SEO

[UK2004]

If a designer builds you a sit and you then want someone to do search engine optimization to try get you a high google ranking, do you have to have the same designer do it or can someone else do it but not alter your site, I understand there is some adding to the code to be done, will this alter the site at all?

[DuaneJackson]

Anyone else can do it.

[Tin]

Hi

Firstly, thinking about SEO after you have had your website done is rather like putting the chicken before the egg. It frustrates me no end to see people pay good money for a website design and then find that they are nowhere on the search engines. Any designer/developer worth their salt will find out your exact needs for a website then either build the optimisation in during the development of the site or will recommend an SEO company who will ensure that the website (through liasing) is built in such a way as to ensure the best possible chance of good rankings.

It depends how your original designer built your site as to whether they or a.n.other can SEO it successfully. Ironically, I've seen some superb site designs that can't be seo'd effectively and yet seen some back bedroom sites that whilst looking poor from a design perspective are absolutely perfect for seo to make them a huge success for their owners.

You do not have to go to the same designers who built you the site in the first place, but it maybe that they have designed it in such a way as to make it difficult if not impossible for an SEO company to successfully achieve top rankings.

Sorry to sound full of doom and gloom but it is a bit of a hobby horse for me, as I said I find it increasingly frustrating to see people paying for websites and then as an afterthought thinking of SEO and treating it as a 'bolt on commodity', it just doesn't make economical sense.

[WomenXtra]

we had a designer build our site..and funny enough they knew alot about SEO.. yet when they designed the site they made it sooo hard for the spiders to go through it.

not all designers are good in SEO...get a specialist one and your better off.

[Kent]

Some great points there from Tin. Also remember that when writting the copy for any site you are writting for two audiences. 1. Your potential customers who are visiting your site and 2. search engines. As Tin pointed out any developer worth their salt would advise you of this and have the ability to highlight and position the important peices of text / keywords etc to make it easy for spiders to read and rank your site. Also remember there is no subsitute for incoming links and i've found that for the most part you can do this yourself.
Regards

[toystoyou]

I know you probably know this already but I have to say it - be careful who you choose to do your SEO. I've been ripped off by an SEO company - got my money back eventually but I spent 8 months where no-one could see or find my site while they were allegedly optimising it! Those 8 months could've seen me lose the business completely!!!
I did my own SEO and am constantly working on it!! Only take on an SEO company that comes highly recommended.
I'm sure there are lots of people on this site who know of a good company or who have an SEO company that can help you.

[SillyJokes]

I was approached by a seo company to exchange links with a certain site this week using the usual 'I have visited your website and think it is great and has relative contents' line.

The link they had put up was so bad (included the link title of my links page - not very inspiring or relevant to what we actually do) and was utter pants that I replied in the negative and copied it to the email addresses I found on the site in question.

The MD of the site contacted me to say he was disgusted with the standard of the work this company was doing and would be taking it with them.

So beware, cheapo, lazy SEO companies spamming me with link requests - your slovenly emails will be back to haunt you.

[UK2004]

I should of said in my first post that my site is being built now it's not finished yet, I am looking at worst eventualities, theyhave said it will be optimized for search engines and admittedly their other site of my genre shows up first page on google but was wandering incase it didnt work out great. We have a lot of offline advertising and google adwords campaign planned so hopefully those things will bring in enough customers to start with. If the google rankings after a couple of months are poor then I will get a recommended firm to help out.

[Tin]

UK2004 said:
theyhave said it will be optimized for search engines
In my opinion, there's a hell of a lot of web designers who don't have a depth of seo knowledge sufficient to enable them to provide top rankings for any clients that ask for that side of work. I can appreciate no one wants potential design work to walk out of the door if the client requires a service the designer cannot supply but simply slapping in a load of keywords and conjuring up some poor titles and descriptions does nothing to help. There's actually quite a lot of work required to get the most out of those areas which most designers completely overlook.

The worst case scenario is to seek seo services from a designer who can't spell! Mind you, there is a positive side, you could easily be #1 for things like

second hand ortomobiles
pushchers and prams
telefishions and electrecal tosters
oilimpus camraas

If it's any help to you PM me the web designers url and I'll be happy to take a look at whether they can do seo or not and feed that info back to you. It might save some tears later on. :roll:

Given that these matters can be sensitive I fully understand if you don't want my advice. :)

[UK2004]

A adding products now to my site, have boxes like Short Description, Meta Description and Meta Keywords, then the main description body. What do all these different things have in relation to search engine position?

[Tin]

"What do all these different things have in relation to search engine position?"

Quite a lot really. PM me if you want some advice http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif