Pre Launch New Website SEO Best Practices
-
Hi All,
I am currently mid development of a website (no testing page yet) and want to make sure I am doing my due diligence in regards to SEO. Are there best practices to always complete while a website is being built? If so what are they? I've gotten to the stage where I've read every blog on the planet and now maybe too much info.
I am also focusing my Keyword Analysis around competitor research to write great copy from, but seem to be falling down a rabbit hole of way too many keywords. Is there agencies/services that would just be hired to do Keyword Research for my needs?
Thanks a lot!
-
Thank you so much for all your responses. I think I am on the right track and have culled many down!
I appreciate you time very much!
-
As Andy put it "...Remember, you are aiming to get the right traffic to your page - not just any traffic..."
and what he means is traffic that converts!!!!
-
Hi there, it's good that you're thinking about SEO at this stage. Too often, agencies have to work with what they already have once a website has been built, so you've got the right approach. I agree with the others with regards to Google Keyword Planner - it's a great piece of kit that will help a lot. What you need more than anything is clear and logical information architecture as well. If your navigation and sub navigations are logical and the flow of "link juice" follows that structure then you will have a good start. Consider planning in high quality landing pages for each high priority product as well. If everything is clearly marked in a site map before build, you have a bird's eye view on what is needed. Also, as another poster mentioned, don't neglect your metadata, tags, markup and content.
-
Thanks Andy,
I didn't directly elude to the importance of Quality Traffic vs Traffic. Very nice job bringing that to light.
-
I've read every blog on the planet and now maybe too much info
You would be surprised how easy it is to actually fall into that trap. Because there are so many 'experts', everyone has an opinion on how best to SEO a website. It is actually easier that you might realise if you pull yourself back to basics and follow some best practice guidelines on both SEO and user experience (something often overlooked).
The reason you need to consider user experience (UX) is because what is the point in getting traffic to your site if all it does it bounce back off again? There are often reasons for this that include:
- Lack of descriptive page title
- Lack of descriptive Meta Description
- Primary information buried away in too much content
- Call to action not clear
- Uninteresting pages filled with 'waffle'
- Content not broken up into usable paragraphs on pertinent information
- Badly written content
The list goes on...
Remember, you are aiming to get the right traffic to your page - not just any traffic...
For the keyword research, that is a very important aspect because it allows you to not only focus on primary keywords, but also look at alternative related words and phrases that will support the page. For this, Google's keyword planner is pretty basic.
Remember that with content, you are competing amongst billions of other pages for a decent rank, so you have to make sure your content is as good as it can be. Look at what is winning for your desired phrases and see if you can spot why Google is giving this more prominence and then aim to make yours even better - but remember not to copy. Plagiarism will be dealt with by a slap from Google.
I hope this helps a little.
-Andy
-
Hi Krackle,
I have found after numerous site launches and re-works it is always a good idea to have the targeted keywords in mind. As well as have a firm understanding of SEO basics. (see itpseo #3).
When I first start a page analysis I look at the products or services I have to offer, the competitors sites and the best keywords. Thinking logically I decide if I was looking for X how would I do it? Then I ask others how would you find X; what would you type into the search engine? Then compare what I think and what I was told with what Google shows as the highest volume keywords. In some cases you'll find that Google's "best" keywords are not applicable to your industry. This is usually broad stroke keywords that can potentially have many meanings.
For example my company makes customer rubber caps. Broad stroke caps is not going to lead you to our site or any of our competitors site because caps has many meanings and Google has since figured out when somebody types caps they are likely looking for sports team hats.
At this point I would refine my keyword to be a little more industry specific, rubber caps. Still pretty good search volume and now I am seeing rubber companies coming up in the search results. Now I ask my self do I want to be listed among these companies, do they do what we do? The answer here would be no. These companies offer standard lines of rubber caps in many sizes shapes and colors, we do not. We only make custom parts and don't have any standard lines of rubber caps.
Once again I refine my search to be precise with what I am trying to achieve page 1 ranking (hopefully #1) . My keyword now becomes custom rubber caps. When I search I find some of our competitors offering our types of services. This is exactly where we want to be!
Now I have my main keyword. I will then research longer-tail keywords and variations to find the most applicable again following my process laid out as before. Once I have my best 3 keywords I start work on the design.
