Website development and administration is not SEO
This is a PSA for all you guys and gals who are looking at website development or design services for a new website or a website refresh. Read on before you pay extra for “SEO” for your website from your developer or website admin.
What really grinds my gears are the myriads of companies that focus on website design, development, and administration, yet say they do “SEO”.
What this often means, is that they are going to be optimizing your website’s technical aspects so that they can say they have done “SEO” for you.
These on page elements are important because they do help to allow search engines like Google to better crawl and understand your website and its content.
However, a quick pass with a tool like Screaming Frog can help to identify these issues and find the kinds of things that your website developer should be doing as they are building or rebuilding building your website.
If you do have some kind of ongoing “SEO” service for your website, from a website developer, then, typically, the best you can hope for is that your web developer starts posting “keyword optimized” blog content for you.
That content typically reads like the most inorganic and keyword stuffed trash that you can find. And people wonder why SEO seems to be filled with useless people. If the only thing that they are offering is these kinds of blog pages, then you’ll want to start asking about their copy writing skills and how well their content does for other websites that are similar to yours.
That’s really because most website developers and admins are just that, website developers or administrators and not SEO’s. To them, SEO is an add on service that they offer to tick off a box. Not a fully-fledged service that they offer to their clients.
Ask questions to avoid the clowns
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that the value added, SEO services that you can get from website designers and developers is always a shell game. Instead, I suggest that you need to be asking questions about these add on services.
Is it just optimizations to help search engines crawl your website or is it more in depth, such as content creation, and link building? What are they actually doing for you if you are going to be paying extra, especially if it’s going to be an ongoing service.
We have several dedicated resources that you can use to help know what questions to ask about the services that you are going to be getting.
The first that you should read is our FAQ page on Commonly Asked SEO questions.
On that page you’ll find what kinds of questions you should be asking about the SEO services that you’ll be getting. If their answers sound good, then it may well be worth your hard-earned clams. If not, look elsewhere for your SEO needs.
If your website designer is going to be delivering an SEO campaign for you, or you are considering an ongoing SEO service, then you should read our page on the life cycle of a SEO campaign.
On that page you’ll find how an SEO campaign works from start to finish. However, if you are having a website built from scratch, the work of the first month, and beyond depending on the complexity of the project, will be eaten up by the actual creation of your website.
Another thing to note is that it’s not uncommon for the SEO services to be a one and done kind of thing, where they optimize your website but don’t do any additional work beyond the “on-page optimizations“. This can save you some time and money when you do launch a full SEO campaign but be aware that there is more to SEO than just getting your ducks in a row for your website.
Wrapping up
SEO services is something that every website needs in some way, shape or form. But you need to be aware of what you are buying before you shell out your cash.
Invest in quality SEO services and get a feel for your potential vendor’s strengths and weaknesses.
If you are in need of quality SEO services to build out your online presence, then contact us and we’ll get started. No matter what stage you are at, from no website to massive sprawling ones, we can help you with effective and proven strategies, customized to your needs and situation.
