I got into SEO and website development by circumstance and my fastidious character. I was starting a new company to which I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look into search engine optimization. This was about two years ago and prior I had made a bunch of websites for my other B2B ventures to which I never incorporated SEO as a marketing strategy. Thinking back that was a big mistake but at the time I had a lot on my plate as I was trying to figure out how to use all these different website builders for small business while working on my craft of designing and developing websites for these companies I was working on.
I ended up window shopping a number of different vendors, companies and freelancers that did search engine optimization and I never really came across any solution that I thought was worth its money for the kind of work that was performed.
Instead I learned the ins and outs myself, gluing my sockets to my computer screen, scouring google and youtube for answers. I don’t really recommend this as there is way too much to know and it ends up becoming overwhelming especially if you have other things on your plate.
I got back into digital marketing since then and have adapted my own style from the different things that I have learned throughout my different ventures.
The following is a synopsis for any business professional to follow when creating a website to make sure that things are done in what I like to call “uniformity” and not just trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together without knowing what the final puzzle looks like when solved.
The following are things to consider.
You don’t want to plan and start implementing an SEO campaign after your website is developed.
With the plethora of Google ranking factors, I believe there are 3 major signals to consider when designing and building your site (and the keyword here, no pun intended on the word “keyword” for those SEO’s reading this, is “designing”):
So what is good practice in planning the development of a site that has the foundation for good SEO?
The one roadmap is mindfulness.
Let me explain.
For purposes of illustration, let’s use as an example, your dream house.
Boom. You just built your dream house out of thin air. Just the way you always imagined it.
You’re most likely going to want to show it to some of your friends and family, right?
Well, when they come to your house and you greet them at the door, you’re going to want to tell them all the great things about your house and all the little things that make this house so great and hence the reason it’s your dream house.
You’re probably going to touch on every minute detail that makes you so excited about this new house of yours and you’ll be happy to shape the experience of their tour with the things you say.
Now, when your guests come in through the front door, you’re not going to take them blindfoldedly to your master bedroom first and then blind fold them again and then walk them to your basement. That would be kind of confusing to your guests as to the choice in navigation you took and might have them scratching their heads.
What you will do is most likely go in order from one room to another from the entryway in a logical and mapped out path and you will recite and talk of things in certain parts of the house to elevate the experience of your guests.
You want to hit on all the things that make your product or service great, but you want to do it in a way that won’t have your visitor’s scratching their head.
Hence, you want to do it in a meaningful and clear-cut way.
Your website is therefore the personification of you as this tour guide in your dream house and you want to give the best tour of your product or service without you actually being there.
With that said here are pointers to consider when planning the development of your site.
Each page on your website should be targeting a certain keyword. This keyword should be in your title tag, url, h1 tag and sprinkled a few times throughout the content. Preparing your keywords before the design process lines you up for victory as the design of the site can be tailored to hit on points that will move the needle in SEO success.
Have a solid base of robust and well to do content for every page of your site. As a side note: content length of 1,000 words or more tends to attract more links and shares.
Your site should be created with a sophisticated CMS (Content Management System) so it is easy to publish posts. The design of the blog should be clean and simple yet captivating.
If you want to lead the visitor to want to take some kind of action i.e. download white paper, submit email address to receive an e-book on so-and-so, include a CTA. Bottomline, this CTA, should be unobtrusive and should be giving something of value that would help your visitor in making a decision.
These pages will serve as assets in inbound marketing and support your content outreach efforts down the line to establish your brand’s digital earned presence and domain authority.
Any body with a fresh pair of eyes could see how the quality in design in anything evolves over time. From clothing to cars to website design, people whether consciously or subconsciously respond and are affected by its whims.
We aren’t in the era of GeoCities any more, and so, it's not just a matter of keeping up appearances. That is not the point of this discussion. The point is to provide better and elevated website experiences through design all while securing a search engine dominancy.
