How A Good SEO Strategy Can Impact A New Website

Do you want to see how a good SEO strategy can impact a new website? If so, read on to learn how you can give a new domain and website a running start to rank well in search results.

Let’s start with the website foundation itself. SEO is as much about the user experience (UX) as it is keywords and content. Make it easy for your visitors to find your most important content (typically product and service pages) within one to two clicks of landing on your site.

Here’s one way to lay out a website architecture for content – use paper or a whiteboard and sketch the layout that you think makes sense. Draw out the website hierarchy and architecture. Here’s an example:

Once you’ve drawn out how you think the site navigation enhances the buyer’s journey, it’s time to think about how to write your content to convert the web reader from a prospect to a customer.

Good SEO Starts with Knowing What Content Your Prospects Will Read

As part of a good SEO strategy, web page content is the most important effort you can put forth to get better search engine rankings. You’re in business to solve someone’s problems; prospects look for your site to find solutions. Write great content for the most important pages – products and services – or what we call the “money making pages.”

Start with brainstorming your big content buckets. Jot down the main functions your products and services fulfill. Then it’s time to do keyword research for those topics. Long-tail keywords are your best bet to help your landing pages stand out from competitors. Create the content around the keyword phrases you’ve chosen for each page.

Use the old newspaper formula to develop an outline – who, what, why, where, when, how. Have you created your unique value proposition? This is a short statement that tells prospects why you’re different from the competition who offers the same services and products. List all the benefits the web reader needs to know about what you offer. And finally, write to your audience’s level!

Good SEO Strategy: On Page Elements

Now that you have some great keyword phrases and topics your prospects need information about, it’s time to apply search engine optimization to these web page elements. Get the basics right from the start to rank higher in search results faster.

These are “on-page SEO” elements where you use your keyword phrases to help search engine crawlers understand what each page is all about:

• Page title tag – This is the blue clickable text you see in your search results. In order for your entire title tag to show up, it should be a maximum of 65 characters. As a best practice, you should create title tags like the one below. Here’s an example using the keyword phrase “marketing agency”:

• Page description – Use your keyword phrase in the page description. It’s that dark or black text underneath the title tag in search results. It’s best to limit your description tag to about 160 characters so the entire tag shows up in search. Use complete sentences and emphasize product/services benefits. You can also write in geo-specific information if needed. In the example above, the dark text is the page description. Note how the keyword phrase “marketing agency” is used as well.
• H1 tag – think of this as a headline for the web page. It’s different from the page title tag. The H1 only shows up on the actual web page or blog post; the page title tag only shows up in search results. Google recommends using only one H1 tag per page or post, and to include your chosen keyword phrase.
• H2 tag – This is a sub heading tag that’s useful for breaking up long text blocks or introducing a new idea within a web page or blog post. You can use multiple H2 tags per page or post. Like all other tags, use your keyword phrase in at least one of your H2 tags.
• Alt text tag – Did you know that you can insert your keyword phrase into image properties to increase the picture’s chances of showing up in Google’s search image results? By populating the alt text tag for your pictures, illustrations, images, drawings, etc., they have a better chance of showing up in image searches.

How Links Are Part of a Good SEO Strategy for A New Site

Links are a critical part of getting higher search engine rankings for your new site. Google considers links that send traffic to your site as votes of confidence in your content. There are two kinds of links, and they are equally important:

• Internal – Links you create within your own website. Link your most important products and service pages to one another to drive your web visitors deeper into your site. The more time they spend on your site, the better your chance of doing business with them.
• External – Links from another website to yours. Anyone can link to you, but the more links you have from sites that relate to your product and service offerings, the more relevant those links are for Google to consider when crawling, indexing, and ranking your site’s pages. If you sell organic pet food, links from veterinarians, pet experts, and influential bloggers who write about pet products are desirable. On the other hand, if you run a marketing agency, a link from your local dry cleaner isn’t relevant.

Analyze How Well Your SEO Efforts Have Helped Your Site

Finally, no SEO strategy is complete unless it measures website performance data. There’s a saying – “you can’t measure what you can’t see.” In following this phase, have your web developer install Google Analytics, a free web performance data collection and measurement service. Here are some very common web performance metrics that show you how well your search engine optimization is doing:

What you’ve read here are critical processes you can put into place for a new website to get the best start possible at ranking well in search results. If you apply SEO as it’s explained here, you’ll see steady progress in getting more visitors to your site who read more of your web pages and convert from prospects to customers.

If you need help getting your new website’s SEO off the ground, contact the professionals at Kraus Marketing to get started today!