You’re starting a new business and you realise that it makes good sense to represent your startup online. So, the next step is to launch a website, but, with over 1.9 billion websites online today, how will yours stand out from the jam-packed crowd?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can save you from drowning in a sea of online content. Knowing how to effectively optimise your brand-new site for SEO will ensure that you make an appearance where it matters most – on the first page of Google’s search results.
Other benefits of a solid SEO site include:
- Your site appears relevant, trustworthy, and of good quality.
- It allows for effective content marketing.
- It increases your competitive edge.
- It attracts a larger audience with an interest in your business.
- It improves user experience and makes your site search-engine friendly.
- It provides quantifiable results of your site’s performance.
SEO focuses on your organic ranking, which means it’s a completely free tool. Search engines constantly crawl your site in search of informative content to promote which organically attracts new customers to your hypothetical door.
To kickstart your website on good SEO standing, there are two areas to which you have to pay attention – the technical and the content side. The former has to do with the site’s build, its architecture, and how it is coded and linked, whereas the latter focuses on the copy published on the site and how it is optimised.
Learn how to wield the power of SEO for your new website by answering these key questions:
Have you chosen a short and simple domain name?
Make sure your domain name ties in well with your brand and business to keep it memorable, relevant and unique. Search engine crawlers consider the domain name to learn about your site. Your domain name should contain a few keywords that you want to rank for. Bear in mind that if your site is new, it will take a while for it to be indexed.
Have you compiled your site’s structure or architecture?
It’s a good idea to have a sitemap in place before your site is built as this will provide a “skeleton” to work with. This outlines what pages will appear on your site. Setting up your sitemap will make sure that search engine bots crawl your site with ease in order to index it as quickly as possible.
Have you considered page speed?
Paying attention to the loading times of your site’s pages is an essential tactic as it heavily impacts your site’s user experience, traffic, search rankings and conversion rates. Make sure your site’s page speed is optimised to improve its overall performance.
How does your site perform on mobile?
With the ever-increasing use of smartphones for web browsing, now is not the time to give mobile a skip and it’s far simpler to include it into your site’s initial build than it is to address later on. The key to effective mobile performance is a great user experience on mobile.
Do you have access to analytics and insights?
Make sure your site is fully integrated with analytics and tracking tools pre-launch as these ensure your site’s SEO performance throughout. Google Analytics, Search Console and Google Business Profile are some of the tools that report on crucial elements like site traffic, tracking visitors/sessions, customer behaviour, conversions, revenue, etc. in line with your pre-set KPIs.
Do you have the content waxed?
Your website’s more permanent pages should contain optimised content. Your home, services/products and about us pages must feature high-quality content interlaced with relevant and well-researched keywords. On-page SEO relies on keywords that are derived from the words that web users type into search engines – their search queries. Keyword research allows you to source the queries that are relevant to your business and website and integrate them into your content so that your site is easily located when searchers are using those keywords.
To encourage consistent SEO performance and growth, you should “feed” your website with regular informative and interesting content containing the necessary keywords. This is where blog articles, for example, are highly effective.
What about internal and backlinks?
Another measure to optimise your new website is to think about linking. Internal links encourage site users to explore and spend time on your site, and it aids in increasing authority.
In addition, backlinks are an excellent way to increase your site’s ranking as they improve its reliability and authority. These SEO-boosters are links from other websites to your site, page or other web resources – acting effectively as a reference or citation.
iLEAD et al can make your new website SEO-friendly
The Google gurus at iLEAD et al have mastered the nuances of technical and content SEO and consistently stay on top of its ever-changing best practices. Not only can we steer your SEO ship for you long-haul with regular content and management, but we can pour our insights and expertise into SEO strategies for new websites to make sure that you launch a site that will gain ground with Google from the get-go.
