Implementing Search Engine Optimization after you have completed your site is really a backwards approach to a web project. Your SEO Strategy should always be in the forefront of your mind before, during and after you have designed your site.
While you build a new site (or even migrate an old one) many decisions need to be made such as storefront setup, plugins to be used, conversion and signups and blog content – these all need careful analysis and before launch to make sure they are search engine friendly.
In addition the structure and overall layout of the site, the way top and side navigation will work (primary and secondary navigation), the usability, even the external and internal linking structure all need to be discussed in great detail.
Avoid designing the website first and putting off optimizing until afterwards. A great looking professional website is important but worthless if no one ever sees it or can’t navigate through it.
Your site development timeline might look something like this:
- Discuss your needs, establish a budget.
- Analyze keywords and competition for SEO.
- Start a content path. What problems do we need to solve?
- Discuss theme and customization’s.
- Launch a testing or staging site.
- Develop strong internal linking between pages.
- Launch final site and promote. (External linking, social media, etc.)
- Hand off site to you or we can host it for you (optional).
So as a general rule of thumb, we never start working on site design before a SEO and content strategy is in place first. It’s very common that site developers always seem to skip over SEO and a content strategy until the end of the development phase.
