The Benefits Of Having An SEO Company Plan Your Website

For a very long time we were just an SEO company. Sure, we managed a lot of Adwords accounts too but mostly, all we wanted to offer we good Search Engine Optimisation services. For me as the business owner, I was not too interested in designing or developing websites. The last thing I wanted was a client calling me on a Saturday afternoon to let me know that the blue on their website was too blue.

In the last years though, it just makes sense that we are also involved in the planning of new websites from the beginning and also developing them for our clients, new and old.

Most web designers in my view have had the job of making a nice looking website that gets a brand message across and functions well. Nothing wrong with that. They will all say they are search engine friendly, because if they don’t, the client will run for the hills. But having a Google friendly website means a lot more in todays cut throat online world then just being able to install a Yoast SEO plug in.

Here I will list some reasons why an SEO company can help build a better website for your business from the beginning.

Keyword Planning

Planning what you want to be found for comes down to the products and services you offer, and the keywords people search for that relates to them. Your website needs to speak the language of your client. Not your industry peers. Well in almost every case anyway. Connecting with your clients is what it’s all about. So planning what keywords you should be getting found for from the beginning can save a lot of back tracking on a new, pretty looking website.

Site Structure

Keyword planning naturally leads to site mapping, or mapping out the structure of your website. In short, the key products or services that you want get found for on Google, should have their own page. We see a lot of websites that have the modern long format appearance, with minimal content or key pages behind them. No matter how long your home page is, it can only be so relevant for so many things.
If you are a finance provider that specialises in caveat loans, then have a caveat loan page. If you stock certain brands that are important to you, make pages about those brands.

Adding SEO Purpose

We sometimes break a websites pages down into two types, keyword relevant, and keyword supportive. Just to pick an example, if you are going to have an About Us page, which is traditionally a dead end for SEO, how can it be useful to you from a Google point of view. Maybe you could plan your content so that it can link to other pages in your site? Maybe it links to key suppliers or industry associations?
This sort of planning will not be offered by a regular web designer.

More Structuring

An SEO company can also plan how to use different parts of your website to your advantage. This might include the footer or side bars to improve the navigation of your website, or strategies to increase the amount of time the average visitor stays on your site.

Site Speed

The amount of time it takes for your website to load has a direct affect on how Google ranks your website. This is because a slow loading site may cause a poor experience for their users.

A web developer might choose a sliding header image for example, by how easy it is to install, which saves them time. An SEO company might choose the one that loads fast, even if it is harder to initially integrate into a design.

Less SEO Errors To Fix

Often in the first month of our work we are correcting errors in development from an SEO point of view. These may be simple things such as not hosting on HTTPS hosting, having broken links or obsolete pages in the xml sitemap, coding multiple H1’s, coding text in image blocks instead of HTML, not having a content plan in place, uploading large images, not minimising java scripts and CSS file coding, creating unnecessary duplicate pages in blogs and many more.

Many readers would not really know what many of the points in the last paragraph mean. That is because they don’t make a difference to the look of a site. Guess who they do matter to though. You guessed it, Google.

We build SEO friendly WordPress websites with the end in mind. In this case the end is more traffic from search engines faster. Without compromising on style.

Our team can also assist in the planning stage if you have a developer you already trust. This is a service we provide to branding companies that build or outsource web development as well.

If you want to know more or have any questions, contact us for a free quote or planning session.