SEO & Website Design San Diego

A study done in July 2008 by TMP Directional Marketing showed that slightly more people were now using the internet to search for local businesses than using the printed yellow pages.

This is a big change as yellowpages have always ruled for local businesses. The study also showed that people preferred to actually purchase the product offline, which was a bit of a surprise for me, but with problems with secure websites or lack of secure websites, I guess I can see that although people found the product they wanted online, they prefer to go to their local store to buy it.

This development though begs the question should businesses that only cater to local clients spend more money on SEO rather than adding shopping carts to their websites. Sure display your product range and prices, but if your site can't be found in search engines, then your website is perhaps a waste of time, unless of course you are happy to keep paying for advertising showing your url or something like google adwords.

Many business owners don't understand that SEO costs less than even a ½ page advertisement on a newspaper, and once SEO is done, it keeps working month after month, whereas a newspaper add is disposed of within a day or to.

I must admit I haven't priced yellow pages printed ad's here in San Diego, and yellowpages are kept unlike newspapers, but still yellowpages only last for a year, SEO is forever.

Sure as your competitors get their websites SEOed you may have to get your SEO to update your website.

I maybe one of the last SEO's that actually refuse to work on a competitors website, although realistically I could, and just make sure they don't compete for the exact same keywords and phrases.

Call or email me, for a quote to SEO your website

I have been asked to take over and work with various Indian programmers, after they have baffled the website owner, don't get me wrong, I'm sure many Indian programmers do a good job, I've just never come across any.

I did a quick tally last night, and I figure I have worked with 14 different Indian programming companies. And I know my name is on a blacklist somewhere on an Indian coders forum, because I insist that a website works, because the last programmer told me so, when he was getting angry with me, he rang me and said, I should never have worked with you, blah blah blah, I thought that was pretty cool, people are being warned about working with me, because I insist that the work be done correctly, that everything works, and when it comes to beta testing a site I would find every tiny problem.

That's a pretty good name to have I would say. I'm proud of it.

As an example of some problems I have come up with, problems that I've come up against, the first place I worked with, I assumed that if a feature was mentioned that that feature would then work, that's a reasonable assumption I would say.

One I particularly remember, because now I think it so funny but got me so mad at the time. We worked on a site that had 3 levels of website user, the top level coaches, then registered members, then general site users, a coach could sell products or services through the site. And one feature was the ability for coaches to say that website members that made bookings for a seminar before a specific date would get an early bird special discount price. That's a pretty normal way of working right?

When the site was finished, sure enough the coach could there was a place to put an early bird price, but at first it didn't show on the page when a website member looked at the details of the seminar. When I made an issue of this, the programmer said he didn't even know what that early bird thing meant, so just put a text box, so the coach could add this.

I thought well fair enough I guess, different countries different ways of doing things, so I explained how it should work. That was fixed duly, and all seemed well. Until I was beta testing as a registered member and noticed that although the features was there, and it said on the seminar page there was a discount, that when a member made their order, they were charged the normal price not the early bird price. Thinking this was just an oversight, I approached the company, and asked that it be fixed, this is where the problems started.

They said that that feature was in the list of what a coach could do, but was not listed for what a member could do, which was true, it wasn't listed, and because of this the site was now going to cost more to make this feature work for members. I must say they put forward a very good argument, and to the novice building their first website they would have probably paid.

However, I hit the roof, and walls of the reply email, saying that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, how it didn't even make sense that it or any feature wouldn't work for all people that were using the feature. Anyway to cut a long story short, I eventually got what I wanted and didn't pay anything extra for it. But that was only the first of many many such issues there were something like 62 different parts of the site that the coder actually didn't know what the work order meant, so simply didn't add the features, or added a half assed job, once the coder even admitted to me on MSN that he had hoped that a particular feature was forgotten, because he didn't have any clue how to do it.

When starting to work with these company's you will also get a multipage proposal for building your website, this will be 35 plus pdf pages, and seems to list every last detail, but a word of warning, never under any circumstance assume anything. I did in the above mentioned example, and if I hadn't of known, could have had a different outcome. They always quoted a new price whenever I mentioned a different feature not working, and if I would have paid them all, the site would have cost over 3 times as much as the original quote said.

