important fact here is that they make you aware of how vitally important the issue of updating is, and be able to give you advice on how frequently you should be doing it. Any web site designer should also be a web marketer; they should provide in the proposal a route to update and maintain the site over time, so that it is always pertinent.

What are the important factors in the navigational interface on the site?
Once a user has landed on your web site, the navigational interface should be incredibly easy to use so that a user never thinks "how do I find what I am looking for", but rather "what am I interested in". Another reason for this is that you can never guarantee exactly where a user will enter your site, therefore the designer should make it so easy for a user to find their way around your site that it actually becomes immaterial where they enter.

The interface on your site should be subtle, consistent, and transparent, and it should be in the same place on every page on your site. This is the best way to make users comfortable with navigating around your content. If the navigation look, style, feel or placement changes, then the user will rapidly become lost and will soon leave. Remember your closest competitor is only a single click away.

Also any interface should, as well as being intuitive, be very quick to download. Users are relatively impatient with the net, and a slow interface could frustrate and encourage them to leave your site.

Do you use frames?
There are severe usability problems involved in using frames. Frames have a major adverse affect on how high in the search engine listings your page will rank. Many search engine will not be able to index your entire site if it is designed in frames, and will therefore perceive that you only have one page on your topic, and thus cannot be highly relevant.

How will your designer set up the hosting services?
Your web site needs to be hosted on the Internet and your consultant should be able to talk you through all of the many related issues involved in setting up hosting. This is a critical decision that will govern the speed at which your pages are delivered to people and also the reliability - i.e. "uptime".

What will be the site's criteria for success?
You need to decide how you are going to judge that the web site is successful. This can be very hard to ascertain if you are new to the net, but your web site designer should be able to guide you. Examples of criteria for success include a certain number of visitors every week, or a certain percentage of your printing and distribution costs saved by distributing your literature over the net, or a certain amount of new orders from the web site and so on. There could also be less formal criteria in the form of enhanced public perception of the company or better public relations - but these must also be stated and at least attempted to be measured in just the same way as the more concrete criteria.

What are the business benefits for a user of the web site? What reason is there for a visitor to the site to ever return?
No one who encounters your company from the web will become a customer of the company without first being a customer of the site. They will not become a customer of the site from only one visit, therefore you need to know what it is that makes the site "sticky" - i.e. makes people stay around and look at it in detail and also come back repeatedly.

Conclusion
The best advice to be given is to ensure that all the facts are gathered and carefully considered before making such an important investment in your business. Any customer must enter the web site purchasing process with eyes open and deal with a company or individual they can trust.