SEO For a New Business Website
Many new businesses are being formed around some great ideas! And of course one of the first tasks that entrepreneurs think of is to create that new company website to attract investors or customers. However, a great design and terrific messaging won’t go very far if the new website is not built from the ground-up with SEO strategies in mind! SEO for startups has unique challenges, but a little planning can prevent problems down the road.
If you are considering building a new website, why not get some guidance from the experts? Just complete the form to the left and we will be in touch very soon!
Three Steps to an SEO-Friendly Design for New Businesses
Many entrepreneurs get so caught up in their great new idea that they overlook some key fundamentals in setting up their most important marketing tool – their website. In fact, we’ve seen several organizations that just grab a URL, hire a designer and start building. This can be a path to future difficulties.
Before anything is done, careful attention and planning must go into the:
- URL structure and design
- Website template
- Messaging and message construction
URL Structure for Better SEO
Many organizations simply create a URL or website address based on their company name. Sometimes this works. More often though, it makes the job of attracting visitors more difficult. As new businesses have no brand identity, the company must invest in marketing and advertising to establish what the organization is all about. This is expensive, time consuming and can delay an effective market entrance.
Keyword research should influence URL selection. The URL is a powerful factor in telling the search engines what the organization provides. It also allows the company a more rapid market entrance once the website is released. Search engines consider the domain age as a ranking factor so any new website will be challenged to attract visitors right away. A URL that includes a keyword phrase or term provides an advantage during this stage.
Website Template Selection to Attract Website Visitors
Does the website template impact how well the site attracts visitors? Absolutely yes! Here are a few reasons.
- Load speed
- Headline construction
- Ease of navigation
Template design and selection is another frequently overlooked area of new website planning. Many new businesses rightfully want the best possible website presentation. However, many cutting-edge designs are very code-heavy, which means that it takes longer for a browser to load the site. Search engines will degrade results placement for sites that take too long to load – especially on mobile platforms. And with mobile search now accounting for over 50% of search traffic, this is a very important consideration. So, selecting a template that not only looks great but doesn’t load a great deal of code is important.
Headline construction is also a common problem. The search engines give a little extra consideration to the headlines of each page to determine what the page is about. Headlines are designated with <h> tags within the page code. Each headline should be unique to the website and should not be repeated anywhere else on the site. Unfortunately, many website templates embed these <h> tags within the navigation elements, side rails and even in footer links. This causes headlines to be repeated throughout the site and causes the search engines to see duplicate headlines. This hurts the ability of the search engines to properly categorize content.
Ease of navigation is an additional consideration. Search engines follow how visitors interact with the page. Visitors that arrive at a site and just ‘bounce’ off because content is too difficult to find causes the search engines to place the link at a lower position on the results page. Navigation should be in two forms, a primary and a secondary nav. The primary navigation should be a logical roadmap of business oriented content. A secondary navigation may be included for utility pages such as the contact us or any login pages.
There are a great many other considerations for selecting and editing a template. Most website templates need to be modified in some form or another so that they will be SEO friendly. Doing this before the site goes live prevents problems later!
Messaging and Message Construction Impacts Search Engine Results
One of the recent fads in web design has been to construct scrolling pages that enable the user to see a great deal of content without navigating to another page. The unfortunate part of this is that this design places so much different content onto one page that it is impossible to optimize all of it. In the end, different content needs to be optimized separately on separate pages in order to maximize search engine potential.
Message development is a planning process that precedes composition. The page author needs to understand the terms and keyword phrases for the page prior to writing the text. Once a page plan is created, the text should be constructed with headline or <h> tags that accurately describe the content for each section. There is a hierarchy of headline tag types (h1, h2, h3, etc.) that help search engines understand which terms are important and which are less important, so set the higher level “h” tags to describe the more important content. But.. only use one “h1” tag per page!
Using headlines and h tags effectively helps search engine crawlers better understand and index your content. Designing the message around searchable terms when the site is under construction is much easier that retro-fitting it later.
How much text should go on a page? One of the factors search engines understand is how long a reader remains on the page. The more content the reader has to consume, the more likely she or he is to stay longer. A good rule of thumb is to create a page with 500 words of valuable text.
New Website SEO and SEO For Startups can be a Challenge!
There are many considerations to building a new website. In fact, the checklist we use at Denver SEO Consultants has over 50 key points! Why not let us help you get your new website or business venture off on the right track from the start? We have the experience to bring visibility and growth to your organization. Just complete the contact form to the left and we will reach out very soon!
For more information about Denver SEO Consultants, just visit our homepage!
Recent Comments