Where does SEO Belong In Your Web Design & Development Process

Building a website is a team effort, and everyone has a part to play. Designers create visually appealing and interactive user interfaces. Copywriters craft messages that compel visitors to pay attention and act. Developers use code to tie everything together.

However, there is one component of the puzzle that cannot be delegated to a single individual. That is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO.

Unlike traditional marketing, SEO is not the sole responsibility of one person. Where does it belong?

The answer is everywhere.

SEO impacts every aspect of your site, so it has to be considered from the onset of a project before anything is even built out for the web.

SEO is, at its very core, a collaborative process. It requires finesse, input from multiple disciplines, and an understanding of how search engines work. This means that every team member should have a basic understanding of what SEO is and how to implement it on your website — no matter their title or department.

To make this clearer, let's break down how SEO plays into each department within a company:

Design

SEO affects design choices because certain design elements are more SEO-friendly than others. For example, navigation that uses text links rather than images or drop-down menus will be more effective for search engine crawlers and people using screen readers or other assistive technologies. Similarly, search engines prefer responsive sites since they can get content indexed more quickly and efficiently.

Content

The content on your site should be readable to humans and machines alike. That means writing compelling copy that communicates your brand's unique value proposition while also considering keyword optimisation.

Development

Development includes the coding language used on your site — HTML5 is currently an ideal choice since it contains semantic markup (i.e., tags that define the meaning of different content sections). Using semantic markup also helps ensure that search

engine crawlers can quickly understand your content, which improves its chances of ranking higher for relevant keywords.

Marketing

The marketing department is in charge of generating leads for businesses. The purpose of SEO is to generate leads. Do you see where this is going?

The marketing team needs to work with the SEO team to ensure that they properly implement the strategies that will drive traffic to the website and generate leads. If marketing doesn't know what their SEO team is doing, they won't be able to produce content that will help them achieve their goals effectively.

The bottom line is that SEO is a vital component of today's web design and development process. Designers, developers, copywriters - everyone needs to be on the same page when it comes to making their pages search engine-friendly. If not, they could find themselves losing out on valuable traffic. And with such tight competition in the business landscape, you can't afford to lose even one potential customer. Therefore, your entire team must understand how one another's work fits together if you want to make the most out of your SEO.

If you're not sure how to get started, RJW Digital can help you align your site with SEO best practices. Contact us here.