AI & Automation
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
I spent years building what I now call "digital ghost towns" - gorgeous websites that nobody ever found.
Picture this: You've just launched your startup's new website. The design is clean, the animations are smooth, your brand colors pop perfectly. Your team loves it. Your investors think it looks "professional." There's just one tiny problem - nobody's visiting it.
For the first few years of my freelance career, I was essentially training world-class sales reps to do door-to-door sales in empty neighborhoods. I'd pour months into crafting pixel-perfect websites with seamless user journeys and conversion-optimized layouts, only to watch them sit there collecting digital dust.
The uncomfortable truth? Even the world's best-converting website converts zero when nobody can find it. Yet most businesses still approach their website strategy completely backwards, starting with design and hoping traffic will magically appear.
After migrating dozens of company websites and seeing the same pattern repeatedly, I completely flipped my approach. Instead of design-first, I went SEO-first. Instead of treating websites as digital brochures, I started treating them as marketing laboratories.
Here's what you'll learn from my 7-year journey of getting this backwards, then finally getting it right:
Why the "homepage-first" mindset kills your organic growth potential
The fundamental difference between design-driven and SEO-driven site architecture
My systematic framework for building websites that actually get found
Real examples of how this shift transformed client results
When to prioritize design vs SEO (and why it's not always SEO)
Industry Reality
What every business owner believes about websites
Walk into any startup office and mention "website redesign," and you'll hear the same priorities every time. "We need it to look professional. Our competitors' sites look better. The design needs to reflect our brand values."
The traditional website development process follows a predictable pattern:
Brand first: Logo, colors, typography that "feels right"
Design second: Wireframes, mockups, user journey mapping
Development third: Build the beautiful design
Content last: "We'll figure out SEO later"
Launch and hope: "If we build it, they will come"
This approach exists because it feels logical. Design agencies sell it because they can show immediate visual progress. Clients love it because they can see their money being spent on something tangible. Stakeholders can point to the mockups and say "that looks professional."
Here's why this conventional wisdom is so persistent: beautiful design gives you confidence. When potential customers do land on your site, a well-designed page builds trust faster than amateur-looking alternatives. Good design absolutely matters for conversion rates.
But here's where the conventional approach falls apart: it treats your website like a storefront in a physical mall, where foot traffic is guaranteed and your only job is converting the people who walk by. The internet doesn't work that way.
On the internet, your website is more like a store in the middle of nowhere unless people can find it through search. And search engines don't rank websites based on how pretty they are - they rank based on relevance, authority, and user intent matching.
Most businesses realize this too late, after they've already locked in their site architecture around design considerations rather than search considerations. That's when they try to retrofit SEO onto a structure that was never built for it - and wonder why their organic growth stays flat.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
For the first few years of my freelance career, I was the poster child for this backwards approach. I treated each website project like a premium sales representative for the company - everything had to be perfectly aligned with the brand, the user journey had to be seamless, and the design needed to make competitors look outdated.
I remember one SaaS client project where we spent three months perfecting their homepage. We A/B tested button colors, optimized the hero section copy, built beautiful product demo sections, and crafted testimonials that addressed every possible objection. The conversion rate was solid - anyone who landed on the page had a decent chance of signing up for the trial.
But here's the painful reality: we were celebrating a 3% conversion rate on 200 monthly visitors. Meanwhile, their main competitor was getting 10,000 monthly visitors with a basic WordPress theme that looked like it was built in 2015.
That's when it hit me: I was essentially training world-class sales reps to work in empty malls. The websites I built were objectively better at converting visitors, but they were sitting in digital ghost towns with no foot traffic.
The breaking point came when I analyzed traffic sources across my client portfolio. Site after site showed the same pattern:
Direct traffic: 40-60% (mostly existing customers or people who already knew the brand)
Referral traffic: 10-20% (limited and hard to scale)
Paid traffic: 20-30% (expensive and stops the moment you stop paying)
Organic search: 5-15% (the most scalable channel, completely neglected)
I was building beautiful websites for companies that were essentially invisible to their target market. The fundamental problem wasn't conversion - it was discoverability.
This realization forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: most of my "successful" projects weren't actually generating business results. They were generating compliments from other designers and positive feedback from stakeholders who judged success by how the website looked, not by how many customers it actually brought in.
That's when I decided to completely flip my approach. Instead of starting with design and retrofitting SEO, I would start with SEO strategy and build design around it. Instead of treating the homepage as the main entry point, I would treat every page as a potential front door.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
The shift from design-first to SEO-first required completely restructuring how I approached website projects. Instead of starting with wireframes and brand guidelines, I started with keyword research and content architecture.
Here's the systematic framework I developed:
Phase 1: SEO-Driven Site Architecture
Traditional websites are built like physical stores - you design the front door (homepage) and then plan the path customers will take through your space. SEO-driven websites are built like cities - every page needs to be accessible and valuable on its own, because visitors can land anywhere.
