# SEO or site revamp first?



## Sailfly (Jul 1, 2015)

I am about to revamp my site to reflect product changes and offerings. I want to work on search engine optimization, but not sure if it would be more effective after site changes, or if it doesn't matter because domain name would be same...
Any ideas?

Sailfly.com


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## tchandler52 (Sep 17, 2012)

You will need to complete your website first for SEO.


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## robtech (Aug 11, 2015)

do on-page before off-page. Site ranks always suffer after a redesign, even if you do everything the right way. I'd get your site done first


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## nakaapparel (Jul 21, 2015)

Hello.

Yes, make sure your website is complete first before doing any SEO. I don't want to overwhelm you but even before the site re-design, you should also think about your site structure (how will people navigate through your website), is it user friendly and the keywords you want to target. A costly and time-consuming mistake is to just "guess" what people are typing into the search engines - there are several tools the search engines have to check all this. 

Keyword research should be first, then work on the site structure, then design your site around that and then do SEO.

Good luck.


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## tchandler52 (Sep 17, 2012)

Lots of good information here


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## teehugger (Jul 6, 2015)

i would do the revamp AND SEO at the same time myself. to me SEO should be designed in to your site right from the start. i'd be afraid of not getting it right for EVERY page if going through the process 2x for each.

regardless, if you REALLY want to master design and SEO, read these 7 books and be prepared to take lots of notes...

*5/5 Search Engine Optimization for Dummies* – Peter Kent
Don’t let the title fool you, this is a serious text full of essential information by a knowledgeable author who gets right to the point without a bunch of useless fluff like so many authors, though he does throw a joke in here and there. Most of the info isn’t too technical and is easy to read. I took pages of notes on what was covered (my definition of what makes ANY business book important) and in the end, felt as though I knew more than even some alleged SEO experts and web designers. Consider it essential reading whether you’re building your site yourself, or telling your programmer what tags and keywords etc. you want on every page.

*5/5 Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate guide to Link Building* – Eric Ward & Garret French
Is a perfect companion to SEO for Dummies as it covers different territory, but does add a couple SEO tips of its own to the mix. Sometimes it gets a little technical, and tends to be aimed at larger companies, but it’s still a goldmine of crucial info for any e-commerce site owner. UNLIKE crappy books like Guerilla PR Wired, and Epic Content Marketing, this one actually thrown in some inspiration on how to come up with interesting content. The author doesn’t just stick to the subject of link building, but provides tons of great info and ideas.

*5/5 e-Commerce: Get It Right!* – Ian Daniel
Offers a lot of great info on what it takes to create a successful e-commerce site along with some basic SEO tips. About the only thing I DIDN’T like about the book was the author totally dismissing the idea of owners creating their own websites and insists on hiring expensive programmers. To make up for it though, he makes himself available with a direct e-mail link so that you can ask questions directly. Perhaps this is the FIRST book one should read when thinking about starting a website selling anything.

*5/5 Get Rich Click!* The Ultimate Guide to Making Money on the Internet - Marc Ofstofsky
It might sound like the title of a book in some sleazy “get rich quick scheme” infomercial, but this book is full of practical tips on how to improve your website along with some nice original SEO tips not covered in other books. It even offers ideas on alternative business models so some readers can make money in affiliate programs, for example, using nothing but the info in this book. On it’s own, it had more useful info than 3-4 other crappy e-Commerce books combined. It’s an excellent supplement to the 3 previous books.

*5/5 Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers* – Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares the books starts off really slow in the first few chapters & covers commonly discussed marketing channels, but really takes off when it starts comparing them. For example, it does an excellent job of comparing various social media banner ads and goes beyond the standard FaceBook/Twitter/LinkedIn discussion every other book covers and talks about the value of emerging channels. It’s a great shopper’s guide for what marketing options are available with tons of great UNIQUE suggestions and even offers inspiration. It TOTALLY destroys Epic Content Marketing and Guerilla PR Wired and a few other books combined.

Another example of a REALLY juicy piece of info involves magazine ads. One of the better books I read, Small Buisness Bible I think, mentioned that it's possible to get deals on unused remnant ad space. Until now, wherever I read it was the only place that mentioned this nice tip, but I got nowhere with it when talking to the magazine I was planning to target my first ad in. Traction, however, passes this info along too with another juicy CRITICAL nugget that there are ad agencies out there that specialize in finding remnant space!

*5/5 Ultimate Guide to Optimizing Your Website* – Jon Rognerud covers much of the same territory as other e-commerce books (eg. SEO, keywords, link building and social media), but does so with a very unique perspective adding TONS of new and up to date tips and tricks others miss. It’s loaded with great resources too, and like E-commerce: Get It Right!, the author provides personal contact info and openly encourages readers to contact him many times on virtually every topic throughout the book! Sometimes it gets a little technical or scatters bits of related info between chapters eg. 3 different lists of directories to submit your website to, but overall, it’s an amazing resource as either a really deep primer on building a successful site, or as a supplement to a stack of the best books on e-commerce and SEO. It is simply a GOLD MINE of info… even too much to remember or even take notes on eg. What to look for in a webhost.

*4/5 Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insight from the MOZ Blog* - Rand Fishkin & Thomas Hogerhaven sometimes gets technical and sometimes doesn’t explain content adequately, eg. Using schema.org “markup vocabulary” to enhance your SEO, though it’s the ONLY book I’ve read that ever even mentions this new innovation. It also very often lists links to outside sources for more info making it less useful without net access, but it covers a lot of original content not in other books provided by dozens of experts at MOZ Blog. It’s an excellent supplement to the other books listed.


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