SEO and the web site development process

Kategori: Artiklar

06 Nov, 2009

  författat av: Sara Andersson

Building a new web site is a fun, complex and time consuming process. Also it often involves large investments to get it just right. Most companies employ partners with different expertise in the process, like web agencies, web technology agencies, web designers and copy writers. However, the SEO partner is rarely part of the team and that is really too bad. When SEO isn’t part of the developing process, money is left on the table, and even more money is thrown in the garbage for good measure.

Every organization, web site project, team constellation and process is different. However, what is universal is the importance of integrating SEO and the search perspective into that process. So – how and where does SEO fit into the process of building a new web site?

Even if every company is unique, the ideas are generally the same. SEO needs to be intricately weaved throughout every aspect of the development life cycle from research to final result and release…and even further.

SEO is crucial in development aspects like;

Research
Do you know your potential clients and how they search for your products or services, what they think of your brand, what they say about you or your business online, how you are presented in the search results today and if it is effective? These findings have an important impact on the new web site and how it is best structured and designed, what the content should look like and how product or services should best be presented.

Design and Information structure
The design and information structure of a web site have a big impact on how successful it will be in the search results. For example, problems can occur when important information is presented with techniques that is not supported or handled well by the search engines, archives is not open or internal links are not optimized.

Copy
The content on a web site and how it is designed and presented is a very important factor from a SEO point of view. It is important to optimize the content and find and set up tools, routines and easy-to-follow instructions for copywriters as well as the clients editorial team in order to säkerställa effective and search engine friendly content.

Infrastructure and technical platform
The infrastructure and technical platform is the actual base for the web site. If the search perspective is not taken into count here, the rest of the SEO actions do not matter. It is utterly important to make sure the website is crawlable and indexable for the search engines and that the code, code structure and coding techniques are SEO friendly.

CMS – admin tool
The admin tool for the CMS and the way it is designed is important from a search point of view. Here, content managers and content administrators need to be able to adjust and tailor the SEO specific content on the web pages and manage the process of content optimization effectively.

Release of the new web site
When the website is ready to be released the search perspective is perhaps more important and crucial than ever before in the development process. In order for the new web site to be effective the old one has to be de-indexed in the search engine results. SEO efforts are crucial for this transition to be successful and efficient and if this perspective is not taken into count it could mean crucial loss in traffic, sales, negative impact on the brand and long term ranking problems.

It is important to take a look at the project plan to identify where SEO needs to be involved and integrated in the development life cycle. Equally important is to make sure that everyone taking part in the process is aware of when and where SEO will be an activity – and why! Finding an SEO promoter or fan within each department will help efforts immensely.

So in conclusion, SEO is complex and crucial. Make certain that the SEO perspective don’t fall through the cracks in the development process of the new web site. Invest in having an optimized website from the bottom up. It will be worth it!