I started treating every page as a potential entry point. This meant:
Each service page needed to rank for specific keywords, not just describe what we do
Blog content became the primary traffic driver, not an afterthought
Internal linking structure followed topical authority, not just user journey convenience
Phase 2: Content-First Navigation
Instead of organizing navigation around business structure ("About Us," "Our Services," "Contact"), I organized it around search intent. If someone was searching for "SaaS customer onboarding best practices," they should land on a page specifically about that topic, not a generic services page where they have to hunt for relevant information.
This approach completely changed site architecture:
Main navigation reflected actual search terms people use
URL structure followed keyword hierarchy
Page templates were built around content needs, not design preferences
Phase 3: Design as Content Support
This is where most people misunderstand the SEO-first approach. I didn't abandon good design - I just made design serve content strategy instead of the other way around.
For one B2B SaaS client, instead of building a traditional "About Us" page, we created topic-specific pages like "SaaS Pricing Strategy for Small Teams" and "How to Reduce Customer Churn in SaaS." Each page was designed to rank for specific keywords while still maintaining professional branding.
The design elements that mattered most became:
Page loading speed (crucial for rankings)
Mobile responsiveness (Google's mobile-first indexing)
Content readability and structure (user engagement signals)
Clear conversion paths (turning traffic into leads)
Phase 4: Building Content Systems
The biggest challenge with SEO-driven websites is content creation at scale. You can't just write a few blog posts and call it a day - you need systems for consistently producing valuable content that ranks.
I developed a content system based on three pillars:
Keyword-driven topic research: Every piece of content targeted specific search terms with real search volume
Template-based production: Consistent structures that could scale without sacrificing quality
Performance-based iteration: Double down on what works, kill what doesn't
For content creation, I started treating AI as a scaling tool rather than a replacement for expertise. The subject matter knowledge still came from industry experience, but AI helped produce content at the volume modern SEO requires.
Design Reality Check
Beautiful websites don't automatically generate revenue. Most businesses spend 90% of their budget on design and 10% on discoverability - then wonder why nobody finds them.
SEO-First Architecture
Every page becomes a potential front door. Structure your site around what people actually search for, not around your company org chart or internal business logic.
Content Systems
Consistent content production beats perfect individual pieces. Build systems that can generate valuable, keyword-targeted content at scale without sacrificing quality.
Performance Tracking
Track real business metrics: organic traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion paths. Design metrics like "time on site" matter less than "qualified leads generated."
The results from this approach shift were dramatic across multiple client projects:
Immediate Technical Improvements:
Page loading speeds improved because design decisions were made with performance in mind
Mobile experience became cleaner since content structure drove responsive design
Internal linking became more logical and helped both users and search engines navigate
Long-term Traffic Growth:
The most significant change was in organic traffic patterns. Instead of websites sitting at 200-500 monthly organic visitors indefinitely, they started showing consistent month-over-month growth. The SEO-driven architecture created a foundation that could scale with content production.
Conversion Impact:
Interestingly, conversion rates didn't suffer from the SEO-first approach. In many cases, they improved because visitors were landing on pages that directly matched their search intent instead of generic homepage messaging.
The most surprising outcome was stakeholder buy-in. Once business owners saw organic traffic consistently growing month over month, they became much more invested in content production and SEO optimization than they ever had been in design tweaks.
Quality vs Quantity Balance:
One concern I had was that focusing on SEO would lead to generic, templated content. The opposite happened. Because each page needed to provide genuine value to rank, the content quality actually improved. We couldn't rely on pretty design to mask thin content.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
The Five Critical Lessons from 7 Years of Getting This Wrong, Then Right:
Distribution beats perfection every time. A basic website that people can find will always outperform a perfect website that nobody discovers. Focus on being found first, optimizing second.
Your homepage is not your most important page. In an SEO-driven website, your blog posts and service pages often generate more qualified traffic than your homepage. Design your architecture accordingly.
Content structure drives site structure. Don't retrofit content into a predetermined design. Build your site architecture around the content that will actually rank and convert.
Keywords reveal customer intent better than personas. What people actually search for tells you more about their needs than demographic surveys. Let search data inform your content strategy.
SEO and good design aren't mutually exclusive. You can have both, but SEO considerations should inform design decisions, not the other way around. Fast, mobile-friendly, readable pages look professional and rank well.
Stakeholder education is crucial. Most business owners judge website success by how it looks, not how it performs. Show them organic traffic growth early and often to shift their mindset.
Content systems scale, individual content doesn't. One perfect blog post won't move the needle. Build systems that can consistently produce valuable, rankable content at scale.
When to Still Prioritize Design:
This approach isn't universal. If you're in a highly visual industry (design agencies, luxury brands, creative services), or if you're primarily driving traffic through paid advertising or direct referrals, visual impact might outweigh SEO considerations. But for most B2B SaaS companies and service businesses, discoverability should come first.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS Startups implementing SEO-first strategy:
Build topic clusters around your core value propositions rather than feature lists
Create use-case specific landing pages for different customer segments
Optimize for "how to" and "best practices" keywords in your industry
Link internal pages based on topic relevance, not just user flow
For your Ecommerce store
For Ecommerce Stores balancing design and SEO:
Structure category pages around search terms, not just product groupings
Create content-rich product pages that answer common questions
Build comparison and "best of" pages for high-intent commercial keywords
Prioritize page speed and mobile experience over complex animations