This is a key question in the early planning stages of any website. Depending on who you ask will provide you with very different answers. A web designer will argue in the majority of cases that the design should always come first. In defence of all web designers if a website is not pleasing to the eye and does not capture the visitor’s attention then they are likely to almost instantly bounce off the website without browsing deeper into the content. However an important question to answer at this point is how did the visitor reach the website in the first place?
In my own personal experience a typical scenario for many clients is they have their new website designed and developed. Content is then added to the website primarily from corporate leaflets and company brochures. Time then passes with the new website receiving relatively low levels of traffic! As more and more time passes the situation grows increasingly more dire resulting in increased pressure on the management team to attract more visitors and substantiate the development costs of the new website. During this time it is likely a PPC advertising platform such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing will be utilised to try and increase the number of targeted visitors. While this is a sound strategy in the short term and can actually provide highly beneficial keyword research data for a longer term SEO strategy, it rarely makes for a sustainable longer term online marketing strategy.
Typically after a period of around 6 to 12 months when monthly PPC budgets have reached an all time high and organic visitors numbers have failed to increase as expected the decision will be taken to call in an SEO expert. The SEO expert is tasked with building a longer term more sustainable online marketing strategy with search engine optimisation as its focus to try and rescue some search engine rankings.
Unfortunately this is a scenario we experience far too often. Business owners who have fallen victim to this “hope and pray” website development cycle will certainly support me in saying this is not the best way to ensure the success of a new website. It can both delay a website reaching it’s full potential by many months and even years, but also result in thousands in lost profit, turnover and ongoing prospects.
Many web design and web development companies claim in their sales pitch to be SEO experts. A quick browse through their client portfolio can often reveal their lack of SEO knowledge and expertise. This will be evident when you investigate the search engine visibility of both their own website and their listed clients.
So can you really optimise a website for search engine visibility before you launch it? The answer is yes, ideally web design and SEO should go hand in hand. The thought process for optimising a website should form the foundations of the web design/development from the outset. It is the website structure and content which will ultimately help to capture free organic web traffic.
Search engines to a large extent don’t care what a website looks like. Web designers and web developers should take the greatest advantage from the opportunity which is available when a website is first indexed. This opportunity is often wasted if basic SEO principles are not part of the initial web design and development process. Extra time and money should be spent on pre development SEO. This SEO should at the very least include keyword research and SEO copywriting. Conducting SEO so early within the development of a website can provide an outstanding return on investment as a website achieves a strong search engine position from day one.
If a web design agency is not promoting SEO as part of its initial client brief then they are both missing an opportunity for themselves and more importantly for their clients. The opportunity for maximum return on investment should be realied from day one.
