Search engine optimization has become critical to the success of any website.
If you are hoping to find customers online and achieve success, it is vital that you start as soon as possible.
In fact, you should start on SEO as early as the development of your new website.
Check out the following step by step guide to help you with SEO for new websites.
1. Select Your Domain Name With Care
The fact is that domain names are among the major ranking factors that any search engine will check to understand what a given site is all about.
As such, you must always aim to choose a domain name which is relevant. It should also be easy to remember by your customers who should be able to recognize your business or organization immediately. It you can incorporate your primary keyword that you want to get a rank for, then that will be ideal.
However, that is not something that you should be forcing.
For example, consider this your business name to be ABC restaurant. Choosing a domain like www.abc-restaurant.com is excellent if that is available. It is many times better than www.sandwich-restaurant.com.
After all, such generic names can cause a lot of confusion among your customers. This can happen even if they already know you when they try to search for your site.
There are plenty of excellent tools available online which can help you discover domain name ideas on the basis of what’s available for purchase.
Remember that domain names are critical for proper search engine optimization. Moreover, this is something you need to do as soon as you start developing a new website.
The following infographic will help you choose the best web hosting provider for seo benefits.
2. Choose a Reputable Web Host
Google has certainly said a lot about how site speed is a major ranking factor for SEO.
After all, consumers are more impatient than ever in the era of high speed internet. As such, they expect webpages to load within seconds (or less). That is why Google aims to deliver only those results first that can satisfy this speed requirement.
Now, there are many strategies that are capable of making your site faster. However, one of the most effective and easiest steps to go for from the very first day is selecting the right web hosting provider.
You can easily find innumerable resources online to help you identify web host service providers that offer excellent speed benefits for SEO.
Don’t forget to take your time in your search to choose the optimal solution.
3. Perform Diligent Keyword Research.
Learning how to perform keyword research is a critical part of any SEO campaign.
The fact is that keyword research is essential for the best SEO practices for getting your website ranked effectively.
After all, you must first have clarity on the main terms as well as the subject areas that your SEO efforts must focus on.
Again, there is no shortage of SEO tools that deliver keyword suggestions as well data on various metrics like the amount of traffic and the competition level that you need to deal with for the keywords you choose.
Many of them require a subscription fee. However, Google’s Keyword Planner is available for free making it an excellent choice to get started with.
Remember that when you select your keywords you must be realistic. After all, SEO is rather competitive. As such, a brand new website will never be in a good position for competing for popular and broad keywords and terms.
Use keyword research for SEO to get specific keywords and long-tail keywords that you can target. For example, something like “east London shoe sellers” will be easier than just “shoe sellers.”
There are plenty of other keyword research tips out there that you can use.
4. Organize Site Architecture
When you’re just starting with a basic site with a few pages, site architecture may not seem at all important. Nonetheless, it will be smart of you to properly plan and organize your site architecture beforehand as it will allow you to have a solid structure in place going forward.
Of course, the benefits of good site architecture extend beyond SEO.
In the case of most websites, the site architecture must have what is called a pyramid structure. In this case, the homepage is right at the top followed by the next set of most important pages. These are generally the ones that appear on the main menu. Below those, there are the subcategories and the individual pages.
By organizing the site architecture beforehand, your website will be organized to deliver priority to your most important webpages. This is in terms of how easy they can be found by visitors. Moreover, it will be easier for visitors to move and navigate between the webpages on the site to find what they need.
5. Implement Mobile Friendly Designs
If you research a bit, you will notice that many algorithm updates that Google has released recently are all about mobile.
After all, more and more users are turning to their phones for most of their browsing. As such, search engines and users expect the websites to deliver intuitive mobile experiences.
When building a new brand website, it has thus become imperative to have a solid mobile friendly design in place. Otherwise, the SEO efforts will be diminished.
You cannot just implement the latest web design trends and hope that will be enough. You must optimise for mobile or your efforts will be in vain.
This is important even if you are choosing mobile app development services.
6. Target the Primary Keywords for Individual Pages.
The initial keyword research you have done will help you get the overall understanding of the language you must use when developing your website.
However, it’s also a good practice to select a target keyword for every individual page on your website.
In this way, you can avoid competing against your own site. As such, always choose unique keywords for every single page for your site.
Following this process is absolutely vital no matter what SEO checklist you follow.
7. Optimize the URLs of Pages.
It is essential that you customize the URL of all pages on the website.
You will want each URL to have the following characteristics.
- Easy to remember
- Make users understand what is present on the webpage
- Have target keyword for the given page
The site architecture must also help you with the URL structure. Here is a good guide to structuring URLs that you can use.
