Just got your new website designed for your business? It is time for some SEO.
Not all SEO strategies can get you on the top of the SERPs. This is why you need to be very careful while planning and applying SEO to your brand-new blog or website. Maintaining an SEO checklist will help you make sure your site is well-optimized for the search engines. Here is an exclusive one compiled especially for the new websites:
#1. Preparing a Keyword List
Choosing the right keywords is very important if you want to rank high on the search engines. You must ideally pick one keyword per page if you want to increase organic traffic to your website. You can use an automated tool such as Ubersuggest or Keyword Everywhere to look for keyword phrases that are worth targeting.
#2. Keyword-optimizing your Page URLs
One of the best SEO strategies for new websites is to integrate your primary keyword into your page URL. This will increase its relevance to a particular search query and
improve your site’s visibility. If you cannot integrate your main keyword into your page URL try choosing something that is close to it.
#3. Creating Title, Meta Description, and ALT Tags
60 to 65 characters are what you should limit your title to, if you are a new website. Make it a point to use a relevant keyword at the beginning of the title.
Your Meta description should be about 155 characters. It should be enticing enough for the viewers to click through the search engine results so as to visit your webpage.
If you are using images in your website, it is essential that you include appropriate ALT tags with targeted keywords. These will help the search engines in reading and indexing the images.
#4. Including Header Tags and Internal Links
Breaking the content of your webpage into sections and subsections is very important if you want your visitors to spend more time on them. They can be marked easily by using
header tags such as H1, H2, H3, etc. Also make sure you use internal links to make your pages SEO helpful. Try not to link text like “Click Me” or “Know More.” Instead, use strategic anchor texts while linking your web page to other internal pages of your site. This way you can make sure your visitors find their topics of interest with great ease.
#5. Looking for Synonyms of Focused Keyword
Repeating the same keyword again and again is not a good practice, when it comes to SEO. Identify a few synonyms of your focused keyword and sprinkle them all over your content to make sure the search engine understands what your content is all about.
#6. Submitting Sitemap.xml to Google Search Console
A sitemap is a file that tells a search engine or its crawlers, how your site is organized and what kind of content is available there. By submitting this file to
Google Search Console, you can make sure Google has all the information it needs to do its job more efficiently. Although submitting a sitemap isn’t exactly mandatory, it can be very useful for large websites that have and are linked to many pages.
#7. Creating and Uploading Robots.txt file
This is the file that tells the search engines which pages it has to crawl through and which pages it has to leave alone. Once you
create the Robots.txt file, it is important that you submit it to the Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
#8. Link Building
Authoritative backlinks can do wonders to your site, if you use them appropriately. Look where your competitors are getting their links from and what kind of anchor texts they are using. For this you can use ahrefs, Majestic, Open Site Explorer, or SEO toolbox.
#9. Off-Page Optimization
By far the hardest part of SEO optimization is Off-Page optimization. This will involve creating link opportunity worksheets and email outreaching scripts, identifying key influencers, looking for non-linked search existing content, and de-linking disavow bad links that can hurt your ranking.
Check for broken links if any and install Google Analytics on your website. Make sure there are no delays in the loading time of your website. Create relevant profiles and
engage with your audience on social media. Lastly, use an SEO audit tool to make sure there are no issues that can stop your website from ranking higher on the search engines.
