SEO From The Get-Go

I coined the phrase SEO from the Get-Go some years ago when I was optimising a website that I’d inherited. Search Engine Optimisation not only involves developing and including keywords and key phrases (deep keywords) in your website but also ensuring that your website code is semantically correct (the website code itself).

The SEO key words and key phrases allow the search engines to index your website so as people can find your site within the search engine’s organic results. Search engines have many metrics such as performance (the speed in which the page loads) and the quality of the code. The latter is addressed during coding phase of the website development.

Optimising a website after the fact is time consuming and expensive whereas SEO from the Get-Go adds little time, ergo lowering the costs to your project.

What is SEO From The Get-Go?

‘SEO from the Get-Go’ is the technique of ensuring that each page of your website is optimised during development of your website using the keywords and key phrase that have been identified and agreed upon during the strategic planning phase. By identifying each the following items before laying out and writing the content of each page you have a greater chance of ranking higher on the organic search results :-

<title></title>

Browser page title. This is the ‘hidden’ page title that search engines use (not to be confused with page headings).

<h1></h1>

Page/section headings. The heading elements are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 with H1 being the most important (highest) level and H6 the least.

<meta name = “description”>

Page META description. This again is a ‘hidden’ piece of information that is used by search engines.

<p></p>

Page content. Content is KING when it comes to search engine optimisation, Paragraphs should be short making it easier to read and engaging for the visitor to read. Aim to write at least 400 words per page.

<img alt=” ” />

Image Alternative Text (alt text). Have you ever used the images tab on a search engines results page to find something on the internet? Search engines use the alt text of images on each of your page to index them.

<a></a>

Hyperlink text. Avoid using ‘click Here’ when adding links on your page. Instead use the description of the link as the link text. See the next item on https:// for a good example.

https://

Page URLs Make you website secure, Google have already indicated that secure websites rank higher than non-secure websites.

Sitemap

If you’ve already got a Google Analytics account I’ll add the new sitemap.xml to it but don’t worry if you haven’t, I’ll help you set one up.

404 Page Redirect

redirects are created for any old pages so as they point to the appropriate new pages and a user friendly ‘404 page not found’ page is created for those non-existent urls.

Continue to the next stage in Strategic Website Design: Website Promotion and Monitoring

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