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Choosing a Web design firm

January 11, 2006 |

Building a search-engine-friendly Web site is the first step in growing any online company. Unfortunately, this critical first step is often overlooked by businesses large and small.

Building a search-engine-friendly Web site is the first step in growing any online company. Unfortunately, this critical first step is often overlooked by businesses large and small.

Consider the following all-too-true scenario: Deep within a corporate cube farm, a brand manager receives the green-light to build a Web site for a timely new product line launch. The department that usually builds these sites—the department with a bona fide SEO (define) checklist—has its hands full with other projects. The brand manager must hire an outside Web design firm to build the new site.

With visions of Web glitz and dazzle and working outside of normal business processes for new site designs, the brand manager hires a firm that excels in building Flash-based Web sites. The firm builds a finely focused, all-Flash site that’s virtually invisible to the search engines (the only text on the page is the parent company’s copyright details). Three months later, the new online brand attains only 25 percent of its sales projection because there’s little to no search-referred traffic coming to the site.

In a panic, the brand manager asks for marketing money for a massive online ad campaign to draw would-be buyers to the site. But the expenditure is unbudgeted, so the brand manager does the next best thing: he requests the site be organically optimized to increase search engine referrals. This is the first time he’s ever heard of search-engine-friendly design.

The brand manager just learned one of the hardest SEM (define) lessons: the time to organically optimize a new Web site is during site design, not after. He could’ve kept the new project launch under budget and on target for sales if only he’d focused on hiring a search-engine-friendly Web design firm in the first place.

How do you find the right Web design firm? Start with the basics.

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