Last post I mentioned I had my first client. They’re a young international couple who decided to take a leap of faith, quit their respective careers, and open a cafe in Barcelona. From their business research, they knew they needed an SEO optimised website. This is where I came in.
As their cafe is currently overrun with builders and the like, we met at a cafe close by. We discussed their vision and they showed me a website that encapsulated the look they desired. Clean and simple.
Back in my home office however, I mentally shelved the design in lieu of focusing on the SEO research. In this post I discussed why SEO is so crucial to Web Design, however, one thing I didn’t mention was the order of things, so I’m here to tell you now – do it first! URLs are an integral part of SEO so make sure you choose them wisely. Over time, they build authority on Google so if they’re changed at a later date there will be a negative impact on their search rankings. If you have a client that is absolutely sure they want to change their URL, check out this step by step guide that’ll help reduce the impact.
My research method focused on keywords and phrases, recording page one results, and then determining which websites made repeat appearances. From this I could see who were the top bloggers, publishers, and review forums. These will be used for their off-site SEO strategy. From the repeat top cafe websites, I dug deeper into their on-site and off-site SEO strategies comparing keywords, page elements, and social media.
I’ve left the in-depth keyword trending research for when I’m up to the content stage. As for now, I am currently having fun building the website using WordPress.org. More to come on how I conquered WordPress!
UX DESIGN 