{"id":9659,"date":"2018-09-07T15:43:59","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T10:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/?p=9659"},"modified":"2023-12-04T10:00:35","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T04:30:35","slug":"why-seo-comes-before-your-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/why-seo-comes-before-your-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Why SEO Comes Before Your Website?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Why-SEO-Comes-Before-Your-Website_.png?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-9661\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Why-SEO-Comes-Before-Your-Website_.png?resize=640%2C320&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Why-SEO-Comes-Before-Your-Website_.png?w=1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Why-SEO-Comes-Before-Your-Website_.png?resize=300%2C150&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Why-SEO-Comes-Before-Your-Website_.png?resize=768%2C384&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With this post, I hope to help you avoid one of the most frustrating, unnecessary and costly SEO mistakes of all: planning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s such a simple step that many business owners or startups miss entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Most successful businesses follow a simple principle; identify a market or a need then create a company around that need.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A successful website should follow those exact same principles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> DO NOT build your website and make it pretty and functional, and then approach an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/tillison.co.uk\/seo-specialists\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SEO Agency<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to optimise it for search engines, rank your site and attract a ton of significant traffic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When that happens, any professional SEO will hang their head and tell you that it would have been better to plan the website structure and content first, then to build the website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why? Because your SEO girl or guy will have to start undoing parts of the site, cramming new components into it and working around problems &#8211; that takes valuable time and money to do. Time better spent on creating more content or building links to your site.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Think of it like building a house. You wouldn&#8217;t get a builder and a decorator in without first considering where each room should go, where the sunlight comes from or having an architect design where the walls should go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A successful website is no different &#8211; get the SEO architecture correct before you make it functional and pretty. That approach saves a lot of time in the long run and provides a solid foundation to work on page optimisation, work on your content plan and focus on external linking.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>The New Website SEO Process<\/h2>\n<h3>Keyword Research<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start with your market. Get deep into your potential customers&#8217; search habits. What do they search for? How much volume is there? What&#8217;s the intent behind each search query?<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Finding Keywords for Your Site<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are some tools to help understand what your potential customers search Google for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>*\u00a0The <a href=\"https:\/\/ads.google.com\/intl\/en_uk\/home\/tools\/keyword-planner\/\">Google Ads Keyword Planner<\/a><\/strong> is free (you&#8217;ll need a Google Ads account though) and provides an insight into Google&#8217;s massive database of search trends and volumes in your market and in your location (very important!).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Add an initial keyword, and the Keyword Planner will suggest similar terms you might want to consider adding to your keyword target list, along with volumes and trends.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-1.png?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9813\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-1.png?resize=640%2C599&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"SEO\" width=\"640\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-1.png?zoom=2&amp;resize=710%2C664&amp;ssl=1 1420w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-1.png?zoom=3&amp;resize=710%2C664&amp;ssl=1 2130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*<\/strong> <strong>Google Predictive Search:<\/strong> <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start typing into the Google Search bar. Google automatically begins to predict what your query might be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-2.png?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9814\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-2.png?resize=640%2C325&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"SEO\" width=\"640\" height=\"325\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-2.png?zoom=2&amp;resize=710%2C360&amp;ssl=1 1420w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-2.png?zoom=3&amp;resize=710%2C360&amp;ssl=1 2130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That data is harvested from millions of queries, suggesting those which are regularly searched.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If Google suggests the query as an auto-complete, there&#8217;s some search volume. It may not be much, it may be a ton, but there&#8217;s some.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s a thankless task, manually going through the alphabet to test different queries, but can be a goldmine for building an excellent keyword list.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>* Keyword Mining Tools:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are some systems which can save you some manual labour, though they may not provide as detailed information as Google Predictive Search.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ubersuggest<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is pretty neat. Enter a search term, and it&#8217;ll return a heap of similar words you might consider adding to your keyword list. This combines results from both the Google Ads Keyword Planner and Google Predictive Search, though I\u2019ve found using both natively a little more complete and reliable. You can even download to a CSV file and pull it into a spreadsheet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-3.png?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9815\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-3.png?resize=640%2C712&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"SEO\" width=\"640\" height=\"712\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-3.png?zoom=2&amp;resize=710%2C790&amp;ssl=1 1420w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-3.png?zoom=3&amp;resize=710%2C790&amp;ssl=1 2130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The <a href=\"https:\/\/yoast.com\/suggest\/\">Yoast keyword tool<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is free and works pretty well too, though I have some (untested) concerns over UK specific data being as full and accurate as the US data. It works similarly to Ubersuggest.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-4.png?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9816\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-4.png?resize=640%2C712&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"SEO\" width=\"640\" height=\"712\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-4.png?zoom=2&amp;resize=710%2C790&amp;ssl=1 1420w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-4.png?zoom=3&amp;resize=710%2C790&amp;ssl=1 2130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check your Google Search Console Data. It&#8217;s free and is your view into what your site (if you have one) already ranks for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/webmasters\/\">Search Console<\/a><\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will show you how many times your pages showed organically for a particular keyword, your average position and how many clicks you got. It\u2019s a wonderful source of keywords which you could rank quickly and easily for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you&#8217;re running a Google Ads campaign, you&#8217;re already paying for a ton of insight that&#8217;s way more valuable than any of these tools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Head to the Search Terms report in your Search or Google Shopping campaigns. You&#8217;ll see data about the specific queries that showed your ads, attracted clicks and, most importantly, made you sales (you&#8217;ll need <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/1009612\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">eCommerce conversion tracking<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in place for that data).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whichever\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tool or data source you use (maybe some different ones), create yourself a neat spreadsheet of all of the keywords you might want to rank for, including search volume data if you have it.