One of the things that I notice about a lot of Web Design firms and even creative agencies who say they bake SEO into everything they do, is that very few of them bake it into there own sites. Now I don’t want to call anyone out today but I do want to give people a quick little guide on the top five things to look for when evaluating the SEO ability of design firm that says they know SEO. I mean, if SEO is part of their overall offering, they would be silly not to SEO their own site right? And if they haven’t taken the time to do that, is that a firm that you can really feel confident in? I think you know my answer. *lol* So here is the top 5 things that I would look for in a design firms web site that will give you some idea if they know what they are doing:
1) Are their page titles unique on every page and are they keyword focused. If you see a site with Page Titles like “About Us – Company Name”, they have not been optimized. Page Titles should read like intelligent sentences or phrases and convey as much information about the content of the page as possible. If you see short page titles that lack keyword focus in relation to the content that is on the page, that’s a sure sign that the optimization skills of this company are lacking.
2) Are all their pages indexed in Google, Yahoo and MSN? Many times if a site is dynamic or has extra long URL strings with too many parameters, search engines can have some difficulty indexing pages. Doing a site:www.domain.com search on the company URL can tell you if the pages you see on the Web site are indexed. If they are not, or there are issues with duplicate content where content is indexed, your company might not be the best option for SEO.
3) And speaking of dynamic URL strings, if your design firm has you using URLs that are a mile long with more than 4 or 5 parameters, you want to recheck #2 to see if those pages are indexed. Google does fairly well with long URL strings nowadays although they are inconsistent at best. The other engines are farther behind in their ability to understand and rank these types of pages. So it’s best to be on the safe side and have URL strings which are as short and easy to understand as possible.
4) Flash – While there have been a lot of advancements over the last year in SEO, it is still not recommended that your site be completely based in Flash. Usability and accessibility concerns aside, unless your design team has a specific solution to optimize your Flash, like using FlashObject or one of the other Flash Solutions that Benj has recommended, your SEO millage may vary. And if they put your primary navigation for your site in Flash with no alternative way for spiders to see it, you have clearly found someone who does not have a SEO.
5) JavaScript – Again, if the entire site navigation is built in JavaScript with no alternative text link navigation or 
noscript
tag, odds are the company in question has a very limited understanding of SEO.
Obviously there is a lot more to SEO than these five issues. But these are pretty easy to spot and can be a quick clue as to the relative sophistication level of your Web design firm or creative agency as it relates to SEO. If they don’t offer SEO as part of their services, then these types of issues may be expected. But if they do offer SEO and these issues exist, it might be time to re-evaluate whether or not you want to engage that company for SEO work.
I hope that helps a few people in their decision making process. Have a great week!
Related SEO Blog Post
Tags: Flash, Guides, JavaScript, On-Page SEO
Great post, IMO I also find these two resources helpful in evaluating an SEO where or not it be a company or individual:
1) The Wayback Machine / Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/index.php — see how long the companies site has been around, any site offering SEO with less than 2 years on the internet is questionable.
2) LinkedIn.com – check if the company / SEOer in question has employee churn, ex: a company losing talent quickly / or SEOer switching jobs within a small time frame = another indication that SEO quality and skill is lacking.
Very informative post Catfish. This may be to much for this post, but you should also check to see if the company in question is practicing any Black Hat SEO Practices like keyword stuffing, or invisible text. These practices could provide a quick gain, but will result in being black listed.
Megastar media
Also, randomly look for existing customers and call them..ask them outright about the companies service.
sandy
I do agree with you Gary but I think for most people that probably follows outside their ability level. Although one thing I did forget is if the company in question has a bunch of unrelated links in the footer to viagra and used car sites..lol. Spammy footers are a dead give away.
I thought everyone else's suggestions where also really good. Certainly a track record of success is key in this industry.
Good stuff! Also check to see if the keyphrases in the title tag show up in the on-page content. Particularly in the head, subheads and link text.
Can you "dumb down" the last point about JavaScript for us non-techies, please?
While all are good points, including those added in the comments, wouldn't it be a better idea to check out their portfolio rather than their own site? The old saying of how the shoe makers children are rarely shod comes to mind. Or as a friend put it, if they have time to work on their own site… is that a good thing?
Great post Catfish! SEO is often casually tossed around by many agencies, and in most respects I find that it is NOT their core competency, or worse, there is NO competency at all.
I have worked with agencies that nod "yes, yes, yes" when I bring up the subject of SEO and when it comes time to execute on the project, they bring an outside SEO consultant or fail to deliver at all!
I agree that looking at what the agency does and not what it says it does is the best way to measure their competency. It's not enough to look at their own site or to look only at their clients' site, definitely look at both. Sometimes the client may not give a hoot about SEO they just want it flashy!
That is really deep tips for finding the SEO ability of Web Design Firm.
Now a day The meta tags are also optimized, the meta keywords are not given much importance but the meta description is given good importance by the search enignes.
Thanks for the tips.
Hi Louise,
What I was saying with the Java script point is that most link found in java script code cannot be indexed by search engines. Now Google has shown a limited ability to understand these links, but from a consistent application point of view, your main navigation links should never appear in Flash or Java script as they might be indexed. And since internal link connectitivty is very important in rankings, you can be shooting yourself in the foot.