Any suggestions for how to find a good web developer?

[budbiss]

Hello, I want to hire someone to create a new ecommerce site for my company. I am having trouble finding someone who is good with SEO. Do you guys have any suggestions on how/where to find someone to hire? How and where do you all find people to hire?

I'd also like to hear your input about:
1) Hiring someone who is local verses hiring someone over the internet who lives in another state. Do you have a preference? How about these Indian based firms? How to they compare in the quality department?

2) Do you typically expect one person/company to build a site that a) functions the way you want; b) make it search eninge optimized and c) has the look and feel you want? Or, do you have one person do the functional side of things, another do the SEO and another do the look and feel? I am finding that the people who are good at designing a nice look and feel are typically not so good at coding a clean working site. And, the reverse seems to be true as well: generally I find that people who are great at coding are not so great at implementing a nice look an feel.

Thanks for you help!

[treeline]

Hi,

There is another discussion going on right now that covers most of these same issues. Take a look and jump in if you want:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[simonuk]

My advice?

You have two options:

1. Buy a cart, use one of their templates and go for it yourself.

2. Get two people involved in my opinion is very important! As you said get a web designer for the content and a database guru for the cart.

If SEO is important (as it will be) then try to find a designer who can build the site using pure CSS and make sure the database guru is aware of how SE's cache database driven links.

If the designer can create the templates in CSS the DB guru should be able to tie them cart into the cart easily.

Those two steps will go a long way for SEO.