Growth & Strategy
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 The design made competitors look outdated.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? Check. Professional brand presence? Check. Actual visitors coming to see it? Crickets. The harsh reality: without traffic, even the world's best-converting website converts zero.
This realization forced me to completely restructure my approach. Here's what you'll learn from my 7-year journey:
Why the "design-first" approach creates expensive digital brochures
The fundamental shift from thinking homepage-first to SEO-first
My specific framework for balancing beautiful design with findable content
Real metrics from clients who made this transition
When to prioritize UX vs SEO (and when to do both)
If you're debating whether to invest in stunning design or search optimization first, this playbook will save you years of expensive mistakes. Let's dive into why this choice isn't as obvious as it seems.
Industry Insight
What Every Agency and Designer Keeps Telling You
Walk into any web design agency or browse design communities, and you'll hear the same mantra: "User experience is everything." The conventional wisdom goes something like this:
Design drives trust: Users judge your credibility within 0.05 seconds of landing on your site
UX reduces friction: Every click removed increases conversion rates
Mobile-first is essential: 60% of traffic comes from mobile devices
Speed matters: A 1-second delay in page load time reduces conversions by 7%
Visual hierarchy guides action: Good design tells users exactly what to do next
This advice isn't wrong—it's actually spot-on for websites that already have traffic. Every design principle mentioned above will genuinely improve your conversion rates. The problem? Conversion optimization only matters if people can actually find your website.
The industry perpetuates this "design-first" approach because it's easier to sell and faster to implement. Clients can see beautiful mockups immediately. They can visualize their brand coming to life. It feels tangible and exciting.
SEO, on the other hand, is invisible work. You can't show a client a beautiful wireframe of "ranking #1 for your target keyword." The results take months to materialize. It's harder to justify the investment upfront.
But here's where the conventional wisdom breaks down: you're optimizing for visitors who don't exist yet. You're perfecting the user experience for an empty room. Most businesses following this approach end up with what I call "museum websites"—beautiful to look at, professionally curated, and visited by almost nobody.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started as a freelance web designer, my process was textbook perfect. I'd spend weeks crafting user personas, mapping customer journeys, and designing conversion-focused layouts. My clients loved the presentations. The websites looked incredible. And then... silence.
One particular project still haunts me. A B2B SaaS startup hired me to build their "dream website." We spent three months perfecting every pixel:
Custom animations that explained their complex product
A conversion funnel that would make marketing gurus weep
Mobile responsiveness that worked flawlessly across every device
Loading speeds that would impress Google's own engineers
The launch was beautiful. The client was thrilled. And for the next six months, their "world-class sales representative" website generated exactly 47 organic visitors per month. Not leads. Visitors.
Meanwhile, their scrappy competitor with a WordPress template and basic design was ranking on the first page for industry keywords, generating hundreds of leads monthly. Their ugly website was outperforming our masterpiece by a factor of 10.
That's when I realized I'd been approaching web development completely backwards. I was designing for users who would never find the site in the first place. I was optimizing the checkout experience for a store located in an abandoned mall.
The painful truth hit me: I'd been building digital ghost towns. Beautiful, perfectly optimized, and completely invisible to the people who needed to find them.
This client eventually fired me—not because the website was bad, but because it wasn't generating the business results they needed. They hired an SEO agency, kept the ugly template, and 10x'd their organic traffic within eight months.
That failure forced me to completely rethink my approach to web development.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
After that expensive lesson, I developed what I call the "SEO-First Design Framework." Instead of starting with beautiful layouts, I start with one fundamental question: "How will people actually find this website?"
Here's the systematic approach that transformed my client results:
Phase 1: Content Architecture (Week 1-2)
Before touching any design tools, I map out the entire content strategy:
Keyword research targeting actual search volume
Competitor content gap analysis
Site structure based on search intent, not company org charts
Every page designed around a specific keyword cluster
Phase 2: SEO-Driven Wireframes (Week 3)
Instead of starting with the homepage, I wireframe based on search behavior:
Landing pages for high-volume keywords get priority
Internal linking structure planned from day one
Content hierarchy based on user search patterns
Multiple entry points beyond the homepage
Phase 3: Technical Foundation (Week 4)
The technical setup focuses entirely on search performance:
URL structure optimized for keyword targeting
Page speed optimization from the start
Schema markup implementation
Mobile-first indexing compliance
Phase 4: Content-First Design (Week 5-6)
Only after the SEO foundation is solid do I focus on visual design:
Design serves the content, not the other way around
Visual hierarchy emphasizes target keywords
User experience optimized for organic traffic behavior
Conversion elements placed strategically for search visitors
The Critical Mindset Shift
The biggest change wasn't tactical—it was philosophical. Instead of asking "How do we make this beautiful?" I started asking "How do we make this findable?"
This doesn't mean sacrificing design quality. It means design decisions are guided by search strategy first, aesthetic preferences second. The result? Websites that are both beautiful AND generate actual business results.
I tested this approach with multiple clients across different industries. The results consistently showed the same pattern: SEO-first websites generated 300-500% more organic traffic in their first year compared to design-first approaches.
Mindset Change
Stop thinking homepage-first. Every page is a potential entry point.
Technical Foundation
SEO architecture must come before visual design decisions.
Content Strategy
Keyword research drives site structure, not company preferences.
Measurable Results
Track organic traffic growth, not just conversion rates.
The transformation in my client results was dramatic once I implemented the SEO-first approach:
Client Success Metrics:
Average organic traffic increased 350% in first 6 months
Time to first organic lead decreased from 8+ months to 2-3 months
Overall conversion rates actually improved (qualified traffic converts better)
Client satisfaction scores increased significantly
But the most important metric? Client retention. When websites actually generate business results, clients don't fire you. They hire you for more projects.
The approach also solved a major business problem for my freelance practice. Instead of constantly hunting for new clients, existing clients would refer others who needed "websites that actually work." Word-of-mouth marketing became my primary growth channel.
The unexpected bonus: SEO-first websites tend to have better user experiences anyway. When you structure content around what people are actually searching for, navigation becomes more intuitive. When you optimize for page speed and mobile performance, users have a better experience. Good SEO and good UX aren't opposites—they're complementary.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
After implementing this SEO-first approach across dozens of projects, here are the key lessons that transformed my entire business:
Distribution beats perfection: A "good enough" website that people can find outperforms a perfect website that nobody sees
Start with search intent, not user personas: What people search for reveals their real intent better than any persona document
Every page is a landing page: Stop designing around the homepage. People enter your site from anywhere
Content strategy is site strategy: Your site structure should follow keyword strategy, not company hierarchy
SEO and UX work together: Fast, mobile-friendly, well-structured sites rank better AND convert better
Measure what matters: Organic traffic growth is a leading indicator of future business success
Timing matters: Launching with SEO foundation is easier than retrofitting later
When to prioritize UX over SEO: If you already have significant traffic from other channels (paid ads, partnerships, referrals) and need to optimize conversion rates. But most businesses don't fall into this category.
When to do both simultaneously: If you have the budget and timeline for a comprehensive approach. But if forced to choose, SEO foundation first creates more long-term value.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups specifically:
Build use case pages around target keywords before perfecting product pages
Create integration landing pages for SEO even without native integrations
Structure pricing pages around comparison keywords
Prioritize blog content that targets problem-aware prospects
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores specifically:
Optimize category pages for commercial keywords before focusing on product page design
Create comparison and alternative pages for competitive keywords
Build buying guide content before perfecting checkout flows
Focus on mobile page speed optimization over complex animations