There is a long history of battles between web designers and search engine optimization (SEO) specialists. Often the client, ends up caught in the middle and pays the price. But you can avoid them with one simple step which I’ll share below…
Lines Drawn in the Sand
Web designers often take shots at SEOs saying that SEO is manipulative, irrelevant, or that it’s so simple they (the designer) can do it (with no training and little experience.)
SEOs often complain of designers that make SEO difficult with poor coding and coding sites in ways that make optimization for search engines difficult.
Shots Fired
What’s more, designers and SEOs often battle each other for access to the site. Or even worse, I’ve heard of cases where SEOs and designers intentionally change and overwrite code implemented by the other.
As the battle escalates, both end up complaining to the client – organization who owns the website – that the other is keeping them from being able to do their job. The organization ends up caught in the middle having to arbitrate between the two. And with little knowledge of design or SEO principles, they are ill equipped to make decision between the competing interests of the designer and the SEO.
Protect Yourself
If you’re the person in your organization in charge of the website, and you’re the one responsible for redesigning the website and maximizing its visitors, this make be a frightening scenario that you never even realized was possible.
The easiest way to protect yourself against design/SEO turf wars is to hire one company to provide both services.
Be wary of design companies that claim to include SEO at no extra charge. Most of the time, what they mean is they will make your site “search engine friendly,” which means it is able to be optimized. They don’t actually do any actual optimization – the keyword research, the on-page optimization, provide a content development strategy or a link building service.
Proven Results
Make sure you select a company that has provided proven results for both design and SEO services.
OurChurch.Com has been providing Christian organizations with great-looking custom websites as well as SEO services that dramatically increase traffic and help organizations reach their strategic goals (more sales, more church visitors, increased school enrolment.)
We offer packages that include both design and SEO, so you get great value and don’t have to worry about design/SEO turf wars.
4 Comments
Forgive my ignorance but I would've thought that this discussion was irrelevant for an organisation like yours. Yes if you're a big multinational like Coca Cola, you worry about SEO. But when you're a human-based, human-sized organisation in a specific location like yours, you must've got SEO beat with Word or Mouth. Am I missing something obvious?
Phil, what do you mean by "you must've got SEO beat with Word or Mouth?" Do you mean that word of mouth produces far more visitors/sales than SEO? Or that word of mouth gets one to the top of the search rankings?
I don't believe either is accurate. First of all, we do receive visitors and sales from word of mouth, but our biggest source of new visitors is search engines. Even churches, which are "human-based, human-sized organisation in a specific location" frequently receive more visitors from search engines than word of mouth because research shows up to 80% of people who are looking for a church start their search online.
Second, while word of mouth can help search rankings when that word of mouth is online (social media, links) it's still only one part of the SEO puzzle.
I do agree with you that SEO is very important for small business concerns to get big amount of customers which will move your business on the way of success. I think nowadays, people must pay attention upon social media along with SEO because majority of people use social medias for getting information as well as share with others. Phill is discussing about SEO for well established brand like Coca Cola and I think they don't need SEO anymore because they already have big amount of customers and demand level. However your comparison is pretty informative for bloggers and people running business websites 🙂
Well, the design of the website must be very static so the website has the less loading time and it is one of the ranking factor for website.