Your 5-Step SEO Guide to New Websites

It’s important that you think about your website’s SEO when you’re just starting out. You can start things properly and save yourself any hassles later on. If you’re in the early stages of developing or launching your website, there are a few vital steps you should take to get your new website SEO well on-track.

1. Select Your Domain Name Carefully

Domain names are one of the key ranking factors search engines use to find out what your page is about. If it’s possible to choose a domain name that’s easy to remember, relevant and incorporates the main keywords you are hoping to rank for, that’s ideal. It’s not something you should try and force. For example, if your business is called New Zealand Plumbing Experts and the domain “www.nzplumbingexperts.co.nz” is available, that’s probably better than “www.nzleakypipes.co.nz”. That’s likely to cause a great deal of confusion when prospective customers who know you are trying to locate your site.

2. Choose a Reputable Web Hosting Provider

Google has been very upfront about a site’s speed being an important ranking factor for SEO. Web users are impatient and expect websites to load within seconds or less. Therefore, Google tries to only deliver results that will satisfy, if not exceed, this requirement. One of the best steps to take to ensure quality site speed is by selecting a web hosting provider that can deliver consistent site speeds.

3. Undertake Keyword Research

Keyword research is a massive part of SEO. In order to do a lot of the other things on this list efficiently, you first have to have a clear idea of the main subject areas and terms you want to focus your SEO work on.
A number of SEO tools provide keyword data and suggestions on the amount of competition and traffic you can expect to deal with for each keyword. Most of them will cost you a subscription fee, but you can use Google’s free Keyword Planner to get started.

4. Plan Your Website’s Architecture

If you’re starting with a simple site that just have a few pages, this might not seem imperative right at this time. But it’s still a good idea to plan out your website architecture in advance so that you have a structure planned as you go. For most websites, your site architecture should contain a pyramid structure. Your homepage is at the very top, with the next most vital pages (usually the ones that go on your main menu) right underneath. Below those, you’ll add any subcategories and specific pages that fall under these
categories.

When you plan out your website architecture in advance, you’ll ensure your website is organised. This gives priority to the most important pages in terms of how simple they are for users to find. Your website will make it easier on users to navigate between pages on the site to find what they
need.

5. Choose a Mobile-Friendly Design

Many of the SEO algorithm updates Google has announce in recent years have been based around mobile advancements. More and more people are switching to mobile to do their browsing, and users and search engines alike expect sites to provide a fast, intuitive mobile experience. When you’re creating your new website, it’s vital that you make it mobile-friendly.