When searching for vendors to handle your law firm’s digital marketing, it is smart to interview multiple companies. After all, you’ll want to look through their web design portfolio, talk about search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, discuss their track record for return on investment, and ask for references from other clients.
While shopping around, it can be tempting to piece together different services from different vendors. Whether you are piecemealing to save money or because you liked different parts of different vendors’ proposals, beware: This fragmented approach will cause costly cracks in your online marketing campaign.
Even when vendors pledge to work together, even when they have a good relationship, even when they have the best intentions for your campaign, the disconnect will inevitably show. And your bottom line will suffer.
Understanding the Interconnections Between Design, Development & SEO
Web design and SEO are often thought of as separate services, but to be effective, they should be considered a package deal. For law firms, the intent of a website is to bring in clients, so that should be the intent of the design. A beautiful website that doesn’t attract visitors and convert is a waste of money.
Designers should be closely consulting with SEO teams on user experience (UX), functionality, site structure, and paths to conversion. As a design moves into code, developers should also be working the SEO team to address factors that will affect the site’s rankings and conversions.
Common problems that pop up when SEO is not considered during the design and development phase include:
- Poor mobile usability
- Missing functionality
- Minimal focus on conversion
- Lack of site structure optimization
- Poor site speed
- Problems with image sizes
- Improper usage of header tags
- Incomplete NAP (name, address, phone) references
- Too small font sizes (yep, that can cause a ding to your SEO!)
These are all problems that may not be immediately noticeable by looking at a beautifully designed homepage, but they can leave your new site dead in the water when it comes to bringing in business.
More Vendors, Less Efficiency & Ultimately Money Wasted
When an SEO team from one vendor works on a site that was designed by another vendor without optimization in mind, the team has to go back and play catch-up. They must fix site structures, create workarounds for problematic coding, and address problems of missing functionality. In some cases, this can mean additional money for recoding. In every case, it is work that could have been done before the site launched to ensure success out the gate.
In addition, if a problem arises with a site, your entire online marketing campaign can come to a screeching halt as you try to get to the bottom of what happened. (For example, changes from a design vendor can severely impact your SEO.) Once you identify a problem, you may see delays as the appropriate fixes are implemented by each vendor and intertwined issues are hashed out by representatives from different companies.
Save Time and Make Money with Consultwebs
At Consultwebs, our experienced web designers and developers work hand-in-hand with our search engine optimization experts to ensure your site is set up for success. You don’t have to worry about wasted time, duplicated efforts, or miscommunication. And as you are ready to expand, our creative social media team and paid advertising experts can step in to take your campaign to the next level.
This fully integrated approach has made us a leader in law firm web marketing for 20 years. Contact us today to discuss how we can start getting you more clients from the web.
