The aim: This post highlights SEO areas that need to be addressed and decided on before the website brief is sent to designers and developers.
Imagine a scenario: a client asks what they should do to improve their organic rankings. After a diligent tech audit, market analysis, and a conversion funnel review, you have to deliver some tough recommendations:
“You have to redesign your site architecture,” or
“You have to migrate your site altogether,” or even
“You have to rethink your business model, because currently you are not providing any significant value.”
This can happen when SEO is only seriously considered after the site and business are up and running. As a marketing grad, I can tell you that SEO has not been on my syllabus amongst other classic components of the marketing mix. It’s not hard to imagine even mentored and supported businesses overlooking this area.
This post aims to highlight areas that need to be addressed along with your SWOT analysis and pricing models — the areas before you design and build your digital ‘place’:
- Wider strategic areas
- Technical areas to be discussed with developers.
- Design areas to be discussed with designers.
Note: This post is not meant to be a pre-launch checklist (hence areas like robots.txt, analytics, social, & title tags are completely omitted), but rather a list of SEO-affecting areas that will be hard to change after the website is built.
Wider strategic questions that should be answered:
1. How do we communicate our mission statement online?
After you identify your classic marketing ‘value proposition,’ next comes working out how you communicate it online.
Are terms describing the customer problem/your solution being searched for? Your value proposition might not have many searches; in this case, you need to create a brand association with the problem-solving for specific customer needs. (Other ways of getting traffic are discussed in: “How to Do SEO for Sites and Products with No Search Demand”).
How competitive are these terms? You may find that space is too competitive and you will need to look into alternative or long-tail variations of your offering.
2. Do we understand our customer segments?
These are the questions that are a starting point in your research:
- How large is our market? Is the potential audience growing or shrinking? (A tool to assist you: Google Trends.)
- What are our key personas — their demographics, motivations, roles, and needs? (If you are short on time, Craig Bradford’s Persona Research in Under 5 Minutes shows how to draw insights using Twitter.)
- How do they behave online and offline? What are their touch points beyond the site? (A detailed post on Content and the Marketing Funnel.)
This understanding will allow you to build your site architecture around the stages your customers need to go through before completing their goal. Rand offers a useful framework for how to build killer content by mapping keywords. Ideally, this process should be performed in advance of the site build, to guide which pages you should have to target specific intents and keywords that signify them.
3. Who are our digital competitors?
Knowing who you are competing against in the digital space should inform decisions like site architecture, user experience, and outreach. First, you want to identify who fall under three main types of competitors:
- You search competitors: those who rank for the product/service you offer. They will compete for the same keywords as those you are targeting, but may cater to a completely different intent.
- Your business competitors: those that are currently solving the customer problem you aim to solve.
- Cross-industry competitors: those that solve your customer problem indirectly.
After you come up with the list of competitors, analyze where each stands and how much operational resource it will take to get where they are:
- What are our competitors’ size and performance?
- How do they differentiate themselves?
- How strong is their brand?
- What does their link profile look like?
- Are they doing anything different/interesting with their site architecture?
Tools to assist you: Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO, and Ahrefs for competitor link analysis, and SEM rush for identifying who is ranking for your targeted keywords.
Technical areas to consider in order to avoid future migration/rebuild
1. HTTP or HTTPS
Decide on whether you want to use HTTPS or HTTP. In most instances, the answer will be the former, considering that this is also one of the ranking factors by Google. The rule of thumb is that if you ever plan on accepting payments on your site, you need HTTPS on those pages at a minimum.
2. Decide on a canonical version of your URLs
Duplicate content issues may arise when Google can access the same piece of content via multiple URLs. Without one clear version, pages will compete with one another unnecessarily.
In developer’s eyes, a page is unique if it has a unique ID in the website’s database, while for search engines the URL is a unique identifier. A developer should be reminded that each piece of content should be accessed via only one URL.
3. Site speed
Developers are under pressure to deliver code on time and might neglect areas affecting page speed. Communicate the importance of page speed from the start and put in some time in the brief to optimize the site’s performance (A three-part Site Speed for Dummies Guide explains why we should care about this area.)
