# General Business Category > Marketing Forum >  The standards of web design in SA

## Chatmaster

I was on my way to the office today when my cell phone rang. The lady phoned me after being referred by one of my clients and she was disheartened. She quickly explained to me that she has had a website live for nearly 5 years now and had several redesigns done on it by different web designers over the period of time costing her in access of R60k. During the 5 years period she has never had one referral, not even one! I told her that I would give her a call the moment I had a look at it and we will discuss her options. In my years in the industry I have received several similar requests, but this one was enough to cause me to go hit the punching bag for 5 minutes before returning her call.

The website had fantastic content and I was truly impress by her writing style as it grabbed my eyeballs and made me want to go to KZN with my next vacation. There were just a few basic problems with her site.

She had an image landing page with a Ã¢â¬Åclick to enterÃ¢â¬Â button. Once I got to the internal pages I was shocked to see that the website had a JavaScript dropdown menu that couldnÃ¢â¬â¢t be indexed. In viewing the source code I could even see where the JS source code was borrowed from.

In terms of conversion rates and usability there was simply dull pages that looked like big advertising boards. It took about 4 hours of my time to just analyze and compile a suggestions report. It was clear to me that the web designer wasnÃ¢â¬â¢t a complete newbie and this made me even more angry as he should have known better. But this incident made me think!

Just what do web design companies sell to their clients. I personally would not just design and associate myself with any website as I feel reputation is of importance in our small industry. If she could pay R12k for this website, what should I charge for my websites (Sarcasm intended). Is it time that someone brings out a website where web design companies are being blacklisted? Is it fair to judge web designers that clearly have no idea what makes a website work? Is it the web designerÃ¢â¬â¢s responsibility to deliver a product that works or to deliver a product that the client (Who has no idea what works) demands? How can this be improved? 

Any opinions?

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## Dave A

First off - I think it is a very common problem. The first site I ever "set up" was for an industry association about 6 years ago. Essentially I wrote the content and outsourced site design and layout. And it cost a fair bit for what was little more than a mildly modified ASP based CMS.

After walking the road here, I was approached to revue a new page of content for that site. I was horrified by what I found and looked at the full site now armed with the knowledge gained (as an unintended consequence) here.

I think the thing that bugs me the most was some of the shortcomings were really basic. Such as some simple CSS stuff that makes a big difference. An example - main headings were called class_1 instead of H1. Tight synopsis content was class_3 instead of H2. No robots.txt, no sitemap, hopeless page titles.

Perhaps we can lay this at the door of a lack of professionalism (and that seems valid enough), but I don't think that is the only problem.
Most stock standard CMS's are not well optimised even on the basics.SEO is held as being a near mystical art (I agree it is heavily nuanced, but the basics are the basics).There is something of an attitude among coders (and I'm not even going to try to expand on that - but non-coders who have spent much time around "average" coders will know what I mean).The client is ignorant of the fact that pretty does not necessarily equal effective.

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## Marq

I think there are two additional factors to this problem within the web building profession and its not just this area that has a problem.

Its a catch 22 type set-up. 

The first is that the fundamentals of business practice from admin, philosophies, operations etc, through to ethics is generally missing today. Bad potty training. The basics are not taught and everyone wants to fly before they have learned the complexities of aerodynamics. Result = crash.

This results in the second factor; which is that there is a vast amount of information out there which allows the DIY guy to train themselves to be a "passable" marketable resourse. 

The problem here is that because they do not have the basics and have no proper formal training their views and business practices are skewed and the results show up in badly presented reports/presentations/websites which on the surface appear to be good but below is a structure without foundations. DIY in this case = Don't Involve Yourself.

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## leuce

> It was clear to me that the web designer wasn’t a complete newbie and this made me even more angry as he should have known better. But this incident made me think!


Think of it from the web designer's perspective.

What is the goal of a web designer?  Surely it is to win web design contracts and to get good referrals quickly.

It is understandable, therefore, that web designers would submit proposals that look impressive on the surface instead of being impressively efficient in the deep structure.  Potential clients are led by what they see, not by the theory of good web design.  Furthermore, clients are more likely to talk about their web sites when the site is still new, and presumably that is the time when most word-of-mouth referrals happen.

