Selecting a web design firm can be a difficult process--there are a few key things to consider, namely, will the website be SEO friendly? (And, no, that does not mean the website can have a few solid title and descriptive tags) Watch this video to learn more about what a SEO web design firm should be. Let's get you started!

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Hello, and welcome to our SEO Web Design Firm video. I'm Chad Hill. I have Adam Stetzer here with me, as well.

All right. Good afternoon, Chad. People have realized the power of online marketing and SEO, and they're starting to think about it more and more in the web design process. And I think we would argue that's a good thing.

I want to talk today in our video blog and address those viewers who are looking for an SEO web design firm, help them think through the steps of what they should be asking, where should they be focused, and get them started.

Yeah. so if you kind of unpack the SEO web design firms, what I think that means is someone is looking to build a new website, but they want to make sure that it's SEO-friendly, that they're not going to make the mistake of spending time and money building a website that doesn't get any traffic.

So the first thing that you want to make sure you're doing is you want to make sure that your website is easily discoverable and crawlable by the search engines. So here at Semify, we found that WordPress is a content management system. It's the foundation for all of our websites.

And we've found that it's, perhaps, one of the most easy CMSs for Google to crawl and to make sure that everything you write and put on your website ends up being digested by search engines so that, ultimately, your content can show up in the search results.

So your first point is a really good one. That is, if you're looking for SEO web design firms, that already shows that you're thinking about getting customers to your website, and you know that traffic is important. And that's a huge step forward, because many folks get stuck in the web design process and really obsess over making it look perfect, when there is, in fact, going to be no audience to that website for a long time.

I know I used to take a very unorthodox approach, several years back, where I would just put up a starter site and start working on the promotion first. I probably wouldn't argue that as much anymore, given that Google is looking more at quality websites as a signal. But there is a lesson to be learned there. If no one comes to your website, it just doesn't matter how beautiful it is, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that pretty quickly gets into, ultimately, what content you're putting on the website. And, again, at Semify, you have the choice of either providing the content and saving a few dollars or having us write the content. Of course, when we're writing the content, we have more control over making sure that the keywords that you're targeting get into that content.

But then, more importantly, or, actually, of equal importance, you want to make sure that that content, those keywords, get into some of the most important SEO attributes aside from the content. And those are things like the title tag, the description. And then there are some very specific ways that you can tag your website using schema.org and a few other ways of structuring data so that it's easier for search engines to find and put that information into their index.

Yeah, that's interesting stuff, Chad. Because a traditional web design firm probably puts all of the emphasis on the look and feel and the brand. And an SEO web design firm, as you say, is going to say, content is king when it comes to the search engines and the spiders, bringing those robots to your site, getting digested appropriate. So the SEO web design firm is probably going to try to find a balance between the traditional aspects of the look and feel and the brand, color schemes, as well as the content, which is really important.

Right. And I think you made a good point earlier, Adam. Because it may used to have been that the SEO web design firms would maybe even have steered too far away from the brand and just really focused on the content. But more and more, what a lot of people are talking about is conversion.

And so if you do accomplish your objectives and get traffic to the website, if the website doesn't look good, and it doesn't look lived in, and it just falls flat, you're not going to get the ultimate objective, which is to get new customers. And so you've got to keep those in balance.

And, really, the final thing that I wanted to mention, though, is that an SEO web design firm might say that what really differentiates an SEO web design firm from a more traditional web design firm is that an SEO design firm is really going to be thinking about once this website is launched, that's actually just the beginning.

Whereas some people are going to think that's the end of the project, we, as an SEO web design firm, will be saying that's the beginning of the project, because now we want to promote that website. We want to work on the rankings. We want to work on different ways to drive traffic to the website. Because, again, the objective that we're really focused on is getting new business for that client.

Right, and most people will hear that and think, oh, geez, this pitch is, like, I just have to keep paying this bill forever and ever. And they'll see that as a negative. And what I think is very ironic about that is that's the money you really want to spend. Again, why build a beautiful well-designed website if you don't have traffic and, ultimately, new customers coming in through your marketing efforts? So Chad, what you're saying is totally right.

You should really, as you're shopping for a design firm, be thinking in the back of your mind, once this thing's launched, that's just the beginning. And are they going to have the expertise to keep that moving, bring those customers, show me the ROI, which may seem like long-term a lot of money. But in the end game, it's actually where your return comes from. And you'll find, after a year of doing that and seeing success, you'll be upping that budget, because you'll want to spend more money to get more customers.