SEO Basics That Are Most Often Overlooked When Building a Website

In most web projects, SEO is treated as the final step. The briefing often states: “Build the site first, then do SEO at some point.” The problem with this sequence is that much of what makes a website visible on Google at all is determined during the actual development process, not afterward.

What is overlooked here can only be made up for later with significantly more effort. Sometimes, it can’t even be fully rectified. We see this in nearly every other project that comes to us after it has already been built elsewhere: The fundamentals are missing, and retrofitting them costs many times more than it would have cost to incorporate them from the start.

Here are the fundamentals that are most often overlooked, and what should be taken into account from the very beginning instead.

What SEO Actually Needs to Achieve When Building a Website

SEO isn't just a list of tricks you apply at the very end. It's the combination of technical accuracy, a clear structure, and content that actually matches what people are searching for. All three of these elements are largely established during the design and development phases, not afterward.

If you treat SEO as the final step, you’re essentially not treating it at all. While a basic framework can be fixed, any fixes made to a live website are more time-consuming, riskier, and more expensive than making the same decision before you even click “Publish” in the CMS. That’s exactly why this list belongs in the briefing, not in the post-launch review.

The following seven points are not insider tips. They are fundamentals. Nevertheless, they are missing from most of the projects we take on because they were simply never explicitly requested. This is rarely due to a lack of knowledge on the agency’s part. It’s because SEO doesn’t have its own place in the project plan; instead, it gets lost somewhere between design approval and the launch date.

If you’re familiar with these points, you can specifically request them for your next project—whether you’re the client or the team building the site. That’s exactly what this list is for: not as a way to troubleshoot problems after the fact, but as part of the briefing that’s established from the very beginning.

1. The URL structure isn't well thought out

Many websites go live with URLs like marschfahrt.de/seite?id=384 or with wildly nested subfolders. Neither Google nor visitors can tell what the page is about from the URL. Ideally, a URL should be readable without even having to open the page.

The problem usually doesn't stem from carelessness, but rather from the workflow. The CMS automatically generates a URL based on the page title or an internal ID; no one double-checks it, and the result is a URL that works technically but provides no indication of the page's content.

What you should do: Plan a descriptive, flat URL structure before building the first page. Use marschfahrt.de/webdesign instead of cryptic parameters. This may sound obvious, but it’s often overlooked because no one explicitly requires it. It’s best to lay out the entire structure on a piece of paper before you start building, so no one has to improvise later on.

2. Redirects Are Often Overlooked During a Relaunch

When an existing website is redesigned and URLs change without the old addresses being properly redirected to the new ones, the site loses its previous visibility on Google overnight. Years of built-up rankings are simply gone, often without anyone understanding why.

This happens more often than you might think, and usually not because of a lack of knowledge. The relaunch is complete, everyone is happy with the new design, and the redirect list slips to the bottom of the project plan because it doesn’t seem like a big deal, either technically or visually. That’s exactly what makes it so dangerous.

What you should do: Before every relaunch, create a complete list of all existing URLs and set up an appropriate redirect for each one. Don’t just do a random sample—make sure the list is complete. After the migration, check to see if the redirects are actually working. This is one of the most costly mistakes that can happen during a website migration, and at the same time, one of the easiest to avoid.

3. Meta titles and descriptions remain blank or generic

The title and short description that appear in a Google search result often determine whether someone clicks on it or keeps scrolling. Nevertheless, on many websites, these fields remain blank or are automatically filled with the page name, without any real content behind them.

This effect is often underestimated: Two pages can rank exactly the same position in search results yet receive vastly different click-through rates, depending on how well the title and description reflect the actual content. Ranking one position higher is of little use if no one clicks because the text below doesn't deliver on its promise.

What you should do: Write a unique, specific title and a description for each important page—one that actually describes what the page offers, rather than just repeating the company name. Imagine you see ten search results listed one below the other: What would your entry need to include for you to click on it specifically?

4. Images are not optimized for search engines

Large, uncompressed images without alt text are one of the most common causes of slow loading times, and slow loading times directly affect search rankings. Missing alt text also means that Google cannot understand what is shown in an image.

With many projects, the problem starts right at the delivery stage: A photo comes from a camera or smartphone in its original size, is uploaded without any adjustments, and the page loads noticeably slower than it should. You rarely notice this right away, but it adds up across the entire page.

What you should do: Compress images before uploading them and provide a brief, specific description of each important image in the alt text. This not only helps Google, but also people who rely on image descriptions—for example, those who use a screen reader. Good alt text isn’t an SEO trick here; it’s simply a matter of accessibility, which also happens to help with rankings.

5. The heading structure gets all mixed up

A page should have exactly one H1 heading, followed by a logical sequence of additional headings below it. In practice, we often see multiple H1 elements on a single page or headings that were chosen based purely on visual size rather than content structure.

This often happens when design and content are developed separately. Someone decides that a text element should look bigger, chooses the H1 formatting to achieve this, and suddenly the page has two or three main headings, even though the content was only meant to have one. People hardly notice this. Google does.

