Introduction
(Edit: I recently posted in more detail about ongoing SEO as I’ve noticed more and more small businesses hoping that there is a “one-off” way to fix search engine visibility.)
Search engine optimisation is generally seen as the process of optimising a website’s content and structure to increase its visibility and ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. An SEO-ready website is one that at claims to have had search engines in mind right from the start. In contrast a website being actively worked on by an SEO executive is one that is undergoing ongoing optimisation efforts to improve its search engine performance.
In this article, we will discuss some of the more detailed differences between an SEO-ready website and one that is being actively worked on by an SEO executive.
(Side note: this was prompted by a chat with the guys at Big Event Films, who had done many things right according to the SEO guidelines provided by Wix — but of course, the platform on which you build a site is only the start of the journey to being competitive!)
What is an SEO-ready website?
An SEO-ready website is one that has been designed and developed with SEO in mind. Some web design companies will not make the distinction between this and “doing” SEO (and some may not really do as much as they should so get a website “SEO-ready”!).
In general, this indicates a website that has been optimised for search engine crawlers to better understand its content and structure. The website has been created with an understanding of the factors that search engines use to rank websites, and its design and structure have been optimised to meet those requirements (as an aside here, this has a lot to do with user experience, accessibility and common sense, something for another post).
An SEO-ready website typically has the following features:
- Well-structured URLs: URLs that are easy to read and understand, with clear and concise titles that are relevant to the content on the page.
- Fast loading time: Websites that load quickly are more likely to rank higher on search engines.
- Responsive design: A responsive design ensures that the website is optimised for viewing on different devices, including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.
- Quality content: The website contains high-quality content that is relevant to the target audience and provides value.
- Optimised images: Images are optimised for faster loading time and better search engine performance.
- Meta tags: The website includes meta tags, such as title tags and meta descriptions, which provide additional information to search engines about the content on the page.
What is “ongoing SEO”?
Ongoing SEO would be one way of describing the process in place whilst a website is undergoing ongoing optimisation efforts by an SEO exec, marketing manager or other person (in-house or maybe agency-side) to improve its search engine performance. This involves a range of activities aimed at improving the website’s ranking on search engines, increasing its visibility and driving more traffic to the website. This work usually involves some mixture of the following activities:
- Keyword research: An SEO exec will conduct extensive keyword research to identify the keywords and phrases that are relevant to the website’s target audience.
- On-page optimisation: On-page optimisation involves optimising the website’s content, structure, and meta tags to improve its relevance and ranking on search engines.
- Link building: Link building involves creating high-quality backlinks to the website from other reputable websites, which can improve its search engine ranking.
- Content creation: An SEO executive will create high-quality content that is relevant to the website’s target audience and optimised for search engines and is aware of the current context and opportunities in the market — this is super important!
- Monitoring and reporting: An SEO executive will monitor the website’s search engine performance and provide regular reports on its ranking, traffic, and other metrics.
- Technical optimisation (aka “tech SEO”): Technical optimisation involves optimising the website’s technical aspects (often in a content-agnostic way), such as its speed, security, and mobile-friendliness, to improve its search engine performance.
Conclusion: SEO-ready vs ongoing SEO doesn’t really make sense!
The main difference between an SEO-ready website and ongoing SEO is that an SEO-ready website is designed and developed with SEO in mind, while ongoing SEO works not only to achieve an optimised site, but can also react to new content created by other teams (e.g. new products or posts), new opportunities for content (e.g. because of changes in the market or consumer trends). The fact is, you will usually see much better results (perhaps some, rather than none!) if you keep working on search engine visibility.
Clients should not be under the impression that a site that is optimised for SEO is going to instantly deliver results (unless the site in question is built on an aged domain, or is a rebuild for an existing business, and even then there are plenty of caveats to do with redirections and migrations etc.), but it’s really important to have a good site as a starting point, especially if there are other comms going out that demand it be found at least from a branded search perspective.
It’s really important that business owners, marketing managers or whoever is in charge of the site consider using ongoing SEO activity in addition to having an SEO-ready site. It doesn’t have to be a full-time thing, in fact just a few hours a month could be enough to make progress in some niches!
