AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
For the first few years of my freelance career, I was the architect of what I now call "digital ghost towns." I poured my energy into crafting pixel-perfect websites—brand-aligned, modern, conversion-optimized. Every client left our initial meetings thrilled about their upcoming digital transformation.
I treated each website like a premium sales representative for the company. The messaging was sharp. The user journey was seamless. The design made competitors look outdated.
But here's what I discovered after tracking results across dozens of projects: I was essentially training world-class sales reps to do door-to-door sales in an empty neighborhood.
After analyzing my client portfolio, a painful pattern emerged: beautiful websites with professional brand presence, but nobody was actually visiting them. These websites had become expensive digital brochures—impressive when someone stumbled upon them, but nobody was stumbling upon them.
This experience forced me to completely restructure my approach to building business websites. Here's what you'll learn from my 7-year journey:
Why design-first thinking kills SEO performance
The fundamental mindset shift from homepage-centric to keyword-centric design
My proven framework for building websites that actually get found
Real examples of SEO-friendly business websites that drive revenue
The specific technical implementations that matter most
Industry Reality
What every web designer has been teaching
The traditional approach to business website development follows a predictable pattern that looks logical on paper but fails in practice. Most agencies and designers start with what I call the "design-first methodology."
Here's the standard playbook every business owner has heard:
Start with brand identity: Create a stunning homepage that represents your company values
Build user journeys: Map out how visitors will navigate from homepage to conversion
Optimize for conversion: Perfect the sales funnel assuming traffic already exists
Add SEO later: Treat search optimization as an afterthought or separate project
Focus on perfection: Spend months polishing every detail before launch
This conventional wisdom exists because it mirrors traditional business thinking. Companies want websites that look professional and represent their brand perfectly. Designers love creating beautiful, award-winning sites. Everyone focuses on what the website looks like rather than whether anyone will actually find it.
The problem? This approach treats your website like a digital brochure in a world where distribution beats perfection every single time. You end up with a world-class sales representative working in an empty mall.
While competitors focus on pixel-perfect design, the businesses that actually grow online have figured out something different entirely.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The wake-up call came when I started tracking actual website performance six months after launch. One client, a B2B consulting firm, had spent $15,000 on a beautiful website. Modern design, perfect user experience, compelling copy—everything looked incredible.
Six months later? They were getting fewer than 300 organic visitors per month. Zero leads from search. Their "professional online presence" was generating exactly nothing for their business.
That's when I realized I was solving the wrong problem. I was optimizing for beauty when I should have been optimizing for findability. I was treating websites like products when they're actually marketing assets that need constant experimentation.
The breakthrough moment came during a project with a B2B SaaS startup. Instead of starting with homepage design, I decided to flip my entire process. I began with one simple question: "What do your customers actually search for when they have the problem you solve?"
This led me to discover something that changed everything: their potential customers weren't searching for their company name or even their product category. They were searching for specific use cases, integration solutions, and "how-to" guides related to their industry challenges.
Traditional web design completely ignores this reality. Most websites are built like stores with only one entrance—the homepage. But in the SEO-driven world, every page is a potential front door. Your customers don't care about your perfect homepage if they can't find your solutions when they're actively searching for help.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After this realization, I developed what I call the "SEO-first website framework." Instead of designing beautiful pages that nobody finds, I started building websites that serve as marketing laboratories.
Step 1: Keyword-Driven Architecture
I completely flipped the traditional approach. Instead of starting with company structure (About, Services, Contact), I started with customer search behavior. For each client, I would:
Research 50-100 keywords their customers actually use
Map each keyword to a specific page purpose
Build site architecture around search intent, not company org charts
Create multiple entry points for different customer journeys
Step 2: Content-First Design
Rather than designing empty pages and filling them with content later, I started writing SEO-optimized content first, then designing around it. This meant:
Every page targets specific search queries
Headlines and subheadings include target keywords naturally
Internal linking connects related topics strategically
Meta descriptions and title tags are crafted before visual design
Step 3: Technical SEO Foundation
I implemented technical optimizations during development, not as an afterthought:
Clean URL structures that include target keywords
Optimized page loading speeds (under 3 seconds)
Mobile-first responsive design
Schema markup for rich search results
XML sitemaps and robots.txt configuration
Step 4: Launch and Iterate
Instead of spending months perfecting everything before launch, I started launching "good enough" versions and optimizing based on real search performance data. This approach meant getting live faster and improving based on actual user behavior rather than assumptions.
Keyword Research
Start with customer search behavior, not company structure. Map 50-100 relevant keywords to specific pages before any design work begins.
Technical Setup
Implement clean URLs, fast loading speeds, mobile optimization, and schema markup during development—not as an afterthought.
Content Strategy
Write SEO-optimized content first, then design around it. Every page should target specific search queries with natural keyword integration.
Performance Tracking
Launch quickly with "good enough" versions and optimize based on real search data rather than spending months perfecting before launch.
The results of this SEO-first approach were dramatic compared to my previous design-first projects:
Traffic Growth: Clients typically saw 300-500% increases in organic traffic within 6 months, compared to virtually no organic growth with design-first sites.
Lead Generation: SEO-optimized business websites consistently generated 5-15 qualified leads per month from organic search, while beautiful-but-unfindable sites generated zero.
Long-term ROI: After 12 months, SEO-first websites continued growing organic traffic month-over-month, while design-first sites remained stagnant.
The biggest surprise? Clients were happier with "good enough" websites that generated leads than perfect websites that sat empty. It turns out business owners care more about results than awards.
This experience taught me that in business websites, distribution strategy matters infinitely more than design perfection. Your website isn't a digital business card—it's a marketing asset that needs to actually drive business growth.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this approach across dozens of projects, here are the key lessons that transformed how I think about business websites:
Every page is a landing page: Stop thinking homepage-first. Your customers enter through search results, not your front door.
Keywords drive architecture: Site structure should follow search behavior, not company hierarchy.
Content before design: Beautiful pages with no traffic are worthless. Ugly pages with qualified visitors are goldmines.
Speed beats perfection: Launch faster and optimize based on real data rather than assumptions.
Technical SEO isn't optional: Clean URLs, fast loading, and mobile optimization are table stakes, not nice-to-haves.
Distribution is strategy: Your website is a marketing laboratory, not a digital brochure.
Measure what matters: Organic traffic and qualified leads matter more than design awards.
The biggest mindset shift? Stop treating your website like a product and start treating it like a marketing experiment. The goal isn't to create something perfect—it's to create something that actually grows your business.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
Build feature pages around customer use cases, not product features
Create integration pages for each tool your SaaS connects with
Optimize for "[product] alternative" and comparison keywords
Focus on problem-solution content rather than company-centric pages
For your Ecommerce store
Optimize product pages for specific product + intent keywords
Create category pages that target commercial search terms
Build location-based pages for local SEO if applicable
Implement schema markup for products and reviews