Don't Lose Your Domain Name to a Shady Web Design Firm

Part of researching the right Website Design Company for your project is knowing what questions to ask. This article is addressing one simple but very important question to ask; who will own my domain name? Registering a domain name is one of the very first steps in the web design process and it is one of the most common services that is taken for granted. Any reputable web design firm will help you through all aspects of the website design process and explain to you the importance of each step. Here's one point that many website design companies neglect to mention - whoever registers your domain name owns your domain name.

What does this mean for business owners? This means website owners beware! Register your own domain names!

I have been in the website design business for many years and have seen some pretty shady practices from several Web designers that include holding domain names hostage. I encourage all of my clients and all small business owners to register their domain names in their own names. It is of the utmost importance that the website owner has control over his or her domain name. By controlling your own domain name you can control who hosts your website and ultimately who has the right to maintain your website. Any legitimate website design firm would want their clients to be able to have control over their business information.

Many unsuspecting business owners simply assume that they have control over their website and are free to change hosting or web designers as they please. They certainly should be able to, however, I was inspired to write this short article or warning to business owners after receiving a surprising amount of phone calls recently from people who were being held hostage by their web designers. They were all similar situations where a web designer helped a client set up a site from scratch and everything seemed fine until the website owner wished to transfer hosting or change web designers only to find out that they could not. Finding out that your domain name is being held hostage for more money or out of spite can be devastating.

Here is a summary of one of the domain name horror stories that I recently encountered that illustrates the importance of owning your own domain name very clearly. A real-estate agent, we'll call her Maggie, was working with a web designer for several years. This web designer then got her real estate license and became a competing real estate agent. Once the "web designer" became a real estate agent she no longer wanted to update and maintain Maggies' website. Maggie also noticed that her website started falling from Google search results. Maggie came to my website design company to see if we could help her make some updates and regain her Google Search engine positioning.

Maggie was unhappy with her current web designer and wanted to move her hosting to a new hosting company when we initiated the work. Maggie, like many business owners, thought she could do whatever she wanted with her website. Unfortunately, there are people out there who scam, extort, and retaliate. Maggie was the victim of the latter. We were unable to make any headway with the former designer and had to advise the client to contact a lawyer. Unfortunately, this is often the only alternative and can be a tedious and costly process. Many people holding a domain name hostage will release it immediately when confronted with a letter from a lawyer, but there are always those willing to ride out the process to the bitter end.

My recommendation is to avoid any domain name complications that could derail your website from the beginning and register your domain name through a reputable registrar like GoDaddy. I personally recommend using GoDaddy as a registrar due to their exemplary customer service and streamlined processing. It only takes 5 minutes to set up. Having to fight for a domain name you spent years establishing a business with will certainly cost you much more.


About the Author:
Chris London is the Art Director for Pixel Productions Inc., a graphic design agency and web design company ranked top in their field for creative brand packaging and website design. He believes that one of the greatest assets a company can have today is a well planned brand identity system.

Where Website Design Ends and SEO Begins

Many people looking to have a website developed think the only investment they need to make to have a successful website is in the design of the website itself. I won't argue that design is important, but any professional knows that without a long term search engine optimization and website marketing plan that website is never going to gain visibility. When clients pay a lot of money for a website that has no visibility they usually get upset. This is why any business owner should research exactly what they need their website to do and who can help them achieve this.

Business owners should look at professional SEO services as part of their website development budget as well as part of their yearly advertising budget. Professional SEO is an investment in your websites' success where ultimately the traffic generated and business driven to your site will pay for this investment. Website design and SEO services work hand in hand to make a successful website, however you may need to go to two separate agencies to get both of these services. Getting a few different quotes for both design and SEO is always wise. Just like getting estimates from any other service provider, the lowest estimate isn't always the best choice especially with Search engine optimization.

There are several factors that affect the pricing of SEO services with the main factor being the time involved in getting a specific site to rank well. Professional SEO companies that offer quality services don't come cheap, but they usually offer a free website analysis and come up with a custom plan on how to achieve the best results for your website. This is important because every website is unique and so is it's niche in the world wide web. A professional SEO company will check to make sure that your website is designed with not only the visitor in mind but the search engine crawlers as well. They will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your website compared to your direct competitors' websites and also determine how populated your specific niche is. They will then evaluate your site for useful content and determine what must be done to better your content and maximize target keyword search rankings.

Successful SEO is not a one shot deal it is a continuous effort that utilizes a combination of website marketing tactics. Many people are tempted by low one time fees offering to submit your website to over 12,000 directories with guarantees of high quality back links that will sky rocket your website to the top of search engine rankings. I've said this many times, "if it seems too good to be true - it is!" A professional SEO company will use a combination of marketing and link building services to naturally build links, credibility, and popularity to gradually increase your organic search engine rankings.

