You’re about to wrap up work on your new website, and it feels great… for the most part. Sure, the design looks great, the calls-to-action are bold and beautiful, and the copy is incredibly engaging. So, what could be missing?
When you get to the end (or near the end) of your web design project, it’s important to assess the SEO situation.
While it’s easy to believe that a single SEO plugin is enough to get you started, that would be a mistake. There’s a lot more you could do – even before your site goes live – if you want your website truly optimized for search. It’s better to do the work now than find six months down the road that no one’s visiting your site because the right work wasn’t done upfront.
In order to truly maximize SEO, your website needs to be ready to meet the search engine’s high expectations straight out the gate with:
- High-quality content
- Optimal performance
- Intuitive User Experience
- Demonstration of Authority
- Regular Updates
If you can take care of as much of that as possible before launch, your website will be well prepared to take on the challenge of beating the competition in search, starting on day one.
Now, let’s explore how you can optimize your new site for search.
Maximizing SEO When Setting Up a New Site
Don’t be intimidated by the steps here. Many of these we are already doing for you if you selected for us to set up your site; we simply wanted to include them here for good measure seeing as they’re an essential part of the SEO maximization process.
Step 1: Domain Check
If your site is quickly approaching launch, then you’ve most likely purchased a domain already. Make sure your domain is Mapped Correctly to your new website and ready to go live.
bizProTips:
- Domain Mapping: Using our Domain Mapping tool in your website dashboard, it's easy to connect your domain. We usually do this for you.
- Cloudflare: For websites that require an International Presence, we recommend mapping through Cloudflare for maximum optimization. We can help you do this: Your Domain with CF Name Servers Add @ 'A' record to bizProWeb's IP
Step 2: HTTPS Security
Step 3: SEO Friendly Template
Step 4: Keyword Research
Ideally, all keyword research for your site’s content and metadata was completed before any copy was written. Even if it wasn’t, there’s no time like the present to get this done. You can use tools like kwfinder and Answer the Public to identify which keywords work best for your site. Keywords/Key-Phrases should be relevant, memorable, and less competitive if you want to improve your chances of getting found for them.
Step 5: Page Optimization
Once you have your keywords selected, you’ll want to optimize all of your content around them. In other words, use the keywords enough where it’s easy for visitors and search engines to determine what each page is about. Typically, you’ll want to use one focus keyword per page. While it’s okay to infuse a few secondary keywords within there as well.
bizProWeb provides the SEO Tools you’ll need to optimize each page of your website.
Step 6: Image Assignment
Each page of your website should have at least one image on it. Once you’ve selected and uploaded your image, use the metadata fields to add ALT text (if you want the image to be found in search as well).
If you can tie your page’s focus keyword into the ALT tag, that’s even better. Then set a featured image for each page so that, when your content is shared on social media (a search ranking factor), it has an engaging image attached to it.
bizProTips:
- Automatic ALT-Tags: bizProWeb will Automatically copy the 'Title' of the images to to the Alternative (ALT) Tag area so you only have to write it once.
- Image Naming: Naming your images with more Descriptive Text will help with generating great 'Title' tags. – Good Example: bizproweb-img-hero-woman-in-front-of-a-restaurant.jpg / Bad Example: DCI202031559a7bked93c.jpg
Step 7: Content Check
Step 8: Link Internally
bizProTips:
- Automatic Linking: Can be Enabled from your bizProWeb site's SEO Tools area. If we build your website, we do this for you.
- Connecting Content: Internal linking helps Search Engines understand the Relationship of your Website Content.
Step 9: Link Externally
Another way to improve your reputation with search engines is by linking to high-authority websites from your content. While this won’t have an earth-shattering effect on your ranking, outgoing links to relevant and high-authority sources have shown to have somewhat of a positive effect.
Step 10: Image Optimization
As websites become more reliant on high-resolution and full-screen imagery, which are great for the user experience, you’ll need a way to get a handle on what they do to your loading speeds.
Re-sizing your images and properly naming them are the first step, the rest you can leave to bizProWeb’s robust Image Compression software that will super-optimize your images for speed and vibrancy.
bizProTips:
- Photo Editing: Use a Free online editor such as Canva.com or subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud and utilize Adobe Photoshop
- Image Sizes: High Definition Images should be Maxed-at 1920x1920 pixels. 1920x1080 is HD with 4K image Definition at 3840x2160 px
- Image Compression: bizProWeb will automatically compress and optimize your images upon upload before being served from our Content Delivery Network
Wrapping-Up
Building a new website is both exhilarating and nerve-wracking. You’re excited to launch that baby and get marketing online, but you need to be sure you haven’t forgotten anything. Considering how important organic search traffic is to getting new visitors to your site, you shouldn’t save SEO for after launch. Make the necessary efforts to maximize SEO now.
