Fort Worth Web Developers, Where Are You?

Ask any search engine for “Fort Worth web developers” and you’ll find some interesting results in the organic listings. These findings might make you think twice about contacting any of these companies to get your Fort Worth web development done properly.

Out of the first ten results I got in Google for this keyword phrase, here’s what I found:

• Companies headquartered in Fort Worth: 6 — One his based in Denton – that’s a hike from Fort Worth, especially during rush hour! Still, these projects go much more smoothly when you can sit down with the developer, and those meetings work better when you’re in the same town. C’mon, if I wanted a Dallas web developer I’d have looked for one.
• Companies with no physical address: 2 — I’m not sure what the deal is with these two, but I’d feel alot more comfortable knowing that my developer is a real company with a real address, and not some part-timer chilling out at Starbucks.
• Flash-based websites: 1 — Flash-based websites can look really cool, but are a huge problem for people wanting to get their websites found. Sure it isn’t impossible, as this company did it, but how likely are you to get a bunch of strangers to include a link to you in the footer of their websites? Web developers can do that alot more easily than you can.
• Companies claiming SEO expertise: 8 — Search engine optimization is a service that many web developers claim expertise. These sites have varying amounts of explanation of what their SEO services are (two just have a single sentence, along the lines of “…and we do SEO too.”)
• SEO-unfriendly page titles: 8 — Only two companies offering search engine optimization services have SEO-friendly page titles on their own company websites. If they can’t even optimize their own web pages properly, it doesn’t inspire alot of confidence in their ability to optimize yours.
• Companies including SEO examples: 0 — Not one company boasting SEO services offered any examples of their work on their websites. Apart from their page one presence on my original query (which can be explained away by the inclusion of a footer link in their clients’ sites), no other examples of what they can accomplish can be found. We, of course, do include SEO examples for you. Hmmm….

Now, let me jump in for the cynics among you: “Where is Smartacus in this query?” Well, this is a keyword I’m only now focusing on, and this afternoon we come in at #31. (We don’t generally force our link into site footers, unlike some of our competitors.)

I expect to do a bit better than #31 over the near future.