Do Your Homework Before You Hire A Web Designer

I am completely flabbergasted.

Just finished reading a post at a mothering forum I frequent about a WAHM who has hired three nuts to design her websites.

Normally, I’d just chalk this up to to the original poster not knowing what to look for in a web designer. An isolated case. But I have just finished teaching a web design class at my local technology center and the sites my students had paid people to build were just as nuts as what you’re describing. Apparently, there are a lot of people out there that have been hoodwinked by a web designer who knew less about building websites than their clients … who at least know that what the web designer is doing isn’t working!

One of my students had a web site that was nothing but a huge graphic with two little bitty frames in which the designer quite literally hid the content and navigation.

Another student had a site in which every page was completely different and the content looked like it had been puked up on the page by a toddler.

Yet another student had a fairly decently organized site — but you were too busy playing with the flash bubbles in the header to notice what the site said.

ARGH. Where are these people learning web design?!

Before you hire a web designer, you need to follow the advice below to make sure you don’t pay for a website that will do your business more harm than good.

How To Avoid Bad Web Designers

1. Ask the designer you’re going to hire what methods they’ll be using to build your site, and then look through their portfolio. Go to the sites and see how those sites are ranking for their keyword phrases.
2. Run far away from designers who are more interested in building a pretty site than a site that works — in other words, sells your products.
3. Finally, I’d like to suggest that you read my SEO friendly website special report* that I’m offering at SEO Power Up (or sign up for the course, once we go live with the site).

*This report is no longer available for free. But you can receive it as part of your membership in SEO Power Up.

How To Make A Website

If you have never set up a website, you may not realize how tricky it can be to keep things organized. It can be especially difficult if you plan to have a lot of content. Starting things off in an organized manner will help you keep track of things later.

One item that has been up for debate is whether to create subfolders or subdomains. If your domain, or URL, is www.yourname.com, a subfolder would look like this www.yourname.com/subfolder. A subdomain would look like this: http://subdomain.yourname.com. The following are some tips on deciding when to use each type of organizational method.

You will want to name each of your pages as descriptively as possible, without making them too long. Of course, keeping things descriptive will help the search engines find you. You will also want a person who only sees your URL to have a good idea of what content they would find if they clicked on your link.

Most people can organize their site info by simply using subfolders. If you have a site with information on family vacation ideas, you may choose to organize your site into folders by geographical region or by activity. If you have a site devoted to household organization, your folders could be named after rooms of the house.

Each subfolder can also have its own subfolders. Using the example of the family vacation site, the geographical region and activity folders can be further divided by cost. If you were going to have a content page that described budget friendly options for traveling to Florida, your page might be named something like: www.familyvacationideas.com/florida/budget.

If you want to create a bit of separation between your content, yet still create brand recognition, you would want to add a subdomain. For instance, if you have a website that contains information about raising children aged 5 – 8, and have been thinking about adding content about home schooling, setting up a subdomain may be your best option.

The search engines will treat your subdomain as if it is a separate website. By having incoming links to your main site, you can add to the traffic coming in to that site, as well. If someone is familiar with your main website, they will automatically relate your subdomain to your main domain. Yet, they will also understand exactly what type of information the subdomain has to offer.

Another reason to use subdomains is if you are creating a special event for your main website, such as an expo or class. Again, people that are already familiar with your main site will see that the site is affiliated with you.

There is no concrete evidence that one method works better for search engine traffic. It is simply a matter of preference over which way you would rather organize things.

Also, if you are using a sitebuilder like the Shop Kit Plus or a content management system like Wordpress, you won’t need to worry about setting up subdomains. The program will create pages and product or informational categories for you.