Sunward

SEO website design

Websites built to rank, not just to look good.

Most sites are designed first and made findable afterwards. That order is why they never rank. We decide the search structure before the design starts, because by the time a site looks finished the decisions that matter have already been made.

The order of work

Design last, not first.

A website has to answer two questions before anyone judges how it looks. What searches should this business appear for, and what pages need to exist to win them. Those answers determine the page structure, the headings, the internal links and the copy.

Answer them after the design is built and you are retrofitting. Pages get bolted on, the structure stops making sense, and the site needs rebuilding within a year. Answer them first and the design has something to be designed around.

The build

Six things every build includes.

01
Keyword-led architecture
The page structure comes from what people actually search, not from what the business calls its services internally. Every page has one search job.
02
Technical SEO from the first commit
Clean URLs, correct heading order, metadata, canonicals, sitemap and structured data. Built in, not added in month three.
03
Speed as a requirement
Lightweight builds that load on mobile data. Google treats speed as a ranking factor, so we treat it as a build constraint rather than an optimisation pass.
04
Conversion design
Every page decision is measured against one question. Does this make the visitor more likely to get in touch.
05
Google Business Profile connected
The site and the Google listing set up to reinforce each other rather than sitting apart.
06
Room to grow
Structured so new service and location pages can be added later without a rebuild.

The process

Four phases. The order matters.

01
Research
We map what your customers search, what the current results look like, and which of those searches you can realistically take. You get the keyword map before anything is designed.
02
Structure
Page architecture, headings and internal linking drawn out and agreed. This is the document the whole build follows.
03
Build
Design and development in one pass, reviewed live as it goes. You see it working rather than seeing flat mockups.
04
Launch and measure
Search Console connected, indexing requested, baseline positions recorded on day one so there is something to measure against.

After launch

Then we keep it moving.

Search does not finish on launch day. Positions move, competitors respond, and what Google rewards changes. We keep the site maintained and keep working the searches month to month.

You hear from me regularly, not once a quarter when something has gone wrong. Where you rank, how many people got in touch, what I am working on next, in plain words and whenever there is something worth telling you. You will always know who is looking after your site, because it is the same person every time.

Working in Edinburgh?

Local search works differently to national search. The Google local pack, your Business Profile and proximity all change what ranking means. See SEO web design in Edinburgh.

Get in touch.