A similar thing happens to translators (I am a translator).  A company may commission one of its employees (say, Joe) to get something translated.  Now I can either translate in such a way that the company will get most benefit from the translation, or... I can translate in a way that most impresses Joe.  My word-of-mouth referrals will come via Joe, not via the rest of the company when they eventually notice increased sales (which may well be a result of my highly suitable but visually unimpressive translation).  So... if you look at it from my perspective... whom should I woo?

The ideal is to do both, of course.  One has to have some professional pride, after all.

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## Debbiedle

I have to agree with Leuce - Designing is just that - the exterior and the aesthetically pleasing.

SEO and the ability to accommodate the demands of SEO is a marketing issue.

Logical function eg automatic invoicing is a programming function.

It has been my contention for years that there is a gap in the market for an advisor or consultant (I am now both ducking and dodging) to act as the liaison between all 3 of the above parties and the client, should the latter not be informed enough to know the difference.

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## Dave A

Hold on a moment. We're talking about *websites*, not magazines. 

If all you want is pretty to look at, why not just do the whole thing in image files? Including the text. It would save a heck of a lot of layout issues and be the same thing, right? 

I don't think so. The text is in text for a reason.

My gripe is at the most basic level. Really basic stuff. A simple thing like page title, a description tag, and using a few important tag names don't affect the final visual appeal, and it's more likely to aid the design process. And from there the SEO expert can start weaving their magic without having to re-engineer the entire site.

Forgiving this because the website designer is an "artiste'" is just not on. An artist generally won't use watercolour on canvas made for oils. And if they ever did, it would be intended, not out of ignorance.

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## Chatmaster

Maybe I should go about things this way. Lets rather answer the following questions first and then based on our answers there decide what the role of the web designer is in the whole process. Why does anyone want a website? Why does any business need a website?

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## Dave A

To influence existing and potential clients to make the right decisions?

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## leuce

> Why does anyone want a website? Why does any business need a website?


There's this pub in the bush, and they're making some money because they have some regular customers.  The owner then gets a brainwave -- why not introduce a shuttle service to transport potential customers from the main road to the pub?  The shuttle minibuses are expensive, but running costs are low.  After a few months, the owner realises that although the shuttle service has been running, it hasn't brought him any new customers.  He is angry and annoyed at the guy who sold him the shuttle minibuses.  He knows that other businesses have shuttle services and they're obviously making a tonne of money.  So where does the problem lie?  With the shuttle service, obviously...

...not!

The owner has a misconception of how a shuttle service could bring him more customers.  He thinks that if the service is in place, customers would automatically come.  If they don't, he blames the service... not the implementation of it.

He doesn't realise that when he sees other businesses' shuttle services, what he's seeing is only the visible part of a more comprehensive marketing programme.  He would have spent his money better getting smaller shuttle buses that formed part of an integrated marketing plan.

A web site should not be expected to stand on its own, but should form part of a comprehensive marketing strategy.  The problem with small businesses is that they can't afford extensive marketing projects, and their owners do most of the marketing themselves, so they tend to think of a web site as a complete solution instead of a single tool in a large toolbox.

Ideally, in a small business setup, the person responsible for the web site should have an interest in the business itself.  A web design firm will design the site and then forget about it, but a one-person marketing department might continually refine the web site and do stuff with it until it actually makes money.

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## Debbiedle

Surely a website IS a magazine /brochure in a more eco friendly medium?  IMHO not all magazines have the same goal, nor market, in mind either.  So the biggest question has to be "what do you want from the website"

One of the best designer sites - http://www.steinergraphics.com

For me they are a whole planet ahead of most on design, but when it comes to the reality of SEO, they don't feature.

I somehow don't think it is important to them.

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## Dave A

> One of the best designer sites - http://www.steinergraphics.com


And then we do a Google search for *website designer* or *web site design* and we get?
Even with *web design*, one of the site's listed keywords - nowhere.

The site has PR5. So clearly inbound links (referrals or "reputation") is how people are finding him. Now if he paid a little attention to keyword presentation for search engines, they'd be impressed too.

EDIT: OK. I've now tried quite hard. web design geneva, web design canada - _nada_

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## duncan drennan

> For me they are a whole planet ahead of most on design, but when it comes to the reality of SEO, they don't feature.
> 
> I somehow don't think it is important to them.


