SEO Prior to Development:

SEO needs to be considered before development, because there can often be problems which need to be reverse engineered once the website has been built. Developing a website is much like building a house, imagine if you didn’t lay the foundations before you built the house. The houses will either have to be rebuilt or will collapse if you leave it.

SEO is usually an afterthought, because clients mistakenly assume that Search Engine rankings are based on:

•    The amount of times someone clicks on a website
•    Adding ‘SEO’ code

There is no relation between the amount of time someone clicks on a website and where it ranks in Google. If this were the case, all you would need to get high up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) would be an army of people clicking on your website. Secondly that SEO can be done to a website by adding SEO code. There is no secret to SEO, really all SEO means is, making a website that Google (or any other Search Engine) can understand, which in other words just means making a good website.

Google ranks websites in three major ways, the better (or more) you do each one the further you will get up in Google.

•    Lots of unique content.
•    Well-written metadata.
•    Lots of backlinks to your site.

Clients require websites that are designed well - they want high customer conversion, retention, brand visibility and a pleasant shop face. This often leads to clients spending a large proportion of the build time, on the way a site looks and feels and less time, considering how design or programming elements will affect SEO. Because design is subjective it can tend to take up a large proportion of the build process and development can often take longer than is expected, due to testing, extra functionality, SEO is often left as an afterthought, once the website has been made.

Once the website has been created, it looks good and it goes live, for many clients this will be the first time they consider SEO. This normally comes at the end of the process, however this is the most crucial aspect of the web build. SEO has to be considered during the build otherwise the SEO will have to liaise with the developer in an attempt to reverse engineer the website.

There may be many aspects of programming or development, which are conducive to the demands of the development brief, but not conducive to demands of the SEO. Because SEO is a speciality in itself, the developer and designer may over look important SEO requirements. Here are some of the main examples of web build, which can affect SEO.

•    Website written either entirely or has large chunks written in flash. Flash is a type of programming that allows you to create animations and interactive games. It often looks great but Search Engine Spiders can’t read flash.
•    Dynamic URLs. Search Engines can follow short dynamic URLs
http://www.mysite.com/?something=type but after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =). Search Engines will no longer follow these URLs and index the content on these pages.
•    Creating important text navigation links on a flattened gif.
•    Burying important body content towards the end of the page, due to the way the mark-up has been constructed.
•    Using AJAX menus.
•    Using complex JavaScript links.
•    Overusing inline CSS styles.
•    Duplicating dynamic URLs.
•    Duplicating content.
•    Not blocking site from Search Engines prior to going live.
•    Not blocking proportions of the site that are duplicated content.
•    Placing content in Iframes.
•    Using unoptimised images.
•    Using unoptimised alt tags.
•    Generating generic Meta data with specific keywords for dynamic websites. Meta data are a series of html tags at the top of a webpage that tell a search engine what the webpage is about.

<title>This is my webpage!</title>

It will appear as the words in the blue bar in your browser. A dynamic site might be created in such a way where it is not possible to generate the title tags for specific subsections of the site. The site may be divided up into different sections which make it easier to program. However after keyword analysis or competitor analysis has been performed, we may want to divide up these subsections in a different way to how the programmer has.

For example imagine I have a site that sells widgets. Widgets come in type A, type B, type C, type D. The programmer or developer has divided the website up into sections by type. Now it comes to keyword research and competitor analysis and the SEO discovers that no one actually searches for widgets by type A, B, C, D but by colour, Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green. However all these different colours and mixed in with type. E.g. type A has blue and green - type B; Blue, yellow, green – type C; red, green – type D; red, blue, yellow, green. Now because the way the website has been made, the SEO is stuck with creating Meta tags that refer to sections by type, rather than what he wants to do - by colour. Consequently he is stuck with a less than ideal optimisation without reverse engineering the site.
•    Placing whole sections in tables. Generally it is better to place elements within divs rather than tables as these are followed / scanned easily.

In summary:

It’s OK having a website that looks great and works fine, but organic listings are one of the most important revenue streams as well as lending to brand trust and integrity. Subsequently, SEO should be considered prior to design and build.