While starting a small business, building a brand is one of the most crucial steps. Looking at the journey of brand building, the website is a critical cornerstone in the process. And to make your website rank higher in the search results, search engine optimization is the best bet. A website that is optimized for major search engines such as Google and Bing, makes it easier for users to find brands online.
As per the State of Content Marketing Report, attracting more traffic is the priority among marketers. When done right, SEO can lower the cost of customer acquisition and make an appealing avenue for companies looking to grow. Without spending enormous amounts, start-ups can reach out to more customers that are interested in the brand. SEO has the power to transform your website to make it more appealing, easily accessible, and appear on the top results in major search engines for the most relevant keywords. Doing SEO the right way also eliminates the need to spend hefty amounts on ads.
Also if you want to learn SEO, then enroll in this Free SEO Course Online offered By Great Learning.
SEO checklist for New Websites
- Choosing the right and effective domain name
- Outline the site structure and architecture
- Building the website on your own is an option, or outsource the task, or a mix of both
- Create the content before launch
- Outline the complete content strategy and calendar for future
- Focus equally on on-site and off-site SEO
- Sort out tracking and analytics before the site goes LIVE
- Stay updated with SEO best practices and review the website repeatedly
Apart from the tips mentioned above, keep a track of the following best practices to create a great SEO strategy for a new website:
Structure website content for target keywords
In order to effectively rank on search engines, your website should be optimized for target keywords. Each page should include its set of closely related keywords that are highly relevant to the business. An ideal way would be to break your website into different categories and each category should be targeted to rank for a specific keyword (related keywords).
For example, if you have a website selling women footwear and you sell a variety of shoes, then your keywords could look like, women’s footwear as the primary keyword and the categories could be: heels, flats, formal footwear, casual footwear, women’s shoes, etc.
Google Analytics to track website traffic
Google Analytics is free, flexible, and powerful. It is the best analytics software to track traffic on the website and user behavior. You could use Google Analytics to track sales, the type of content that interests your audience, and how your audience found you. With a little bit of technical knowledge, it is very easy to get started with Google Analytics. If you are using a popular content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, there are additional plugins and tools to make it easy.
Google Search Console to see how Google sees your site
Google has a powerful collection of tools that tell you exactly how often does it crawl your website. Google Search Console is one such tool that tells you what Google thinks your site is about and helps with suggestions on things it has trouble with. It is a free service that helps businesses monitor and optimizes website performance in search results.
Getting started with Search Console is easy and you can start by verifying yourself as the owner or admin for a website by adding a meta tag to the HTML code of your homepage. Other ways to do it are by either uploading a file to a server or through your Google Analytics or Google Taga Manager setup.
Google Search Console can be used to:
- Ensure that Google understands your content and its context
- Identify the queries that drive traffic to your site
- Monitor spam issues on the site
- Information about who is linking to your site, and much more.
SEO is a vast field and there is no one way to proceed with it. With a basic understanding of SEO, you should be able to identify what strategies will suit best for your kind of website. In today’s digital age, a business needs to have an effective online presence to reach its target audience without spending a bomb. It is also essential to boost brand awareness and improve conversions. If you wish to become a certified SEO practitioner, join Great Learning’s PG Program in Strategic Digital Marketing today.