What you should do: Treat headings as a table of contents for your page, not just as a stylistic device. Use an H1, followed by H2s for the main sections, and H3s only where there’s a genuine subheading. This helps both Google and visitors quickly find their way around, especially on mobile devices, where people tend to skim a page rather than read it thoroughly.

6. Internal links are completely missing

Many websites consist of isolated subpages that rarely link to one another. However, Google uses internal links to understand which pages are particularly important and how content is related. A page without incoming internal links comes across as a footnote, even if the content is actually central to the site.

This doesn't just apply to blog posts. Service pages also rarely link to one another, even though they often should. Anyone offering web design and SEO should link from the web design page to the SEO page—and vice versa—because visitors often aren't yet aware of this connection themselves.

What you should do: Deliberately link thematically related content together. A blog post that links to the relevant service page not only helps visitors navigate further but also boosts the linked page’s ranking on Google. The easiest way to do this is to create a brief overview of which pages are thematically related; then, the right places to insert links will almost come naturally as you write.

7. Structured data is skipped

Structured data is additional, invisible information embedded in the code that helps Google categorize content correctly—such as business hours, reviews, or product information. Without it, Google can only understand a page in general terms; with it, Google can understand it much more precisely.

This point is often overlooked because it’s invisible. No one sees structured data when looking at the finished page, so no one asks about it when the project is accepted. That’s exactly what makes it one of the items most likely to be missing once a project is considered “finished.”

What you should do: When building your website, determine which structured data makes sense for your business model and have it set up right away. For a local business, this often includes the address, hours of operation, and reviews; for an online store, it’s more likely to be product details and prices. While this can be done later, it’s often forgotten once the project is considered complete.

Why it will be nearly impossible to make up for this later

The reason this list should be addressed before development begins—and not afterward—is simple: Each of these seven decisions affects the website’s basic structure. Changing the URL structure after the fact means having to set up redirects all over again. Correcting the heading structure after the fact means going through every subpage individually. What is a decision during development becomes a project in and of itself afterward.

On top of that, there’s an effect that’s hard to quantify but is very real: Google needs time to reevaluate a website. Even if all seven issues are corrected retroactively, it often takes weeks or months for that to show up in the rankings. With a website that’s set up properly from the start, this delay is completely eliminated because Google can classify the site correctly right away.

We're not saying this to scare anyone. We're saying it because we regularly take on projects where this very rework eats up the lion's share of the budget—a budget that would have been better spent during the initial construction.

That doesn't mean an existing website with these gaps is worthless. It just means that the order of the work is reversed: Instead of planning everything out properly from the start, fixes are made retroactively while the site is live and still running. Both approaches are possible. But only one of them is more cost-effective, faster, and carries less risk of losing good rankings during the transition.

A real-world example

A while back, a client came to us with a five-year-old website that had carried over exactly these issues from a previous relaunch. The URLs were automatically generated, there were no redirects from the previous version, the alt text was completely empty, and a handful of pages had duplicate H1 tags. The client felt the site was working well: modern design, fast load times on paper, and positive feedback from colleagues.

The situation was different on Google. The site barely appeared for the search terms that were actually relevant, even though the competition wasn’t any stronger in terms of content. The reason wasn’t the design, but rather the seven points listed above, which no one had explicitly checked during the relaunch at the time.

The correction took several weeks and cost significantly more than it would have to address these issues right from the start of construction. Some of the redirects could only be reconstructed using old Analytics data because no one remembered which URLs had even existed. This is exactly what we mean when we say that it’s nearly impossible to fully make up for this later: It’s not just about time, but also about information that becomes harder to obtain with each passing month.

Checklist for Your Next Web Project

Before your website goes live, you should have these points clarified:

• A clean, descriptive URL structure has been finalized

• During a relaunch, all old URLs are fully redirected to the new ones

• Every important page has its own meta title and description

• Images are compressed and have alt text

• The heading structure follows a clear logic rather than being based purely on aesthetics

• Related content is linked internally as appropriate

• Structured data is included where appropriate

If you can check off these seven items before launch, you’ve already covered most of the technical SEO basics without having to set up a separate SEO project.

Conclusion: SEO isn't an afterthought

Most of these points take hardly any extra time to address during website development if they are considered from the start. If they are fixed later on, they cost significantly more—and sometimes even result in a loss of search rankings that can never be fully recovered.

Good visibility on Google isn't achieved through some quick fix after launch. It comes from laying a solid foundation from the very beginning and from having the discipline to actually work through this checklist before the site goes live—not only after the first results fail to materialize.

Related: Google AI Mode and AI Insights: Why Your Website Is Getting Fewer Clicks and What Still Drives Traffic, and Local SEO—The Key to Regional Visibility · Services: SEO at a Fixed Price

Do you want to know how well your website is technically optimized for Google?

We'll take a look at your website and give you honest feedback on where your site stands in terms of the seven points listed above and what's most worth addressing first. Send us a quick message using the contact form. We'll respond within 24 hours—personally and without any sales pitch.