SEO for Web Design

Great SEO Begins Well Before the Website Goes Live

If you are considering an overhaul of your current website or you’re creating a brand new website, you need to consider SEO early on and plan for SEO well before the design process even begins. While you can optimize existing websites, great SEO is only available when it is an integral part of early stages of the web design project.

At Web Savvy Marketing we won’t even start the graphical portion of the web design process until we’ve gone through a complete keyword discovery and mapping phrase. We hold off the graphic artist until we know what keywords and phrases we will target, what call to actions are needed, and what the sitemap will look like. That way you’re designing around core SEO fundamentals and optimizing the user experience all in one.

This allows us to build good SEO from the ground up and not backtracking and trying to fill holes within your sitemap or website architecture.

Steps for Optimal SEO in Web Design

• Review an initial list of possible keywords
• Compile a list of expanded keyword options via:
  • Existing website review
  • Planned sitemap changes and/or content updates
  • Competitor website(s) review
  • Google Analytics data
  • Google Search Console (formally Google Webmaster Tools) data
  • Google SERPs
  • Google Ad campaigns
  • Historical keyword reports
• Review the expanded keyword list for further Google suggestions and monthly search volumes
• Reduce Google output for irrelevant terms
• Review the first round of the keyword list for relevance and scoring
• Reduce the list of all possible keywords based on relevance input
• Match applicable keywords to planned content
• Identify keywords for new content creation
• Develop a list of targeted “long tail” keywords and phrases to be used for blog posts
• Optimize page content for SEO, which can include changes to the following:
  • Page name
  • URL
  • H1 header
  • H2-H6 subheaders
  • Text on page
  • Image file names
  • Image alt text
  • Hyperlinks
  • Link alt text
  • Use of bullets and readability
• Create and add page specific meta titles and descriptions
• Build internal links to support destination pages
• Create 301 redirects for any URL changes
• Prepare XML sitemap file
• Submit XML sitemaps to Google and Bing

And while we love having projects that combine our two passions, we’re also more than happy to pitch in and help another web designer create an SEO friendly website. Whether you’re revamping your current website or starting fresh, we’re here to help make sure your website is highly optimized to garnish search traffic.