Oh another problem we had that was really funny, on the proposal anyone visiting the site could ask the coach a question by clicking on a link which took them to a form page. However because it wasn't mentioned on the coaches list that they would receive this form, the submitted form didn't have a place to go, it was really just a dummy form. How pathetically dumb was that.

My main problem with them is they prey on unsuspecting new website owners, people that really need a helping hand, and understanding that the idea of a site will evolve as it is being built, they are offering them a cheap website, and pretending to be wonderful and helpful, ringing up talking for hours on the phone. When most often rip the poor client.

I've dealt with a few website owners, over the years, who had their original website built by different Indian website designers/developers. Although the original website was cheap enough, they mistakenly agreed to have only the original developer do any changes on the site in the future or the site warrantee would be void.

One site was a comprehensive community website that originally cost only $6000 USD. Great price for the site, so no problems there, however a year down the line, and the site wanted to add a feature they wrote to the developer, and they wanted, $25,000USD that's twenty five thousand dollars USD for what was a relatively easy job even if the coding had to be written from scratch.

This is outrageous, yet sadly enough commonplace. For a new website owner really daunting.

Looking at the website warrantee or guarantee it actually only lasted for a month after the site was built, so I advised the owner of this, much to their relief.

I found a coder, and had the job done for a total of $350. The killer was that the feature the owner actually wanted added, was actually in the code all the time, and had been hidden, so all that was required was to find it, and take out the code that was hiding it. It took me longer to find a coder that actually coded in that particular coding language than it did to have the work done.

It is vital that if you get a cheap site made you don't agree to anything like this, for this very reason. I have heard story after story from owners of how these "Cheap websites" end up costing the owner a bundle of money.

Another story was a website, that at first look, seemed to be a nice website, and as long as any members joined, and did everything correctly the site worked well. And in the testing stage of the website, since the owner wasn't an experienced beta tester, he didn't realize there were no correct error controls within the site.

I went to the site, actually to become a member, I filled out the membership form, and when I submitted it, my password didn't have enough characters, when the page refreshed after the error message it was blank, so I filled it in again, this time my dyslexia kicked in and my password didn't match, again I was faced with filling in the form. After 4 tries I eventually got the form to accept, and wrote to the owner, explaining that it was a simple change in coding to make the form keep the information, when something like that happened. And told him what to ask his developers to do in geek speak.

The owner wrote back and thanked me, and said that he hadn't known of the problem, and would get it fixed. All was well. I started writing to the owner just on a friendly basis about the site, and how things were going, his idea was a good one, and I have an inquisitive nature, like hobit our hedgehog mascot.

A month later the site owner wrote to me and said he hadn't had a reply from the company, after several emails on his part, and was sick and tired of their lousy after sales service.

He told me about a couple of other issues that had been reported, and asked if our webdesign/development company would be willing to fix these issues. I by that time had found another 3 problems with the site.

I said that we'd be happy to do the work, and carry on as his developer. I suggested that I beta test the site, which he was happy for me to do. I found 24 different issues, nothing major but things that should have been found and fixed during the building and testing stage.

While looking at the code to fix a couple of small issues, I noticed that some of the code was familiar, and actually turned out to be open source code, free to use, and just had a couple of minor customizations made to it, and should never have cost the $4000 that he was charged in the first place, so even though initially he was happy with the cheap price, he was actually overcharged.

That was over 3 years ago now, and now the site works well, has had several changes made, and features added, the owner is a happy camper.

The moral of the story is, you often get what you pay for, especially when it comes to very cheap websites. And paying for someone to explain the options you have can often save you a lot in the long run.

Regards Lynny

Best SEO in San Diego
Website design and development, Hillcrest, San Diego

Best Regards Lynny Brown - Best SEO Results, from the BEST SEO!!!

San Diego Born, English speaking SEO.
Not The Cheapest SEO, but I get Results that amaze My Clients and & other SEO's

Contact Me directly.
Lynny help1@seobyCanz.com
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