It is amazing how much the web has changed over the last 17 years or so that I have been building website. Since the web started out with people with no formal training, it will be a long time before the industry matures and there are degrees for this stuff. Part of the reason for this is schools just can not keep up with changing technology because things move so quickly.
Yes, I know there are degree programs now, but honestly they are still 2 years behind the curve and in internet years, this is a lifetime.
So I am giving a presentation tonight at a local business organization. As I walk through the lobby I pick up a little junk advertising rag for local businesses to advertise in. After the presentation mostly on blogging and social media, I pick up this rag to flip through since it humors me from time to time.
Anyhow I run across an add for a website professional that used the big headline WHERE DO YOU RANK? So this intrigued me and I thought I check out the site to see what I thought. Running a quick test I found out this site ranks pretty low. Sadly this SEO Expert gets a website grade of 16% out of 100. Not so good. Worse the traffic rank of the site is roughly 21 million when the goal is to be as close to the #1 as possible this seemed like a pretty long way to go for a web expert.
The reason I bring this up is because anyone can say they are a web expert as long as they are able to either find a template or learn some basic html and build their first site. This is fine and we all have to start some where. The problem comes when a consumer is shopping for a website expert and they work with an amateur that is a self proclaimed certified webmaster, seo expert, social media marketer or whatever the current buzz is. How are consumers supposed to know who is legit and who is out there peddling their snake oil?
Well it is very hard for people to know the truth and find quality web experts. Sometimes you can tell by the quality and ease of use of their website, but sometimes a great designer can make a beautiful website that is not able to be found by search engines.
So what do you need to look for in a web designer?
Here are a few items.
- Do they have a website? If so is it professional or cheesy?
- Do they have a blog? If so how often do they post articles- daily, weekly, monthly or a few times a year? Look for someone that posts weekly.
- Is their blog attached to the website or is it external and different from the original site. Look for a blog on the same domain name as the website like www.coke.com/blog.
- Are their articles interesting, educational and do a lot of people write comments on their blog.
- Do they have a social media accounts – linkedin, facebook, twitter, stumble upon, digg, plaxo, etc. The more they have the more knowledgeable they may be. Also review their profiles and are they active users or just update once every few months.
- Do a search for web deign in the area they serve so do something like Fort Worth Web Designers and see if they come up on the first page of google. Or try Fort Worth SEO Companies. Obviously replace your city with the local area this company works in. When it comes to SEO experts, they had better be listed on the first page, isn’t that what they are getting paid for?
The point of this article is not to bad mouth the company I saw advertising, but to warn the buyer and teach them how to find the best vendor. If you go through these 6 tips, you will be able to weed out the snake salesmen from the true SEO Experts and inbound marketers. We hope you find this informative and helpful at finding your best vendor. Best of luck and happy shopping.
I’m curious why you recommend finding someone whose blog is hosted on their business domain. In terms of SEO, it’s better to have your blog on a completely different domain – therefore a designer who has a blog somewhere else may be a bit better at SEO. I design websites and have always kept my blogs separately. They are very much related to my business, but the overall target is geared toward helping people accomplish specific goals (i.e. plan a website), where the business site is geared toward providing the actual web design service.
I’m curious why you recommend finding someone whose blog is hosted on their business domain. In terms of SEO, it’s better to have your blog on a completely different domain – therefore a designer who has a blog somewhere else may be a bit better at SEO. I design websites and have always kept my blogs separately. They are very much related to my business, but the overall target is geared toward helping people accomplish specific goals (i.e. plan a website), where the business site is geared toward providing the actual web design service.
Hi Elaine,
Here is the reason. Actually you are right that the blog is a huge part of the SEO system and since this brings in so much traffic, this is exactly why you want it tied to your website.
The first thing to think about is when someone asks you, What’s your website? Do you give them 2 URLs check out our website at getbrandwise.com and then also check out our blog at areyoubrandwise.com. If this is what you do, this confusing to prospects. Why not just say go to our website at getbrandwise.com and if you’d like you can see our blog on our site.
The other problem is that the seo and the blog are all about finding leads for your business right? I mean really a website is all about getting more sales to your business. If you get a lot of traffic to your blog and the main site gets other traffic, the sites are competing. From a search engine stand point they do not know which one to look at so because the blog probably has more pages, updates regularly and has visitor interactions the blog will win out.
The problem is the main site is a competitor and there are so many competitors in this industry that we really don’t need another one knocking our ranking down.
Also, since the site is meant to be a sales tool, when people are ready to buy- because they found your site and you have convinced the visitor you are a valuable resource, is there a way for them to buy your product or service?
Chances are slim that this is the case. After reviewing many blogs, I often do not see any way to buy the firms service or even contact them. If I have to figure out how to buy from them guess what, I’ll move on. My time is too valuable to figure out how to buy from them. That leads me to their site. Sometimes these same firm’s websites makes it hard to buy their product. They sometimes have pages under construction and no place on their site to get a good idea of who they are. Most companies do not make any offers on the site so I can’t double check that they are the right fit for my needs.
