Domain Names:

First thing a web design company should do, is look for an appropriate / logical / suitable Domain Name for your businesses website. They should tip you on what we think is the best Domain Name for you, always keeping in mind that keywords in domain names is very important regarding search engines! Upon your approval, they should go ahead and register your domain name upon, so that it is secure and cannot be registered by someone else, (rivals).

Web Design:

Your web design must have a good layout. A good layout means that your website will be user friendly, more compatible and easy for "spiders" from search engines, to crawl your website and pick up the necessary keywords and information. Do not use frames or flash presentation in our web design simply because its known to "block" "spiders" from reading further into your websites text information, therefore a simple static website design is all you need. Not like you will know this, but it is important that your web designer does not develop a high number of tables within tables because, search engine "spiders" battle to access text information thats "deep" within those tables.

Presentation:

We designers always urge clients to send high quality / professional, if not, at least decent looking photo's of their business to make their web design / website have that attraction that their business deserves. Good photo's makes a website look Good. Bad photo's (over exposed / under exposed / poor quality photo's) will definitely bring down your websites presentation a lot. Although designers do touch up the photo's that clients send, theres is only 'so much' one can do to a photo.

Meta Tags (Search Engine Optimization)

Web design company's, should make sure that their website designs are fully Search Engine Optimized! This should really be standard for all websites that are made. Although a lot of web design company's do this service, they cannot guarantee that your website will feature on the 1st page (ie: top 10 listings) on any search engine. Reason being is because hundreds of website are been indexed and crawled daily ... and lots of businesses are trying to grab the top position on the search engine rankings, therefore their will be a lot of tough competition out there. So unfortunately only 10 listings can actually get listed on that first page on search engines, where the rest will have to fall on the pages behind. So it is clearly not an easy job!

The key to meta tags is to cleverly phrase your keywords to match what your target market would type in search engines to find the product/service you provide. Before a designer, develops your website, the first thing they should do, is full in the meta tags: TITLE, DESCRIPTION, KEYWORD meta tags... (been the most important meta tags on a website).

Alt tags should be filled in for each photo you have on your website. Links within your website create easy navigation for the search engine "spider" to read all your website content.

Link exchange from other websites is very important, especially if that company is in the same industry as you are.

For many years now, CONTENT still remains as the most important factor for search engine optimization ... pages and pages of content (to do with your business of course), is a powerful method to increase your search engine rankings.

Hosting:

Don't get ripped off with hosting! Look into and do some price research before you choose a company to host your website. Some company's include services within their hosting fee, so be sure to look out for these deals.

My name is Dale Hughes and I am a web designer for South Africa... If you are interested in having a website developed for your company/business ... please visit our website http://www.miniwebs.co.za We take all the points above into consideration ... and we also make sure that you are happy with the work we have done, before we launch your website (pay once you're happy policy)