Website Development

Yes I do in fact cave easily

I know I said in my previous blog about Development Requests For Proposals that doing an SEO RFP was something to be avoided at all costs (to the point that ramming a pen directly into your kneecap to get out of it would be a viable option), but of course this just guarantees that at some point your job is going to require you to do it. In order to spare you any unnecessary Bic-related patella injuries, we have gone ahead and put together a sample SEO RFP that is available for download at our site.

Please note that this Search Engine optimization request for proposal is even more dependant on you the client providing information than its Web development counterpart. SEO strategies and Internet marketing campaigns are tailored specifically to your market, your target site users and what kind of communication medium you use your Web site for, and an SEO firm getting a firm enough grip on all of this through an SEO RFP is highly unlikely. As with the development RFP, just download the SEO RFP template, change the fonts and page background to fit your company’s branding and then start sending out the pain to us, the sad response-preparers. We have also included a TKG-Branded version to give you an idea of how to brand it to your company - which doubles as a not-so-subtle reminder to of course remember to hit us with one when it comes time to distribute your finished SEO RFP!

 All of this being said, it is still crucial even with an RFP that you meet with a company before making your final decision to hire them. Wasting time with ineffectual campaigns is way too costly, both in terms of actual investment and in ground lost to your competition, to risk with someone you haven’t had the chance to question in person. Meet with them and have them actually show you the results that they have generated. Have them discuss in depth their approach to ensure that everything you hear is “white hat” as you definitely can not risk ending up being punished by the search engines. Also, remember that you will be working closely with this group if they are ultimately selected. Use this interview as a chance to see how they interact with each other and with you. Make sure the experience is one that you wish to repeat in the coming months and one that you are sure will be productive.

It is definitely time to blog again as I am just not getting enough spam any more from my previous post and I can’t be sure when I might suddenly need some cheap allergy prescriptions. Today I’d like to begin the crusade against the mystery of industry buzz words, and I would like to start with podcasts. Wikipedia should be referred to for a full definition of the term podcast, but we’ll be focusing here on how a client can tell if this is something that they need and how to get it.

The buzz phrase formula is pretty typical; someone hears of something that is “hot” and then asks you why your site doesn’t have it - good times. But, does your site actually need it? Starting with the definition, podcasts are so much more than just plain old ordinary audio files – they are plain old ordinary audio files on a Web site. Ta da! Well, I guess we can go a little deeper than that. Any audio files (or sometimes short video clips) available on your site can be called podcasts. Basically, people put together little presentations that are related to the content of their site for others to listen to or view and then make the files available on the site. So here comes the bottom line, could your company’s site experience or marketing be enhanced by having something like this available to your site users?

If yes, then let us break down what each of the three approaches will require of you. Allowing users to just straight-up download these files requires that you upload the files to the site and have a link that users can use to download the file. Allowing users to view the files from the site by streaming them requires that the file be hosted somewhere with a link to play it on the site. The feed subscription option requires that you have a developer set it up to be available via RSS or other type of feed (for example, us. Hey look, I just achieved “marketing”!).

So which approach is best for you? Having the file available for download from your site is the most cost-effective solution as any standard CMS system should already allow this functionality, and static sites can quickly and easily have this type of file added by any developer. The best for site users and over-all distribution is probably the RSS feed as it will instantly send out the latest editions to the registered recipients as soon as each is done and posted to the site. The middle option of having the files available to be streamed from the site is not a bad choice as more as Flash-based media players become more and more readily available, but one of the lures of the mighty podcast is that people can save them to their computers and then transfer them to their mp3 player of choice (I refuse to refer to the obvious here) to listen to anywhere.

Hope this helps, I’ll be back soon with whatever the next phrase is that we have to hear get misused enough times to cause sever cranial bleeding.