Before approaching a website design company you should have a good idea of the kind of website you need to ensure you get a proper price and no hidden or surprising fees during the course of the design work.

The types of websites that exist:

Informational:

An informational site is essentially a website that provides information on your business, company, services without selling any products online.  Examples of informational sites would be realtors, restaurants and even web design companies as they aren’t actually selling a product but bringing about awareness of their services and products they offer.

An informational website is open to the creative freedom of any design you want and use of any mixture of technologies such as flash, DHTML, java script, RSS, PHP, ASP and more. To keep a site SEO friendly it’s best to build a website in HTML, PHP or ASP but not all flash or frames.

Typically sites are built in HTML and the other technologies enhance the look and experience for your visitors.

• Flash can be used to animate and liven up a website or used to convey an important message. 
• DHTML and flash navigations allow for professional and customizable menus that can include drop down and slide out options to organize your site in an easy to navigate, attractive package.
• Java Script drives mouse over effects, photo rotations and other basic functions to more complex features that allow an interactive site.
• RSS can be used to pull in news feeds and other information that will update automatically.
• PHP and ASP are technologies that run databases.  Should your site need a database to store and show information dynamically such as lists, products, locations and other information that would normally require a large number of pages.

Ecommerce:

Should you wish to sell products on your website you will need an ecommerce website. Ecommerce websites are growing at staggering rates and so are online sales.  More and more businesses are seeing the values of selling online.

There are many ecommerce solutions to choose from, including open source software, paid software, custom designs and monthly plans.  Each option has its pros and cons and will be dependant on your budget, design requirements and size of store.

• Open source software is the least expensive option, however is limited in designs and functions.
• For a one time fee you can purchase ecommerce software that typically includes some design templates but will usually need the design work or at least finishing touches of a web designer.
• Customer websites can be designed allowing the most flexibility of any ecommerce solution.  These options are becoming more and more affordable with the new technologies a custom ecommerce site is an option to consider.
• There are many companies offering monthly subscription solutions.  The monthly fee typically covers the use of the software, hosting and support.  These options usually include basic templates and design work would be additional.   

To determine what is the best option for your ecommerce store you will need to determine your budget, design needs, right down to how many products you intend to sell.  Again, like the informational websites you need to ensure your solution is SEO friendly, although most ecommerce softwares are now ensuring they are SEO friendly.  

Blogs:

Blogs, like this very site are growing in popularity daily.  There are 2 blog solutions each with their own pros and cons.  

The first is with a blogging software there are free and paid softwares all with their own pros and cons.  Most come with a standard design but there are the options of buying a template or having a custom design made. 

The second option is with a 3^rd party blogs.  With these blogs you simply sign up for an account, choose from a selection of templates and start your blogging.  These are usually very simple to use but leave very little room for customization or personalization of the blog.

With either choice the customization of a blog is limited, but is a great addition to any site or a great site on its own.

Understanding what you are looking for and what you will need will help ensure a web design company will understand what you want as well as ensure they provide you proper pricing and lastly that they have the capabilities of building what you want.

One common mistake that many website owners make is not having a current copy of their website files.  Many don’t think to ask for a copy from their web design company and don’t have a web master to provide the files or ensure they are backed up somewhere other than the hosting server, or aren’t comfortable technically to download their own. 

Depending on your hosting company, your site may or may not be backed up automatically and should they have problems, crash, reset or in some cases we’ve even seen them shut down without warning.  Without your website files your entire website could be lost and you incur the expense and time lost to have a new site recreated.

Even if you aren’t technically inclined or experienced there are 2 easy ways in which you can back up your website files on your own computer.

Control Panel - Most hosting companies supply a control panel.  The most popular is Cpanel from www.cpanel.net, which is accessed at www.mydomainname.com/cpanel .  You will need to know your hosting user name and password, typically supplied when your hosting account was created.  Cpanel control panels are very easy to use and icon based.  One such icon is Backups.  In this section you can download an entire backup of the folders that make up your website all in one easy step.  At the same time this section can also be used to restore the website from these backed up files at anytime.

