Web Designers as SEO Partners

Chris Nielsen   Popular

Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) projects involve taking a site that has already been built and changing or adding optimization elements that help the site to be indexed well by search engines. For a site that has been built, the web designer is usually not involved in the process. The site is optimized and the designer is notified at some point that they need to update their copy of the site, so that any future site changes by the designer does not “erase” the optimization that has been added.

However, there are two situations where the designer should be very much involved in the SEO process, and these are when a new site is constructed, or an old site is being redesigned.

When building a new site, the SEO consultant should be involved from the very beginning as the site concept is being developed. This is not to just gain additional billable hours. The perspective of the SEO consultant is much different from the design team and often even the site owner. The SEO knows that what makes the site attract traffic and to “sell” the visitors is a balance of scored keyword phrase research and good marketing copywriting. The SEO can advise on things like the fact that a site that is about food will draw many visitors if it has a section that offers recipes. A site about music will see many more visitors if it also offers MP3 music files.

Even more important, the SEO can advice on how the site is constructed. Most consultants will generally advise against sites that have 100% of the content in Flash, or use frames, since they each pose problems in the optimization process. The consultant can also advise on the construction of dynamic sites to overcome some of the limitations that they have.

But by having the design team aware and involved in the optimization process, a site can be optimized “from the ground up” as it is built and involve less time by the SEO consultant. It can also impart a level of optimization that is generally not practical after a site has been constructed.

If the keyword research has been completed before site construction has started, the SEO can provide the basic Meta tag set used for the site. By including the Meta tags in the site templates, the work of editing each page later to add the tags is avoided. Some of the tags will need to be edited after the content is added, but it is possible to save a percentage of the labor needed by including the tags from the start.

By providing the list of researched keyword phrases, the designers can use the phrases when they create new pages and graphics files to realize the benefit from using keywords in the file-naming process. Instead of using words like “logo” and “header”, the designer can choose keywords that are descriptive, but also help with the optimization.

It should be noted that while there is benefit to using keywords in filenames, it is generally not great enough to justify the labor involved to re-name the files for a site that has already been constructed.

That covers what role a designer can play in the optimization for a new site, but what of a site that is being updated? The first and foremost is for the SEO to advise against creating what is known as a “Traffic-Death Redesign”
(http://www.searchenginedictionary.com/t.shtml#trafficdeathredesign).

For some unexplained reason, many web designers tend to change all the page names when doing a site update. What happens is that when the new site is launched, the traffic levels to the site drop off, since traffic that was arriving at the site from search engine listings now receive 404, or “page not found” errors, since the old page no longer exists. The only exception to this is the main URL (www.domain.com), which is not affected.

The old page name should be re-used as much as possible, and if not, there are two ways to deal with the problem:

1. A custom 404-error page can be installed to inform the visitor that the page(s) no longer exists and present several options for them to continue into the site.
   
   
2. Redirection pages using the old page name and that have an informative message for the visitor can be added. The pages should offer one or more clickable links, and can include a timed-redirect that should be at least 30 seconds before taking the visitor to the page with the new name.

The second option is more desirable, since it allows the search engine that is verifying links to note the change, and follow the link to the new page and add it to it's index at some later point.

And of course, if new pages are added, or the filenames have to change, it provides a chance to use filenames that can be optimized with keyword phrases.

Just as you are unlikely to turn a SEO consultant into a web designer, so to are you going to find it difficult to turn a web designer into a SEO. But just as the SEO realizes that graphic images can be very important in the visual appeal of a well-designed web site, the designer too can learn to understand the benefit of having a home page title that says more than just “Home”.