SEO Question: I’m Redesigning My Website, When Should I Start Thinking About Search Engines?
I am in the process of getting my website rebuilt. When during the redesigning do I need to start thinking about SEO and being search engine friendly?
Deeho Says:
When you start thinking about search traffic depends on what you want your website to do for you? If you just want a web presence for people to refer to, then search engines aren’t going to be the be all and end all for you, but if you want to generate new business from your website you need to start before you build the site.
Everything one and relating to your site needs to be focused on meeting Googles demanding criteria.
Start with a good quality, reliable server that will serve your web content quickly for users. Speed is vitally important for google search and slow websites just don’t rank well.
If you build a site using code rich html, your text/html ratio will be data heavy which also slows down your site. Some web design platforms are code heavy and use much more html than is really required to create your pages.
Every line of code increases the time it takes to deliver your web page to a user, so the less code your site needs, the faster it will be.
Some web design platforms are more Google friendly than others and if you choose a slow platform or design that is code heavy then you might end up with a site that’s too slow to ever rank well in search.
During redesigning if you get the basics right and choose a search engine friendly web platform then you will have a sound footing from which to build on.
Many web designers only build websites, they don’t consider what the site needs to be able to do for you. As a consequence, your site will look great, but lack the performance metrics needs to work well and get you found online.
While your bounce rate is a fixable metric, other factors like load speed, mobile compatibility, content compression etc. are much harder to fix once a poor quality site has been built.
Ask your web designer if your site will meet Google load speed criteria? Ask them if it’ll be responsive for all viewing devices, browsers and platforms? Ask them if it’s Google friendly?
The decisions you make now, before you commission your new site will have a huge impact on how well your site will work for you.
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