FAQ : Frequently Asked Questions

Should I Hire An SEO Agency?

Hiring an SEO agency can seem like a daunting task; How do you know who is good and who is not? Search engine optimisation is like any other industry, there are those who know what they’re doing, and there are the cowboys. But if you use the following 5 questions in your search you will quickly be able to sort out who is who and make your decision on who to hire.

You should try searching the phrase “SEO Toowoomba” and contacting the people that seem to keep coming up in the top results. If they can achieve these results for themselves they will know what they are doing and you will just need to ensure they are ethical.

Once you have a shortlist of contacts you can now make contact and ask the following questions to ensure they are ethical and the right choice for your business:

1. What past successes have you had?

Any good and experienced SEO consultant will be able to give a few examples of companies they have worked with. Many will be able to offer you case studies and client testimonials to back up what they claim. It is important to go through their results to ensure that they are correct and that the companies are in good positions on the search engines.

2. What will you do for me?

Search engine optimisation is an on page and off page process and should involve the optimisation of your website and link building to be effective. You should also consider if you would like the SEO consultant to make all site changes for you or whether you or your web team will be making the changes. If you are expecting them to make the changes ensure that the SEO consultant you choose can make the changes and is skilled to work with the technology your website is built on.

3. Can you guarantee results?

This is a trick question as no one can guarantee you top results or first place listings in the search engines because they do not own them. If someone tells you they guarantee first page ranking run. These people are either lying, or using ‘black hat’ tactics. ‘Black Hat’ SEO is ranking by tricking Google’s search engine robots. These methods usually get you quick results, and then Google blacklists your site and you’re done. A good SEO consultant will be able to guarantee an increase in your current online presence, which eventually may lead to you being in first place for highly competitive keywords. You can’t guarantee it though, all the SEO can do, is put in the work.

4. What reports will I receive?

This will differ from one consultant to the next. Digimark provides a quarterly SEO campaign strategy, complete with Keyword position, ranking strategy and link building strategy. A monthly report is also sent out to each client with results from Google Analytics, showing the amount of traffic that is visiting the site and where those visitors are coming from. If reports are not provided by an SEO, they are not being transparent with you and this should throw up a red flag.

5. What happens next?

Search engine optimisation is an ongoing process of testing, measuring and optimising. It is not something that can be done once and left alone so you should expect to have a quarterly campaign with your SEO consultant where they are optimising, link building and reporting on a quarterly basis. This is crucial for long term growth and success so be wary of anyone telling you they will do it once and that is all you need.

The bottom line is if you have any reservations or something doesn’t sound right with your potential SEO agency, don’t use them and keep on looking.

Hiring a Website Designer vs Using a DIY Option

A website is one of the most important investments you can make for your business. Whether or not you venture further into the online world, at the very least, you need a website. Customers have come to expect businesses to have a website and if they do not, they are treated as untrustworthy.

It is also one of the easiest times to either design your first website or update your existing website. There are plenty of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) options available, and a multitude of freelancers and agencies that provide website design services for variable prices. Here are our reasons for hiring a website designer as opposed to using a DIY option.

1. It Saves You Time

Designing a website is time consuming if you want to create something that doesn’t look like a chook’s breakfast. You’ll need to work out a style guide, what typography will you use and have you though about colours? What will the layout for each page look like? What platform will you use? Who is will you host with? These are only some of the many questions you will need to figure out if you choose to do it yourself. Meanwhile, a web designer will generally have their preferred platform and hosting company. Style guide will also be required, but the designer can help walk you through the process and make educated decisions along the way.

2. It will be SEO Friendly

Ranking in Google is kind of a big deal. If you aren’t showing up when your customers are searching in Google, but your competitors are, guess who they’ll buy from. If you design a website yourself, short of you learning SEO, you won’t know the techniques used for good on-page SEO. Most website designers should have a fundamental understanding of these concepts.

3. Better Customer Experience

As a business owner, you should know your customers quite well. In fact, if you don’t, we would recommend that you hold off on designing a website because you have a more important task to do, customer research. Despite this, a website designer, with experience in your field, will have a better idea of what you customer wants online. How a customer interacts with you offline will be different to how they interact online and when you make the mistake of thinking it is otherwise, you lose customers.

4. To Make Your Website Unique

Let’s assume that you don’t know how to code and you use a website builder such as Wix or Weebly, or a platform like WordPress. You yourself are not going to be able to customise the layout. You will select a theme, just like everyone else that ‘builds’ a DIY website and then add images and content to make it look more like your business. The only problem is that it will look like every other website, there will be minimal differences and nothing that makes it unique to your business.

5. To Make Sure You Look Professional

Imagine you are looking for a new GP. You look in the yellow pages and narrow down a list of suitable candidates, then jump in the car and drive to each. When you reach the first clinic, the building looks run down and you see masking tap holding pipes together, boards over broken windows. It looks more like a slum than a doctor’s office. Do you go in and see the doctor, or do you move on to the next GP on the list? Of course you move on to the next GP, and your customers will move on to your competition too if your website doesn’t look professional.

How Long Does It Take To Design A Website?

Our basic website design, without content, usually takes four weeks. This assumes that all the requirements are provided immediately and that you are able to provide revisions quickly.

Do You Include Hosting?

The service covers the website build and the site’s launch as well as 30 days of support after launch. Name registry, hosting, and server costs are exclusive of this service. However, we would be more than happy to suggest a few hosting providers that provide great products and quality customer support.

What Technologies Do You Use To Build Your Websites?

We use WordPress along with premium WordPress themes. Our themes are built with HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and PHP. All our themes also use Page Builders which allow our clients to easily add posts and pages, with unlimited layouts, through a drag and drop user interface, without the need for coding knowledge.

Why WordPress?

Our Web Design services are built on the WordPress content management system (CMS) because:

It is the most flexible and easiest to use open-source content management system, with worldwide community support.
It has themes with responsive web design that provide optimal user experience across devices so that users navigate the website with minimal re-sizing and scrolling.
Its Dashboards use page builders that: provide a drag and drop interface; allow easy creation of responsive column-based content; and, have more than five (5) pre-designed widgets, e.g. Galleries, Testimonial, Blog Feed and many more.

Why Won’t You Launch On A Friday?

Development best practices discourage the launching of sites on Fridays. As most sites represent a business that runs on weekdays only, weekend launches may cause unforeseen errors that cannot be addressed in real-time as our staff and most clients do not work on weekends.

Do You Build Websites That Are SEO Friendly?

We will build your site based on architecture that’s optimised for SEO.

Where Will You Build My Website?

We create your site on our own servers first and would only upload to your own server after the final quality assurance and revisions have been completed.

How Many Changes Can I Make Before Incurring Additional Costs?

There are three revision points for you. First is generally around 2 weeks for approval of the content and mockups. The next revision is at the 4-week mark for approval of the design. The last is before launch.
Please note that any revisions on the last round would have to be minimal and not amount anymore to design changes or work that would take more than half a day to execute.