how seo and web design work together

[DeSexGuide]

You take the design and make it as seo effective as possible, you start with the design.

yeppers

[webcamhostess]

You take the design and make it as seo effective as possible, you start with the design.

well yes you need an idea for a site to build it and then work the traffic side of it.

[gotonudecom]

The chicken came first not the chicken, and the design comes first not the seo.

First DESIGN is LAST PERIOD. Been doing this since 1995. DESIGN is for sure the last thing anyone should consider when building a site.

CONTENT is first. Without content you have NOTHING. If you do design first then you have to force your content into the design. NOT! Then you have to force the functionality into the design.

Functionality is second. Then the content for the functionality.

Once you have all that setup, you can go back and start working on SEO. SEO is not, in whole, what was in 1995, but the basics are still exactly the same.

blah blah
Once everything else is complete and your budget allows you can start working on design. LAST!

This is why I do not work with designers, as a rule. Every time I break that rule I regret it. They think they are first, when they are actually last.

[gotonudecom]

The 2 most important group of people who can set this argument straight are designers and seo specialists with experience.

Sorry I disagree.

Maybe I am not defining a designer the same way some of you are.
To me a designer is the person that makes the site look pretty with colors and graphics.

Designers can not help because all they do is design, they are not involved in the rest of the creation of a site. Most have zero clue about anything other and design.
SEO specialists are normally called in after the designer has touched the site and most don't care when they are called in. Most SEO people I know, know very little about SEO to begin with and even less about site functionality.

I was building sites before most people knew what a .com was. I have been doing SEO since before it was an acronym. I have been designing sites since before you could go to University to learn how to design a site. In fact I used to teach classes starting with HTML 1, using HOT DOG as the HTML editor among others, before many of you were alive.

My main business, outside this niche ,has been building sites.

There is no argument, just people that are not well enough informed to know they are WRONG!

Content is first.
Content is now created with SEO in mind. Has been since Google, for sure. Some of you might remember the days of keywords stuffing. You did the SEO research to determine which keywords to stuff, bought the EMD for the best keyword or phrase, then created your content around the keywords, then you hired someone to shove it all in HTML one page at a time. BTW, I used CGI to create my own CMS shopping cart system in 1996, However, I still created pages mostly one at a time.
My minimum for a site in 1997 was $50k (sometimes I have no idea why I share shit!) PONTIFICATION! MUCH?

Once all that is done, if they did not like the way the site looked, we hired a graphics person or team to design the site around what I had already built. NEVER did it increase the conversion rate of a site. NEVER! Only made the site owners, (mostly females) happier about their sites.

There have been many studies performed (years and years ago) and they all surprising came out with the same/similar results. The site design does not affect the performance of a sites conversions in a positive way. In some cases, "better looking" sites performed less than sites that were build with content and functionality alone.

That is right, the old dull sites, with good content and functionality out perform beautiful sites with the same content and functionality.

Yes some of my ( sites were used in these test. My sites were considered to be ugly. Until you look at the bank accounts attached to them.

The ONLY way to gauge the performance of a site is by how efficiently it is reaching the goals of the site owner. Which is normally by the performance of the ROI and the growth in their bank accounts.

Maybe I should have said
Pedantic, instead of pontificate. or both?

[HarryXxX]

The chicken came first not the chicken, and the design comes first not the seo.

First DESIGN is LAST PERIOD. Been doing this since 1995. DESIGN is for sure the last thing anyone should consider when building a site.

CONTENT is first. Without content you have NOTHING. If you do design first then you have to force your content into the design. NOT! Then you have to force the functionality into the design.

Functionality is second. Then the content for the functionality.

Once you have all that setup, you can go back and start working on SEO. SEO is not, in whole, what was in 1995, but the basics are still exactly the same.

blah blah
Once everything else is complete and your budget allows you can start working on design. LAST!

This is why I do not work with designers, as a rule. Every time I break that rule I regret it. They think they are first, when they are actually last.

One of the best answers ever regarding design

[gspotman]

Listen to gotonudecom he's right

[annakieu541]

Use good webdesign with your SEO. You can’t divorce them from each other. But if you marry them together, you’ll see the results both now and in the future.

[Webby]

You always have to think seo from the get go. If you don't, you'll be doing work arounds, retro fitting, edits to make it work. Think seo when choosing a theme, plugins, content, linkage, purpose, etc. If you fail to plan your plan will fail

smartest answer I heard

[CanadianChick]

Not me when I start a new blog then I add the content, once it is online I start thinking how to get it ranked on Google. The site comes first.

[gotonudecom]

Not me when I start a new blog then I add the content, once it is online I start thinking how to get it ranked on Google. The site comes first.

In the most nicest possible way, that is ridiculous.

Hey, lets dig this hole but not determine where it needs to be, so we can move it after we figure out where it needs to be.

Is it, maybe, you do not understand what SEO is in relation to the content? SEO for 2020 that is. Not that it is much different from SEO 1996. Which was before SEO was an acronym.

[monsta]

Forget the design go for the seo make sales

[brt22]

Forget the design go for the seo make sales

I feel content, design, traffic and seo are all equally important, not just any one of those on its own on it's own leads to the sales

[fetishnews]

Best post so far

I feel content, design, traffic and seo are all equally important, not just any one of those on its own on it's own leads to the sales

[gotonudecom]

Best post so far

I feel content, design, traffic and seo are all equally important, not just any one of those on its own on it's own leads to the sales

I have built and current manage sites that the only design is the default template and some color changes. Graphic design has very little impact on the conversion rate of a site.

