How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
-
The organization I work for has decided to re-design or re-develop the existing company Web site. My part in this project is to come up with new features to add to the site, as well as making the site SEO-friendly (copywriting, link-building, keyword research, etc.).
I don’t know a thing about Web site design, coding, format, etc., and I guess I will have to work with a designer on this project. How would I go about finding a Web site designer? Should they have some SEO knowledge? How much designer, coding and site structure knowledge should I have? And how do we not infringe on one another as we work together? (Sorry so many questions.)
-
To be a competent SEO you need to know a lot about code, because that is where the optimization is done. So an important thing for you to do is learn enough about code to do the optimization work and if you can learn more than that it would be even better.
In my opinion it is good that your company wants an in-house person to be involved with the site redesign. Perhaps they would be willing to give you time away from other work to do reading and study to improve your skills. Ask for it, get as much as you can.
Getting the right designer is really important. Some of them know a lot about SEO and are extremely competent at it. Some of them know nothing about SEO and will become defensive if you stick your nose into the code. Others think that they are the designer and will make you a site - AND YOU ARE GOING TO LIKE IT.
So, find the right designer. One who really knows a lot about SEO and one who knows that you are the boss. That will make all of the difference. You don't want this job to be like pulling crocodile teeth.
-
How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
One word comes to mind, Respect.
The SEO needs to respect the web designer and their expertise. The web designer needs to be respectful of the SEO's knowledge and expertise.
One challenge is both web design and SEO have challenges where experts disagree with each other and there is a lack of common standards. Both industries also have people who feel they are "experts" who possess minimal and often incorrect knowledge.
Ultimately, the client is the boss. The SEO is the client's representative on matters related to SEO which involves most aspects of the site. The SEO / web-designer relationship needs to be outlined by the client. The SEO needs the ability to provide direction for the project. The site's design requirements should be offered by the SEO and implemented by the web designer. Ultimately, if a dispute arises, the client needs to make a decision. Both the web designer and SEO would need to plead their case to the client.
What will likely happen over time is you will work with some great web designers. If you find one who also is affordable you can refer future clients to the web designer with whom you have experience. It can be a win-win-win situation for all involved.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Migrating login page from website: SEO impact
Our current login page looks like www.website.com/log-in/. We are planning to migrate it to a sub directory login.website.com. For years, our login page is the top landing with highest visits after homepage. If we migrate this now, are we going to loose traffic and drop in rankings? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Avg Page Load Time Increase After Responsive Web Design
The Avg. Page Load Time has been steadily increasing after our website went responsive. What could have cause this?
Web Design | | JMSCC1 -
Does interlinking on mobile site helps in seo & improvement in rankings
Hi, Does interlinking on mobile site helps in seo & improvement in rankings. Our desktop site & mobile site has same urls. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Wordpress Site Structure and H1 Tags
We are working on optimizing a client's website and asked the client's webmaster to change a handful of H1 tags. The webmaster said they could not do to the existing names being pre-set in the design. The website is built in Wordpress. The client has repeating H1 tags due to the 'design'. I have attached a snapshot of the backend. Is there a rule around Wordpress site structure where this doesn't happen? Is it worth changing? If so,what is the best solution. Thank you ahead of time. ylAMvNg.jpg
Web Design | | seoessentials0 -
Many errors from previous ecommerce site. Domain is now just a localized wordpress site.
Many errors from previous ecommerce site. Do I need to redirect every single page that no longer exists at this domain? loveyourcabinets.com used to be loveyourkitchenandbath.com but we have since changed course. We want loveyourkitchenandbath.com to be our local site on Long Island and NYC. Loveyourcabinets.com will be an ecommerce project that I'll be revamping in the coming months. I think Moz as well as Google still has all of the old ecommerce pages indexed. And of course, Moz is shooting me a bunch of error all regarding pages from the ecommerce site that used to be on loveyourkitchenandbath.com. Any thoughts? Commentary? Thx
Web Design | | loveyourkitchen0 -
Pages vs. Posts for SEO
Hi, I would like your thoughts about pages vs. posts for SEO. I understand the difference in terms of WP structure and have read the SEOmoz blog post about setting up your site for SEO success (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). However, if you're trying to rank for a particular keyword, it seems that either one could work, from an on-page SEO perspective, as far as title tag, URL, meta description, etc. So how do you decide whether to set up a page vs. a post? What are the pros and cons, from an SEO perspective, about using one vs. the other? Thanks in advance! Carolina
Web Design | | csmm0 -
Two sites in same industry and which shopping cart
Right. So I suspect I am going to sound paranoid here - but you'll all forgive me right?? I am sure I saw a reply to a question on the Q&A suggesting that it was a bad idea to have two sites in one industry as Google may see it as trying to get two bites of the SERP cherry... is this accurate? I have an existing asp.net site in the maternity wear industry here in Australia and am wanting to start another site to appeal to a different customer base... the market is quite broad. There will be a core list of products that are the same between the sites, but also some quite different products. Content, product descriptions and categorys will be different. I have another website that I bought with reasonable age and links in the industry that I was going to 301 to the new site to give it a kick in the juice. So, not wanting to deceive my customers in anyway, I was thinking I would call it a "division of" or "sister site to" the existing ecommerce site, with a single link back and forward between the two sites. Would there be anything wrong with this in googles eyes? Even with same contact details? They would be run on totally different platforms and hosted by totally different providers. Or would you keep them totally seperate and only have contact details in images? Or a step further and have totally different phone numbers etc? Then the shopping cart - I would love some suggestions on which opensourse cart to use, preferrably one that I can set up myself, and that has a good framework for seo. I want to use schema.org, authorship, seo friendly urls all of which I am having trouble getting out of the developer of my asp.net site.... I don't want the new site to be asp.net Thanks in advance!!
Web Design | | catfree0 -
Multilingual Website. Best SEO Strategy
Hello.
Web Design | | teconsite.com
We have a client that will extend his business to severak countries in Europe.
So far its main market was the Spanish one. In this market it works with his own domain that is the same that its brand name. The domain does not contain any important keyword but it has been working for 11 years: www.efutgol.com. In Spain has a good ranking. It ranks number 1 or number 2, it fluctuates. But it also sells to France and Portugal. In the France market they used a domain with exact match with the French keyword that they are interested in: www.equipementsfootball.com/. The same strategy www.equipamentosfutebol.com in Portugal. Both have number 1 for the main keyword in those Countries for that keyword Now they are going to sell in more countries.
The problem is that each website have a different CMS what makes necessary double maintenance. We are going to unificate in only one domain, one single design, one single CMS all websites. But were have doubts about SEO consequences of doing that What is the best thing for URLs?
www.efutgol.com/fr/ .....
www.efutgol.com/es/
www.efutgol.com / pt What should we do with the domains that are so well positioned in france and portugal? 301 redirect will work? What should we expect? What would you do? What things we should consider to keep the current position?0