4. Languages and locations
If you are planning on targeting users from different countries, you need to decide whether your site would be multi-lingual, multi-regional, or both. Localized keyword research, hreflang considerations, and duplicate content are all issues better addressed before the site build.
Using separate country-level domains gives an advantage of being able to target a country or language more closely. This approach is, however, reliant upon you having the resources to build and maintain infrastructure, write unique content, and promote each domain.
If you plan to go down the route of multiple language/country combinations on a single site, typically the best approach is subfolders (e.g. example.com/uk, example.com/de). Subfolders can run from one platform/CMS, which means that development setup/maintenance is significantly lower.
5. Ease of editing and flexibility in a platform
Google tends to update their recommendations and requirements all the time. Your platform needs to be flexible enough to make quick changes at scale on your site.
Design areas to consider in order to avoid future redesign
1. Architecture and internal linking
An effective information architecture is critical if you want search engines to be able to find your content and serve it to users. If crawlers cannot access the content, they cannot rank it well. From a human point of view, information architecture is important so that users can easily find what they are looking for.
Where possible, you should look to create a flat site structure that will keep pages no deeper than 4 clicks from the homepage. That allows search engines and users to find content in as few clicks as possible.
Use keyword and competitor research to guide which pages you should have. However, the way pages should be grouped and connected should be user-focused. See how users map out relationships between your content using a card sorting technique — you don’t have to have website mockup or even products in order to do that. (This guide discusses in detail how to Improve Your Information Architecture With Card Sorting.)
2. Content-first design
Consider what types of content you will host. Will it be large guides/whitepapers, or a video library? Your content strategy needs to be mapped out at this point to understand what formats you will use and hence what kind of functionality this will require. Knowing what content type you will producing will help with designing page types and create a more consistent user interface.
3. Machine readability (Flash, JS, iFrame) and structured data
Your web pages might use a variety of technologies such as Javascript, Flash, and Ajax that can be hard for crawlers to understand. Although they may be necessary to provide a better user experience, you need to be aware of the issues these technologies can cause. In order to improve your site’s machine readability, mark up your pages with structured data as described in more detail in the post: “How to Audit a Site for Structured Data Opportunities”.
4. Responsive design
As we see more variation in devices and their requirements, along with shifting behavior patterns of mobile device use, ‘mobile’ is becoming less of a separate channel and instead is becoming an underlying technology for accessing the web. Therefore, the long-term goal should be to create a seamless and consistent user experience across all devices. In the interest of this goal, responsive design and dynamic serving methods can assist with creating device-specific experiences.
Closing thoughts
As a business owner/someone responsible for launching a site, you have a lot on your plate. It is probably not the best use of your time to go down the rabbit hole, reading about how to implement structured data and whether JSON-LD is better than Microdata. This post gives you important areas that you should keep in mind and address with those you are delegating them to — even if the scope of such delegation is doing research for you (“Give me pros and cons of HTTPS for my business” ) rather than complete implementation/handling.
I invite my fellow marketers to add other areas/issues you feel should be addressed at the initial planning stages in the comments below!
Hi Maryna!
Excellent post, if I told you how many online projects have failed because of this tips... :P
You know, when I worked on an agency in Spain the main ussue we have with clients was this:
A client come to us with a new website designed by a development agency, but without marketing department, then he come to us with that website and, of course, there are tons of things "not so good made", so we have to practically rebuild everything...
Is the same in other countries?
Not in the UK
Design is the most important step cause there is no second chance for first impression!
Well, it's true that there isn't a second chance for fist impression, but without SEO the point is that you are not having neither the first chance :P
Italy the same...
United Kingdom the same...
As all other bad things it happens everywhere :)
But probably things are changing. In the last period ever more clients are asking for SEO services before the website build
That sound really good Giovanni, if the market starts changing, the point is keeping it on that way :)
Thank you, Sergio! That is certainly true in the UK. However, increasingly, we are getting clients who approach us pre-launch for general guidance or to help with specific question (e.g.: “which pages should we build?”).
