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Bad News: Build A Website and; They Won’t Come

Why search engine optimization should be website priority #1

Good News

You hired an amazing freelancer or web design agency to put together your dream website. After several weeks, maybe months of blood, sweat and tears over the thing, launch day finally arrives and everyone is in love with your website. Looks fantastic!

Bad News

During the process of creating your site, SEO didn’t really come up – it certainly wasn’t a focus – and now your brand new website is not looking so great, and not delivering the way you’d hoped.

Hey, it happens, unfortunately. Last month, I wrote about how to pick a website design agency. The focus was how to find an agency who understands that a successful website is more than just bells and whistles. Besides a thorough understanding of great web design and development, the agency you work with, should first and foremost be experienced online marketers; understanding the primary role SEO plays in your site’s performance.

Let’s talk Search Engine Optimization, or, SEO. Optimizing your business website should be an integral part of your web development in phase one. I’ve had many clients ask when they should start thinking about SEO for their site. My answer is always: “Sooner than later.”

Making search engine optimization part of the website build-out process keeps you ahead of the game. And, it forces you to focus on content, site structure, links and the end user. What keywords do prospects use when searching for what your company sells? And how popular are those keywords? Optimizing your website for relevant and popular (or high volume) keywords is vital. Your online marketing agency should help you determine these during the content phase of building your site. (Content should always come first).

Picking the right focus keywords, writing content, naming pages/URLs, structuring links (and the like) may seem boring or “scientific”, but trust me that without proper optimization, your website will suffer greatly. Search engines won’t “promote” you, preventing new prospects from finding you online, leading to well, a very unhappy website. Coding, linking, structuring, content – it’s all relevant.

Build it and no one will come… unless, of course, SEO is paramount upfront and ongoing. What you don’t want to do post-launch is have to edit your content, site structure, links, etc. because SEO was overlooked. Talk about time, money and users lost. Now, THAT is bad news. But it’s never too late to turn bad news into good… let’s talk.

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