Incorporate best keywords in Title, H1,H2, H3 tags. Use (
So in short:
*** Find Best Match Keywords
- Refine Best Match Keywords
- Make a Top 3 list
- Follow basic SEO rules
- Create compelling, informative content
I hope this helps you,
Don**
-
Hi Kracle,
You can use Google Keyword Planner and MOZ tools to analyse the most suitable keywords for your website.
List of Tools:
1. Google Keyword Planner
2. Keyword Difficulty tool (MOZ).
3. Read the pdf guides for begineers by MOZ.( http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo)
Just download the pdf and go through it, then after another guide is also available there.
4. You can checkout the Matt Cutts (Google) -Video on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=matt+cutts+seo+tips).
Follow them regularly and be updated with the latest blogs and tutorials.
Regards!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Selling on eBay and Amazon, does it have a negative impact our your website?
_We sell on multiple platforms I.e own website, eBay, Amazon and have noticed over the last few years to hold a page 1 ranking on Google is becoming more and more difficult as the SERPs are saturated with the big brands. _ My question is, we've loaded all of our products and there lovely unique descriptions to eBay and Amazon, is there any chance that this content is helping eBay and Amazon rank (may be not by much!), but certainly not doing us any favours. As effectively why would you show our site in the search results for a product range, when all of the content/products already appear on eBay/Amazon which is several SERPs places higher? Is Google not inclined to think, "hey no need to show x site, as the content is already features on Amazon, why show it twice?" Any one have any thoughts?
Competitive Research | | bnknowles10 -
How can I track where visitors go after exiting my website?
I don't want to track external links. I just want to know where they go when they leave. Is that possible? Can I do this with a cookie?
Competitive Research | | Vacatia_SEO0 -
Why is our website ranked lower but beats most competitors in full SERP report?
We are analysing why our website ranks so low (currently position 8 in serp). We beat our competitors in most areas. Also we produce by far the most useful content. Do not buy links or do any other malpractice. We have been for a long time ranked in top 3 (well mostly 1-2) positions. In the last year we have seen a decline to position 8-10 and we are not sure why this is the case. Can anyone suggest what we should be focusing on? We are clueless. All the practices we used to "know" now seem obsolete. m8qIeyC,Kf1LLei#0
Competitive Research | | urkeman0 -
What's the best way to discover my business and search competitors?
I am trying to figure out who the real competitors are for the domain that I have been recently handed. Other than the client's references, which I don't think are the real competition (they are his benchmarks), how do I go about discovering the true competition? What the simplest, most effective way to go about discovering my business and search competitors? Given that this is a web portal, aren't both of the latter the same?
Competitive Research | | amit20760 -
Websites like these..
Hi, I'm new to link building. I have done some research of my competitors and have found that many of them are being linked to sites like this http://www.worldofwondersvu.com/ As you can see, this website looks like a business website, but if you view the content, it's spammed with external links. I'm just wondering what method they are going about to get these links, because most of the websites that are linking to them are simular to the one I posted above! Thanks 🙂
Competitive Research | | LTTVending740 -
Crazy SEO question (maybe I'm missing something?)
OK - so one of our customers just called us and told us an interesting story: A local SEO company called her yesterday to try to sell their services to her. She's in the process of starting SEO services with us, so she told them she wasn't interested. The sales guy told her that they were better (without even asking who she was currently using) and asked her for a term that she'd like to rank higher for. She said she'd like to rank higher for "spray in bedliners northern ky" and he said "Gotcha, call you tomorrow" He called back just now and told her to look at Google. She's now ranking number one for that term. He didn't have access to her site, so he wasn't able to change anything on her site. He won't tell her what he did, and told her it was legitimate - but it seems to me that with only off-site tactics, it'd be nearly impossible to white-hat her site to number one overnight... Any ideas what he's doing? First of all, we want to be able to tell her what he's doing, because she's curious. More importantly, we want to be sure he's not doing anything black-hat that's going to hurt our client's site. Thanks for your help, Mozzers!
Competitive Research | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Best place to view referral traffic on a third party site?
What is the best site / tool to use to view referral traffic on a third party site?
Competitive Research | | nicole.healthline0 -
What's the best SEO practice to get conversion rate up?
If you want to get conversion rate up what is the best method to do so?
Competitive Research | | blackrino0