To reach your goals you will need 3 things: Web Development, Web Design and SEO. Keeping these job-functions separated in your mind will make for a very successful online endeavor.
Web Development is the building of a web site. It deals with computer coding, things like creating pages and linking them together. Form submissions are a good example – they are the workings of the computer on which the website lives.
Web Design is specifically about the beauty and usability. The things that humans need in a website to understand your business and contact you.
Search Engine Optimization is about arranging things for search engines to understand your web site (and business) better so that your business can be found by those humans.
You can see that these are very different skill-sets that are often wrongly lumped together. The web designer talks to people, the other two to computers. Knowing these job-functions are different will save you from making the biggest, most common mistakes.
Good web design is almost priceless. Its worth every penny. Spend your time and budget on the design/er. And keep them focused on designing for people.
Web Development and SEO are similar in that they must consider the mechanics – how the website function must serve the business. re. an eCommerce website is very different from a local business website.
Web Developers and Designers go together, usually in pairs. The designer designs and the developer turns the design into computer code. What often goes wrong is that during this process, SEO is not included. And that is a big mistake.
I caution against using a Web Design firm to do SEO. 99% of these firms start as web designers (artists). As the firm grows, the imperative to increase services/income naturally includes SEO – but not because they are experts in SEO.
Determine your SEO first, then have the Web Developer follow the blueprint. The SEO should establish the framework on which the mechanics are built. This way the website will function for the business and it will be beautiful to people and it will be a thing of beauty to search engines as well. The perfect web site.
Now you know why Hartenstine does not do web design. We outsource both Web Dev and Web Design to specialist or work with the customers existing web firm. In the case you are seeking a new web-dev-designer. I am happy to help you find one.