Web Design & Web Development Blog

How many web design and development companies would dare claim this?

SEO Dark Lord - 100%

Are you an SEO Expert?

I did have to look up a couple obscure answers such as why the Bluefield directory was majorly penalized, and what the most popular search engine in Korea was, but there was not a single question that pertained to real-world and generally accepted search engine optimization development that I couldn’t answer answer. I think some of the questions are utterly useless such as who invented PageRank (although I did know the answer).

Because of a factual error in #62, my disagreement with some of their statements (I have evidence), and the vagueness of a couple of questions, I did do it a second time–but it shows that I am willing to understand other viewpoints of SEO. I can say I learned something new that may come in useful: the robots-nocontent tag. In fact, I would not trust anyone that claims to have gotten a 100% score the first time around (especially since a lot of the questions are gray, and the factual error that exists). I got a 90% the first time, but again, I still can’t honestly believe they have volumes of evidence to some of their claims–no one does in SEO.

I do think they should:

1. Stick to more factual or widely accepted elements of SEO, instead of their opinion.
2. Stick to more relevant optimization questions (stay on target)
3. Expand the test with more questions
4. Offer questions with a way to prioritize the answers from most to least important (e.g. what the most most important factors…
5. Offer community feedback,giving credit to those with higher trust/credibility
6. Be more precise in writing their questions and answers, and other factors that make it more about test taking skills than about SEO
7. Reduce the double-negative writing in some of their questions such as “How will this not help your site not rank?”
8. Perhaps offer a premium (paid) SEO test, with free form answers.

Anyways, if you are a web design firm, search engine optimization company, or someone who takes SEO seriously, test yourself and post your results.

Or why it’s maybe not best to hire your brothers friend after all

It’s going to begin by reviewing their portfolio, but even their portfolio is not going to tell you about all the bad designs, or designs that were never properly completed. Simply asking them is unlikely to get you a real answer either.

When hiring a custom site designer, call around and ask a half-dozen website designers in your area. If you find prices from other companies that simply don’t fit in, be cautious. The ol’ adage still applies “If it’s too good to be true….”

You may even find a friend or a student willing to try it out. These sometimes work out, but truth is, you will have no real assurance that they really know what they are doing if your site’s goal is to drive business, sales, reputation, etc… This is much more true when dealing with anything beyond an informational, or brochure type of site; but even a great brochure site needs to have a purpose, unless you need it just to make you feel good about yourself. Which ones of these apply to your informational site?

• create awareness
• capture interest
• fuel desire for prospective new business
• generate qualified leads
• be marketable through channels such as search engines
• educate
• maintain contact with and inform current clients
• be easy and affordable to maintain after its complete
• be engaging

Here are a few real-world examples:

1. For example, there was a company that had an informational site with the ultimate goal of using the store locater feature. After a complete overhaul, this goal (or sometimes referred to as “conversion rate”) increased by 50 times. I am sure they had a lot more business as a result at their brick-and-mortar store fronts.
2. I have seen sites built beautifully using Flash (usually un-beknownst to the site owner) but they were practically impossible to rank in the search engines the way they wanted to; nor could they simply hire another site designer to ever edit it for them since they did not have the original Flash files. This is really bad if you need to switch designers as it may force a complete redesign.
3. I am not a trained as a custom site designer, and I built a site once for a family member. After a redesign later on, the conversion rate, and therefore sales, tripled. Yet more proof that hiring a great custom site designer can really help an online business.

In my next post, I will cover some of the questions you should ask when trying to find a potential custom web designer

And why it may or may not be for you

When all is said and done, a custom web site design definitely costs more than a template website design. But, does your site really need a custom website design? Maybe not. For example, if you scan the 100 top converting retail websites, you will see that most of them are virtually identical in many regards. Some are literally mirror images of other web sites. You would think they were all using templates. And trust me, those companies spend a lot more on brand recognition than smaller companies can afford to.

Perhaps this standardized look and feel is slightly less common once you venture out of ecommerce, but even then, in all the years I have been involved in custom website design, I have yet to find a real study that shows template sites are less effective than complete original custom web site designs.

A custom website design can add originality and enhance a site that depends more heavily on its brand image.  Does it equate to more dollars? I have not seen many cases yet. More important factors are questions like does the site drive the visitor to action, and can they accomplish the goal with the greatest ease possible?  Resturcturing of websites, or their layout has been shown to be very important in driving sales.

I am not trying to steer you away from a custom web site design, but I know that is is not always a necessity for every company that is in its infant stages.  I can count numerous, insanely great looking sites (that you probably know) that simply do not make money.  They have much bigger things to worry about.  Of course, for most well-established businesses, spending $1,500 - $7,000 on a decent custom website design is very good option for them.

I am actually aware of numerous cases people I know are buying “custom web site designs” built, only to have a slightly modified template delivered to them (unbeknownst to them).  I’ll cover that another day though…