@Sergio & Co
We can say that in Spain is also changing. 30% of customers come before designing their website, but it must be said that they are customers who have already had previous experience, and know the importance of seo.
Vamos, que no estamos tan mal...
Hi Koke!
Sure, it depends a lot of the type of company, I think familiar ones (even very large familiar companies) are more likely to do first the website and then marketing, with no connection between.
On the ot her hand, high-competitive niche companies or just tech ones are more likely to involve both aspects.
Podríamos estar peor, eso sí ;)
Great post Maryna! I totally agree with your technical and designing recommendations here.
I just want to add here something related to interlinking which worked for me in past. I have seen people (especially on big websites) unintentionally interlinking their not so important pages (pages that are not mostly relevant to user's queries) most of the times. The pages such as about, privacy policy, content policy, terms, etc. are most of the times most interlinked (say on footer or menu bar) URLs which consumes your crawl budget.
I would suggest we should interlink our important pages more like services, products, blogs, even FAQ's, etc in our main content. That way somehow we can tell search engines about our most important pages and what they should be crawling most often. For not so important pages, we can keep them on homepage's footer and try to not to repeat them throughout the website.
Thanks
Nice suggestion Praveen.
Yes buddy, unfortunately the Crow is black everywhere :(
Not only clients, even, when we build inhouse website, Boss or Project manager (in development/design department) are the decision makers. They decide the theme, design, etc and making the website live. Then, boss simply email to SEO managers to start working on it. BDW, I am from INDIA....
I believe, people should not think that taking suggestion from SEO's will only be technical stuffs, it might be the key of your online success because at the end, SEO's are going to market it.
So, thanks for this wonderful breakdown Maryna, I am going to send this link to my boss right now.
Thank you again !
Edited: Reply to Sergio Ramírez .
Well, I feel a little better knowing this issue are the same all over the world, no only on SEO stuff, on online marketing niche as a global thing ;)
I'm glad I have made you feel better ;P Anyways, it's a serious issue and hope people(clients/bosses) will understand this soon. It's worth discussing with SEO's before making a site rather than finding error's while analyzing website after it goes live.
Thanks,
Great thoughts.... I think that this procedure could also be applied to a "new section of a site" or even a "new page on a site". Thank you!
Time spent on the planning and design is really important. At some point, though, you got to upload and see what happens. At that point it is "time to watch the analytics and learn from your visitors". So, don't become so invested in your planning and design that you are unwilling to change. They are simply concept. Practice could be quite different. It takes more than one shot to adjust the sights of a gun or a website.
Great Post...wish I had read this before, say an year ago...now i have pulled down my site to rework on SEO....kills me to tell that what I posted maybe an year ago has to be redone from scratch..: (
Whether or not individual service location pages, or product/service pages should be created. I feel like a lot of business owners overlook this and want to consolidate the scope of work without realizing the importance of page level content. Creating an index page (ex. /consulting) with a list of everything they do is a cost-effective strategy if on a tight budget. But if the goal is to rank for specific offerings and keywords (ex. /consulting/business-continuity-planning/), it rarely works.
Glad to see you mentioned responsive design Maryna - in this modern digital era website design should respond to the user's behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.
Hi Maryna!
In the post you said, "Decide on whether you want to use HTTPS or HTTP. In most instances, the answer will be the former, considering that this is also one of the ranking factors by Google. The rule of thumb is that if you ever plan on accepting payments on your site, you need HTTPS on those pages at a minimum."
I was to reiterate that if you are building a new website, you should always choose to be HTTPS—even if you never plan on accepting payments on your website. We've found that this has helped boost rankings slightly, even if they don't accept payment via the website.
Thanks for taking the time to put this together!
Great post. In my opinion you have to first consider whether you wish to build a static site, custom CMS or use any of the open source CMS that are available.
In case you wish to go for a CMS you have to evaluate whether it is SEO friendly or not. This is because if you want to then improve your ranking and find that the CMS is not SEO friendly, you may have to drop your entire website and start from scratch.
