5 Things to Consider For SEO When Developing a New Website

Want to rank well for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo? Then it's important to play by their rules. Search Engines look at a number of factors, which collectively act like a giant score board determining the success of your website on their results page. Do something good and you get points! Do something bad and it can negatively affect your score.

Sounds complicated, right? It is. However, there's good news! There are a number of key considerations you can make during the initial development of your website that can set you on the best possible start for your journey of seeing great search results! This article will cover some of these tips.

 

  1. Identify Search Terms Early
  2. Make Accessibility a Priority
  3. Check for Code Errors
  4. Get trained on content management
  5. Have a launch plan

 

1. Identify Search Terms Early!

Consider your search terms before development, and ideally before content writing. The sooner you can let your web developers and content writers know the kinds of terms you want to rank for, the better! It's so important that your terms are actually present in your website's content and by identifying them as early as possible, you can include them in your website's content and code in the most natural way.

 

2. Make Accessibility a Priority

Website accessibility benefits everyone. By choosing to make the accessibility of your website a priority you are making it easier for visitors to use and understand. At the same time, it's also easier for search engines to crawl and understand it as well. One of the best and most complete guidelines for web accessibility is the WCAG 2.0, which includes three levels; A, AA and AAA. Visit the WCAG website to learn more. Since meeting accessibility guidelines can be complex, it's important to let your developer know ahead of time if accessibility is important for your new website. In some cases, it is even a legal requirement.

 

3. Check for Code Errors

Code errors can be big and obvious, such as those affecting website functionality, but they can also be minor enough that most abled visitors might not notice anything is wrong. Checking for errors is an important step in the development of any project. Code errors are never a good thing and even those seemingly small errors can lead to confusion and delays in; website accessibility, page speed and even user experience. Make sure code errors are checked both during development and again just before launch!

While checking for errors is a step your developer is likely performing along the way already, it doesn't hurt to check in on them by communicating the importance to you during development stages. You can also check for errors yourself using your browsers Inspection tool (right click and choose "Inspect").

 

4. Get trained on content management

Whether you're planning to manage your website's content on your own, or have someone else do it for you, make sure they're properly trained on how to do it, especially in terms of proper page hierarchy and layout. Common mistakes which can affect your content's quality score are; improper use or order of headings, overuse of bold, italic, underline, using tables for page layout and accidental copying and pasting of inline styles and images.

 

5. Have a Launch Plan

Be excited about your new website! By letting people know ahead of time about your website you can generate some excitement. As well, make sure to market and share the URL for the site as soon as it launches. When users start hitting your URL, it helps send signals for search engine bots to join in as well and start indexing your website. If you have a rush of traffic on your website, that's a big bonus!

 

Conclusion

And that sums up our article of five things to consider for SEO when developing a new website! Whether you're planning to build a new website or are already in process of developing your new website, we hope it helps! Have questions? We're happy to discuss further.

 

Tel: (807) 768.6603
Fax: (807) 768.2218
Toll-Free: 1 (888) 817.3707
Email: info@sencia.ca