Starting a personal blog or website can be tasking, particularly during the early design phase. This is a time when you’re just getting started, trying to find your niche, and just starting to place the building blocks that will hopefully turn into a successful website someday soon. Relying on do it yourself (DIY) website builder that sometimes fall short can add to some of the stress. After all, you just want to sit down and start typing that blog entry or sharing your site with others.
Good websites take time, but great websites take a lot of time and effort. During your search for the best possible website design service, heed the following:
Embrace White Hat SEO
White Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must-have technique for building a website, particularly during the initial design phase, as it acts as a foundation for your website to be built upon. SEO includes things such as Keyword research and optimization, link-building, and social linkage, among others. Your meta descriptions and title tags need to be relevant to your visitors, and adding alt title tags to your images will also give you a needed boost. With regard to link-building, it should only be done using high quality backlinks and natural linkage. This will lead to natural growth. Unfortunately, most so-called SEO services don’t do it correctly, and generally just post your website links everywhere they can, which inevitably leads to getting punished by search engines, resulting in fewer page views.
Our Full-Service plans, include Premium SEO services that rely on building up your site’s SEO to ensure that visitors know your page is exactly what they’re looking for. We rely on building natural linkage so that your site in the long run becomes easy to find on the front page of Google and Bing.
It’s important to note that no one can guarantee front page appearance in search results. Any person or service who says otherwise should immediately be removed from your list of potential designers, as this is a common misrepresentation of services and false-advertising. They can only try using the white-hat techniques outlined above, but only time and serious effort will tell if they succeed.
READ: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Frequently Asked Questions
Unique Layout and Design vs. Generic Theme
The problem with most “local” web developers is the same problem shared with even the more established development services: website themes are commonly recycled with a limited number of clients. Rather than develop a unique website for you from the ground up based on your needs, they essentially repurpose a theme used for other clients. While this may meet your very basic needs, it can be frustrating if you ever want to stand out from a crowd and show off your own unique style.
As with unlimited updates above, our web design services are based on your unique tastes and we design based solely on your needs. Also like unlimited updates above, recycling themes is a fairly uncommon practice, particularly with local web design services where resources can be severely limited.
What Other Services Are Included? Are they High Quality?
Web design is a given. But what other services are being offered to you, and is there a way to verify if these services are legitimate or high quality? For instance, there are plenty of SEO services out there, but are they going to concentrate on giving you high quality visitors or are they going to concentrate on just giving you backlinks by plastering your website address all over the internet, potentially getting you flagged by Google, Bing, or other search engines?
If they offer graphic design or logo and icon design, are the graphics going to be high quality and fast-loading? You don’t want graphics that slow down your web page as slower pages will cause you to rank lower in search results as Google algorithms evolve; it will also cause your visitors to leave your site if it doesn’t load in a few seconds. This is also true if your design service is providing your hosting, in which case, you’ll want to make sure they have fast-loading servers. SSL website security is also a good idea to show your visitors that they’re protected.
Finally, though it may seem obvious, make sure that if they offer it, they provide it. Don’t pay for a service that you’re not getting, something all too common online today.
These are just a few things you’ll want to watch out for and be aware of. What else have you come across in your travels? Let the community know in the comments below.