I have come across a custom built CMS which did not have the ability to specify a unique title for each page!!!
Finally a good blog post about this important and underestimated issue.
Based on my personal experience, for someone could be different, the most important thing before to even start building a website is to run a keyword research in order to understand how to organize categories and content and what topic needs to be addressed.
Most of the website out there have two or categories that compete for the same keywords or one category that compete for a lot, sometimes without any relation to each other.
Completeley agree, but SEO is very boring for the most of people and they tend to spend time in other issues as design or content. These isues are very important but SEO is the third leg that holds the web success.
Great information. Many times we work with starting companies or just a group of people with an idea in a seed phase. And they want a 'great website' and being the 'first in google for this and this keyword'.
How seo and marketing are linked when a customer asks us to improve their traffir or rankings? Many times is not just the rankings or the web design, but we as business consultants see (or feel) that company cannot offer anything better or different, or do not have a plan to stay in business for a long time.
I like talking to them and explaining any improvements I would do not just in the web page but in the whole company (normally a few members with more technical than economic profiles). Many peers prefer to improve the seo, web design and marketing. That’s why they were called for.
I am an economic mind in a romance with digital marketing and SEO, but other advisors come from computing. What do you think about it? Is it better to try to recommend business improvements as a whole, or just working on seo, web design, etc.? What do you usually do?
I bet on site speed and design.
Great article.
Fantastic Post!
A BIG point is, watch out for is the "sales" guy. He will say yes to anything, while the developer has no clue.
I provided a detailed list of requirements, along with the copy, images, basic SEO & a sitemap, once the site was ready they never built a single page, only templates. Then said we were to build it out, Thanks "sales" guy. :/
Their custom CMS with "2+ years online" was full of "bugs", 6+ months later, I'm still telling them to fix simple things like duplicate pages and Alt text for images. Thanks again "sales" guy!
After all is said and done, the site works good, but their custom "CMS" is a bear to edit pages, it doesn't even allow for multiple image uploads...
I'd post a link, but prefer not to give them any credit. :)
PS: I do hope their "marketing dept" reads this. LOL
Sadly all too common. I've regularly had to inherit a website build in this fashion, and knowing how lacking the vast majority of SMEs are when it comes to technical ability, it shocks me no one considers the day to day usage.
Dear Maryna,
Yes, it is better to learn SEO before launching a website. But, it is also true that practice makes us perfect. If we study SEO without having a website of our own, then we won't be able to learn it properly. So, it is better to start our SEO journey with a live site and then after achieving enough experience, we easily will be able to launch another website.
And about HTTPS, the most important thing is that it is not so important for a niche site. A niche site doesn't require any information, especially any personal information from the visitors. So, HTTPS is not mandatory for niche marketers. Yes, HTTPS is undoubtedly better than HTTP, but your HTTPS won't be able to defeat your competitors if you don't have enough HQ Contents and Links. However, many many thanks for sharing those awesome Tips!
I've helped quite a few websites be brought to launch, and this article is so much better than a checklist. You've actually given me things to think about in future, delving deeper than just strikethroughs on a list.
Cross-industry competitors? I didn't even consider those....
Nice post, Maryna!
It's great when you can be involved from an SEO perspective this early in the process, and not have to upset/annoy web developers that may already be underway developing a site.
Responsive design and site-wide security are my two biggest technical recommendations for any businesses starting a new website build, with Google's recent changes and mobile-first index coming into play.
Interesting article. Many times the client does not think about these things and is detrimental to the positioning of the website.
A web page very "pretty", can be very bad to position because of great weight of images, codes that do not read properly google ...
To this I would add that you plan a number of words that you will almost always use in blog posts. Also, plan constructive tags that identify families of materials within your website. I do not suggest that they are very particular. It is not good to inhundate the web site that you will not use later.
excellent post Maryna, thank you
This is a fantastic post and something that should be reviewed prior to any new rebuilds or even a new client. The technical aspects mentioned whith HTTPS being the first is a huge point to be made with the new changes in the alog across searches. A side note I would add is also that if possible to pinpoint the most valuable content with in the site and ensure that is is a focal point upon the redesign / relaunch process. By looking back at past data if possible allowing your crawl budget to focus on those pages.