It's crazy, like saying that it is not important for people to know how to find your shop.

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## Chatmaster

Designing a website is something that a 12 year old can do. Designing a web site for a business is a complete different story. A business that approaches a design company to design them a website puts the responsibility in the hands of that company to design them a site that will work. At the end of the day the objective of the business is to get web publicity. For this reason they are laying out 1000's and it certainly is not their responsibility to ensure that the basics of the web design was done correctly. They are normally not technical and nor should they be. Although W3C standards are not a requirement for any web design it certainly makes sense following them. The W3C standards are good practice standards that makes it easy for spiders to read and understand the HTML/XML etc. These could easily be used by web designers to ensure that they deliver a quality product. That quality includes a solid rendering website, without any errors in the code and spider friendly for SEO purposes. Remember that SEO is not actually done by the web designer. This still stays the responsibility of the client. The point of this is that SEO is impossible if the web design company didn't design the website properly.

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## Debbiedle

> Remember that SEO is not actually done by the web designer. This still stays the responsibility of the client. The point of this is that SEO is impossible if the web design company didn't design the website properly.


I agree and IF the client is not clued up, he needs an intermediary to start speaking his language (sales and marketing) to the website designer *or* the website designer needs and intermediary to speak his language (graphics  and design) to the client...........unless of course the client is a SME or owner based business like a lot of us on here.....I certainly know just about enough on both sides, to be dangerous....

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## Chatmaster

> And then we do a Google search for *website designer* or *web site design* and we get?
> Even with *web design*, one of the site's listed keywords - nowhere.
> 
> The site has PR5. So clearly inbound links (referrals or "reputation") is how people are finding him. Now if he paid a little attention to keyword presentation for search engines, they'd be impressed too.
> 
> EDIT: OK. I've now tried quite hard. web design geneva, web design canada - _nada_


The site is very poorly designed and shouldn't rank. It seems to be designed by graphics orientated people instead of proper web designers. The irony is that this site specifically will not convert that well either as their site is not designed with any conversion methods in mind. It is a typical example of a pretty but complete useless billboard. It al starts with the homepage. Using images for your main nav is never a good idea, especially if you do not use alt tags over them.

Dave try the following search
Swiss-Canadian freelance web designer

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## Dave A

> Dave try the following search
> Swiss-Canadian freelance web designer


Now why didn't I think of that?  :Slap: 
 :Big Grin:

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## Debbiedle

> It's crazy, like saying that it is not important for people to know how to find your shop.


Hi DSD

I would imagine Versache sp?(for instance) has no desire for the masses to even know about them, never mind actually inviting us (I speak for myself in plural)  into the inner sanctities of  designer heaven.  Surely their only interest is in ensuring that WOM continues to set them apart and the website is thus purely a showcase of their ability, kept as exclusive as their real life establishments?

If we look at it from this point of view, is the design from steinergraphics excellent or poor?  Fact is we don't know, because we don't know what the brief (originating from the client) was.

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## Chatmaster

Hi Debbie, this is a very valid point. I would like to answer this for you if you do not mind. When a web site is designed by the company the innitial brief and decision making process consist out of alot of compromising. The client must be comfortable and happy with the aesthetics of the end product. However... this doesn't mean that the design needs to be done ignoring the minimum standards.

For example, I have a serious issue with them using graphics for the navigation. This could have easily been resolved by either using text navigation and css to alter the appearance of the font. Alternatively they could have simply just added alt tags to every image. Nothing changed as far as the aesthetics were concerned.

I remember reading research done, 3 years ago? Anyway the research basically said that 24% of all searches on Google was done for local business searches. I wish I could reference it but I recall this as I prepared a seminar at the time and this was very suitable for my audience at the time. Now even if Steiner wasn't interested in SE's for some stupid reason, surely they would freak out to realize that nothing in the look and feel of their website would have to change to accomplish rankings, it was simply not designed properly!

To go to the next example. Once again an image is used to replace text within the profile page. The same text could have been done using background images, real HTML text and css, but with one MAJOR difference... they would be able to rank for some of the keywords like "new media designer"

This site has a PR6 homepage and several PR5 internal pages, but they are not visible on some crucial Google SERPS for completely no reason.

