SEO training for web designers
without becoming an SEO
One hour on Zoom, your own builds on screen. Learn the SEO decisions that happen during a build, so the sites you hand over look bloody lovely and hold up six months later.
Your client thought SEO was included
“So why aren’t we ranking?”
Fucking marvellous.
You know how to build a website. Somewhere along the line, clients started assuming you do the SEO too, and nobody told them otherwise.
You do not need to become an SEO. You do need to know which decisions made during a build help a site get found, and which ones bury it. Most of what turns up in an audit was set months earlier by a theme default nobody looked at.
What SEO training for web designers covers
This is not a generic SEO course. We use your sites, your build process and the questions your clients keep asking you.
Heading structure
H1s, H2s and H3s, why heading tags are for structure rather than styling, and what your page builder does to them by default.
Site structure
Navigation and internal linking that makes sense to people first and search engines second.
URLs and redirects
What makes a sensible URL, when changing one matters, and how to avoid a redirect chain nobody can unpick later.
Migrations and rebuilds
What needs protecting when you rebuild an existing site, so the rankings do not leave with the old design.
Indexing basics
Noindex, robots.txt, canonicals and sitemaps, and the easy ways a perfectly good page disappears from Google.
Launch checks
The handful of checks worth doing before you push a site live, and the ones worth doing the morning after.
On-page SEO
Titles, headings, copy and images, and what is reasonable to set up before handover.
Images and alt text
File sizes, filenames, accessibility, and why keyword stuffed alt text belongs in the bin.
SEO plugins
Yoast, Rank Math and the rest. Useful tools, not tiny green traffic lights that decide whether a page is any good.
Know where your job ends
A good build needs SEO foundations. It does not need you absorbing an entire SEO retainer into a fixed project price because you felt awkward saying no.
No slide deck, no homework
Bring the thing causing you grief and we work on that. Send it over beforehand and we start there instead of spending ten minutes finding it.
- A site you are building right now
- One you launched last month that is not behaving
- Your build checklist, to be picked apart
- A migration you are dreading
- A client’s alarming list of SEO questions
- Five things you have been bluffing for three years
Web people who want to do the job properly
No previous SEO training needed, and no expensive tools. Book it for yourself, or bring your team so everyone builds to the same rules.
More confidence, fewer oh shit moments
- A clear idea of the SEO foundations a decent site should have
- Checks you run before launch and after launch, from memory
- Straight answers for clients, without overselling what you do
- A sense of what to include, what to charge for and what to refer on
- An understanding of why it matters, rather than a list you memorised
- The recording and a written summary, so you are not taking notes
What people say about the sessions
The heading tags cheat sheet
One page on H1 to H6: what each one is for, where page builders get it wrong, and the mistakes that show up in nearly every audit. Print it, stick it above the desk, send it to whoever does your builds.
Sixty minutes. You, me, your websites.
Bring your questions, your sites, your process or the odd thing a client asked you yesterday. We spend the hour on whatever makes the biggest difference to what you build next.
Booking for a team, or got more than an hour’s worth? Get in touch and we will sort something out.
SEO training for web designers: your questions
Do I need to know anything about SEO first?
No. Come with questions and a site.
Can I book this for my team?
Yes. Same session, more people on the call. Tell me how many when you book.
Can I send something over beforehand?
Please do. Send the site, or the thing that has been bugging you, and we start there.
What if I have more questions afterwards?
Email me. I would rather answer a quick one than watch it turn into a problem on your next build.
Do you do the SEO work as well?
Sometimes. Plenty of designers pass SEO work my way or bring me in on a build. If that is what you are after, say so and we will talk about it separately.
Build the pretty site.
Just don’t bury it.
You do not need to be an SEO. Knowing the foundations makes you better at your own job, gives you straighter conversations with clients, and saves everyone an expensive mess later.
Book your 1:1 session