Step by Step SEO Guide for New Websites
The best time to start thinking about SEO for your website is during the earliest stages of development. By getting things started on the right foot, you can avoid potential issues later on. If you’re still in the process of learning how to build a website, there are a few key steps you should take now to ensure that your new website is properly optimized for search engines. This SEO guide will help you get started. This will help your site rank higher in the search results. In addition, link to your site from other high-quality websites. This will help build your site’s reputation and improve your search engine ranking..
Domain Name matters, Choose it Carefully:
The domain name that you choose for your website can have an impact on your ranking in search engine results pages. If you are able to choose a domain name that is relevant to your main keyword, easy to remember, and incorporate the main keyword, that would be ideal. However, you should not force it. It is better to have a domain name that makes sense for your business and is something that your customers will be able to easily remember when they are trying to find your website.
Need a reputable web hosting provider:
From day one, one of the best strategies for making your site fast is to choose a web hosting provider that can deliver consistent speeds. Google has been upfront about site speed being a ranking factor for SEO, so it’s important to satisfy that requirement. Visitors are impatient and expect webpages to load quickly, so delivering results that meet that expectation is essential. There are a number of strategies you can try to make your site fast over time, but choosing a reliable web hosting provider is one of the best steps you can take.
Choose the best Keywords:
In order to be successful with SEO, keyword research is a critical component. Once you have a clear understanding of the main terms and subject areas you want to target, you can then begin to implement other effective SEO strategies.
There are a number of SEO tools available that can provide you with keyword suggestions and traffic data. Most of these tools come with a subscription fee, but Google’s Keyword Planner is available for free. This tool can help you get started with your keyword research.
When choosing your keywords, it is important to be realistic. SEO is competitive, and a new website is unlikely to rank for popular, broad terms. Instead, focus on long-tail keywords that are specific to your brand. For example, “best seo agency in Australia” is more attainable than just “seo agency.”
Organized website architecture:
When you’re starting out with a basic website, it might not seem like site architecture is all that important. However, it’s always a good idea to plan ahead and have a structure in place before you start adding content. This will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.
Most websites adopt a pyramid structure for their site architecture, with the homepage at the top. The next most important pages sit below the homepage on the main menu, followed by subcategories and individual pages.
When you plan your site architecture, you can ensure that your most important pages are easy for visitors to find and navigate between. This will make it easier for visitors to find what they need on your site.
Keep your navigation simple, clear, and efficient :
Your site architecture is a key step in making your website more user-friendly, but it’s just one part of the puzzle. As you’re building out your website, always keep your customers’ needs in mind. Make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for on every page.
* Organizing your website’s main menu to include the most important pages that visitors are likely to want to see is crucial for optimizing the user experience.
* When creating categories and subcategories, base them off of how your target audience is most likely to browse. This will make it easier for them to find what they’re looking for and keep them engaged with your content.
* It is important for category and subcategory pages to use keywords that research shows people use when searching for the type of products or information on them. This will ensure that people can find what they are looking for on your website.
* Each webpage should include links to related pages that may interest the visitor.
* Each page of your website should include a clear call-to-action, so visitors know what to do next.
* It is beneficial to have a search bar on each page of a website so that visitors who know what they are looking for can find it more quickly than browsing between pages.
The goal of this step is to understand what your visitors want and how they will interact with your website. This requires some guesswork, but you can confirm your assumptions with user testing before the site goes live.
Build a better SEO-friendly URL structure :
URL’s are important for search engines when they are trying to determine what a web page is about. The URL is the address for each page on your site. Every URL starts with your domain name. For every page on your site (other than your home page), there will be characters that are unique to that page.
To ensure that your website is optimized for search engine ranking, you should customize the URL for each webpage according to the keywords you want that page to rank for. In addition to writing a custom URL for each page, you should also create a larger, more SEO-friendly URL structure for naming URLs on your website.
Referring back to the site architecture you developed, the categories and subcategories can become a part of the URL structure. This way, you can more relevant keywords into your URLs, making them useful and intuitive for visitors.
www.yourwebsite.com/pets/dogs would be the URL structure for each page included in that section of the website. The main keyword for the specific page would come next, such as www.yourwebsite.com/pets/dogs/dog-food. The URL tells Google that the web page is about dog food and also relates to dogs and pets. The algorithm understands these terms to be related to each other.
Site speed is a vital ranking factor for Google:
There are many factors that affect how fast your website will be, including your web design, web hosting package, and plugins. Many decisions you make during the design stage can impact your site’s speed. To ensure your site is fast for visitors, consider these factors during the design process.
A fast loading time is essential for a good user experience. It is also a ranking factor that search engine algorithms take into account. When designing your website, therefore, consider ways to improve site speed:
* Minimizing features that decrease loading time, like animation or large, high-resolution images.
* Any time you use JavaScript or CSS, you should consider shrinking the code to reduce the size of your files.
* Reducing the number of HTTP requests on each page can help improve page load times.
* It is important to use only the necessary widgets and to keep external scripts to a minimum. This will help improve the performance of your website.
Build a mobile-friendly and responsive website:
The majority of website visits now come from people using their mobile phones. A few years ago, it was natural to assume that most visitors would view a website on a computer. Now, however, more people find websites on their smartphones.