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## Dave A

> I would imagine Versache sp?(for instance) has no desire for the masses to even know about them, never mind actually inviting us (I speak for myself in plural)  into the inner sanctities of  designer heaven.  Surely their only interest is in ensuring that WOM continues to set them apart and the website is thus purely a showcase of their ability, kept as exclusive as their real life establishments?


The question that comes to my mind here is the relationship between exclusivity and being known.

What makes a nightclub elite? The great music and decor, or the queue outside, the red rope at the door, and the blatant attitude of the doorkeeper? Without the queue, the elitist posturing is laughable.

Which is more attractive to the elite - a brand that is largely unknown except among the elite circles, or one that is widely known as being for the elite only?

Surely it is the oohs and aahs of the commoner that makes "the experience" of shopping there worth it for the elite. Otherwise it's not much more than the local store that has really great product, but has no signage outside the door. Cliquey, perhaps. But not elite.

Part of the image of being a "great little secret" is that people know it's a "secret."

*Just for the record, I think Debbie is putting up a really impressive counter-argument on this.

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## Chatmaster

> *Just for the record, I think Debbie is putting up a really impressive counter-argument on this.


Yep, and I have reped her because I appreciate it!

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## Debbiedle

Hi Guys, 

It is not that I disagree with the original post. I think I am questioning the terminology and expectations.

I have come across this very phenomena when chatting to my very own IT team (yup, they are mine, on loan, one calls me MOTHER) and I am trying to find the reasoning behind our different expectations.

They are very SYSTEMS and TASK driven individuals and they often steer me away from some form of BLING that I want, with the comment, "if you want DESIGNERS go and hire them!"

I personally had to do some serious analysis and research to understand what I wanted, because I thought I did want a DESIGNER, but in  fact I found that I actually wanted PROGRAMMERS (PHP to be exact and I now have automated invoicing and all kinds of amazing back end stuff, leaving me free to interact on this forum :Kissing2:   I love these guys!).

I still need really great inhouse marketing/SEO contractors, now that I have functionality and capacity to cope with volume and I (who know dangerously little) was able to put the "layout" (design) together.

But it took a mindshift from ME (the client)  I had to speak in a language the IT team understood. I also needed to know EXACTLY what I wanted, because they worked to spec (I now believe this was in fact a conspiracy to get me educated, so they didn't have to deal with my ongoing moronic requests!)

In my efforts to educate myself as a client I found:
1. steinergraphics - who I thought were great at design and have a very exclusive type client base.
2. a few sites that are on the web purely to provide backup for technical teams (downloads, specs etc)  There is no DESIGN (pretty) as such, no marketing, no SEO, pure programming, logical layout and functionality - who I saw as programmers
3.  A myriad of sites telling you that having a website that the SE can't find doesn't bring you sales, mostly coming from and aimed at medium and small business.

In essence, to get a website that really WORKED for me, I had to think beyond sales and shopfront to functionality and sustainability, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears realising that I had to make myself understood in foreign language, but I had insider assistance. If I didn't have it, I may have ended up either firing a DESIGNER halfway or settling for a half-baked job.  I suspect that this is one of the challenges of the IT industry as well as their clients?

As to the exclusivity - I personally think ( no proof, just conjecture) that when you move in those circles you seek approval from others who you perceive to be in those circles too.  Therefore I would suggest that your store needs to be widely known amongst the elite :Big Grin: 

And keeping with the store analogy, maybe this will help as to how I see it.

The brick and mortar shop lease and rental = client + web hosting company (setup and hosting)
The architect/builder/ shop fitter  = client + graphics designer
The staff = client + programmer
The continual flow of customers = client + SEO/marketing guy.

In each case it may be necessary to replace the client with a project manager!

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## RKS Computer Solutions

This is an absolute brilliant thread...

_SEO side of the coin_

Having done a backlink search on Steiner, I couldn't figure out why the were linked to from Wikipedia for the term: Trepanation.  Following the links, it seems to lead to sites that have been designed by them and left on their site for whatever reason.  Why?  Can't see the point in that, unless they are medical consultants/web designers...  Wouldn't trust them either, all pretty pictures and no substance!

