My Toronto web design firm, Dandelion Web Design, offers no-obligation web site assessments for prospective clients who already have an existing web site.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of web developers telling clients they will optimize their web site for search engines and the client accepts that without questioning their search engine optimization (SEO) knowledge.  Time and again I review sites and find they have been developed without following even basic SEO principles.

Here are 10 questions to ask your web developer to make sure they know what they are talking about:

1. Where is your web developer’s site positioned in search engine results? If they can’t achieve SEO results for themselves then they won’t achieve the results you want. How did you find them?  If you are looking for a local web designer you should “Google” the key words you think of and see where they are on the list.  In my case I would want Dandelion Web Design to be number one for my closest keywords web design Etobicoke and as high as possible for variations such as using Toronto web design, web designer, osCommerce, Dreamweaver Templates…well you get the idea.  Don’t hire a web designer without checking out their own site as well as other sites in their portfolio.

2. Are they obeying the rules? If your web developer is using tricks to improve your SEO rank they will probably end up getting your site banned from Google or other search engines.  Once your site has been banned it can be very difficult to get reinstated and can take months or even years.  Make sure whoever is working on your site is following the rules.  I recently assessed a site that had their competitor’s name in the meta tags and as hidden text on the page.  Adding text in the same colour as the background of the page so search engine robots will find it but site visitors won’t is called cloaking and will get you banned.

3. Do they offer a guarantee of placement? Nobody can guarantee you a certain search engine ranking.  If somebody makes outrageous claims like promises to get you on the first page of Google this should be a red flag alerting you that this company is not reputable.  They are probably talking about pay-per-click and not natural search engine placement.  Pay-per-click advertising is great for specific marketing strategies, but not for ongoing search engine visibility.  Pay-per-click is not a long-term solution unless you have deep pockets.  “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.  Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a “special relationship” with Google, or that claim to have a “priority submit” to Google.  There is no priority submit for Google.”

4. Are they using up-to-date SEO practices? The way search engines work is changing to keep up with unethical tricks and with new media tools. How well read is your developer? Ask them for examples of blogs they regularly read and receive feeds from.

5. What are meta tags and are they important in SEO? A few years ago, SEO was all about the “keywords” meta tag.  Major search engines no longer care about the keyword meta tag, although it doesn’t hurt to use it.  There are still companies out there selling search engine optimization based on meta tags.  That said, it is still important to use the “description” and “title” metatags… I’ve found many sites that are missing these.  Your page title should be different for each page of your site and should use keywords.  There is no point having a title tag that just says “home” or “about us”.

6. Do they offer SEO copywriting services? It doesn’t help to just plug keywords into a meta tag.  Keywords need to be used in weighted areas of the site, as text-based links, in descriptive image names and Alt text (alternative text that shows as a tool tip when you mouse over an image).

7. How will traffic results be monitored? There are great free tools available for checking up on your results.  Will your developer add google analytics to your site?  Does the host offer webalizer?

8. Do coding practices affect SEO? YES! In one website assessment I found the equivalent of 6 full pages of messy code before reaching the content.  You want search engines to immediately find well written content that uses your keywords properly – not a clutter of code. Your developer should use external cascading style sheets (CSS) and also move javascript to external files.

9. How will site navigation be handled? Will they use images, javascript menus, text-based links for navigation?  Will they include a sitemap?  If your navigation system is created with a Java applet or JavaScript it won’t be read by search engines.  You will need to also supply the searchbots with text-based links to all of your pages.  A sitemap is perfect for this provided that the site developer tells the searchbots where to find the file in the robot.txt file.

10. How will the site be found once it is developed? The webmaster should use Google webmaster tools to verify the website and submit a sitemap.  The site also needs to be submitted to the open directory project and the Yahoo! directory.  Searchbots will also find your site from inbound links - links that point to your site from other sites.  Inbound links are a major component of your website’s search ranking.  Ask those linking to your site to do so using your keywords not words such as “click here”.  Be careful here, if link trading results in your website linking to spam sites or other websites the search engines consider unsavory, it can be penalized.  So it is very important that you trade links only with above-board, reputable websites to avoid being penalized.  Take advantage of social networking to provide inbound links to your site.

You may also be interested in these related posts:

1. Domain Domination – Keyword Targeted URLs
2. Checklist of 10 SEO Basics
3. SEO – a straightforward approach to better visibility
4. Google’s Matt Cutts with Five steps to Get Better Visibility on Google
5. Targeting Canadian Search Results