Hi Maryna,
Really enjoyed how you started this post by addressing strategic questions that a new site build should answer. I think it's easy to get caught up in all the technical considerations and lose site of the who we're marketing towards. I very much appreciate this being on the forefront, thanks Maryna!
I think selection of right CMS and hosting provider is also important decision to make. As SEO team will also have to do lots of on-page SEO all the time and its always ease off the pressure from developer when SEO team knows the CMS basics.
Server response time is really important when it comes to page load speed so its always better to do some research.
Good reference for website considerations. It's best to prepare in advance.
Wonderful tips. This kind of high-level strategic thinking is so important when it comes to almost anything SEO related, but particularly websites. When we redesigned our site a few years ago we didn't fully think all this through, which meant some weak assumptions about our page structures, linking structures, and the keywords we were targeting. For the next months our organic traffic plummeted. Luckily we made some big changes to all these areas in September 2016 and since then our rankings, organic traffic and time on site have improved month on month - but just think of all the lost traffic we could have gained had we just planned well upfront!
Luckily we're a video agency, not an SEO agency ;)
A lot of people don't realise how much planning goes into a website. I have my own business and when we decided to use the services of an SEO company, i learned a lot about SEO and link building. Before I was ussing PPC as my only source of prospects, but with SEO, the effects last longer and are a lot cheaper in the long run.
Maryna one quick question.
Which will be the best between (HTTP or HTTPS)? if there is no payment transaction will be occurred. What extension will be the best for SEO point?
Many thanks Maryna for sharing your knowledge !! Very good contribution, all the points that detail we must have them very much in our projects. Everything counts to be increasing our website little by little.
Informative and raw post on Basic seo, thanks for highlighting this design and technical issue so wonderfully.
Here, In Bangladesh, we face that visitors often have bad impressions to this broken design website, only a few companies maintain this issues seriously.
Excellent!
Thanks Maryna Samokhina for this helpful tips......... It looks simple and informative....
Now it's necessary to make online presence for every business.So we should make SEO friendly websites. Digital marketing is something every business has to give due consideration to. There are lots of digital marketing courses available today.
Thanks again for this excellent post ....
Awesome post Maryna!
In the technical areas to consider, number 2 to decide on the unique versions of the URLs, I have seen this become a big issue many times. I have had eCommerce businesses complain that they need the same product in different categories and so create different URLs of the exact same content!
I like to have a whole discussion on the site URL structure. Deciding the keywords in the URL and what keywords you want that page mapped to is so much easier to do in the beginning than later down the road. As the pages are indexed and develop natural links, it is harder later to make a change than it is before the page even gets indexed.
One of the best articles on strategic SEO decisions. It covers almost every topic on how a website should be developed. I feel clarity on business offerings, target audience segmentation, site structure and content plan makes most of the web / mobile development strategy.
Thanks for sharing a very specific post on web development.
I specialize in local business and almost none of them will believe me when I say they should hire me before hiring a web designer. Frustrating!
Thank you for your recommendations, Maryna. Without a doubt, answering all these questions is the ideal option to develop a successful online project. The problem is that sometimes we work under pressure, so you ask yourself all these questions with the web already finished ... haha. Great post, Maryna!
A big thanks for this excellent & Informative post.
It gives shape to my ideas..(thinking to launch my website) & way to implement it:)
I really admire from your content, also keywords research part is really essential for all marketers. the point i get from your article is drafting content on white paper before going live.
We should review complete site architectural & usability analysis and structural analysis of the site not limited to content, interlinking, coding, and usability.
Apart from this, we should also figure out about the required pages that need to create for your website also add landing pages and blog for the purposes and don't forget to put sharing options on it.
HTTP or HTTPS is not an issue today anymore, Not that it was so expensive before but right now anyone can get FREE SSL with this open source https://letsencrypt.org
Awesome!
Thanks Maryna! :)