Looking at some of the other links pointing to their site, it's quite obvious to note that those backlinks are indeed from sites that they have designed and stuck their name on their pages, fair enough, but no-one would ever find any of those sites because of non-existent SEO on those pages...  Going to give one page as an example:



```
http://www.cfscommunication.com/products001.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>CFS Communication</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
```

That is the entire header of that page...  So, for a human that is given a direct link to that page, that won't make a difference, but from a SERPS standpoint and looking at the page from a robot or a crawlers viewpoint, the only thing to be seen is the title, ie. CFS Communication.

Do a Google Search, nowhere in the top 100 anywhere is there a link to the CFS Communications website.  This would take into account that you actually know the company name and were searching for it...  But you wouldn't find anything, because they aren't listed in the top 100... Why would you bother going through more than 10 pages in Google looking for a company you know, by that time you would have assumed they don't have a website and left your searches for someone else.

Taking the above in mind, nowhere would they be ranked or listed for any of their products or any of their services...  So, paying for web design as well as hosting is throwing money down the drain, because if you're not going to be actively marketing it offline, then you won't be getting any marketing online unless further cash is spent...

Taking the above into account, the website designed by Steiner, linked to from Wikipedia, has the following in the header...


```
http://www.steinergraphics.com/surgical/006_17.6.html

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Surgical Care at the District Hospital</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/JavaScript">
```

Do a Google Search for "the forum SA" and it is right there, 2nd link from the top...  So knowing the company and searching on its name after some decent SEO has been done, gets you an immediate result...



```
http://www.theforumsa.co.za/

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html dir="ltr" lang="en">
<head>

<title>The Forum SA - for South African business owners and managers </title>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<meta name="generator" content="vBulletin 3.6.8" />

<meta name="keywords" content="forum,south,africa,small,business,sa,the forum sa" />
<meta name="description" content="Welcome to The Forum SA - The place to ask the questions and get the answers about doing business in South Africa" />
```

If we take a look at internal pages, let's take one of the more popular topics that we've had in the last few months and do a Google Search for that...  Rudco

TheForumSA is listed at nr 2 with the titel:  Rudco Homeloans at 6% - The Forum SA

looking at the headers for the page:



```
http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/showthread.php?t=1559

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html dir="ltr" lang="en">
<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<meta name="generator" content="vBulletin 3.6.8" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Rudco Homeloans at 6%, south africa,south african,business,industry,vbulletin,forum,discussion," />
<meta name="description" content="Questions are being asked how Rudco is going to finance homeloans at 6%. But reading this article, it seems that is not the only question" />
```

It seems as even though "Rudco" is not listed as a direct keyword on it's own, the relevance of the page to the searched for term means that it gets higher SERPS and thus gets it placed at nr 2 on Google...


*All of the above proves one point.  When a site is designed well and the proper information is given to crawlers, bots and search engines, your visibility on the net is exponentially so much more and thus you get so much more out of your site than it just sitting there only to be opened when you send the link to someone.*

I can provide various links to web designers internationally that have nice fancy smancy sites, all done in flash, or very overrated Java...  The only thing they have coming for them is the links they force on the pour souls website which they have just stuck on the web, knowing full well that that website won't get a single hit from any search engine, because they have done some pretty pictures and little else.


_Design side of the coin_

Obviously a site needs to motivate and steer a potential client into either signing up with your company, or partaking in your service or purchasing your products.

A website has a slim chance of doing this if the design looks likes it's been done by a grade 5 pupil over his afternoon sarnie with milk and cookies being a bonus for the nice blinking text that irritates absolutely everyone except for the brilliant voice in the owners head begging it to blink some more... 

The owner off course needs to have an idea of what the website should look like before it's being designed, but I do believe that anyone wanting to start a website, either for their company or themselves, have browsed enough websites in order to get half an idea of what designs they like or would like to emulate.  If this is not the norm, then I'm sorry, your website is not going to cut it.

In the competitive day and the age of technology, your website should stand out from the rest, be a cut above the best and strive to be the best in it's market.  If those are not part of the goals of the website being designed, why bother in the first place?  A website that is properly designed, uses decent CSS and valid HTML, will go a long way in today's cut-throat market where everyone is trying their best to entice clients to only stop at their site and not go wandering off to their competitors who have a better designed website.

I'm not the best designer in the world, but I'd like to prove my point on design with one example...  A simple little thing, something that has come about with the advent of Web 2.0...  Stupid? Creative? Why don't you be the judge...

