Hiring a web site design & development agency? The rules have changed.

Doing business at the speed of thought means you need to stay up with changes. A few short years ago you could hire a website design and development agency that came up with revolutionary designs, knew how to build pages with good content and made sure that the site was easy to navigate.

But there’s much more to hiring a website design and development agency than looking for good design, development, website copywriting and the like. You have to look for a website design & development company that knows inbound marketing, search engine optimization and keyword analytics. Most web site design and development agencies will say they know how to do these things, but the reality is very few of these companies know how to do it right.

It pays to ask any web site design and development agency you’re considering to show you the inbound marketing efforts they use for their own company. They should be able to give you the list of keywords where they are ranked on the first two or three pages of Google, how they got there and how they plan to rise further. If they don’t have a clear strategy for their own website design and development agency, chances are pretty small they’ll be able to come up with a good one for your company.