I don't want to undervalue the importance of directory submissions, but directory submissions alone aren't enough. Business owners should look at SEO companies offering a diverse range of SEO services to build your sites rankings. Things you should be looking for an SEO company to handle as part of their bundle of services are; directory submissions, content writing, article writing and article marketing, press release writing and distribution, blog creation, blog posting, and reciprocal link building with high quality related websites. Things you should steer clear of are one time only submission services and websites that guarantee first page rankings for comparatively inexpensive prices.

Ultimately, there are no tricks or gimmicks that will get your site top positioning. If your website is brand new It is realistic to expect to see positive results within four to six months. You will probably see very noticeable improvements in your website search engine rankings within one years time and in many cases even top ten rankings. Like most other forms of advertising - search engine marketing is a long term strategy that will eventually produce an excellent return on investment.

Choosing the right Website Design Company for your SEO and Website Marketing Needs

Many people look at website development as a two part process separating website design and website optimization. Because website architecture, coding, and content are critical elements in successful website rankings and search engine placement your dollars would be better spent in locating one company to handle both your website design and website SEO needs.

A website design company that knows how to set up your web site with SEO in mind is going to save you time and money on revisions that would need to be made when it comes to SEO. Having your website streamlined for search engine optimization on the front side is also going to start producing results much sooner than a site that needs to undergo revisions.

When choosing a website design company you will want to look at their online portfolio to see real world solutions that they have come up with for their clients. There are many website designers out there who can create visually appealing web solutions. I recommend looking at website design and development companies because they have a team of dedicated experts to ensure that your needs are met. They will also be more likely to have in-house SEO expertise which will ensure that your website development is done in an SEO friendly manner.

What should you expect to see from a professional website design/website SEO company? In terms of an initial proposal you should expect to see a very clearly specified project management proposal. The initial proposal should clearly state what services will be included in their estimate and what may be cause for additional fees. If a company is unwilling to disclose the exact services they intend on providing you with, this should be considered a "red flag" for you to move on to a different company. An example proposal is included below to give you an idea of what services to look for and a rough idea of the cost involved.

Please Note that obviously website design prices vary from company to company and also may be influenced by location. SEO and search engine marketing services will vary in price due to many factors including niche density of your target market, local versus national ranking factors, how new your site and domain name are, etc. Professional SEO services could range anywhere between $450 for local results and $2,500 per month nationally.

Example Proposal:

1) E-commerce Website Base Price = $4,800

• Design of e-commerce website
• Logo / Branding Corporate Identity
• Miva Shopping Cart Installation & Setup
• Ability to Import/Update Products & Categories from excel spreadsheet
• Initial Set up Includes set up for 10 Total Products
• Product Search

Additional Costs
• Hosting $38.00 month – hostasaurus.com
• SSL Certificate $30 annually – godaddy.com
• Gateway account - $20 month - Authorize.net includes virtual terminal
• Merchant account- $$ month - bank of your choice

Optional Modules - Additional Cost
• Basket Price, Mini Cart, Item Added to cart - $50
• Bread Crumbs & Category Bread Crumbs - $30
• Dynamic Category Menus – $40
• WYSIWYG For Editing Pages- $99
• UPS Real Time Rates Integration with your account $169.95
• Product Reviews & Ratings - $45.00
• Promo Codes/Coupons - $99.95
• Constant Contact Mailing List Integration $25.00
• Suggested Products – Included
• Order Tracking & Status (wombat beta) – Included
• Product Search – Included

2) SEO/SEM Services Base Price = $$$$ per month (minimum 6 month contract)

Search engine optimization is a long term website marketing program building your websites credibility, back links and traffic in a natural search engine friendly manner that ensures your site is found in organic search results and includes the following services.

• Monthly Manual Search Engine & Directory Inclusion of the site
• Press Release and Article Marketing
• Company Facebook & Twitter accounts
• Building Quality Back Links
• Google Anylitics

Stage 1: Research and Development
The company will analyze your website and compare your website's structure and components with that of your direct competitors. The company will then do in-depth research into your market’s keywords and determine what your primary key phrases should be and focus on promoting your site around those keywords and phrases. The SEO company should eliminate weaknesses in your website's meta tags, descriptions, and structure as part of their services.

Stage 2: Implementation and Maintenance
This stage is the monthly work it takes to build your site's credibility on the world wide web and includes the following services:

Press Release and Article Marketing – The company will distribute industry related articles and press releases building High Quality inbound links and credibility to your site. This is one of the most important things a professional SEO company can do for your site. Google rates your site on the quality of content as well as the quality and credibility of the sites linking to your web site.

Any reputable website design/SEO company should be able to answer any questions you may have before beginning your project. They should also be able to provide examples of their work in both web site design and effective website ranking on search engines such as Google.