In popular Web 2.0 culture it is an unexpressed rule that your webpage should be centered and only be taking up a certain percentage of the screen width...  Take for example my online shop, I couldn't care less about having my shop looking like a snail trail, dancing down the middle of my nice 19" wide screen...  In my market, people don't tend to work with small screens, and whether they do or not, they need information available above the fold and immediately visible in order to make decisions...  

Taking a popular South African website as an example, kalahari.net, their entire site has been designed around a width of 800 pixels.  That would mean that on my small 19" wide screen, just over 50% of the screen would be filled with information on my resolution of 1440x900 pixels...

What would the site look like when browsed to on one of my 26" Wide TFT LCD's?  At a total native resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, the poor site would look like a silly little afterthought on the left of the screen with this huge white space sitting there, taking over 58% of the screen into the the unused territory...  This is a design fault in my eyes, one that could easily be rectified by having adjustable widths...

This is but one of many design errors that can make or break a website...  Graphics, logos, buttons, layout, menus; all of those to name but a few, can be used either to your advantage or to your disadvantage...  It is up to you to decide how you want your site to look and function the way you'd like to use your favorite site, and use those sites as guidelines in having your site designed.  Making it the prettiest website out there is not necessarily going to look the same in the eyes of your target market, and you should do proper research beforehand into both your target market, their likings and the way they think.  

*A good designer should look at your market, and you as the forthcoming owner of that new site, must have a look at your peers and see what has been done and what can be improved upon.  But, at the same time as sitting down with your designer, make sure his understanding of SEO is such that even though he doesn't offer it in his package, (most of them are BS anyway), it would be easy enough for a dedicated SEO person to be able to work on your site without having to charge you for redesigning it in the process.*

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## Dave A

At the risk of derailing the main thrust of this thread, the Rudco thread search engine performance makes a really interesting study.

Google - no.2
Live Search - page 2
Yahoo - page7!

Of course I'm pretty happy with the Google result, particularly if you look at the other sites on page 1 and beyond that we've managed to rank above at this point. But the Yahoo result has me somewhat mystified, especially for all the bandwidth Yahoo chews up here crawling the site.

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## duncan drennan

> Google - no.2


What makes it even more interesting and intriguing is the difference between these three search terms, "rudco", "rudco home loan", and "rudco homeloans". Dramatically different results.

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## Dave A

*That* difference I understand - it's to do with the thread title.

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## Dave A

I've just had quite a funny moment. This call gets put through to me. A website design/hosting company looking to help me apparently.

"Hi sir. Does your company have a website?"
"Yes"
"Can I do a free evaluation of your website for design, speed and search engine performance for you?"
"By all means. Do you want the site address?"
"No sir. Let me do a search by your company name and let's see..."

*sound of breathing, keyboard typing and background music for about a minute*

Click.. beep.. beep.. beep..

I wonder when I'll get my free report?

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## Chatmaster

> I wonder when I'll get my free report?


I think you did get it  :Big Grin:

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## Dave A

Here follows a message received from Rene Steiner via Contact Us.



> Hello, 
> 
> I take it IÃ¢â¬â¢m communicating with the moderator of this forum (RKS)? 
> 
> I have been following, with interest, the thread started by Debbie a few weeks ago in which Steiner Graphics is cited as an example. 
> 
> I can live with the critique of my SEO skills (those can always be improved on). What I do object to is my personal and professional reputation being maligned in the following statement: 
> 
> 
> ...

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## RKS Computer Solutions

Hallo Rene, I'm not the owner of this forum, but seeing as your contact note was directed to me, and I was the one who made the post, I'd like to answer you here.

----



> The inference that I have somehow intentionally “left” the site online and done so in an unethical way to derive benefit for myself is just ridiculous.


My words were:  



> and left on their site for whatever reason.


Nowhere did I state in any way that you were being unethical, I said for whatever reasons.  I don't know you and don't know why you left it there in the first place, so I chose the words correctly in my eyes...  "Whatever reason" could mean a billion different things, and not one specific reason as you seem to think...