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>About Keyword Search Volumes<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each search query (or keyword) will have more or less search volume in real life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don&#8217;t believe everything the Google Ads Keyword Planner tells you. It lies like a sunken ship. Use the data as a guide to compare terms, rather than as an absolute statement of fact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The higher volume keywords will typically have more competition and be tougher to rank for, whereas the more specific, long-tail search terms can often be small niches of profitable traffic which are (comparatively) easier to rank for.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Consider Search Intent<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Depending on what your site is selling, your customers&#8217; search behaviour could be very different.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Complex, expensive purchases like a safari holiday, a big budget CRM system or a new car have long search cycles, starting with research queries through to desire queries and eventually to action queries when they&#8217;re ready to buy.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Understanding the Keyword Intent Funnel<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let&#8217;s take the example of an eCommerce store selling tiles. Floor tiles, wall tiles, bathroom or kitchen tiles. You get the idea.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Research Queries<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a big project that starts weeks or months ahead of final purchase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Customers start their Search journey here with<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Bathroom decorating ideas<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Kitchen trends<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>* <\/strong>Kitchen colour schemes<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Bathroom design ideas<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There&#8217;s a lot of inspiration to be gained, pictures to looks at, Pinterest boards to scan through.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This traffic is still useful to your site but isn&#8217;t really to convert into a sale. Nowhere near. But it does start to help that customer build a relationship with your brand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Then on to slightly higher intent keywords<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>* <\/strong>Wall Tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Floor tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Kitchen Tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Bathroom Tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Kitchen wall tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Bathroom wall tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We&#8217;re likely to still be in a research and inspiration phase here, and while conversions do come from these terms, the conversion rate is low.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you can rank for these keywords, there&#8217;s a significant volume and therefore still a lot of sales to be made.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is where the good stuff starts. The <\/span><b>high intent, \u201cdesire\u201d keywords<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Kitchen quarry tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Large grey kitchen wall tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Slate floor tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Ceramic tiles 150 x 150<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These queries are much more specific. The customer is inspired, they know more about what they want to buy, and they&#8217;re close to a purchase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The conversion rate is higher on these keywords, though individually, the search volume is lower.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Where the action happens<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Your brand or website name<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Brands of tiles<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Brands of tiles with colours<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Ranges of tiles within a specific brand<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>Specific colours and sizes and materials<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These queries represent customers that have been inspired, completed their research, looked through endless Pinterest boards and know precisely what they want. They&#8217;re ready to buy if you have the supply.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These keywords have much lower volume but the highest level intent. You definitely want to rank for this stuff!<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Organise Your Keywords<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the big spreadsheet of keywords from your research, group keywords together into common themes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You&#8217;re going to have keywords which are very similar to one another. That&#8217;s OK. One page can be optimised for a group of related keywords.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You should begin to see a structure emerging as you organise the keywords into groups;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>High intent and low intent<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>*\u00a0<\/strong>High volume, medium volume, and low volume<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This process will start to dictate what pages you&#8217;re going to need for your website and how those pages relate to one another.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Create a Sitemap From Your Keyword Research<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a bunch of tools for creating flowcharts and organisation charts. Personally, I end up using something simple like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/slides\/about\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Slides<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. It&#8217;s not the perfect tool for the job and not as good as <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lucidchart.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lucidchart<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but it&#8217;s quick, free and will work for most projects &#8211; for larger sites, you&#8217;ll need a much more robust tool.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You should end up with a plan, laying out the hierarchy of your home page, the primary pages below that, then on to the more specific pages below that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each layer relates to the layer above and below and creates a clear relationship between your pages and data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Each page in this hierarchy has one or more associated terms that you&#8217;d like it to rank for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-5.png?ssl=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-9817\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-5.png?resize=640%2C361&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"SEO\" width=\"640\" height=\"361\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-5.png?zoom=2&amp;resize=710%2C400&amp;ssl=1 1420w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/seo-5.png?zoom=3&amp;resize=710%2C400&amp;ssl=1 2130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Page Link Architecture<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, now you have your sitemap. A list of all of the pages you&#8217;re going to need for your website. You can give this to your web design agency to follow as they&#8217;re building your shiny new site.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your web designer should deliver your site, ready for you to start the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/how-to-master-on-page-optimization\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">on-page optimisation process<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Focusing first on what your customers are searching for and building a site with pages which match those searches will give you a solid foundation on which to build your SEO strategy and organic rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is nowhere near the end of the SEO journey and is only one part of improving your rankings. You\u2019ll need to complete on-page optimisation, sitemap optimisation, create some excellent content and earn your site some external links to really start ranking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Planning your site isn\u2019t everything, but everything depends on it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With this post, I hope to help you avoid one of the most frustrating, unnecessary and costly SEO mistakes of all: planning.\u00a0 It&#8217;s such a simple step that many business owners or startups miss entirely. Most successful businesses follow a simple principle; identify a market or a need then create a company around that need.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25540,"featured_media":9662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basic-seo","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why SEO Comes Before Your Website? - RankWatch Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rankwatch.com\/blog\/why-seo-comes-before-your-website\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why SEO Comes Before Your Website? - RankWatch Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"With this post, I hope to help you avoid one of the most frustrating, unnecessary and costly SEO mistakes of all: planning.\u00a0 It&#8217;s such a simple step that many business owners or startups miss entirely. 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