It’s true that many website designers are not SEO webmasters and vice versa. I never call myself a website designer. Although I know how to take websites apart and put them back together. Those skills do not make me a designer.
But, if you’re a website designer, there is no reason why you shouldn’t, or couldn’t create websites for your customers that can eventually be marketed on the Internet. Not only will your customers reap the rewards of a website that works FOR them, but you will also reap the rewards of referrals from your customers as well as additional work from your customers! Can’t get more win-win than that!
One of my favourite blogs, SEO Design Solutions came up with 10 tips on how to build a website with SEO in mind…
- Start with a theme (meaning your market and the top level keywords).
- Use Keyword Research to build that theme into the site navigation, internal links, tags and naming conventions.
- Determine what the tipping point is for the top 5 competitors and exceed them using time-released content.
- Leverage internal links to select preferred landing pages.
- Build a stable base of off page links from trusted sources first, and then ensure a fresh supply of relevant ongoing links.
- Build pages properly the first time “optimal” using a pliable CMS system which does all the SEO / heavy lifting by default.
- Use keyword research to integrate less competitive keywords (branches of the root phrase) into supporting posts, pages and off page content (then go back to point #3).
- Keep site architecture flat and make sure to link to a sitemap for that segment of the site (if you use categories).
- Make changes to older / trusted pages – If ranking priorities change, go back and edit and add additional links and content to leverage pages 4 months or older to link to new pages with supporting keywords.
- Measure the results and rinse and repeat.
Granted, some of these are the responsibility of the SEO webmaster, but as a designer you should be aware of what will be happening with the website you created.