FTP Access - FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and isn’t as scary as it sounds.  It does require an FTP program which there are a few good ones that are free such as Filezilla from Mozilla the makers of FireFox or CoffeeCup.  Once you download one of these softwares you will need to know 3 settings;  FTP address which is usually ftp.mydomainname.com, your hosting user name and hosting password.  Once you have this information and enter it in the FTP software you will be able to connect to your hosting server.  Your website files will be in the folder typically entitled www or public_html.  Once you have opened this folder you can simply drag and drop the website files to your computer just as you would with windows files.

Having your website files backed up other than on your web server is crucial to protecting your website and now you have the steps to ensure it’s protected.

You’ve heard the horror stories from others who’ve tried SEO, investing thousands of dollars and not getting results or get short term results that quickly drop magically after payment has been made.  Perhaps you have called a few local SEO companies and found wild prices ranging from $300 per month to $8000 for 3 months or $1000 per keyword.  Plus all conversations involved long drawn out techno-babble that was difficult to understand. Perhaps you have ventured as far as to hire an overseas company at an affordable price, only to have weeks between emails and work, all while your website is going nowhere fast.  

So, how do you find a good affordable SEO solution for your online business or website?  The simple answer is a little research.  But, to research properly you need to know what to look for in an SEO company, enough to know what to look for in a company to judge if they know what they are doing or are dangerous to your business. 

Here are the top 5 criteria to evaluate an SEO company by: 

1. Methodologies – In plain speak these are the methods that they use to gain your website top rankings.  No company will fully disclose all the methods they will use but watch for terms such as “ethical”, “white hat” and “legal”.  If a company doesn’t employ ethical SEO methodologies the end result will be that your website will be sandboxed (where Google will freeze your website for a period of 3 to 18 months or more, no rankings will be achieved during this time), semi-banned (where Google will only include your website in the “supplemental index” where it will never rank for anything but a search under your company or domain name) or worse yet, banned (where your site will never see rankings and sites can be banned in all search engine discovering the illegal tactics used). Once semi-banned or banned the only solution is to buy a new domain name and start over from scratch.  

Make sure the company clearly states they use ethical and white hat SEO tactics or drop them from your list.  

2. Link Building – This ties in with methodologies but is so important that it deserves a number of its own.  Link building is one element of proper SEO work, but if not done properly has the capability of destroying your chances of ever ranking in the search engines.

Most SEO companies know that link farms are bad and becoming a thing of the past, however many have yet to catch on to some of the more recent changes to link building that are now frowned upon or outright punishable by the search engines.  Some link building red flags to watch out for are:

• Reciprocal Link Building - Where the company will build links to your website by trading a link back to their’s. Search engines, especially Google punish websites that participate in link building.
  
• Linking Rings – Where the company will build a series of inbound links with other sites where everyone trades a one way link
  
• Forum or Blog Posting – Forum or Blog posting is considered spam or garbage posting by forums and blogs.  Many companies employ this tactic to build mass amounts of quick links all which fade quickly and hurt your site in the process

If a company doesn’t mention their link building methods on their website ask them specifically where and how do they build links and just as important ask them how fast.  Building 100 links in a month will only damage your site’s chances to rank well in Google.  Make sure they are building quality, related industry, inbound links or their link building will only hurt your site in the long run.  

3. Portfolio – Nothing speaks louder to a company’s capabilities than their portfolio.  How do you evaluate a company’s portfolio?

Firstly if you find an SEO company not actively promoting their portfolio on their website, drop them from the list.  This is such an important part of displaying their capabilities that missing this from their website is either poor business leadership or a deliberate act.  

Secondly look for 3 crucial pieces of information in their portfolio:

·        Domain name/URL – Without this you won’t be able to verify the top rankings.  Also search among the sites for similar industries to yours such as ecommerce, small business, retail shops, travel companies, realtors etc and notice their results.

·        Keywords – In addition to verifying the rankings achieved in the search engines you also need to look at the keywords themselves to get an idea of how “competitive” their keywords targeted are.  A simple method to see how competitive a keyword is, is to check how long the keyword is and if it’s targeting a small local area, large local area or globally.  A small local area will have less businesses competing for the top ten than a metropolitan area like Chicago, New York or Toronto.  As well the more words in the keyword the less competitive it is.  For instance did they get good rankings for “Electronics stores” or was it “Electronic stores selling Sony TV’s” or “Electronic Stores in Kalamazoo Michigan”.  Obviously getting good rankings for the second and third terms would be easier than the first. 

