Austin Web Marketing Checklist

If you're trying to find an Austin web marketing service, these are the kinds of things the company should provide (at a minimum). Use this list to help you screen Austin website marketing firms before you sign on with them.

Search Engine Optimization

When interviewing Austin web marketing companies, be sure to ask what kind of search engine optimization talent they have in-house. This is critical. Because after all, even if you have excellent lead-generation tools on your site, it won't matter if nobody can find your website.

For more on this criteria, read my tips on choosing an Austin search engine optimization company.

Website Usability

Who's going to be updating and managing your website, you or the web marketing firm? This is an important question to ask before selecting an Austin web marketing company. Here's why. Some website marketing companies build sites that only a programmer can manage. Such a website can not be updated by the average Joe or Jane — it will take the programmer's assistance. So each time you want to update your website, you'll have to pay the web marketing company to do it for you.

If you ask me, this kind of approach is outdated. With the abundance of content-management tools available today, there's no reason you can't have an easy-to-manage website. For example, when I build websites for clients, I often use WordPress. This blog program can be configured in such a way that it serves as both a blog and a website. Best of all, the website owner can add content and make updates ... without any programming skills to speak of.

If this kind of usability is important to you (and it should be), ask your Austin web designer or web marketing company about it. If they tell you they don't offer anything like that, you may want to keep shopping around.

Blogging Support

Business blogs are all the rage right now. (Check out my corporate blogging website for an example.) The reasons are many. Blogs give publishing power to even the most unskilled of web novices. If you can type and send an email, you can publish content to a blog.

Blogs also help with search engine visibility by giving you an easy way to grow your website with quality content. For these reasons and many more, ask your Austin web marketing company if they can set you up with a blog. Ask them about blog training while you're at it.

Web Marketing Success Stories

Any Austin web marketing company should be able to share some success stories with you. Even if they've only been in business a short while, they should have some case studies to share. If they don't, you can consider yourself their guinea pig. Are you comfortable with that role?

Conclusion

These are just a few of the things you should look for in an Austin web site marketing company. These are the criteria I feel are most important, but you can probably add to my list with your own criteria. By all means do so!