---

As for leaving the site to be hosted under your domain; I can't see the reason for it...  WHO have their own site, pretty nice one too...  Why would they leave something they commissioned on the designer site?  It is of no benefit to them, and the fact that people are now pointing links to your site, only means it's been there for forever and got noted there...  If it is on the WHO site, then you are taking away from their PR and traffic because Search Engines will penalize two copies of the same information...

What is does bring you is a link from wikipedia, which strengthens your PR because of the deep linking into your site...  I'm not saying your doing this on purpose, but it takes the main drift away from the people you designed the site for...  If you designed a site for me, and found out it's not indexed by the SE's because of you leaving your old and already indexed copy of it on your site, I'd be slightly hacked off, to say the least.

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You are correct, I don't know you and I don't know your clients.  But, and this is a big one, in todays competitive world everything possible should be done to make your website stand out and make it reachable by as many people as possible.  I only followed a few links from your site, correct again, but if I was looking for a designer and knew a few things about SEO, I'd skip over you in a heartbeat.

Having a good design, not only means the customer must be happy, but I truly believe that it should be the most effective marketing device for that company, and that includes having your site accessible to search engines in such a way that they can index the site and help get you noted when people search for services you offer...  Please do read my entire post again, as everything has been set out in plain words, trying to bring a point across that would be hard taken if written in HTML/XHTML...  

I have pointed out the images pertinently, because of what was missing...  Check my banners on the bottom of this page as well as on the main forum page, right click/properties...  The one thing I notice in my simple pictures is both titles and alternative text, which wasn't present in your pictures on some sites.  This would imply that the only info a SE has of that image, is that it is an image and thats that.  If Google read this page, it would note my images, and tag it with it's title and it's alternative text. I cannot tell you how many visitors I've had to my site, searching on images.google.com, and finding their way to site...

The other side of that is that when you use images to link to different categories and sub-directories, and you have not added titles/alternative text, that those links it follows, looses PR and the probability of a SE seeing it as a connected part of that site, greatly diminishes.

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Having a client who doesn't understand the nitty-gritty of SEO, is of no importance.  A client comes to you in the faith of having a 24/7 online marketing presence, and looking at this from a prospective clients point of view, if my site is not open to search engines and links from the outside world, the what is the point of paying for it to be done in the first place.  Companies go online in an effort to be noticed by a greater audience and to expand their business reach, having to go and tell every client you already have that you now have a website and they should check it out, is a waste of more money.  The site should be indexed, it should be done in such a way that SE's can help those customers get their share of the market, without them having to go and pay for more marketing in regards to getting their website known.

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This is not a personal attack on you, and my previous post was never meant to attack you, but I pointed out what I saw and reported back to this forum, for who I cannot lie and for which I will be honest for at all times...

Again, this is in no way a personal attack, and I can barely call myself a web designer or an SEO guru, but I have picked up a few things along my few travels through this wonderful thing called the internet, and I posted my remarks the way I saw it.

Riaan

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## Dave A

Personally, I'd be quite interested in Rene's views on the issue of incorporating basic on-site SEO elements into web design. Is this something that is simply handed over to an SEO expert or _should_ site designers be thinking about this?

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## Chatmaster

> Personally, I'd be quite interested in Rene's views on the issue of incorporating basic on-site SEO elements into web design. Is this something that is simply handed over to an SEO expert or _should_ site designers be thinking about this?


I personally am very interested in any design company's response to this. Years ago SEO was a minor thing. You did your meta tags, description and page titles and all was well. My true objective for starting this thread is to get pointed in a direction to set minimum standards for products delivered by design companies and NOT to point fingers. Is it fair to state that W3C standards should be complied to? I personally feel that it is not always possible nor is it a requirement for SEO to work. Most SEO has moved to off-page factors instead and that certainly is not the responsibility of the design company.

My hat goes of to Rene for not leaving the comments made as just comments made, but to actually respond an stating her side of things. I hope Rene also sees RKS's comments in a positive way as he certainly didn't intend any personal attacks but rather commented on his observations.

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## RKS Computer Solutions

First off, Rene, if you are reading this, join this forum and please respond here...

To get back to the topic, I think most people have a misconception about what a website is supposed to be doing; and in that comment, I include web designers, web implementers, site creators, online presenters and a million other things they've called themselves over the years...

I personally would be more interested in having someone come to me and call themselves the following:

*Online Business Presence Coordinator*

Think about that...

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