Develop Structure
Successful SEO website design requires the coordination of many moving parts.
Personas
First, it is important to consider the needs of the people who are going to visit the website and create “personas” – imaginary people with the characteristics of your target audience. We then identify what they will be looking for and the kinds of questions they’re likely to have when they visit your website.
Personas provide a cast of characters that we call upon throughout the SEO web design and SEO website development process to help us define the paths that people might take to navigate through the website content. Studies show that people just don’t read a website in the order of the links from start to finish, but rather point and click their way around the site. However, we can influence this behavior by establishing solid way-finding principles.
By understanding the needs of your target audience, we can create a foundation of the work that follows in developing a visitor optimized and search engine optimized website. This part of the SEO website design process addresses the existing website’s organization of content, adjusting and enhancing where necessary to support the goals identified in the discovery phase.
Search Engine Optimized Content Development
Next, we establish naming conventions and use a site map to develop a content outline. If your goal is to re-design a site, there may be some content on the existing website that can be reused, but often new sites require new search engine optimized content. If new content is called for, we create an outline of the main topics and messages that you wish to convey, then develop a search engine optimized content delivery plan.
If you are writing the copy, we can usually work with the content you provide and edit it to incorporate your target keywords and phrases. This is called content optimization. However, using an experienced SEO copywriter to create your website content from the ground-up is always a good investment. Because SEO copywriters can view your products and services from an objective perspective, they can articulate benefits very clearly from the perspective of a client who may be new to the products and services you offer. Further, our SEO copywriters are experts at writing clear and effective copy structured in a way that ensures search engines index your target keywords and phrases.
Wireframe Models
The next step in the SEO web design process is creating wireframe models. Once an outline of the content and a site map are developed, we create wireframe models that sketch the main features of key pages within the new website. The wireframes provide you with a visual tool for discussing the most effective forms of navigational structure and establishing a set of rules for naming and labeling the site content and sections.