5 Questions to Answer Before Selecting a Web Site Marketing Firm

Web Site Promotion & Marketing

Recently, many web designers have jumped on the web site marketing bandwagon with all kinds of claims. Most of them usually mention submitting your site to a gazillion search engines and how they'll create great meta tags for your site. However, this is definitely an area for caveat emptor or "buyer beware."

Few web designers and firms have both successful website marketing experience and intimate knowledge of the major search engines. Others may not even know that some search engine optimization techniques can actually HARM your web site's visibility in the major search engines. Before you jump in, make sure the web design firm that handles your website marketing actually knows what they're talking about.

To help you make the right decision, here are 5 crucial questions to arm yourself with as you're looking for a reputable web design firm to take your results 2 the Top. The answers you get will let you know if you're talking to someone who can help your website or if they might do permanent damage to your online marketing efforts.

#1 - How do we figure out what keywords to use?

Keywords are the words and phrases that describe your products and services. People surfing the web use keywords at search engines and directories to search for whatever they're interested in. Sometimes your important keywords are obvious. Let's assume your website is about web site design and promotion and you're located in Nashville, Tennessee. Your keywords might include: “Nashville SEO”, “Nashville web designers”, and “Nashville web hosting". However, you're just shooting in the dark unless you do keyword research.

2 the Top has the expertise and tools to properly research not only your industry but also the habits of your target market. We can identify the right keywords to drive targeted, high volume traffic to your web site. Without the right keyword research, you might as well have put up a billboard in the middle of a ghost town.

#2 - How important are meta tags?

Meta tags are clues that were designed to describe your web site to search engines. They're important, but inexperienced firms may rely on them exclusively to obtain your search engine rankings. Beware of web site design firms that focus too heavily on meta tags.

2 the Top knows that proper meta tag usage is one of many aspects of effective search engine optimization.

Several years ago, overly ambitious web site promotion firms realized that they could “stuff” dozens or even hundreds of repeated keywords in the meta tags to achieve high search engine rankings for their web sites. The search engines eventually caught on and now treat this spam one of two ways. They either completely ignore meta tags or they give them only minor consideration. Some search engines also will penalize you if they think you're trying to trick them with your meta tags. Repeat a keyword too many times and you go 2 the Bottom of their rankings.

#3 - How many search engines will my site be submitted to and how often will the search engine submission be repeated?

Beware of web site design firms that focus too heavily on submitting your site to thousands of search engines.

There are only about 10-15 general search engines that are worth submitting your web site to. These top search engines account for about 95% of all searches on the entire web. For most web sites, the rest are insignificant at best. At worst, they're spam traps.

Some web site design firms that aren't familiar with search engine optimization will also make the mistake of repeating your site's search engine submission too often. Guess they don't know that some search engines reward pages that have remained unchanged for a longer period. And they probably don't know which search engine gives a rankings boost to sites that are NOT SUBMITTED but FOUND by that SE's spider.

Sounds like you need the right kind of web site design firm to take your search engine rankings 2 the Top!

#4 - Will my web site be submitted to Free For All (FFA) pages and Link Exchanges? If so, how often & to how many?

Watch out! Some of the better search engines now monitor for participation in FFA pages and Link Exchanges. Why? Well, since they partially base their search results on link popularity, they don't like methods like these that try to trick them. You may get a temporary boost but you risk being penalized or worse. Stay away from these underhanded schemes.

#5 - Will my web site use “Cloaking” and “Hidden Text?”

Some web designers will use methods to show a different web page to the search engines than what they present to a surfer. Or they'll use white text on a white background to stuff invisible keywords onto your pages. Their intent is to trick the search engines and achieve higher rankings. Again, you risk being penalized or banned permanently. Reputable web site design firms and search engine optimization professionals don't use these deceptive SEO techniques.

If you're interested in getting targeted traffic from the search engines, you owe it to yourself to get straight answers to these questions. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of web design firms, regardless of size and reputation, do not have the knowledge and experience to secure the important top rankings on the search engines for you. And way too many web site designers have just enough knowledge to be dangerous, literally!

Don't risk the success of your online opportunity. Make sure you get 2 the Top!

Our web site promotion packages are custom tailored to get the results you need from your web site. 2 the Top can put the search engines to work for you.