My name is Matthew Bredel and as of March, 2007, I am a full-time, work-at-home internet marketer.
For close to 10 years, I worked for a defense company which was an OK job, but I was so uninspired in life and frankly, I needed some more money. That is when I first discovered internet marketing! Now I admit that I didn't start making thousands in my first couple of months (in fact, I lost my shirt!), but I finally saw the "internet light"...
When purchasing a new website, a lot of webmasters offer SEO services, but are these services really providing you with SEO?
I am currently in the process of designing and sourcing out a lot of web design work and most of these freelance designers (or even website programs) offer what they call “SEO Optimization”. I find [...]
When purchasing a new website, a lot of webmasters offer SEO services, but are these services really providing you with SEO?
I am currently in the process of designing and sourcing out a lot of web design work and most of these freelance designers (or even website programs) offer what they call “SEO Optimization”. I find it funny, first, that they call it this since they are really saying Search Engine Optimization Optimization. But we understand what they are offering: They will design your website with SEO in mind. That is good. But do I really need to pay extra for this?
I have written several articles about both on-page and off-page optimization of a website. Most of the on-page optimization is very trivial and frankly, should be included in any package or contract that you sign up for. Optimization of H1 tags, titles, content, anchor texts, etc should be rather simple to the designer and should be a part of the full design process. Some companies will sell you on the meta-tags, but again, these seem to have minimal effect.
Secondly, many companies will advertise the off-page SEO they provide as well. Such things include submission into a ka-zillion search engines, directories, or link websites. These are all good things, but for an extra $500? There are plenty of other companies that will do this service (probably much better, too!) for a much lower cost. I would not be surprised if most of the SEO add-ons are done by the external sites and the web designer takes the profit for themself.
Further, some designers will offer services to research and optimize keywords for your product. That is great, but in my opinion, these are the types of tasks that should be really done by YOU. Having someone choosing the path of your Search Engine Optimization may lead you down some dead ends.
One intriguing offer that may be presented with webmasters that manage many sites are the free links they can give you from other, well established sites. This is definitely worth something, though, like any paid links, these can disappear at any time. Still, this is probably the most valuable form of SEO that a designer can offer you.
The services that ultimately really do matter for SEO are still link trades, articles, Press Releases, Forum postings, etc. These are services that are not usually offered by web designers, though most can be outsourced. I do not want to discourage anyone from taking advantage of “SEO Services” provided by an external source, just be aware of what they are planning to do and ask yourself: If I outsourced this work myself, would I be getting more value for the buck?
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