internet marketing

[gbb011]

All too often web design companies build a website and don't offer and make the client aware of the need and importance for an internet marketing campaign.
Is there a checklist that the client should be aware of to ask what the company intends to do?

Below I've listed a few things that the client should discuss
What directories do you intend to submit my site to, both paid and free?
How many directories do you intend to submit to?
What keywords should we target?
How do you target keywords?
do you intend to use Pay Per Click?

I'd be interested if you guys can offer any more suggestions to bring up with web design companies

thanks.

[jestep]

I do think it is better if a design company makes a customer aware of the need to market their website, but I don't think it is the designers responsibility to do this. Many designers know next to nothing about promoting a website, so I'm not sure if I would want them promoting it anyways.

Whatever the case, it should be clearly stated whether there is going to be any promotion, before and work starts.

Getting a site to rank well is much harder and more expensive than actually building it, especially if it is for highly competitive search terms. It should be considered a completely seperate project in itself.

[Lori99]

I think it's best to build the site for search engines. We are actually discussing this approach at my company right now. Rather than just telling our clients that we are going to build them a pretty web site, we are also pushing the importance of structuring the site to be easily read by the search engines. Especially our e-commerce clients where their business thrives from the search engines.

I work closely with the production staff to ensure that they are including Title tags and ALT tags, building the linking structure in a way that allows the search engines to navigate our clients sites. We do encounter head-butting a lot b/c the designers want to do what looks best, but myself and the other web marketers want to have our clients sites built for the search engines.

I guess understanding the firms approach to building a search engine friendly site is what your concern should be. Also asking for references or results of other clients. A couple of our clients end up having us build the site, but then go to a seperate firm to completely optimize the site.

http://www.oneupweb.com/ really puts it into perspective:

Optimization Firms - team of professionals working on your project, great customer service, annual programs range from $30,000 - $100,000

One Man Band - single person within a web company with enough knowledge about the industry, usually find one tactic that works and sticks with it, Annually packages range from $1,000 - $20,000 and usually come in cookie cutter A, B, C packages
(OneUpWeb suggests to ask specific questions about their tactics and then follow up by doing a little research on your own to be safe.)

Software Systems - companies tried to automate the process of SEO, popular among entrepreneurs and small business managers, usually people with little or no knowledge of SEO purchase the software, has a couple drawbacks, but is pretty affordable to the budget conscious businessman

Hope this info helps.

[adbart]

What I've found is that when I am employed to design a site for someone, they don't even mention its marketing.

This is quite clearly something that is not part of a designers' repartee possibly, but nevertheless is increasingly becoming a responsibility.

As a designer, you have a responsibility to your clients to make your site searchable.

I now talk my clients through and offer SEO services with all my design work. So far, not a single one has turned me down.

[KeithO]

Our firm has a design review where comps are put up before the staff before being shown to the clients. its at that time that i usually get to put in some SEO tactics. The design team we have has a good grip on what is smart for search engines though so there really isn't too much for me to suggest. if the design company has a full range of services, they should operate similar to this. its the freelance designers who went to a design school and try to be pixel picassos where trying to optimize those sites becomes an infinitely ridiculous disaster.

[adbart]

Lol do I sense a bit of anger?

Maybe you should petition design schools to get them to teach basic SEO skills....

[KeithO]

Originally Posted by adbart

Lol do I sense a bit of anger?

Maybe you should petition design schools to get them to teach basic SEO skills....

nah. i'm on production team as well. i rarely deal with the clients. i let sales tell them that they wasted their money on a pretty site that no one will ever find. Then they realize they should have started with us in the 1st place.

[adbart]

Lol. Fair do's.

To be honest, clearing up other people's mess is always annoying. And that includes re-vamping websites to reflect keywords.

Grrrrrrrrrrr

[mspidc01]

I'm curious about other folks' experience convincing clients to implement optimized design up front.

I'm currently working with a new client to implement our SEO and CMS toolkit, and struggling with this. They have also retained
- an excellent SEO firm.
- a less excellent usability/web experience/web project management firm.

The project management firm claimed SEO experience and started out saying all the right words, but --- when internal designers wanted a site with a homepage that was one big picture, no words and all Javascript navigation, they said "that's OK, the idea that page content matters is old information. The developer (me) must not be keeping up with the latest trends." I've argued until I'm blue in the face that being found and providing what users actually want and have asked for should be the first priority, but with little success. Expereince suggests that after the artistic site goes up, then there will be another SEO-driven project to fix it, but why do people want to go through that? Why not just do it right up front?

Curious for others' perspective,
Mark

[Lori99]

Originally Posted by mspidc01

I'm curious about other folks' experience convincing clients to implement optimized design up front.

Its so difficult with clients. We have had experience with a couple of clients where we just fill them with information on the importance of designing the site in html vs flash or one way vs another way. They never want to listen to us until after the site is live. Then about a month after the site is live, we get a phone call "Why aren't we showing up in the search engines?"

Well. DUH! You were so persistant on having a web site that looked beautiful, and ya didn't want to listen to us.

It's really tough to measure that one. Some of our clients are aware of the importance to design for the search engines and others really need to be sold on that fact. But, then they still push to have the site created one way, and for the cheapest dollar amount.

[Fulgore]

Technology for technologies sake is just silly. I fought for 2 months with my Executive Director trying to explain that the majority of the audience we are trying to communicate with is still using Windows 98 on antiquated machines with dial-up. Sure the flashy graphics are nifty but if the audience is unable to view it your going to loose that audience.

It was also a struggle to have them understand that they needed consistency with all the types of information flowing from the office, whether it was newsletters, the website, or emails the message needs to be the same, that also goes for color, logos etc.

Brand recognition is as important as search engine optimization.