I was reminded of a classic web design v SEO misconception last week and it is alarmingly common.
Last week, a call with a prospective client brought about the old web design v SEO conversation. This has been ongoing for at least 15 years, but I recall a time when it wasn’t the issue it is today.
The company in question was upset with the business they’d engaged to design their website. It was a start-up business and the site was relatively inexpensive. However, it wasn’t a stock $199 waste of money you find on offer from many web designers.
They were asking me what it would take to make their site visible in Google SERPS (Search Engine Ranking Pages) for a couple of reasonably competitive key phrase targets. As it stood, their site was indexed, but was considerably low down in ranking results. It had page 7 and page 9 listings for their two most important phrases.
Web designers – the clue is in the name
I’ll get this out of the way early, web designers are not SEO specialists. That’s not an insult to them, it’s a simple fact. They have a very particular set of skills, related to design, graphic design and a collection of generic web design tools, that take years to learn and become expert in.
SEO specialists have exactly the same. The skills I have were accumulated over a 25 year period. What I know about graphic design could be written on a Post-It note. I can develop a website, but I’m certainly not a ‘designer’.
The early days of web design and SEO
If we were to go back to pre-2005, the split in skillset wasn’t quite as dramatic as it is today. That’s mainly because SEO wasn’t that complex. There wasn’t anything like the volume of websites online that there are today. Hence, the competitive landscape of getting visibility for a site was far easier.
Furthermore, Google and other search engines hadn’t implemented a fraction of the considerations and ranking factors that are required today. Ultimately, getting a site ranked was reasonably easy and SEO wasn’t the specialist skill that it is today. If you were a web designer back then, you could throw a few words and phrases on the site and achieve reasonable visibility for your client.
Tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver had appeared in the late 1990’s and allowed a traditional graphic designer to get their wonderful creations on a webpage with ease. It helped if they had a modicum of technical knowledge, but it wasn’t essential.
The web evolved, design and SEO skills separated
Then everything began to change. Since then, web design skills and SEO skills have moved further away with almost every month that has passed. The tech sector has long since acknowledged that these are two very different vocations. They’re occupied by two very different types of people and skill sets.
The aforementioned is all well and good if you work in the sector and know it. However, if you’re a business outside the sector, you may well see web design, web development and SEO as one.
Why was the prospective client upset?
The argument of the prospective client was that they’d told the designer they wanted to be found in Google Search. They’d said “Okay, that’s not a problem.”
Had a digital agency said the above, perhaps they’d have an SEO Executive or other person in-house to do that. Unfortunately, this was a freelance web designer.
I asked if the client had clarified their requirements, because as it stood, the web designer had done nothing wrong. Yes, the client was indeed to be found in Google Search – only on pages 7 and 9. To their end, the web designer had done as requested.
Furthermore, the amount paid for the website suggested that the designer was low to mid-range in what they charged. They hadn’t charged for even a small percentage of the time that would be required on SEO.
Should the designer have been more upfront with the business? Probably. Should the prospective client have asked more questions? Definitely.
The unpleasant task of explaining the reality
This left me with the task of explaining the reality of the situation to the unhappy business. That’s never an easy task and I am not bereft of empathy for people when they haven’t known any better. I choose my words carefully when explaining this kind of predicament. I use the same analogy that I’ve published in this blog.
Some people understand it immediately and accept that they’ve made an error, perhaps with some blame on the designer’s side. This business was very frustrated with the designer. They didn’t feel at fault and that could be fair if they’d been misled and trusted the designer. It is difficult to know when you receive one side of the story. That said, I believed them. They were very open and transparent.
Web designers are a breed that I have a lot of respect for. They craft, cultivate and hone some wonderful creations (although I’ve seen some terrible creations too). Their thinking time is often under-estimated, much like the time to research and implement SEO can be.
People tend to judge them on the time they “think” it should take to produce the end result they see. Similarly, fast results in SEO are often met with “it must have been easy, so why have I been charged X amount“. End results are seldom a gauge of the time and effort that has been expended if you don’t know the skills or time required.
Had the web designer been honest about SEO?
The design of the site was good. However, given that I have seen the site structure and what little had been done from an SEO-friendly perspective, they certainly hadn’t spent more than a few fleeting moments thinking about SEO (they hadn’t completely ignored it, at least not on the main pages of the site, but they hadn’t paid it much attention either).
On the face of it, and with the way the prospective client described certain conversations they’d had, I was inclined to think they’d been told a lot more would be done than actually was, or lead to believe the designer knew a lot more about SEO than they did.
The designer should have informed them that they didn’t provide SEO services, been upfront and honest with them. My suspicion is that they probably knew the client might go to another provider. I suspect that they didn’t want to risk losing the business.