Lastly many forget to add simple things like a phone number on either site so even if they are getting found people are unable to contact them by any other means than their contact us page if they even have that.
Since people are skeptical about contact forms and if they haven’t fully built trust already, there is no way they are going to give their private data out. This is why we recommend other ways to connect.
Keep in mind Elaine, I am by no means trying to bash you or your ideas. They are valid, but I am trying to use this as an example of the mistakes commonly made when firms have a site and a blog on different domains and also some other things that are common mistakes in this industry.
Please dig through our site and see if we have any of these issues. We don’t because this is what we sell. We have a phone number on the top and bottom of every page. We have one URL for our website and it is tied to our blog, and they look similar to help build the brand. We offer a ton of ways for customers to engage with us and contact us or get offers to see if we know what we are talking about. We also offer a bunch of testimonials and samples of our work to show prospect what they will be getting.
Granted we have a lot of places to improve as well, but our site is set up to help with the sales process. It helps us generate leads for the sales team to work. Sales can then start closing deals to pay for the website, future marketing and the business itself. In my mind this is what websites should do. They are more than a beautiful digital brochure and SEO is more than a few keywords, they are both meant to drive business.
Thank you for your thoughts. I hope this helped clarify things or at least how we see website development.
Hi Elaine,
Here is the reason. Actually you are right that the blog is a huge part of the SEO system and since this brings in so much traffic, this is exactly why you want it tied to your website.
The first thing to think about is when someone asks you, What’s your website? Do you give them 2 URLs check out our website at getbrandwise.com and then also check out our blog at areyoubrandwise.com. If this is what you do, this confusing to prospects. Why not just say go to our website at getbrandwise.com and if you’d like you can see our blog on our site.
The other problem is that the seo and the blog are all about finding leads for your business right? I mean really a website is all about getting more sales to your business. If you get a lot of traffic to your blog and the main site gets other traffic, the sites are competing. From a search engine stand point they do not know which one to look at so because the blog probably has more pages, updates regularly and has visitor interactions the blog will win out.
The problem is the main site is a competitor and there are so many competitors in this industry that we really don’t need another one knocking our ranking down.
Also, since the site is meant to be a sales tool, when people are ready to buy- because they found your site and you have convinced the visitor you are a valuable resource, is there a way for them to buy your product or service?
Chances are slim that this is the case. After reviewing many blogs, I often do not see any way to buy the firms service or even contact them. If I have to figure out how to buy from them guess what, I’ll move on. My time is too valuable to figure out how to buy from them. That leads me to their site. Sometimes these same firm’s websites makes it hard to buy their product. They sometimes have pages under construction and no place on their site to get a good idea of who they are. Most companies do not make any offers on the site so I can’t double check that they are the right fit for my needs.
Lastly many forget to add simple things like a phone number on either site so even if they are getting found people are unable to contact them by any other means than their contact us page if they even have that.
Since people are skeptical about contact forms and if they haven’t fully built trust already, there is no way they are going to give their private data out. This is why we recommend other ways to connect.
Keep in mind Elaine, I am by no means trying to bash you or your ideas. They are valid, but I am trying to use this as an example of the mistakes commonly made when firms have a site and a blog on different domains and also some other things that are common mistakes in this industry.
Please dig through our site and see if we have any of these issues. We don’t because this is what we sell. We have a phone number on the top and bottom of every page. We have one URL for our website and it is tied to our blog, and they look similar to help build the brand. We offer a ton of ways for customers to engage with us and contact us or get offers to see if we know what we are talking about. We also offer a bunch of testimonials and samples of our work to show prospect what they will be getting.
Granted we have a lot of places to improve as well, but our site is set up to help with the sales process. It helps us generate leads for the sales team to work. Sales can then start closing deals to pay for the website, future marketing and the business itself. In my mind this is what websites should do. They are more than a beautiful digital brochure and SEO is more than a few keywords, they are both meant to drive business.
Thank you for your thoughts. I hope this helped clarify things or at least how we see website development.
To each his own. 🙂 Our methods are a bit different: you seem to post about exactly the subjects and keywords you are selling, and I post similar subjects that are helpful to prospective customers but that do not cross over in SEO. For example, “(insert local area) web design” is targeted for the business, and “how to plan a website” is targeted for the blog. In this way, the sites complement each other and Google sees them as related, but they’re not competing for the same keywords.
I find it useful to post small snippets of the blog on the company site, so that people know there are additional educational resources available. The navigation on both sites is also set up to encourage people to travel freely between the two sites. It’s true that many people make it hard to find the business from the blog or vice versa – just something you have to take into consideration when designing navigation and content. By including bits of both sites on each site, you can make it easy to find whichever sort of content is desired at the moment but avoid having duplicate content issues.
