B2B Web Strategy Blog - eMagine

SEO: It’s Not An Accessory To Add On After Your Website Redesign

August 3rd, 2007 Posted by: Bill Gadless

So you’ve just had your website totally redesigned and launched;  now it’s time to do some search engine optimization (SEO), right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong! …so hopefully this isn’t actually your B2B’s story.  Doing it the right way means treating SEO as an integral part of the website-redesign process… and if your Web consultants don’t tell you that in the planning stage, you’ll be completely justified in changing consultants.

Remember:  SEO is simply a set of steps for structuring both your visible site content and certain technical aspects of your site’s pages so as to maximize you site’s “importance”, as perceived by the major search engines.  What better time to do that than when your entire website is up for grabs? …i.e., during the re-design project.

Content is king …and keywords rule
It all starts with discovering the most critical keywords/keyphrases that searchers use when they’re looking for the products or services that your company offers.  You simply can’t assume that these will be the same as the last time your site was rebuilt …the market is rarely that static.  There are a number of techniques that facilitate keyword discovery;  again, your Web-design consultants should be conversant with all of them.

With that step done, you now want to develop dense, “meaty” content that’s rich in those relevant keywords;  more than anything else, this will help the search engines to find your site more easily, more often.  You should probably also rethink your site’s architecture at this point, because it may make sense to build entire pages around certain keywords and use them as part of your navigation.  (For some deeper thinking along these lines, see Shari Thurow’s great ClickZ piece “SEO, Information Architecture and Interface Design” …which includes this quote:  “If I had one piece of advice…about SEO and information architecture, it’s this:  bring in a search usability specialist early in the [website] design, redesign, or early prototype stages.”)

By the way, if you’re revamping your print literature to track the updated messaging on your new site… why not use those same critical keywords liberally in those pieces as well?  There’s a lot to be said for consistency, and for not fighting the market’s terms.

Technical nitty-gritties complete the picture
Now, with the content done right and the graphic design solid, your consultants can take care of the more technical aspects of SEO:  page titles/headlines, page or H1 tags, alt-tags, meta-name keyword and description tags.  Then they should help get you some inbound links, and finish up by submitting the new site to the major engines.

As important as it is to optimize at site-rebuild time, that doesn’t mean it’s the only time.  Nothing about SEO ever stands still:  certainly not the search engines’ algorithms, frequently not even the terms the market uses for your product or service type.  This is why many clients sign up for an ongoing SEO service, which should help keep your site from falling into the dreaded “set it & forget it” trap.

Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy, Search Engine Marketing