There is a degree of second-guessing in that, but it is very common and many reading this will know that’s the case.
Website construction and the house building analogy
I have an analogy for the misconception that a web designer is an SEO expert, and it is related to housebuilding.
When a house is constructed, the end result comes from a collection of skills. The bricklayer lays the bricks, the electrician wires and house and the plumber…well you get the idea. This is the same with websites. You can think of a website as an online house. It is even easier to connect the two when you consider that the front door of your website is called the Homepage.
I’ll come back to the mention of a web designer and web developer for a moment to expand this analogy. They’re very different skills, although they do merge from time to time. The designer is the arty one. The developer is the one that does the coding. They’re like the architect or interior designer versus the electrician. I wouldn’t want the electrician decorating my home. Nor would I want the architect wiring it – and I probably wouldn’t live to tell the tale.
The expansion of the website and house analogy
Having covered the analogy of the house being built, saying it looks nice from the outside, and the inside is okay too, I came to the next point – it is 50 miles from anywhere and there are no roads leading to it. They now need the infrastructure for people to get to them. That, in this case, is the SEO.
Unfortunately, saying this can be like adding fuel to the fire of an already well lit furnace. They’ll often think that the infrastructure analogy doesn’t work, because SEO can’t be anything like building roads to a house.
SEO had to be significant part of delivering traffic to a website, particularly one with no other real means of obtaining visibility. They weren’t very active on social channels and marketing spend was bringing direct traffic to their site, but in small volume and sporadically.
It was at this point that another misconception came to the fore. You might have picked up on it earlier in this blog, merely by them expecting the web designer to have dealt with their SEO – i.e. SEO is not a single hit item.
How could the web designer have “dealt with” their SEO?
The business was of the opinion that SEO was something the web designer should have done, and all these months later that would have given them the Google rankings they wanted.
As I’m sure most people reading this blog will be aware, nothing could be farther from the truth. It is reasonable to say that a one-off SEO process can resolve issues or prove to be a useful foundation for a website and, occasionally, it might reap rewards – but it isn’t a long-term solution.
Back to the house analogy and traffic to it
SEO, to go back to the house analogy again, is the maintenance of the road to the property, the signposting of where it is, the invitations to parties and gatherings at the house and so on. Ultimately, it is the process of making you known, visible and accessible. More importantly, it is the goal of making you the place to go to ahead of anywhere else.
If the route to the house wasn’t maintained and continually serviced from a signposting perspective, the road would fail and the signposting would become worn. In other words, the one-off task would be worthless.
Educating, gently, about what SEO requires
This is where there was a complete misunderstanding from the business. They didn’t think there was anything required other than “doing the SEO”. The idea of continual service was alien to them, so the call became educational on one hand, but difficult on the other.
It isn’t easy for a start-up, or indeed any, business to be told there will be an ongoing cost attached to their goal of being in their desired position on Google. Their competition was mature and well-established. Their naivety about what the web designer would do was amplified by their overall lack of understanding about what it takes to get to your goal online.
I gave them options, one of which was to deliver a one-off SEO fix that would at least give them greater visibility and they could then revisit it. My recommendation was to do that along with a monthly retained SEO service, but their budget simply didn’t allow for it.
It was evident that the prospective client hadn’t been expecting this. They’d been of the impression I could “do some stuff” and all would be good, the sun would shine and clients would flock to their site. The yacht in the Bahamas would be theirs within a year.
Businesses need to do their research
I began this blog by saying this misconception is common, and it is sadly true. Businesses have a far better understanding of SEO, and the difference between it and web design, than ever before. However, that doesn’t mean the subject is understood by all.
There are still far too many businesses that don’t know what they could be faced with when they plan an online business, and their plans are largely based on what they “think” and not research.
The situation this particular business found themselves in was unfortunate but avoidable. A small amount of research would have revealed the specialist skills and separation of web design and SEO.
That said, I remain of the view that both parties were culpable for the end result. More research and a clearer brief was required on the part of the prospective client, and more honesty, transparency and the ability to say “No, we can’t provide that” was needed from the web designer.
Where will they go with their SEO now?
If you’re wondering where the conversation ended between myself and the prospective client, there’s a big hint in my continuing to refer to them as a prospective client.
Their start-up nature and the targets they seek mean that the costs of SEO (to achieve their goals) aren’t something they were prepared for at this stage. I completely appreciate that position, it is something you have to get used to occasionally when working as an SEO consultant.
I will be conducting some small fixes for them that will resolve a few issues keeping them far lower in SERPS than they could be. It isn’t ideal, but they know the position and that it isn’t a final solution.
If you have any feedback or your own stories about this type of situation, please feel free to leave a comment! You’ll find more of my SEO blogs on the main index.
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