After all, URLs can provide information to the visitor as to their positioning on your site.
8. Optimize the Title Tags
The title tag is that section of the site that Google checks to understand what that page is about.
In other words, this is an essential spot for using the target keyword.
You must always keep the title tag short. Google only displays 50-60 characters on its search engine results page. Even less of your title tag will be visible in the browser tabs.
That means, being concise is the key to success here.
Of course, don’t stuff keywords here. Just the primary keyword once will be enough.
9. Optimize the Images
All images that are used on a given web page ends up creating a few more opportunities to optimize the page for the main keywords.
As a result, this is one step you do not want to miss out on when creating your new website.
When you are naming the images for search engine optimization, it is vital to insert the keyword that you are targeting. For example, it should be keyword.jpg and not some random name.
Don’t forget to update the image alt text with the keyword when uploading.
10. Optimize the Headings
When you are writing for the online world, you will find headings to be a good tool for organizing the copy.
This way, it becomes easier to read and scan the copy. Your visitors will find it immensely helpful when they are looking for specific information.
Moreover, the headings provide another signal to search engines on what the page is all about. As such, they are vital for SEO, especially for a new site.
Make a strategy for including the target keywords in your headings on the webpage. However, you should only do so where it actually makes intuitive sense for it to happen.
You will certainly not want to end up forcing words if they end up sounding strange to your readers. However, if you can utilize the keywords in a sensible mannerss, do so.
11. Optimize Page Copy
There are plenty of website copywriting tips out there. However, the most important tip you must remember is to always avoid keyword stuffing.
The fact is that search engines are quite capable of noticing keyword stuffing. More importantly, they can penalize your website for it.
However, as long as you use only your target keywords and their relevant synonyms in the contexts where they actually make proper sense, then you can incorporate them into your copy of the page.
In the majority of cases, as long as you have selected target keywords which are relevant to the purpose of the page, then this section will come in a natural manner.
Hire experienced content writers if you are unable to come up with suitable content for your SEO requirements. Of course, you can also use a guide to content writing if you are confident about your own skills. You will also find plenty of content writing tools out there to help you.
12. Create Unique Meta Descriptions
The fact is that meta descriptions don’t influence rankings directly.
However, they do certainly play a role in the click-through rates of the site from search results.
After all, when users see your page in the SERPs, they will also see the meta description following the page title.
Moreover, any words in the meta description that match the search terms of the users will be displayed in bold. This will help draw user attention to your specific result.
Since users are trying to determine which search result to select, you should use this copy to make the users understand why your webpage is worth clicking on.
As such, always create a relevant and proper meta description for all the page on the website.
Don’t forget to place your keyword(s) for each page naturally in the meta description.
13. Implement Internal Linking
Internal linking allows you to signal to search engines what the page is about by means of the anchor text used.
The term, anchor text, refers to words which are hyperlinked.
Search engines like Google checks the words used every time there is a link to a page and considers that as information about the content of the page.
Internal links also provide a way for showing search engines how the different pages in your site are connected. They help in driving traffic from one webpage to another.
Ideally, you will want the visitors to remain on the site to prevent a high bounce rate on the website. By using helpful internal links, you can make it happen.
14. Submit Sitemap to Google
The fact is that before your website and webpages can start showing up on the results pages of the search engine, Google will have to crawl the website first.
By default, Google’s crawlers will end up in your website with time even without you doing anything. However, this takes time.
Therefore, you can actually speed up the process by properly submitting the sitemap of your website via Google Search Console. This way, you directly inform Google about your website and tell it about all the webpages on it.
15. Develop an SEO Strategy for the Future
Now, this list may seem like a lot. However, you need to get used to this as you are only just getting started with SEO.
Search engine optimization is a long-term and continuous process.
Without a proper strategy in place, you will end up losing your place in Google and ultimately your customers as well.
To appear in the search engines when customers are searching for information or services or products that you provide, it is imperative to put hard work into delivering consistent value on the website and developing authority for your brand online. This is critical for the SEO of a new website
As such, you must start on the strategy for long-term SEO as soon as you can instead of later.
Think whether you can learn SEO and do the work yourself, or if you need strong SEO services. You can also choose digital marketing as a whole. Here is a comprehensive guide to digital marketing to help you out.
Irrespective of what you choose, it’s vital that you prioritize this decision and take the long term into account.
SEO is surely slow but powerful nonetheless. As such, the sooner you can start, the better off your new site will be.
If you are in need of SEO services or digital marketing services, contact Cogito Software. We also provide web development services, creative solutions and more
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