Step 4: Optimise your code
While writing content for people is very important, you need to pay attention to how you optimise your website’s code so search engines can read your content too.
Let’s look at how you can properly optimise your site’s code and help your site rank higher in search engines:
SEO-friendly URL structure
URLs are another important element but often overlooked. If your URLs have gibbering numbers and punctuation marks then, just like users, search engines will have a hard time understanding what that page is about.
Here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to achieve an SEO-friendly site URL structure:
Consolidate your www and the non-www domain versions. If you type in www.example.co.uk into your browser and then you type in just example.co.uk and the “non-www” version does not redirect to www.example.co.uk, that means that search engines are seeing two different sites which is considered duplicate content. This isn’t effective for your overall SEO efforts as it will dilute your inbound links, as external sites will be linking to www.example.co.uk and example.co.uk. So what you need to do is to set your preferred domain, whether with or without www, and implement 301 redirects for all other versions of your URL which will redirect visitors to your preferred domain. It doesn’t matter which URL version you choose as long as you are consistent with it.
Avoid dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs are ugly and don’t say anything about what’s on your page. So instead of a www.example.co.uk/?p=3355474 you might want to use static URLs like www.example.co.uk/topic-name. Descriptive URLs allows visitors to figure out what the page is about just by looking at the link.
Use canonical tags. These tags tell search engine bots which pieces of content are the original and which are duplicates. This way the bot will pass over the duplicates and only index and give link credit to the primary piece. To specify the canonical URL, you need to add the rel=”canonical” tag into your URL.
Create an XML sitemap. Sitemaps are like a roadmap for search engines. They include every page on your site, making sure search engine bots don’t miss anything. Once your XML sitemap is created, you should submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools so that search engines can crawl and index your website more easily.
The title tag
Each of your web pages needs to have a unique title tag that describes what that page is about. Pay attention to the title tag because it’s what people see in search engine results when they’re searching for your products or service. In addition, the title tag also shows up in posts shared on social media sites like Facebook, for example. So you not only need to include your main keyword in the title but you also have to make it enticing enough to convince people to click.
So, when you write your title tags, make sure you:
Have a unique title tag for each page
Include the name of your product or the main topic you’re covering on the page
Keep your title tag between 42 and 60 characters, including spaces. To make sure your title isn’t cut off, try not to go over 60 characters.
The meta description tag
The meta description needs to summarise the content on your page because this too will show up in search engine results together with the title tag. While it won’t help you rank higher, a well-written meta description can have a big impact on whether users decide to click through or not so it should be written to “sell”.
Step 5: Technical setup
Set up and verify Google Analytics
You need to measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and see how your website is performing. How many visitors a month is your site attracting? Which pages are the most popular? How much time are they spending on your site? These are just a few of the things you can uncover by using an analytics tool so make sure you set up your analytics software now so you can start collecting data right away.
Google Analytics is a very good choice because it’s free, easy to set up and use, and provides loads of useful information about your visitors’ behaviour on your site.
Set up Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
The webmaster tools products from Google and Bing allow you to go more in depth and see things like: who is linking to your site, what search terms are sending visitors to your site, whether your site has any issues that need to be fixed quickly, and more.
Install an SEO plugin
If you have a WordPress website, make sure you install an SEO plugin to help you optimise your content. One of our favourites is Yoast. Why? Because it’s free, easy to use and packed with powerful features. Having an SEO plugin like this installed will help you meet all of the recommended SEO criteria with ease.
Robots.txt
The robotx.txt file contains instructions for search engines as to which pages of your site to ignore during the crawl. Basically, this file includes a list of commands, such as allow and disallow, that tells web crawlers which web pages they can or cannot retrieve. So, if a URL is disallowed in your robots.txt files, that URL and its contents won’t appear in Google search results.
Make sure you’re not stopping search engines from indexing your site. While some prefer to use the “disallow: /” command while their site is under construction, it’s important to remember to remove it once the site is ready to receive visitors.
Step 6: Earn links
Links are an important ranking factor and continue to be a great indicator of what content is relevant and important.
Today your link building strategy should be about earning links, which you can do by:
Creating purposeful content (for example, guest posts or infographics) that is so useful and engaging that people want to link to it and share it with others.
Promoting your content so that it reaches the right people who will be motivated to link to your content and share it online.
Building relationships with influencers and convincing them that your content is of a high enough quality to share.
If you’re using our Search Engine Optimiser, make sure to check the “Increase Popularity” tab. It will not only tell you where your links are coming from but will also show you where competitors are getting links from so you can get a good idea about what other websites might be interested in linking to your site too.
Step 7: Things to check post-launch
Test usability
Usability is super-important for SEO and it also helps keep your visitors happy. Great user experience refers to a site that is easy to navigate through, with information that’s easy to find and useful.
Check to make sure there aren’t more steps than necessary in the checkout process and that it’s easy for visitors to navigate through your site, to buy a product and to contact you.
Test your site speed
Site speed is an increasingly important ranking factor, so don’t forget to test your site’s speed and improve loading times if necessary. If the speed is less than 90, you will need to make some changes such as optimising and compressing images, and loading scripts after your website’s main content, wherever possible.
At this time having a web developer is useful as you can send them a link to the site speed report and ask them to follow instructions supplied by Google in order to increase your pages’ loading time.
Check your mobile website
Having a website that works properly on all devices – desktops, tablets and smartphones – is extremely important. With mobile devices now driving 56% of traffic to top sites and with mobile-friendliness now a ranking factor, you need to make sure that your site is mobile-ready and that there aren’t any issues.
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