Oftentimes, creating a website for your business is rooted in a certain vision you have from the get-go. You might be so wrapped up in design and content (for good reason!) that key search engine optimization strategies may be put on the back burner. However, it is so much easier to start your website off with good SEO practices rather than trying to fix things later on.
While you do not have to come up with your entire strategy right away, having some of the basics already implemented will ward off frustration down the line from having to edit, redirect, or rewrite parts of your site.
Here are five basic SEO practices to keep in mind when starting your website.
1. Titles & Descriptions
Each of your pages should have what is called a meta title and meta description. This is the name of the page that will show up in search result, along with the blurb about what it is about. This is important information to capture the eyes of users looking for specific content online. The titles and descriptions should also include the keywords you want your page to show up under. These can be edited within the HTML of the page, or you can use a plugin.
2. Link Internally
Search engines take inventory of all the pages on your site by “crawling” through all of the links you’ve placed within your pages. That means if you build a page, but you don’t link to it from somewhere else (like the home page), a search engine won’t see it. Building these internal links will be easier if you do it along the way instead of all at once later down the line.
3. Make Your Links Human-Friendly
Some content management systems automatically build the links to your page looking something like www.website.com/p?=29384712783 . It’s much more SEO-friendly to make your links human-friendly, and keyword rich. For example, a page about the house cleaning services you provide could be linked as www.website.com/house-cleaning-services. Usually there is a setting that will take the title of the page and use it for the link. It’s an easy way to get them right the first time.
4. Use Alt Tags for Images
Did you know that search engines cannot see what your images are of unless you tell them? That’s where the “alt” tag comes in. When looking at the HTML for an embedded image, you’ll most likely see <img src=”{link}” alt=”{text}”> Within the text after the alt tag, write a description of your image, using keywords. This will give the page a little extra SEO juice, and will prompt your image to show up in the search results for said keywords.
5. Upload Sitemaps
Think that search engines will just that your site exists? Sometimes not! Once you have most of your pages up that create the backbone of your site, submit it to search engines. For example, use Google Webmaster Tools to submit your sitemap and manage its indexing in their search results.
Creating good SEO habits from the start will give your website a leg up from the beginning. If you need more SEO help for your business, feel free to contact Connection Marketing for a consultation.
