Building a new website gives you the fantastic opportunity to get everything right from the very start. If you do the initial legwork well, the chances are that your website will have the best chance at performing and ranking from the outset, which will save you valuable resources during its lifetime. You won’t have to invest time, money or workforce in auditing and changing your website, having missed optimising a specific element when you are built the website.
Below are listed the most important SEO elements you should focus on when building a new website:
Know your target audience
Contrary to what some might believe, SEO is not about attracting everyone to your website: it’s about knowing who your target audience is, what their pain points are, and how your product or service can help solve them.
When building a new website, it’s paramount to know who you are selling to and what your target audience is like online. This knowledge will help inform your keyword research, content production and off-page efforts down the line.
Ensure a smooth website structure
An easy to understand and easy to crawl website will help both visitors and search engine bots better understand what your website is all about. Also, it is a great way to boost conversion rates, as it allows for ease of access to multiple pages.
When planning your page layouts and menus and the titles and URLs of all pages, make sure the way you connect them is intuitive and easy to navigate. As we know, UX is a significant ranking factor, so making things easy for your visitors is a must.
Choose your host carefully.
When choosing a hosting provider, please make sure they are located in the same area your customers are (this will boost rankings) and that the hosting plan you choose can handle all the traffic you anticipate having. Page loading speeds are a significant SEO factor, and slow hosts will not help matters.
Also, it’s a good idea to know how easily you can upgrade your plan.
Select a different keyword for each page
Choosing the right keywords for each page is paramount, and we’d suggest opting for keywords that attract less traffic but will also be easier to rank for, at least in the beginning. Once some of your pages attract attention, your entire website will experience a boost.
Also, make sure that you don’t try to rank multiple pages for the same keyword – you don’t want to be competing against yourself.
Keep your URLs short.
The way you structure your URLs will also play a significant role in how you rank.
Try to include your main keyword in the URL when it makes sense, and keep the URLs short. Don’t add numbers and dates to them if you don’t have to.
The main focus when crafting URLs should be for users, not search engines. Make sure your users can understand what each page is about based on the URL alone.
Don’t forget your meta and other tags.
While they may seem trivial and minor compared to other page elements, all titles, tags, and meta-data should be carefully crafted. These elements are not seen by users but are still a significant information source for search engines, so filling all of them out should be a given when building a new website.
Try to include your keywords in titles and meta descriptions, and don’t forget to optimise your media elements.
While it may prolong your website launch by a few extra weeks, getting all the SEO elements right when building a new website will help you market it better – so don’t shy away from getting your hands dirty before launch day. You’ll thank yourself later.
