Search
I take great pride in developing websites in a way that search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Ask find easy to access. As part of the setup, I always ask people what kind of 'phrases' people might use to look for their services online and try to embed these in key ways that help them to stand out.
As a result, some of my client's sites have performed extremely well in terms of bringing in visitor traffic - even without any additional costs being involved. Although there is never any guarantee of success in this area, it is always a good idea to hire a service provider who understands what is involved and who can implement important steps to encourage the results to happen over time. Otherwise you close yourself off from a potential, regular source of new business.
Examples of the kinds of things I ALWAYS do to promote results include:
- Registering a special sitemap that tells Google what pages you have
- Building your website using a technique that that works best in my experience (called 'tableless XHTML with CSS formatting' and is also tested and externally validated by the premier organisation that lays down standards for how website should be built)
- Embedding important searchable phrases into the code to help it get noticed
These are just a few examples of the kind of things that can make a huge difference, there are more but I'd rather not give away that information since I use it to give my clients the advantage over other websites whose designers are not aware of the tricks.
I also make an effort to inform my clients about why things can help their results so that they are part of that process. The reason for this is that your decisions can also have an impact in this area, for example your content can be used to establish the relevance of your website when your potential new clients are searching for what you have to offer.