Why SEO Must be a Part of Website Design
Many businesses think of search engine optimization (SEO) as strictly a part of marketing, and in a way it is. The key understanding they miss, however, is that marketing doesn't wait to begin until you are at the stage of website promotion. It begins during the first stages of website design.
Think of your website as your business's public face. You get to pick the features you want on your face to create the most accurate impression you can for people who are first introduced to all you have to offer solely by looking at your face. What do you want your face to convey? And what if they could only find your face by searching for faces that have those specific features?
It is common to think of website architecture in terms of the content you want to share with visitors. You want them to see your products and services. You want them to know where you are. You may want to convey your pricing structure. Most websites out there are designed with these sorts of goals in mind. But no one searches for "products and services," so why name a page that way? What do people search for that would make it likely your products or services would fit the bill? Well that's what you need to name that page!
And likely we are talking about multiple pages, rather than a single "products and services" page, regardless of what you might name it. That will allow you to target your site's appearance for different possible searches even more, and attract more traffic.
Future articles will focus on how to discover the right search terms to structure your site's page around. For now I want to fully get across just how important it is that you structure your site around an SEO methodology from the ground up. In fact, we specialize in site redesign even when the graphics and user interface of a site are great, simply changing the architecture of the pages to be more search engine friendly.
Though there is debate in the SEO world as to whether Google and other major search engines still use page urls as part of their ranking criteria (we believe they don't), there is no doubt that they ALL use page content, particularly the page Title, as a major part of ranking criteria for any term. In other words, that page of your website is much more likely to come up in searches for a specific word or phrase if you put that word or phrase in the title of the page. This is why most search engine traffic comes in through pages other than the site's home page.
The home page is usually too general to attract the specific keyword orientation of search engines. Yet many companies continue to focus their marketing efforts on their home page, as if that was the most important page on the site. In terms of how pretty and attractive your "face" is, yes, the home page says the most about that, and you do want a visually appealing home page. But the home page needs to focus more on creating a favorable visual impression than in presenting substantial content. In terms of content, less is definitely more when it comes to the home page. But when it does come to conveying content, convincing a visitor that you have the products and/or expertise they seek, the secondary pages of the site are where the action is. And that is where SEO website architecture comes in.
Make SEO the framework of your site and you will find it is dependable, expandable, and able to accommodate your business's needs even as your business grows to include new offerings. The best marketing investment is the one you can make once and build on limitlessly for free, rather than having to pay for clicks for a lifetime. (However, pay-per-click marketing is an important adjunct to SEO, and we will also look at that in a future article.)
If you'd rather have someone who can apply their SEO website design expertise to your business's website immediately instead of waiting to develop that expertise yourself, visit our SEO Website Redesign page and learn more about what we do. Even if you choose to hire the help of a professional, you will still benefit from learning the basics of SEO yourself, if only so that you can understand the value and approach of the work you are contracting for.
Think of your website as your business's public face. You get to pick the features you want on your face to create the most accurate impression you can for people who are first introduced to all you have to offer solely by looking at your face. What do you want your face to convey? And what if they could only find your face by searching for faces that have those specific features?
It is common to think of website architecture in terms of the content you want to share with visitors. You want them to see your products and services. You want them to know where you are. You may want to convey your pricing structure. Most websites out there are designed with these sorts of goals in mind. But no one searches for "products and services," so why name a page that way? What do people search for that would make it likely your products or services would fit the bill? Well that's what you need to name that page!
And likely we are talking about multiple pages, rather than a single "products and services" page, regardless of what you might name it. That will allow you to target your site's appearance for different possible searches even more, and attract more traffic.
Future articles will focus on how to discover the right search terms to structure your site's page around. For now I want to fully get across just how important it is that you structure your site around an SEO methodology from the ground up. In fact, we specialize in site redesign even when the graphics and user interface of a site are great, simply changing the architecture of the pages to be more search engine friendly.
Though there is debate in the SEO world as to whether Google and other major search engines still use page urls as part of their ranking criteria (we believe they don't), there is no doubt that they ALL use page content, particularly the page Title, as a major part of ranking criteria for any term. In other words, that page of your website is much more likely to come up in searches for a specific word or phrase if you put that word or phrase in the title of the page. This is why most search engine traffic comes in through pages other than the site's home page.
The home page is usually too general to attract the specific keyword orientation of search engines. Yet many companies continue to focus their marketing efforts on their home page, as if that was the most important page on the site. In terms of how pretty and attractive your "face" is, yes, the home page says the most about that, and you do want a visually appealing home page. But the home page needs to focus more on creating a favorable visual impression than in presenting substantial content. In terms of content, less is definitely more when it comes to the home page. But when it does come to conveying content, convincing a visitor that you have the products and/or expertise they seek, the secondary pages of the site are where the action is. And that is where SEO website architecture comes in.
Make SEO the framework of your site and you will find it is dependable, expandable, and able to accommodate your business's needs even as your business grows to include new offerings. The best marketing investment is the one you can make once and build on limitlessly for free, rather than having to pay for clicks for a lifetime. (However, pay-per-click marketing is an important adjunct to SEO, and we will also look at that in a future article.)
If you'd rather have someone who can apply their SEO website design expertise to your business's website immediately instead of waiting to develop that expertise yourself, visit our SEO Website Redesign page and learn more about what we do. Even if you choose to hire the help of a professional, you will still benefit from learning the basics of SEO yourself, if only so that you can understand the value and approach of the work you are contracting for.
posted by Dutton at
11:33 AM
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