As someone who's spent thousands of hours working on SEO and building websites, I've learned what works and what doesn't. One of the biggest challenges I face is working with websites that weren't built with SEO in mind initially. I rarely take on SEO projects for sites I didn't build from the ground up, and here's why.
When I first look at a new website, it often looks fantastic on the surface. The design is clean, modern, and user-friendly—a well-crafted business card for the brand. But, while a website might be visually appealing, it's usually not optimised for traffic or conversions. It's built to showcase a business but doesn't necessarily know how to attract the right audience through organic search or paid ads.
The problem arises when I'm asked to work on SEO for a site like this. Suddenly, I'm looking at a site with a dozen or more plugins, often outdated and sometimes conflicting with each other. It becomes a game of Jenga, where one wrong move can collapse the whole site. And every time I try to fix something, another issue crops up. It's like playing whack-a-mole—every fix creates a new problem.
Working with WordPress, especially when plugins and themes are involved, can be incredibly time-consuming. WordPress itself is great—don't get me wrong. It's flexible, widely supported, and has a massive ecosystem of plugins and themes. However, if not managed correctly, these plugins create a whole new layer of complexity. What should be a simple SEO task—like ensuring the correct heading structure or adding author info to the page—turns into a battle with plugins that aren't working in harmony.
The Importance of a Solid Site Foundation
This brings me to one of the most important points I can make: SEO needs to be part of the planning process from day one when you're building a website. Whether a small local business site or a larger corporate presence, the site's structure must be designed to support SEO best practices. Simple things like correct heading tags (H1, H2, etc.), clean URLs, and optimised metadata are often overlooked, and these are the fundamentals that Google relies on when crawling your site.
Many websites, especially newer ones, are built with aesthetic design as the priority. That's fine, but even the most beautiful site won't perform well in search results without the proper structure. As I've seen repeatedly, once I begin the SEO process, I realise I'm working on a site that wasn't designed to be SEO-friendly. That's when the headaches start.
Why Rebuilding Can Be the Best Solution
I recommend rebuilding the site altogether more often than not. It's not that I don't appreciate the design or the effort that went into the original build. In many cases, the website's foundation is so unstable that it's easier for me to start fresh than to keep fixing patch after patch.
I've learned that the quicker way to get a site ranking well and working with SEO is to strip it down to the essentials. I'll rebuild it using stable, SEO-friendly themes like WP Astra or Beaver Builder, which provide the solid framework I need to ensure SEO success. Then, I can integrate the necessary plugins—just a few, mind you—to optimise everything from page speed to content structure. This helps avoid the conflicts I often encounter with sites with too many plugins.
Streamlining the Site for SEO
When a site is built with SEO in mind, making ongoing adjustments as needed is much easier. One thing that frustrates me the most when working with a pre-built site is the endless number of plugins. Sure, plugins can add functionality, but too many can slow down your site and cause conflicts. As I work on a site, I'll regularly face 20 or more plugins needing updates, often causing the site to break. Each new plugin added is another potential point of failure.
It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of plugins and themes, but they must be chosen carefully if SEO is a priority. Overloading a site with too many tools might seem like a quick fix for adding features, but it creates a web of issues that slow down the entire process. I can't tell you how many times I've logged into a site only to see plugin warnings or discover that an update will break something else.
The Role of Hosting in SEO Success
Another aspect of SEO that many overlook is hosting. Hosting is the backbone of any website, and choosing the right host is crucial for performance. I prefer hosting that allows me full control over server resources—like RAM, memory, and CPU power. With control over these aspects, I can ensure that my sites perform well under traffic load and have the resources to handle ongoing SEO optimisations.
Conversely, some hosting solutions come with restrictive resources, which can cause performance bottlenecks. When you're working with a site that isn't optimised from the start, the last thing you want is for hosting to be another hurdle to overcome. A solid hosting solution is essential to support the site's growth and SEO efforts in the long run.
SEO Is Not Just About Keywords
I can't stress this enough: SEO is more than just stuffing a page with keywords. It's about building a structured website that is easy for search engines and users to navigate. There are many moving parts, from having proper heading structures to using schema markup and ensuring your content is relevant and optimised for your audience.
As an SEO expert, I ensure that the site's content speaks directly to users and search engines. However, if the site is built on a foundation not designed for SEO, it becomes a constant uphill battle.
The Bottom Line
When building a website, whether it's a simple landing page or a full-fledged e-commerce platform, SEO needs to be considered from the beginning. The site's structure should support SEO efforts, not hinder them. And if you already have a website, it's worth considering whether the foundation is strong enough to support your SEO goals. Sometimes, a rebuild is the best option to ensure long-term success.
It's always easier to get SEO right when the site is built with SEO in mind from the start. This doesn't mean you have to sacrifice design for functionality, but it does mean that your site needs the right structure and tools to make it work for users and search engines.