Maybe I should title this post “Blatant Conflicts of Interest,” instead. I suppose someone like myself writing this article and trying to be objective, is like McDonald’s publishing a guide entitled “How To Have A Delicious Lunch,” but I feel I have some important ideas to add to the subject that are easily and often overlooked by anyone without some specific foreknowledge about search engines and websites.
With the above caveat/disclaimer in place, I’ll proceed with these three ideas that are crucial to choosing a web professional to work.
1. Will your finished site be search engine optimized? The basics of search engine optimization should always be built into a website. A basic search engine friendly framework is easily accomplished by any website designer that knows how to do so and is willing to take the time. Search engine optimization can become very detailed, however the basics are simple by comparison and go a very long way to helping a website earn top rankings.
2. Does your designer want to know a lot about your business and your industry? If this answer is “no”, you can probably count on the answer to question one being a “no” as well. To be at the top of search engines, one must know what your potential customers might be searching for. This idea goes beyond the general industry and city in which your business is located. Searches are becoming more and more specific. For instance, while many searches are for “Buffalo Grove dentist”, there are many other specific searches like “Buffalo Grove dentures dentist” or even “Buffalo Grove emergency weekend dentist”. While the more granular searches may individually have very small numbers, the aggregate is very very important. Thus, whatever web designer you choose should want to know about your business in great detail.
3. Will your website be easily editable? Unless you would like to have to call up, wait, and pay your web designer every time you want a modification to your website, he or she better have a simple solution to allow you to make changes to the content of your website. This comes in handy for keeping customers up to date and allows you to use your website as a marketing vehicle rather than simply a static page with basic information. (More on that later.)
You may have noticed that I didn’t cover some very basic ideas, such as “Do you like their other work?” Well, that’s because you already knew about that. You wouldn’t go see a movie if the preview looked awful, and you wouldn’t hire a web designer with an unappealing portfolio. My hope was to cover some easily overlooked details that make a big difference in the long run.
As always, please leave a comment and let me know if you have any questions or other ideas.
-Craig