Traffic is not equal to SEO or design.
Without a functioning website, with the proper textual content you have NOTHING!
You can have graphics and not have text or functionality and you have NO conversions. So comparing Graphic design with anything and saying they are equal is like comparing an apple with a mosquito. The mosquito being the blood sucking graphic designer and the Apple being the functionality and base content of the site.

Then 'traffic', really, first without functionality and textual content you have nothing, now without traffic there is no reason to have functionality and textual content. Still, no need for a graphics designer.

SEO, is one of many ways to get traffic to your site, so without SEO, which by the way covers a lot more than most of you realize, without SEO how do you get traffic?

This is why you build SEO basics into your functionality (see WP standards for included SEO) and build SEO into your content creation process.
Now when your functioning website, with textual content is ready you now have a way for traffic to find your site.

Still no need for Graphics. Unless you products and services need images. For proper SEO every page needs at least ONE SEO optimized image. This is the same for the products and services offered on your website. These images are NOT considered part of the graphic designers responsibility. These images are an important part of the base content for the website and functionality.

Still no need for Graphics.

Once you are to the point that you can test the site with live beta traffic and it is working, then you can waste whatever money you want on graphics design. But maybe not.
Maybe if your conversions are low, it is due to the flow of your website. Did you actually put the correct links in the appropriate places? Is your shipping clear throughout the order process or are people leaving once they find the actual shipping price.

I am well know for building UGLY sites, that make money.
I am also well known for taking award winning graphically designed web site, making them less award winning for graphics and then ME winning awards with the site owner as their conversions graph begins a steep upward trend.

I can go on and on but I have paying clients with beautiful sites that are not making money (yet) that I need to go work on.
BTW, this client I am thinking of now had a horrible main menu, almost no footer links, almost zero internal linking, no site flow ( you could get stuck in a category of products with only the horrible main menu to get you out), lets not go into how bad the cart functionality was, etc.

After fixing only the header, footer and some internal linking, the sites conversion rate slightly increased. Slightly, because zero SEO was performed on the creation of the site, thus 4 or 5 visitors per day is currently the average.
Page views went from 2.6 to 6.8 on average. Yes my team removed our IPs from the stats.

The point to take away from this is that, things are NOT equal.
If they were you could perform the tasks in any order. Building a site has a specific order, Graphics are NOT first and are in fact last.

If you think graphic design is equal, then you might also fill a hole with water, before you dig it. Then to learn that you did not need the water to begin with, because now you have a bunch of water where you need to dig a hole.

For those of you that think a shovel is something you lean on, I do not expect you to understand my analogy.

[JamesNet]

I have built and current manage sites that the only design is the default template and some color changes. Graphic design has very little impact on the conversion rate of a site.

Traffic is not equal to SEO or design.
Without a functioning website, with the proper textual content you have NOTHING!
You can have graphics and not have text or functionality and you have NO conversions. So comparing Graphic design with anything and saying they are equal is like comparing an apple with a mosquito. The mosquito being the blood sucking graphic designer and the Apple being the functionality and base content of the site.

Then 'traffic', really, first without functionality and textual content you have nothing, now without traffic there is no reason to have functionality and textual content. Still, no need for a graphics designer.

SEO, is one of many ways to get traffic to your site, so without SEO, which by the way covers a lot more than most of you realize, without SEO how do you get traffic?

This is why you build SEO basics into your functionality (see WP standards for included SEO) and build SEO into your content creation process.
Now when your functioning website, with textual content is ready you now have a way for traffic to find your site.

Still no need for Graphics. Unless you products and services need images. For proper SEO every page needs at least ONE SEO optimized image. This is the same for the products and services offered on your website. These images are NOT considered part of the graphic designers responsibility. These images are an important part of the base content for the website and functionality.

Still no need for Graphics.

Once you are to the point that you can test the site with live beta traffic and it is working, then you can waste whatever money you want on graphics design. But maybe not.
Maybe if your conversions are low, it is due to the flow of your website. Did you actually put the correct links in the appropriate places? Is your shipping clear throughout the order process or are people leaving once they find the actual shipping price.

I am well know for building UGLY sites, that make money.
I am also well known for taking award winning graphically designed web site, making them less award winning for graphics and then ME winning awards with the site owner as their conversions graph begins a steep upward trend.

I can go on and on but I have paying clients with beautiful sites that are not making money (yet) that I need to go work on.
BTW, this client I am thinking of now had a horrible main menu, almost no footer links, almost zero internal linking, no site flow ( you could get stuck in a category of products with only the horrible main menu to get you out), lets not go into how bad the cart functionality was, etc.

After fixing only the header, footer and some internal linking, the sites conversion rate slightly increased. Slightly, because zero SEO was performed on the creation of the site, thus 4 or 5 visitors per day is currently the average.
Page views went from 2.6 to 6.8 on average. Yes my team removed our IPs from the stats.

The point to take away from this is that, things are NOT equal.
If they were you could perform the tasks in any order. Building a site has a specific order, Graphics are NOT first and are in fact last.

If you think graphic design is equal, then you might also fill a hole with water, before you dig it. Then to learn that you did not need the water to begin with, because now you have a bunch of water where you need to dig a hole.

For those of you that think a shovel is something you lean on, I do not expect you to understand my analogy.

Good read