·        Rankings Achieved – Look at the rankings they have achieved and then go to Google and spot check some of them.  If the rankings are not there inquire about this.  From time to time clients stop their SEO work when rankings are achieved, only to have their rankings drop, or accidentally erase or undo the coding on the website or other changes that will undo the SEO work causing rankings to drop.  A good company will have testimonials or ranking reports to verify the rankings they have gained.  

4. Price – This is likely the original deciding factor you would have used, but hopefully the preceding information has shown that going with the cheapest or even the most expensive won’t ensure you get a great company or even quality work. You will also notice that even after viewing the top 20 SEO companies in the search engines you will be hard pressed to find even one that lists their prices on their website.

SEO companies have a variety of ways in which to charge for their work.  Some charge monthly, some work quarterly (3 month blocks), some require 1 year commitments and others bill by the keyword, page or hourly rate.  The best option to look for is a company that works monthly or quarterly as this allows for monthly payments and the ability to stop the work in a short period of time if the arrangement is not working out.  

Red flags to watch out for:

·        Hidden fees – Some companies will charge more for link building, for targeting more than one search engine, for providing monthly reports.  Make sure you ask to know about all fees upfront and ensure they are put in the contract.

·        Commitment times – Some companies may try to lock you in for a set amount of payments, such as one year or more. You will be required to pay these with or without results and even if you try to terminate your contract with them.  Commitments of 1, 3 or 6 months are standard and reasonable anything more than that may only end up taking your money with no results.

·        Confirm Pricing – If you are interested in an SEO company that doesn’t post their prices on their website are unable to produce a pricing list for you, call back and test by providing another domain name requiring similar work and ensure the pricing they give you is similar to the original pricing. Many companies, even large companies don’t offer fixed pricing for the same work and adjust their pricing based on what they suspect you can afford.

·        Sudden drops in pricing – Along with the point above, if a company starts off at a high price and then at any signs of hesitance on your part they “wheel and deal” with you to lower the price as an “exception” they are likely testing the waters to see what you can afford, where your budget is and try to get the highest amount of money out of you as possible.

·        Upfront Money – It’s not unreasonable for an SEO company to ask for the month’s payment in advance, or a portion of the set fee upfront, but be leery when a company asks for more than 50% of the project price up front, and better yet resolve to a 25%, 25% and 50% payments at fixed milestones.  

5. Language and Customer Service – Usually not something one considers when choosing an SEO company.  Language bears a very important part of effectively optimizing a website.  Not only is important for writing the meta tags that will get proper rankings but also optimizing the content of your pages so that it speaks to the keywords your website is targeting. There are countless times where I have see a website so obviously optimized by a company where English is not their strong suit.  Many companies think of only the search engines and write to them, forgetting that visitors and potential clients will be reading what is written and nothing is more unappealing to a visitor than poorly written text. 

Always hire a company that is capable of writing professionally and understands the nuances and slang of the language you need optimization in. This doesn’t mean just scrutinizing offshore companies but also

North American, UK and Australian companies as well, as many may outsource the work offshore or may be technically trained but not educated in writing professional content. Lastly consider customer service.  Many SEO companies promise great rankings, more traffic and appeal to your need to increase online business but many come up short when it comes to customer service.  Some factors to consider:·        Are you given a direct contact or a general email box to be answered by whoever is on call that day and may not necessarily be familiar with your business.

·        Are they going to explain the work and seek approval and insight from you regarding the work they are performing on the site?

·        Will they make all the suggested changes on your website or will they require you to make or arrange all their changes

·        Will the provide a monthly or quarterly report and will that report be explained if it’s not understood.  

All these factors will determine the type of experience you have with a company and may be more or less important depending on how technically trained and savvy you already are.  In closing, there are affordable, quality SEO companies out there; it simply takes some research and time to find them.  In addition to searching in the search engines you can also consider freelance websites where many companies and freelancers will bid on your SEO project providing you a variety of prices and options.  A North American, UK or Australian based company will likely be more expensive than an offshore Indian, Pakistani, Eastern Europe company, however you gain a local company, more familiar with the language, marketing, pace, and clientele you are trying to reach which has it’s own distinct value.