A responsive web design is important for two reasons: mobile visitors and search engines. A responsive website adjusts to different screen sizes, which is important for people who are visiting your site on a mobile device.flash. Additionally, buttons should be big enough to be easily selected on a touchscreen. Using a responsive web design will ensure that everyone in your target audience can have an enjoyable experience while visiting your site.
Use visual hierarchy on every page:
It is important to consider what users will see when they first land on a webpage. Depending on the size of their screen and browser window, users may only see a small portion of the whole page. When designing each page, think carefully about what you want users to see in the first few seconds after they land on the page.
To ensure your visitors get the information they need and stay on your website, design your pages so that the most important information is high up and easy to see. This will help visitors understand what your website is about and find the information they need faster.
Make your content indexable:
One challenge of SEO web design is that many visual design elements don’t convert well to how search engine algorithms interpret a website. For example, the algorithm can’t read the information inside an image or animation, even though it may be clear to a human visitor. This doesn’t mean you should avoid visuals in your web design, just that you should consider how to make sure they can be indexed by search engines.
If you have any design elements that are visual rather than textual, you need to let Google know what they are. You can do this by:
* It is generally advised that you avoid using flash animation, as it cannot be indexed by search engines and is not supported on all devices.
* If you use Javascript, it is recommended that you use a framework like Brombone or Prerender to optimize it for SEO.
* Videos are a great way to engage website visitors and help your site rank higher in search engine results. Be sure to include target keywords in your video title and description, and provide a transcript of the video on your site.
*Fill in the metadata for all images on your website with your target keyword.
The visuals included in web design play an important role in the overall user experience. However, for the parts of the site that are not visible to search engines, it is important to use relevant keywords to ensure that these elements are still indexed by the search engine.
Choose the primary keyword for each page:
Your initial keyword research can help you understand the language to use when creating your website. However, it’s also good practice to choose a target keyword for each individual web page on your site. This will help you focus your content and ensure that each page is optimized for the keywords you’ve chosen.
In order to avoid self-competition, choose unique ones for each page.
Optimize Title Tags:
The title tag is one of the many factors that Google looks at to determine what a webpage is about. Therefore, it is advantageous to include your target keyword in the title tag.
Keep your title tag short – Google will only display 50-60 characters of the title tag on the search engine results page. Even less of the title tag will show up in the tab at the top of your browser.
And don’t overdo it with the keywords. Using your primary keyword once should be enough.
Optimize Images:
Images are a great opportunity to optimize your web page for your primary keywords. When you name your images for SEO, be sure to include the keyword you’re targeting. (For example, primarykeyword.jpg.) You should also update the alt text on the page with your keyword.
If you have a WordPress site, you can update the alt text in the media editor when you load the image.
If not, you can update the alt text in the html of the page. The html for the image should look something like this: <img src=”primarykeyword.jpg” alt=”primary keyword”>
Optimize your headings:
Using headings when writing for the web is a great way to organize your content and make it easy to read. This also gives Google another signal about what your page is about, which can be helpful for SEO purposes.
In order to help your website rank on search engines, it is important to include target keywords in the headings of your web page. However, it is just as important to make sure that the keywords are used in a way that sounds natural to the reader. You don’t want to force words into the headings if they sound strange, but if you can use the keywords in a way that makes sense, do so.
Optimize content on the page:
It’s important to avoid keyword stuffing when writing website copy. Search engines will penalize your website for this, so be sure to only use your target keywords in contexts where they make sense. This way, you can incorporate them into the text on the page without issue.
It is important to choose target keywords that are relevant to the page topic. In most cases, if you have done this, then the rest of the process will come naturally.
Write Unique Meta Descriptions:
Meta descriptions are important for your click-through rate from the search results. When someone sees your web page in the search results, they’ll see your meta description below the page title.
Any words in your description that match the terms they searched will be in bold, helping draw their attention to your result. Since they’re trying to decide which of the results to choose, you can use this text to make a case for why your page is worth the click.
Every page on your website should have a unique and relevant meta description. Your keywords for the page should be included naturally in the description, which will hopefully result in bolded text on the search results page. Use the space to give a brief overview of what valuable information can be found on the page.
Interlink to Other Pages on Your Website:
When you internal link, you’re using anchor text to signal to Google what your page is about. Anchor text is the hyperlinked text on a page. Google sees the words used each time there’s a link to a web page and uses that as information about what’s on the page.
Internal links are also a great way to connect your different web pages and show the search engines how they are related. You want your visitors to stick around on your site, and providing helpful internal links is a great way to achieve that.
Need to submit your Sitemap to Google:
Before your web pages can be found on the search engine results page, Google has to crawl or index your website.
Google’s crawlers will eventually find your website on their own, but you can notify Google of your website’s existence and all its pages by submitting a sitemap. Doing this speeds up the process and allows you to communicate directly with Google.
Need to create an SEO plan/strategy for future:
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything on this list, keep in mind that this is just the beginning. SEO is an ongoing process that requires long-term commitment.
If you want your website to show up when people search for related information or products, you need to put some effort into creating consistent, valuable content and building up your authority on the internet.
It’s never too early to start thinking about your plans for long-term SEO. Ask yourself if you have the time and knowledge to do the work on your own, or if you’ll need to hire someone to help with optimization.
No matter which route you choose, it’s important that you make it a priority and commit to making progress over time. SEO is a slow process, but the sooner you start, the better your chances will be.