Getting a web site launched can be extremely challenging. The questions, the meetings, and the approvals can seem endless. Search engine optimization can turn out to be an afterthought - after a web site is live and a business begins to question why it has not shown up on any search results pages. Or maybe the question comes out:

Why is our web site not getting any traffic? Or any visitor traffic from the major search engines - Google, Yahoo!, MSN? Or any other search engine?

Before answering this question, can you answer these questions:

Did you require the web designer to create a search engine friendly web site?

Did you ask the web designer if the web site they have created for you will attract visitors from the search engines for specific keyword phrases?

Did you provide your web design company with targeted keywords and keyword phrases?

You can see where this is going…

If you don’t make SEO part of the design parameters for your web site, you can’t expect search engine optimization to be implemented.

SEO and web design are two very different skill sets. Just like the graphic arts and database coding can be split up in web design shops because they are very different disciplines with specialized programming skills. Search engine optimization is also specialized skill set, one who’s quality can vary depending on who is making the SEO recommendations.

Through the web design approval process, a customer often can allow the design firm to simply offer up their best presentation of what a company’s web site should look like. This is the commercial web designer’s strength - to create an image for a company on their web site that is user friendly. But trying to determine what keywords the web site should target in the search engines is not typically part of their design package because it has little to do with the technical code or graphics. This is where an SEO consultant can provide insight into keyword research that reveals what terms might be attainable for high rankings with limited resources, or steering clear of keyword phrases that might not bring any qualified visitor traffic.

Just creating templates for web pages requires the customer to invision what the content of each web page might be. Someone must create this content. Since, businesses often rely on a copywriter for “words” to sell their company, relying on a specialist for search engine optimization is no different. It’s a skillset that is focused on - and SEO is not generally in a web designer’s toolbox.

One of those SEO tools is determining on-page factors to be customized for each page to target specific keywords. These are the keywords that a web site is trying to rank high for in the search engines. Like other aspects of web design, resources are needed to make decisions and provide information for these on-page factors. Much of the time, these factors are the after thought. Several of these on-page factors are:

• Title
• Description
• Keywords
• Keyword density (at least the presence of targeted keywords or related words)

This is not an exhaustive list, and those in the SEO community will argue the importance (or lack of importance) of keywords and other meta tag values - but the basic point is:

SEO does not happen without careful planning or intentionality.

Taking the time to determine what the targeted keywords will be for a web page,  clarifies the topic and the content of page. Did your last web designer ask what the targeted keywords were? And hopefully, this exercise determines the purpose or action that is desired on the web page.  This investment of resources up front for SEO can pay dividends months and even years into the future. But unless some one has the foresight to make search engine optimization part of their web site plan, there will most likely be disappointment because the Google has the home page buried beyond the fifth page results.

Don’t let your web site hide deep in Google’s search results, make sure search engine optimization is part of your web design process by asking for SEO skills specifically.