As an SEO in Pittsburgh, one of the most common things I hear from clients who are disappointed with their website performance is “I thought I was getting SEO with the design.”

Sometimes, the claim in somewhat substantiated. There are some Pittsburgh web designers that actually do know how to set up a site in order so that it can be easily optimized. Most of them, however, only offer SEO as a sideline to their packages, and this is simply not enough to get the rankings and traffic most business owners expect.

Minimum SEO Requirements

There are many design elements that are usually ignored by designers who are, by their nature, more concerned with aesthetics than function. The following are 5 things to make sure you are getting if your web designer claims to be providing SEO services as well.

1. Unique title tags on every page.  It’s not good enough to just have a title on every page. Each one should be different and reflect the keywords you’re optimizing for.
2. Unique meta information.  This info shows up in the search results and should be relevant to the content on each individual page.  It too should be unique on every page.
3. Header Tags. Headers should be used on every page instead of simply bolding text.  The search engines use headers to determine relevance and including keywords in the headings is incredibly important.
4. Use CSS formatting instead of frames.  Frames hinder the search engines’ efficiency and are an archaic organizational method in any case.
5. Include a sitemap.  Sitemaps help the search engines quickly crawl through and index the website.  An XML sitemap should include every page on the site.

SEO is More than Just Good Web Design

The elements listed above are just examples of the on-page elements of optimization that are the absolute bare minimum requirements for a successful SEO campaign.  Off-page optimization is also vital to ranking highly, especially if you are in a highly competitive industry.  It is extremely rare to find a web designer, in Pittsburgh or out of it, who can afford to spend the time necessary to build quality links that will boost your site in the search engine response pages.

Online Marketing is a Full Time Job

You wouldn’t go to Jiffy Lube and expect them to be able to detail your car or rebuild your engine.  Web design is an exacting and time-intensive job all by itself. If SEO is done right, a good web designer would never have time to be able to handle it.  Good, organic SEO is an investment that eventually pays for itself in rankings and the resulting traffic.  Leave it up to the professionals who specialize in it and you won’t be disappointed.

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