During my 13 years or so as an SEO consultant, it never ceases to amaze me the number of new website projects that start without the involvement of an SEO expert. Would you build a house without an architect? Just as an architect designs a house, ensuring it is structurally sound and meets the needs of the occupants, an SEO consultant designs a website’s structure to ensure it meets search engine guidelines and user needs. What about building a bridge? Civil engineers conduct extensive site analysis, design, and planning before construction begins on a bridge. This planning ensures safety, stability, and functionality, much like SEO planning ensures a website’s robustness and effectiveness. So many websites start without a thought for search engines and then afterwards the client realises that while the website looks great, it isn’t performing. This article will examine why any new website project should involve SEO consultancy.
Why you need an SEO Consultant at the start of a website project
Review of Existing Structure (if one exists)
If there is an existing website, it is a great opportunity to review it to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the current structure. If some parts are performing strong, then don’t get rid of them just for appearance’s sake.
Keyword Research and Strategy
Keyword research is really important. It can inform site structure, content planning and user experience. Are there keywords that should be targeted and aren’t? Are new service pages required to focus more fully on specific keywords? This can all come out of keyword research.
Competitor Analysis
Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of competitors is an essential step. Do they have services that are missing from your site? Competitors that rank well provide a great way to evaluate what you need to do.
Planning the Site Structure for SEO
The website’s structure must be search engine friendly. Google, Bing, and other search engines need to efficiently crawl the site and discover all its content. Complicated site architecture and excessively long URLs can hinder this process, making the site less optimal for search engine performance. One of an SEO consultant’s jobs is to ensure that URL structure is optimal and reflects the site architecture.
Content Planning
Structuring content to align with user intent and search engine guidelines is crucial. It is important to determine the topics for each page and identify the key message you want to convey. Ensure this message is clear to both users and search engines, so they can accurately understand the page’s intent as soon as they land or crawl it.
Meta data optimisation
During the website build, an SEO consultant can optimise meta tags, and headers, and integrate keywords effectively without overloading them. While many web designers add meta tags, it’s often an afterthought rather than a central focus of the build since they are not specialists.
Technical Implementation
As part of the launch of the website, it is really important that the new sitemap is submitted to Google search console to ensure proper indexing. Implementing schema markup for enhanced search engine results is also a priority.
Internal Linking
What can really move the dial with ranking is a proper internal linking strategy. Not just internal links on image blocks or buttons, but also keyword-rich anchor text links. Implementing an effective internal linking strategy is super important and often missed.
So in conclusion, set your website apart from all the others. By ensuring that the site’s structure, content, and technical elements are optimised from the outset, businesses can achieve better visibility, attract more organic traffic, and provide a superior user experience. Just as careful planning is crucial in construction, marketing, or product development, SEO consultancy is a critical component of a successful website launch. Invest in SEO expertise early to set your website on the path to long-term success and growth.
Categorised in: Website Design
Published on Jul 26, 2024
