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 The design made competitors look outdated.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.
This painful realization forced me to completely restructure my approach and led to some uncomfortable truths about the UX vs SEO debate that most agencies won't tell you.
Here's what you'll learn from my 7-year evolution:
Why beautiful, conversion-optimized sites often fail completely
The fundamental difference between design-first and SEO-first thinking
How to build websites that people actually find (not just love)
My framework for balancing aesthetics with discoverability
Real metrics from sites that made this transition
Reality Check
What the design world doesn't want to admit
The design industry has built an entire mythology around "user experience" that sounds logical but ignores a fundamental reality: the best user experience in the world is worthless if users never find your site.
Here's what every UX agency and design guru preaches:
Design for conversion first - Optimize every pixel for the user journey, assuming they'll land on your homepage
Brand consistency matters most - Every page should reinforce your visual identity and company values
Mobile-first responsive design - Focus on how it looks and functions across devices
User testing validates everything - If users can navigate it in a lab setting, it's good design
Awards and portfolio pieces prove success - Beautiful sites win clients and industry recognition
This conventional wisdom exists because it makes business sense for design agencies. Beautiful websites photograph well, win awards, and impress potential clients in sales meetings. They're easy to sell because stakeholders can immediately see and feel the difference.
But here's where this approach falls catastrophically short: it assumes people will magically discover your beautiful site. It's building a Ferrari for a race track that no one knows exists. The entire framework optimizes for the wrong metric—what happens after someone arrives, not whether they arrive at all.
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:
Beautiful websites? Check.
Professional brand presence? Check.
Actual visitors coming to see it? Crickets.
I remember one particular project that crystallized this for me—a B2B SaaS client who'd invested heavily in a complete brand overhaul and website redesign. We'd created something genuinely impressive: clean navigation, compelling messaging, seamless user flows, mobile optimization. It looked like it belonged in a design showcase.
Three months post-launch, their analytics told a brutal story: 12 organic visitors per week. Twelve. For a company targeting a massive market with clear demand.
That's when I realized I'd been optimizing for the wrong thing entirely. These websites had become expensive digital brochures—impressive when someone stumbled upon them, but nobody was stumbling upon them.
The harsh reality hit me: without traffic, even the world's best-converting website converts zero.
I started noticing this everywhere in my portfolio. Clients would launch their beautiful new sites, get initial excitement from their existing network, then watch traffic flatline. The conversation always shifted to "How do we get more visitors?" but by then, the site architecture was locked into a design-first approach that made SEO an afterthought.
This pattern forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth: I was essentially training world-class sales reps to work in empty neighborhoods.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
This realization forced me to completely restructure my approach. Here's the framework I developed after rebuilding my entire methodology:
The SEO-First Mindset Shift
Instead of starting with "What should the homepage look like?" I began every project with "What are people actually searching for?" This isn't just a different starting point—it's a fundamentally different way of thinking about websites.
Traditional design thinking: "User lands on homepage → navigates to relevant section → converts"
SEO-first thinking: "User searches specific query → lands on targeted page → finds exact answer → converts"
The New Architecture Framework
I stopped thinking of websites as having one front door (the homepage). In an SEO-focused approach, every piece of content is a potential first impression, a unique entry point designed to meet someone exactly where they are in their search journey.
Here's how I restructured my process:
Keyword Research Before Wireframes - Always. I map out what people actually search for before designing a single page
Content Strategy Drives Site Architecture - The site structure follows search intent, not company org charts
Every Page is a Landing Page - Each page must work independently, assuming it's someone's first interaction with the brand
Internal Linking as Navigation - Users flow between pages based on related topics, not predetermined user journeys
The Practical Implementation
For one e-commerce client, instead of building the traditional "Home > Products > Individual Product" structure, I created hundreds of targeted entry points:
Problem-specific pages for different user pain points
Comparison pages for users evaluating alternatives
How-to guides that naturally led to product recommendations
Category pages optimized for buyer intent keywords
Each page was designed to rank for specific queries while maintaining the brand experience. The key insight: you can have both beautiful design and search visibility, but SEO must inform the structure from day one.
This approach completely changed how I talked to clients. Instead of presenting wireframes first, I presented keyword research and content strategy. Instead of focusing on homepage optimization, we discussed how each page would attract its ideal audience.
Foundation First
SEO architecture must be built into the site structure from day one, not bolted on afterward as an afterthought.
Content Strategy
Every page needs to work independently as a potential first impression, assuming it's someone's entry point to your brand.
Keyword Integration
Natural keyword integration happens during content creation, not through awkward retrofitting of existing copy.
User Intent
Design decisions should support search intent rather than forcing SEO to work around predetermined aesthetic choices.
The transformation in results was dramatic across multiple client projects:
Traffic Growth: Sites built with SEO-first architecture consistently achieved 300-500% increases in organic traffic within 6 months, compared to design-first sites that often stagnated below 100 monthly visitors.
Conversion Quality: Contrary to design purist predictions, conversion rates actually improved. When people find exactly what they're searching for, they convert at higher rates than users forced through generic funnels.
Long-term Performance: SEO-first sites continued growing traffic month over month, while beautiful-but-invisible sites required constant paid advertising to maintain visitor flow.
The most telling metric: client satisfaction. Clients with growing organic traffic were happy even when they had minor design complaints. Clients with beautiful sites and no traffic were universally frustrated, regardless of how much they initially loved the design.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the most important lessons from this 7-year evolution:
Distribution beats perfection - A good site that people find outperforms a perfect site that nobody sees
SEO isn't anti-design - It's a different starting point that leads to more effective design decisions
Every page is a landing page - Stop obsessing over homepage flows when most visitors won't see your homepage first
User intent > user interface - Matching search intent matters more than interface aesthetics
Content strategy is site strategy - What you write determines how you should structure everything else
Earlier is easier - Building SEO into initial architecture is 10x easier than retrofitting it later
Traffic compounds - Unlike paid advertising, organic traffic builds momentum over time
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups, prioritize:
Keyword research before wireframes
Problem-focused page architecture
Use case pages over generic feature lists
Integration pages for search visibility
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores, focus on:
Category pages optimized for buyer intent
Product discovery through search
Comparison and alternative pages
Content that drives organic product visibility