Why SEO should be an integral part of smart website design?

Our SEO wizardry is often called upon when our clients have just finished redesigning their website or created a brand new one, and for a good reason. After all the hard work they invested in their new online content, they understandably want it to appear at the top of Google’s search results. But since they didn’t pay much attention to search engine optimisation when designing the site, its rankings and organic traffic are plummeting, leaving them with no other choice but to invest in a clever SEO strategy that can turn this trend around. But does such late intervention come at a price?

This article will help you understand why optimising an already finished website is usually a lot more complicated, not to mention more expensive, than including SEO in the design process itself. Read on to find out how the latter option might not only spare your budget but also your nerves.

How do we optimise a website?

When our team is faced with a fresh SEO challenge, we usually start by thoroughly analysing the site, checking all the elements that can influence its rankings. We focus on the technical aspects of optimisation (loading speed, robots.txt files, sitemap optimisation, URL structure, metadata) as well as the content on the main pages and the blog. Looking into the most relevant key search phrases in the client’s niche as well as studying their main competitors, we can establish if the texts and other content elements on the site meet the needs of searchers. And this is where things often tend to go awry.

Wrong content strategy equals lower rankings

While it’s fairly easy to edit things like metadata, dealing with the content optimisation gone wrong is considerably more complicated, time-consuming and, at least in most cases, also more expensive. Let’s take a look at the following example.

The client is a young company that’s just launched its first website. In a bid to save a dime or two, the management decided to develop the wireframe and the URL structure of the site without consulting an SEO professional. As a consequence, the most important landing pages are based on the wrong keywords while the site even lacks dedicated pages for some key search phrases.

Due to the failed content optimisation, the site cannot reach its full organic potential, struggling to attract searchers and preventing the client from reaching their business goals. As the texts on the main landing pages don’t include the right keywords with the highest search volume, they cannot rank well for the most relevant search queries, occupying positions on SERP pages that only few searchers bother to check.

Sometimes, however, certain pages can actually be found among the best-ranking search results, but only for queries that actually aren’t relevant for the client’s core business. In such cases, the client’s page is also irrelevant for the searchers and therefore sentenced to being ignored by most of them. These examples clearly show that high rankings rarely tell the whole story and cannot guarantee that a website will attract a lot of organic traffic.

How to solve these issues?

The problem of lacking organic traffic due to low rankings can be solved, but how much work such a task entails usually depends on the current level of optimisation as well as the complexity of the page. Here at Optiweb, we usually list our recommendations for content optimisation in the SEO audit and then also discuss them with the client upon handing over the analysis. Depending on the client’s wishes, needs and budget, we then decide which of the improvements to implement and what to forego.

In most cases, we can achieve better rankings by adding dedicated landing pages with texts that are optimised with the help of strategically chosen keywords and enriched with elements like infographics, pictures, tables or even configurators etc. Cases that require us to add more high-quality SEO content to already existing pages or simply change the main keywords are also common.

However, the content structure of the website can sometimes be so inadequate from the SEO perspective that completely revamping it might be the client’s best bet. This is a bit more complex project as it also involves SEO activities at a technical level, for example redirecting the old indexed pages to the relevant new ones so that users aren’t treated to a welcome by a 404 message.

Design your page with SEO in mind and avoid issues

Of course, a competent SEO intervention will suffice to salvage a website from the online oblivion, but one should bear in mind that such projects take time and, considering the amount of work, don’t come cheap. The client must create new landing pages, prepare quality content and make sure that everything is implemented properly.

And due to the amount of work, it’s not uncommon to see clients that wanted to save money by not including SEO services in their development process, only to face an additional cost later – for SEO services! And this time, the whole deal can be even more expensive than it would have been if the client had thought of SEO a bit sooner.

And this answers the question why SEO should never be forgotten when developing your site structure. If we study the competition and determine the right keywords even before we start to actually work on the site itself, we make sure that its structure is properly optimised and that we can offer the visitors the most relevant content as well as all the elements that the competitors’ sites also boast. This is the only way to make a site competitive in the ever more crowded online universe, enabling it to rank high enough to expand its organic reach.

With all that in mind, we must also stress that search engine optimisation is an ongoing process that always calls for new technical and content upgrades. Especially those that compete in very competitive niches, where the established companies must defend their rankings from the aggressive newcomers, should never rely on their current optimisation strategy and always seek to improve and upgrade their pages instead. However, if the site’s foundations are strong thanks to a smart SEO strategy, every subsequent change is much easier, quicker to implement and, above all, more efficient.

P.S. Are you planning a new website right at this moment, not knowing what you need to take into account to make your new content stand out among the search results? Get in touch and we’ll be happy to assist you!

Our SEO specialists can’t wait to meet you!

Luka Štular

Specialist za vsebinski marketing

Kot specialist za vsebinski marketing strankam pomagam, da s pomočjo kakovostnih in dobro optimiziranih spletnih vsebin dosežejo širši krog spletnih uporabnikov.

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How do we optimise a website?

Wrong content strategy equals lower rankings

How to solve these issues?

Design your page with SEO in mind and avoid issues

Luka Štular

Specialist za vsebinski marketing

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Why SEO should be an integral part of smart website design?

How do we optimise a website?

Wrong content strategy equals lower rankings

How to solve these issues?

Design your page with SEO in mind and avoid issues

Share this entry

Luka Štular

Specialist za vsebinski marketing

Don’t miss out on similar articles

Connecting the Dots: Ideas for Data Synchronization

Learn how to Handle Long-running Requests with Pimcore Process Manager

All roads lead to Škofja Loka