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.
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.
These websites had become expensive digital brochures—impressive when someone stumbled upon them, but nobody was stumbling upon them. 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 the key difference I discovered between design-first and SEO-first web development:
The foundation shift: How I learned to build websites that people actually find
The practical checklist: My step-by-step process for integrating SEO from day one
The architecture change: Why every page becomes a potential front door
The content strategy: Moving from company-focused to search-intent focused structure
The real results: What happens when you stop building beautiful websites that nobody visits
Industry Reality
What every web designer has been taught
The traditional web design approach follows a logical, company-centric structure that makes perfect sense to business owners and designers alike. Here's what the industry typically recommends:
The Standard Design-First Process:
Start with the homepage: Create a compelling hero section that immediately communicates your value proposition
Build the user journey: Map out logical navigation paths from homepage to conversion
Focus on visual hierarchy: Ensure beautiful, on-brand design that builds trust and credibility
Optimize for conversion: Add compelling CTAs, social proof, and remove friction points
Add SEO as an afterthought: Optimize meta tags and add some keywords once the site is built
This approach works beautifully for companies that already have established traffic sources—paid ads, direct traffic, referrals. The website serves as an excellent conversion tool for visitors who are already aware of the brand.
But here's where it falls short: Most businesses don't have infinite marketing budgets for paid ads, and they desperately need organic discovery. The design-first approach treats the website like a store in a mall, assuming foot traffic will just happen. In reality, you're building that beautiful store in the middle of nowhere.
The fundamental flaw is thinking of websites as having one front door (the homepage) when search engines and users can land on any page. This mindset shift changes everything about how you should structure and build websites.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
After analyzing my client portfolio, a painful pattern emerged across dozens of projects. I was delivering websites that looked incredible in portfolio screenshots but generated zero meaningful organic traffic.
The breaking point came when I tracked one particular project—a B2B SaaS client who had everything going for them: solid product, clear value proposition, and a beautifully designed website that converted visitors at a decent rate. The problem? They were getting fewer than 500 monthly organic visitors despite being in a market with clear search demand.
My first instinct was wrong. I thought we just needed to "add some SEO" to the existing design. So I went through the typical checklist—optimized meta tags, added some keywords to existing content, cleaned up the URL structure. Marginal improvements at best.
That's when I realized the fundamental issue: We were treating SEO like a layer you add on top, when it should be the foundation you build upon.
The design-first approach I'd been using had created a beautiful, logical site structure that made perfect sense to humans browsing from the homepage. But search engines and real users don't start on your homepage—they land on whatever page best matches their specific search intent.
I started studying how successful sites actually get discovered. I analyzed competitor sites that were ranking well and found something interesting: their site architecture wasn't built around company structure or user journeys from the homepage. Instead, every page was designed to capture a specific search intent and guide users toward conversion from that entry point.
This discovery forced me to completely rethink my approach. Instead of designing websites, I needed to build search-discovery systems. The visual design and user experience remained important, but they had to serve the primary goal of being findable and valuable to searchers.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Here's the step-by-step SEO-integrated web design process I developed after making this shift. This isn't about "adding SEO" to a design—it's about building search discovery into the foundation.
Phase 1: Search-Intent Architecture (Before Any Design)
Keyword research first: Before wireframing, identify 50-100 keywords your target customers actually search for
Content mapping: Group keywords by search intent and create a content hierarchy based on search volume and business value
URL structure planning: Design your site architecture around keyword clusters, not company departments
Phase 2: Technical Foundation Setup
Core Web Vitals optimization: Choose hosting and build processes that prioritize speed from day one
Mobile-first development: Since most searches happen on mobile, design for mobile experience first
Schema markup planning: Identify which structured data types will help your content stand out in search results
Phase 3: Content-First Page Creation
Start with high-intent pages: Build your most valuable landing pages before the homepage
Search-intent headlines: Write H1s that match what people actually type into search boxes
Internal linking strategy: Plan how pages connect to guide users deeper into your site
Phase 4: Design That Serves Discovery
Scannable layouts: Design for how people actually read online—scanning for relevant information
Clear information hierarchy: Make it obvious what each page is about within 3 seconds
Conversion paths from any entry point: Since users can land anywhere, every page needs clear next steps
The key insight: Stop thinking of your website as having one front door. In an SEO-first approach, every page is a potential entry point that needs to immediately communicate value and guide users toward conversion.
This approach requires more upfront planning but results in websites that actually get discovered organically. You're not just building a beautiful store—you're building a store in the middle of a busy marketplace where your ideal customers are already looking for what you offer.
Foundation First
Set up technical infrastructure before any design work to ensure fast, crawlable sites
Content Planning
Map all content to specific search intents rather than company structure
Multiple Entry Points
Design every page as a potential landing page with clear conversion paths
Measurement Setup
Install analytics and tracking from day one to measure organic discovery success
The shift to SEO-first web development transformed not just my client results, but my entire business model. Instead of delivering beautiful websites that required massive marketing budgets to generate traffic, I was creating organic discovery engines.
The most dramatic change was in client conversations. Previously, website launches were followed by "now what?" discussions about driving traffic. With the SEO-first approach, organic traffic growth became a natural byproduct of the site architecture itself.
One of the clearest examples was seeing how differently users engaged with these sites. Instead of 80% of traffic hitting the homepage and bouncing, traffic was distributed across dozens of targeted landing pages, each capturing specific search intents and guiding users through relevant conversion paths.
The technical metrics also improved significantly—faster loading times, better mobile experience, and cleaner code structure became standard outcomes rather than afterthoughts. This wasn't just good for SEO; it created better user experiences overall.
Most importantly, this approach solved the fundamental "ghost town" problem. Websites became working assets that generated leads and customers organically, rather than expensive digital brochures that required constant paid traffic to function.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons learned from making this fundamental shift in approach:
Technical SEO isn't optional: Site speed, mobile optimization, and crawlability directly impact both user experience and discoverability
Content architecture beats visual design for organic growth: How you organize information matters more than how pretty it looks
Every page needs a purpose: Random pages don't rank—each page should target specific search intent
Internal linking is underrated: How pages connect determines how well your site performs as a whole
Measure from day one: You can't improve what you don't track—set up proper analytics before launch
Think systems, not pages: The most successful sites work as interconnected content systems rather than collections of individual pages
Start with search intent: Begin with what people are actually looking for, not what you want to tell them
The biggest mindset shift: Stop building websites and start building discovery systems. Your goal isn't to create a perfect company brochure—it's to build a system that helps your ideal customers find you when they're actively searching for solutions.
This approach requires more upfront planning and research, but it creates websites that actually work as marketing assets rather than just conversion tools for traffic you have to generate elsewhere.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies implementing this SEO-first approach:
Build feature pages around problem-based searches, not feature names
Create use-case landing pages for different customer segments
Develop comparison pages for competitor keywords
Structure pricing pages to capture commercial intent searches
For your Ecommerce store
For e-commerce stores using this methodology:
Optimize category pages for broad product searches
Create buying guide content for research-phase customers
Build comparison pages for "X vs Y" product searches
Develop collection pages around search themes, not just product categories