Congratulations! You’ve finally decided to set up a website for your business. But you there are so many other steps that you have to think of now. Which platform are you going to host your website on? What type of server is ideal for your business? What domain name would be the right fit for it? These are important questions to ponder about. But one significant process you should work on is the SEO of your website.
How are you going to optimize it to attract potential customers? What SEO services are you going to use? Are you going to hire an in-house team specialized in SEO, or will depend on SEO company? The questions never end.
Search Engine Optimization ensures that your website ranks well on search engines like Google, and be accessible to customers.
In this article, we will see the most important SEO steps that are necessary in building a quality website.
Essential SEO Steps in Website-Building
1. Choosing the domain name
Most refer to high-quality content, page load speeds, and backlinks as factors when it comes to SEO. But a good domain name can also positively affect your SEO, and a bad one can damage your rankings.
The top-level domain also lets your users know where you are based to make a better buying decision. Some may even denote the industry of your website.
- Do not go for top-level domains that are usually associated with fraudulent or spam websites, as doing so can affect your ranking.
- If possible, keep your domain name memorable and short, as they are easier to read and understand.
2. Deciding the structure of the website
Deciding and creating the right website structure is the next important step for website SEO. Not only does it help optimize your website, but also improves user experience.
Users can navigate conveniently to find what they need, which indicates to Google that your website is user-friendly.
According to the niche of your business, you can add specific pages to improve the structure of the website and user experience.
The pages that are traditionally found on all or most websites include the About page, Contact page, FAQ page, Terms and Conditions, and the company’s Privacy Policy.
3. Keyword Research
The first step towards creating quality website content is to do ample keyword research. Take time to find what keywords would attract potential customers to your website.
Use more realistic and narrower range of keywords specific to your niche to eliminate competition and reach customers who might be interested in you.
It is also advised to use keyword research resources and tools like Google Keyword Planner to analyse your competition.
4. Creating the Right Content
Content is what lays the foundation for any successful website. You need to think of what kind of content is relevant, and will engage and inform your customers.
Keep the content easy-to-read and authentic. High-quality content is also essential to create a good user experience.
Choose a topic and assess your current competition. See how you can stand out from the rest and start brainstorming on the topic.
Go for an SEO agency in Manchester that offers content writing services if you cannot afford to hire writers. Publish multiple types of content like videos, podcasts, and images according to the interests of your users.
5. Link Pages
Now that you have enough high-quality content with the right keywords, your website is ready to go. But before that, there is something else that you need to take care of- backlinks.
It is necessary to link relevant pages within your website in the context of SEO. Internal linking lets know search engines which pages are important so as to help understand and rank your website better.
You can link two pages for example, if they are under the same product category. This is done either through a descriptive anchor text or a button below the content.
6. Titles and Descriptions
Creating attractive page titles and meta descriptions is one of the most important steps in SEO.
Page titles or SEO titles help describe the content of your web page to the search engine as well as the users.
They are important for SEO for page ranking, and are crucial when it comes to user experience as well.
The page title should be placed in the head of the file, and should contain between 30 to 60 characters.
Combining page titles with attractive descriptions is a great way to attract users.
While the latter does not contribute to SERP rankings, they still help users understand what your page is all about. 150 to 160 characters is an ideal limit for descriptions.
7. Allow search engines to index your pages
During the initial stages, search engines like Google cannot index your website pages if you build your website using CMS systems like WordPress or Blogger.
This is great since you wouldn’t want your half-written content to be visible to the public or half-built website getting ranked on SERPs.
But when you are ready to publish your content after completing it, you need to let search engines index your web pages. Their bots should be able to crawl your site and its pages to rank them.
8. Generate and Submit Sitemaps
Sitemaps are used to tell Google which pages and content are important on your website.
They also help give the search engine important information about these pages, like the number of products and categories you have, and the last date of page update.
There are various tools and software available online for the purpose of generating sitemaps. Most website builders generate sitemap automatically as well.
After you’ve created the sitemap, you should notify Google about it, and your website will get added to the Google sitemaps account.
Once you’ve submitted your sitemap, search engine bots will crawl it regularly to check for changes and updates.
Conclusion
SEO is a tricky game, which needs a lot of patience to see the right results. You need to test and try a lot of different methods and strategies to see what works well.
But when done right, your website will hop on to new levels that it hasn’t seen before!
Read more: Importance of Choosing Hosting Server For Better Ranking
