Web Development & SEO Go Together

Is your website working for you? Or is it just sitting there, loading slowly, and never popping up in Google searches? As a business owner, you want to spend your time focused on your business, not updating and fussing with your website. Your website itself could be the problem holding you back if it was not designed and developed with the help of an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) specialist.

Avoid Costly Website Rebuilds

Most business owners don’t understand the importance of and hire a website developer who can make the website look pretty, but they are not experienced enough to write, design, and optimize the website properly so it’s discovered by your target audience on Google.

They force you (the business owner) to tell them what to do, write all of the content, choose all of the photos, and choose your own design or template in some cases. This causes either hefty start-up fees when you bring it to an SEO expert, or they may even force you to rebuild your brand new website for it to rank well. It’s definitely not all about the colors, photos, or layout. 

The Average Website Developer

Most web developers don’t even know or care if your website is found after it launches and they were paid for the project. They just do the labor to put it together as you tell them to, without adding in all of the experience it takes to get found. They force you to have your website re-built after the fact by a marketing company as an afterthought. What if it were built properly in the first place? Why not combine web development with SEO when it’s first built and involve your marketing team?

• Keyword Research
• Target Audience & Competitor Research
• Voice, Tone & Branding Cohesiveness
• Content Writing
• Image Title & Alt Tags
• Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
• Properly Configured SEO Plugin
• Robots.txt
• Sitemap.xml
• 301 Redirects from old pages to new pages
• URL Restructuring & Proper Category Naming
• Content Migration, Pruning, and Site Organization
• Menu Structure & Category Order
• Proper Internal Linking

What Is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving and optimizing your website so it ranks on page one in search engines, especially Google. While a good marketing company can help any website rank better, sometimes the most cost-effective way to fix your ranking and online visibility troubles is to build a new website properly.

SEO & Web Design Should Always Go Together

Old and out-of-date sites often rank poorly on Google due to a lack of relevant content, outdated plug-ins, slow loading pages, unfriendly mobile experience, images that are too big, and broken links. Search engines will rank your website according to many factors, and a good SEO company can make sure your site is built with the most important search engine ranking factors in mind.

• Mobile-Friendliness
• Quick-Loading Pages (Page Speed Caching)
• Easy To Navigate (Organized Navigation)
• Keyword Research With Professionally Written Content
• SEO-Friendly URL Structure
• Great Internal Linking Between Pages

Mobile-First User Experience

Close to 60% of all searches happen on mobile devices. Outdated sites or even new sites that are not optimized for the mobile experience will leave your customers frustrated. Your site will quickly drop off of page one on Google because mobile-friendliness is definitely a ranking factor in modern days.

Working with an SEO-focused company during your new website build will make sure your site is optimized and ready to rank well when it first launches.

Avoid Slow Page Loads

We all expect quick service in everything these days, including the websites we browse. An experienced web designer will build web pages that load quickly. This is not only convenient for your customers, but it’s another ranking factor for Google.

If you have a high bounce rate when you check your Google Analytics (customers leaving your page quickly), that may indicate that your website loads too slow.

• Are you with a cheap shared web hosting?
• Is caching enabled?
• Are images too big?
• Are you using too many scripts and plugins?
• Is your code bloated?
• Too many animations?

There are a variety of online tools you can use to check your website’s speed (GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools, Google Pagespeed Insights). You’d think it’s standard practice, but most web developers don’t care about marketing and they won’t bother to become experts in website speed and performance after it’s launched.

Easy To Navigate, Easy To Find

Is your website easy to read, with legible fonts and up-to-date links? Many customers will not stay on a site that looks outdated in terms of design and graphics. Looks aren’t the only thing to consider, if your info is easy to access, it will be easy for search engines to find you, and the better your site will rank.

URL Format – Page Names Matter

The pages of your website each need a unique URL with descriptive words. A website builder who is familiar with SEO best practices can set these up in the proper format. For example, the words in the URL should be the keywords of the page, divided by hyphens. Search engines locate these pages more quickly than pages with arbitrary numerals and letters. This leads to higher online rankings.

Bad URL Examples:

• yourwebsite.com/services/
• yourwebsite.com/?pageid=3
• yourwebsite.com/12562178

Good URL Examples:

• yourwebsite.com/roofing-repairs/
• yourwebsite.com/category/home-remodeling/
• yourwebsite.com/las-vegas-weddings/

Embrace Change – Nobody Likes Stale Content

Search engine algorithms evolve. Even if your site was built with the latest SEO guidelines in mind at the time, you still need an expert to keep your website up-to-date as time passes. Old or static content eventually falls in rankings and you will need to add new content on a regular basis to continue to rank. Especially if the information is poorly written and no longer meets Google’s standard now.

We Have The Team To Help

As you can see, your website needs an excellent SEO-optimized website design as well as continuous SEO marketing. Site Smart Marketing specializes in precisely this combination. We build customized websites that are both beautiful and easy for your customers to quickly understand what you are offering. Our marketing experts and content writers deliver new content and keep it optimized for search engines. It all adds up to more customers and more income for you.

Combine SEO + Website Design

Our clients nationwide count on us for all the details of web design, SEO, digital marketing, and a social media presence. We would love to talk to you about how we can help drive traffic to your site.