Local SEO

SEO and Web Design: What to Insist On Before You Sign

"SEO included" appears on most South African web design quotes and means almost nothing on its own. For one studio it means unique page titles. For another it means three months of content work. The gap between those is thousands of rand, and you cannot tell which you are getting from the word. This is the list of what should be included as standard, what is genuinely extra, and how to check afterwards that you got it.

What should be included in any build?

None of the following is specialist work. It is the equivalent of an electrician earthing a plug — if it is missing, the job was not finished.

A unique title and description on every page. Not the business name repeated eight times. The title is the blue line in search results, and it is the single most influential on-page element you control.

One H1 per page, and headings in order. Structure tells search engines what a page is about. Pages built by dragging text boxes around often have no headings at all, only large text — which looks identical to a human and blank to a crawler.

Descriptive URLs. /geyser-repair-pretoria, not /page-id-47. Set at build time, painful to change later.

Fast loading on a phone, on mobile data. Compressed images in modern formats, no enormous hero video, no twelve fonts. This is the most commonly skipped item and it affects both rankings and whether visitors stay.

A working mobile layout. Tap targets big enough for a thumb, no horizontal scrolling, text readable without pinching.

An XML sitemap and a sensible robots file. Trivial to produce, and they tell Google what exists.

Google Search Console connected, in your account. This is where you find out whether Google can actually see your site. Insist it is set up under your own Google account, not the agency's — same principle as owning your domain, covered in the questions to ask before paying a deposit.

Business schema markup. The structured data that tells search engines your name, address, phone and hours in a machine-readable form. Standard on any competent build.

Analytics of some kind. You cannot judge the investment without it.

Pages that match what people search for. The most important item and the least technical. If people search "electrician Centurion" and your site has one page called Services listing eleven trades, you have nothing to rank. Separate pages for separate services and areas is a structural decision made at build time — the reason we keep distinct pages for electricians and plumbers rather than one generic trades page.

What is genuinely extra?

Being fair to designers: plenty of what people expect under "SEO" really is separate, ongoing work with a real cost.

A quote that folds all of this into one line called "SEO" is not necessarily dishonest — but you cannot compare it to anything. Ask which rows are in and which are out, then compare like for like using the approach in how to compare website quotes.

One row deserves emphasis: Google Business Profile. For a local business it usually does more than everything else combined, it costs nothing, and you can do it yourself in an afternoon. If a designer has not mentioned it, they are not thinking about how you actually get found. Our step-by-step guide covers verification, categories and what really moves map pack position.

What should never be promised?

A specific position. "First page guaranteed" or "number one for your keywords" cannot be honoured. Rankings vary by searcher, location, device and day, and nobody outside Google controls them. The usual trick is guaranteeing rank for a phrase nobody searches — technically true, commercially worthless.

A specific traffic or lead increase. Nobody knows how much demand exists in your category. A designer can commit to the work; the market decides the result. Anyone quoting you a percentage uplift has invented it.

"Submitting your site to 500 search engines." There are effectively two that matter here, and neither needs submitting.

Bulk backlink packages. Cheap link packages are the one item on this list that can actively damage you rather than merely waste money.

Instant results. A brand-new site takes months to establish search visibility. If you need enquiries this month, the honest answer is Google Business Profile and paid ads, not SEO — which is the trade-off we set out in will a new website actually bring you more customers.

The reasonable version of all this sounds like: "We'll build it so Google can read it properly, connect Search Console, and write the pages around what people actually search. Where you rank depends on your competition, and I'll show you what's realistic for your category." That answer is a good sign.

What must happen if you're replacing an old site?

This is where genuine damage occurs, and it is entirely preventable.

Your existing site has addresses Google knows about. If the new site uses different addresses and nobody connects the old to the new, every one of those pages becomes a dead end. Visibility that took years to build disappears, and rebuilding it takes months.

Ask for a redirect map before launch. A simple list: every old URL, and the closest matching new URL. Old contact page to new contact page, old service page to new service page. It takes an hour for a small site.

Keep the pages that were working. If an old page brought enquiries, do not delete it in a redesign because it does not fit the new layout. Find out what was working before anyone starts designing — a quick look in Search Console tells you.

Watch the www and non-www question. Both versions of your address should resolve to one canonical version, consistently. Split signals between two versions of the same site are a common and invisible own goal.

Update the address everywhere else. Google Business Profile, Facebook, directories, your email signature, the bakkie. A new URL that half the internet still points away from is only half launched.

Do not let the old site be switched off early. Keep it live until the new one is up and redirects are in place.

How do you check you actually got it?

Five checks, none requiring technical skill, all doable the week after launch.

1. Search for your own site. Type site:yourdomain.co.za into Google. It lists what Google has indexed. Nothing there a couple of weeks after launch means something is wrong — occasionally the "discourage search engines" setting was left on, which is the single most expensive checkbox in web design.

2. Read your titles. In the same results, look at the blue lines. Are they distinct and descriptive, or is every page called "Home"?

3. Test speed on a phone. Run your address through Google's PageSpeed Insights, on the mobile tab. You are not chasing a perfect score — you are checking nothing is catastrophic.

4. Confirm Search Console is yours. Log in with your own Google account and check the property is verified and the sitemap submitted. If you cannot log in, you do not have it.

5. Click every old link you can remember. If you replaced a site, try a few old addresses. They should land somewhere sensible, not on a 404.

If something is missing, raise it while the invoice is fresh. Most of these are quick fixes, and a reasonable designer will do them without argument. If you get resistance to items on the included list, that tells you something useful about the relationship — the pattern we describe in red flags when hiring a web designer.