To each his own. 🙂 Our methods are a bit different: you seem to post about exactly the subjects and keywords you are selling, and I post similar subjects that are helpful to prospective customers but that do not cross over in SEO. For example, “(insert local area) web design” is targeted for the business, and “how to plan a website” is targeted for the blog. In this way, the sites complement each other and Google sees them as related, but they’re not competing for the same keywords.
I find it useful to post small snippets of the blog on the company site, so that people know there are additional educational resources available. The navigation on both sites is also set up to encourage people to travel freely between the two sites. It’s true that many people make it hard to find the business from the blog or vice versa – just something you have to take into consideration when designing navigation and content. By including bits of both sites on each site, you can make it easy to find whichever sort of content is desired at the moment but avoid having duplicate content issues.
Elaine,
I would have to do some more research, but it was my understanding that it is easier to have a site and blog under the same domain, not for SEO specific keywords, but because the topics are so close. Honestly, we barely touch the website once it is up, most of our work is done to either the blog, news, free tools, portfolio and testimonials pages because these are all very dynamic and always changing. I guess my point is the blog is helping the domain getbrandwise.com become more relevant since it is always increasing our online footprint by adding these dynamic page I mentioned earlier. So I guess it is more of a domain popularity issue instead of a keyword specific issue. Does that make sense? I hope that is clear.
Elaine,
I would have to do some more research, but it was my understanding that it is easier to have a site and blog under the same domain, not for SEO specific keywords, but because the topics are so close. Honestly, we barely touch the website once it is up, most of our work is done to either the blog, news, free tools, portfolio and testimonials pages because these are all very dynamic and always changing. I guess my point is the blog is helping the domain getbrandwise.com become more relevant since it is always increasing our online footprint by adding these dynamic page I mentioned earlier. So I guess it is more of a domain popularity issue instead of a keyword specific issue. Does that make sense? I hope that is clear.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Updates are definitely helpful in keeping your domain authority high. I like to update my business website pages itself (particularly the homepage) often to keep search engines and visitors coming back. But if your content is going to stay the same for a long time, it would make sense to host the blog on that domain.
It’s hard to find a right or wrong answer where search engines are involved – other than blatant black hat techniques. I just thought it would be helpful to your readers to know that if they find a web designer whose blog is on a different domain, it’s not really a big red flag that guarantees they will not do a good job.
To me, the most important thing when choosing a web designer / developer is to look at their samples. Can they provide lots of links to actual, still-working websites, that are relevant to the type of work you need the company to do? If not, move on; there are thousands more out there, and it’s best to match your needs to what their strengths are.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. Updates are definitely helpful in keeping your domain authority high. I like to update my business website pages itself (particularly the homepage) often to keep search engines and visitors coming back. But if your content is going to stay the same for a long time, it would make sense to host the blog on that domain.
It’s hard to find a right or wrong answer where search engines are involved – other than blatant black hat techniques. I just thought it would be helpful to your readers to know that if they find a web designer whose blog is on a different domain, it’s not really a big red flag that guarantees they will not do a good job.
To me, the most important thing when choosing a web designer / developer is to look at their samples. Can they provide lots of links to actual, still-working websites, that are relevant to the type of work you need the company to do? If not, move on; there are thousands more out there, and it’s best to match your needs to what their strengths are.
Honestly, I do think it is better to have both the blog and the site together. I know some companies that have their blog as a standalone part of their marketing, and some of them are highly successful and great web people. I would say the majority though are not what I classify as the cream of the crop. I want my readers to understand quick ideas they can look to in order to find a quality vendor. If 50-75% of the web shops that have the blog and site unconnected, then I think it is easier for a non-experienced web person to play it safe. Typically if you have the blog and website connected, you know some technical skills to bring them together and in our part, have a strategy for doing so.
I do like you idea of showing samples of actual website still working. If you do your job right the clients website will stay live for a long time. There is where the main website may not change much, but the client is focused on adding content and updates in other areas of the site. Another thing to look at is if the sample is being regularly updated since this will show that the web developer is either continuing to help the client or has trained the client on the importance of creating remarkable content on an ongoing basis instead of just a typical static website that really is useless. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Elaine.
Honestly, I do think it is better to have both the blog and the site together. I know some companies that have their blog as a standalone part of their marketing, and some of them are highly successful and great web people. I would say the majority though are not what I classify as the cream of the crop. I want my readers to understand quick ideas they can look to in order to find a quality vendor. If 50-75% of the web shops that have the blog and site unconnected, then I think it is easier for a non-experienced web person to play it safe. Typically if you have the blog and website connected, you know some technical skills to bring them together and in our part, have a strategy for doing so.
I do like you idea of showing samples of actual website still working. If you do your job right the clients website will stay live for a long time. There is where the main website may not change much, but the client is focused on adding content and updates in other areas of the site. Another thing to look at is if the sample is being regularly updated since this will show that the web developer is either continuing to help the client or has trained the client on the importance of creating remarkable content on an ongoing basis instead of just a typical static website that really is useless. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Elaine.