by Dev Basu

1. The Kick Off Phone Call – The purpose of this call is to affirm your role as a supportive entity that complements the web designer’s work. The call with the client and his/her web designer will help set deadlines, process, and types of communication between the project’s stakeholders.

2. Setup A Wiki or Similar Collaboration Resource – Email isn’t necessarily the best way to manage a project, and it’s often much better to establish a central resource for sharing information, wireframes, checklisted SEO recommendations, and similar files. It’s important to keep the access open to the client if they wish to see how SEO is being integrated into the design process.

3. Schedule Regular Phone Calls – Email is great to get communication in and out fast, but not necessarily when you want anything actionable to happen. You can’t file a scheduled phone call away, and it forces both the SEO and web designer to focus project milestones so that deadlines are met.

4. Explain Your Recommendations – While some might think it’s not worth the extra time and effort in educating the web designer, I’ve found that putting some rationale in your recommendations can speed up the work flow. Baking SEO into the design process asks the designer to make changes into their existing work habits, and change isn’t always easy to accept.

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Web designers can do so much for themselves, their clients and their businesses by incorporating the following seo tips…

1) Make sure your URL’s are as SEO friendly as possible. Avoid all those “=” and “?” marks. Use mod re-write to re-create these URL’s to a more seo friendly format. Also, if the URL includes the keyword phrase for that page, that’s extra bonuses!

2) Keyword research should be the absolute basis of any website design project. It should be the very first thing that you do with your client. You’ll be surprised how many more pages and information you’ll be able to get from your client if you can show them what their target audience is looking for.

3) Use semantic tags on every website page. If you’re not familiar with these tags, read this list of semantic tags outlining all the semantic tags. These are not tags that are used in the section, instead, these are tags used within the body of text. They’re very helpful with search engines and how they understand the content of your website pages.

4) Avoid using flash for your navigation, if possible. I know, I know, you want to show your client your flash design, beautiful menus, etc, but the truth is search engines still have trouble reading flash files and they simply will not follow the links from the navigation menu if it’s written in flash.

5) Don’t forget the alt tags on your images. They should be not only descriptive of the image but use the keyword phrase for the page as well.

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