4 SEO MUST-HAVES FOR A NEW WEBSITE

When you first begin a new website, it can be easy to get lost in the idea of it being at the top of the search engines. The problem is that most people don’t actually know how to go about doing this, they just kind of expect it to happen.

This is why the term Search Engine Optimisation – SEO – exists in the first place. Not only does this play a role in helping a business get spotted, it’s vital for long-term development.

Here are some of the most-have SEO basics for both search engine prosperity and overall getting the highest ranking local SEO will allow

The first thing that is vital to a good, effective and easy to manage SEO website is having a smart, easy to use domain name. Make sure that you use one of your primary keywords in the URL for your website as this helps it come across in the right manner, and also makes it more appealing to the search engine crawlers who evaluate your website.

Also try and make sure that whilst it uses your primary keyword that its distinctive and not easily mixed up with another company or URL along the way.

Always make sure that it uses your brand and company name, as well, though. All being a choice and if you cannot make your keyword fit with your company name, always choose the company name instead. It’s better to be personal and branded and miss out on the small bonus of a keyword-friendly URL and have something truly unique and specific to your own business.

It’s not the be-all and end-all for your websites success, but a keyword in the URL can help.

Another deciding factor in the success – or indeed failure – of your website is the keywords that you choose to build it around. You have to make sure that you do proper and committed keyword research to make sure you can get the right words. For example, you should always look for keywords which have;

High natural search volumes. These are keywords that lots of people tend to search for on a monthly basis.

Low competition. This means that whilst lots of people are looking for it, there isn’t a huge amount of competition to force you to stop trying to get to the top of the engine rankings. Try a longer keyword instead, as a smaller number of results makes it more likely you can get to the top.

Obviously make sure it’s relevant to what you are offering on your website, too!

Proper keyword research can be hard to do, and it’s sometimes better to turn to an expert who can come in and give you a hand. They’ll help you find keywords that are useful and not too generic, but will also make it simple for you to find keywords that get enough search volume.

Another deciding factor in the success – or indeed failure – of your website is the keywords that you choose to build it around. You have to make sure that you do proper and committed keyword research to make sure you can get the right words. For example, you should always look for keywords which have;

High natural search volumes. These are keywords that lots of people tend to search for on a monthly basis.

Low competition. This means that whilst lots of people are looking for it, there isn’t a huge amount of competition to force you to stop trying to get to the top of the engine rankings. Try a longer keyword instead, as a smaller number of results makes it more likely you can get to the top.

Obviously make sure it’s relevant to what you are offering on your website, too!

Proper keyword research can be hard to do, and it’s sometimes better to turn to an expert who can come in and give you a hand. They’ll help you find keywords that are useful and not too generic, but will also make it simple for you to find keywords that get enough search volume.

Any good SEO today and search engine rankings that you wish to try and dominate will need quality content to help you do so.

The best way to get up the rankings is to make fresh and exciting content that people resonate with, so you should consider trying to make anything from website content and blog posts on other blogs (links between other websites is always a useful ally) as well as eBooks, white papers and reports on certain elements within your industry.

These help the public to see that you want to inform them instead of just telling them your side of the story.

Alongside this you should look into the media side of things – content is more than just words. A strong SEO strategy gives you videos, pictures and infographics to make the most of. These will make it much easier for your business to keep thriving and informing, giving plenty of people easy to digest – and share – information that they can make the most of.

This will be a deciding and engaging factor in just how successful you are likely to be in the years to come, so keep that in mind moving forward.

Whilst this might be for someone else to handle if you outsource this side of your website, a strong SEO strategy needs a website coded properly. You have to look for your things such as;

• Making sure that your ‘www’ and ‘non-www’ version of the website re-direct to the same place. If they don’t then you have a duplicate content problem and this will hurt your rankings.
• XML sitemaps – you get plenty of apps and plug-ins that make these for you in just a few clicks and they help guide the search engine crawlers on where they should be going to find vital parts of our website.
• Also, try and use canonical tags. By this we mean using tags that let the SEO bots know what you are doing and what content is real, and what is duplicate. This means they’ll skim over the duplicate stuff instead of hurting you – all you need to do is the ref=”canonical” into the URL in your website settings.
• You also need to consider your title tag and Meta description. Ensure that tittles and Meta descriptions both use one keyword and are different for every page. Make sure that the Meta description also uses a keyword and that it reads like a call-to-action, encouraging people to click on it and see what you are doing.

It’s very important to take these things into account when building a website as local SEO ranking is so important to your chances of success. One major problem that you might have, however, is that building a website and managing SEO yourself can be quite time consuming.

Whether you lack the time or the technique, it’s very easy to turn to SEO management firms and let them do it for you. They’ll take on the vital parts of your website that need managing and take care of them for you, no problem.