In this post, discover 8 quick ways to get a new website’s SEO on track and boost your performance in organic search.
It may take some time for your investment in money and resources to pay off. But that doesn’t mean you have to sit back and wait for that day. Rather, you can take a lot of things into your own hands when it comes to search engine optimization. There are certain SEO factors that you can use to achieve rapid success with your new website.
We recommend the following SEO monitoring and optimization tactics to help you measure your website’s visibility in search and position yourself for success.
1. setting up analyses and diagnostic tools
To know how well your website is performing and to measure improvements and profits, you should set up Google Analytics or a similar website analytics tool to track your website visitors and website behavior.
You can learn a lot from web analytics, and it’s helpful to have an objective benchmark or baseline to work from in the areas of traffic, content, conversions and more.
You should also get accounts for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. These provide more information about how the search engines see your website and provide additional keyword performance data that is not available to Google Analytics.
2. design optimal website architecture
Similar to the structure of a school assignment or the outline of a book, we should do the same for the content of our website. Books for adults often do not consist of a single chapter into which everything is packed. Even with a website, not everything should be squeezed onto a single page.
In most cases, the home page is used for navigation, to introduce the brand or company and to lead users to other pages on the website. Think about how deep you want to go into your content. Whether it’s information, e-commerce or other topics, organize them in a way that makes sense and transitions from the general to the specific. Don’t try to pack too much into a single page. Add subpages if the topics and subtopics justify this. Long content is good for technical and specific topics.
However, it is also advisable to allow the user to click on their own terms and go deeper, rather than overwhelming them. Furthermore, the search engines can recognize the vertical depth of the content in addition to the width of the parent pages and sections.
3. deal strategically with the internal link structure
Incoming links to your website from other websites give the pages and your website as a whole authority status. This process of sharing values does not stop at the page that receives the link.
The way you link to pages within your website can have a big impact on the page value and link value that is distributed throughout the site. Remember, you don’t want to link to every other page on the site from every page.
Concentrate on the top-level navigation and only link where it is relevant and necessary. This allows you to pass on the value of the page specifically to the desired areas.
If every page has links to every other page, it’s messy and doesn’t help prioritize the value of link authority, and also undermines the work you’ve done to cleanly organize your site architecture for the search engines.
4. create quality content
More content – as long as it is relevant, high quality and helpful for your audience – is always better. Whether you are extending existing pages, adding new ones or going further in depth, do it. This is your chance to check the success of your migration or the launch of a new website and step on the gas.
If you have thin pages with little text or many pages with significant overlap or duplicate content compared to other pages on the site, find a way to improve or remove these pages.
Going back to the details of website architecture and internal linking that I’ve already explained: You don’t want to compromise these formats and efforts.
5. monitoring and troubleshooting during indexing
First and foremost, you need to make sure that your XML sitemap, robots.txt and all in-page canonical and indexing commands are in a good place. From there, you can monitor how quickly the search engines index your pages.
It may seem like overkill, but you should spend a lot of time in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure that the sitemap is validated and that the indexed pages are the ones you expect and are displayed in the correct order. Don’t assume that you will create the sitemap and Google will come.
Make sure everything is submitted, watch for errors and monitor the entire indexing process to ensure that it runs as quickly as possible and that any errors are fixed immediately.
6. optimize the page speed
As with the content, you should not be satisfied with the loading times of the pages. Evaluate the page speed of your website with tools such as the Google Chrome Lighthouse Auditing Developer Tool. Is it fast? Then make them faster! Is it slow or does it not meet industry standards? Improve them! Do not ignore the speed and do not postpone it until later in the process. Draw on development and IT resources to achieve the maximum speed you can reasonably achieve.
Time is of the essence, and you don’t want to invest in a lot of other optimization areas if the speed profile isn’t right.
7. keep your code clean
If you have speed issues, indexing issues or general concerns about the code, you should dig deeper. Many content management systems contain plugins and bloated code that is not needed or does not make sense.
Shortcuts from developers (I love developers – I don’t mean to denigrate them) or out-of-the-box stuff you don’t need can impact speed and indexing. They can also cause you headaches when uploading or updating content if there are frequent problems.
Minimalist, clean code helps you across the spectrum and has an impact on the quick wins I mentioned.
8. build up links and quotations
External authority and validation signals are important. Building on what I mentioned in the section on internal linking, you should think about any relationships that could lead to another, credible website linking to your website.
Think about partnerships, charities, clients, memberships, trade associations, testimonials and credible directories that could and should link to your website. Create a list and plan to establish these links on the web to mirror real life relationships.
Beware of the traps and shortcuts when buying links that can get you into trouble during the process. Other types of links or mentions that contribute to credibility are often referred to as citations.
This can be done by creating Google Maps entries via Google Business Profiles, by submitting to data aggregation services and other well-known directories and map sites on the Internet. All of these links and mentions increase your brand’s presence and point to your website as a hub or authority for your business or organization.
Conclusion
By taking a proactive approach to a new website to achieve quick wins, you can shorten the time it takes to get the visibility you deserve for your new website. New websites can take some time to build up authority status through external links and relevant content that the search engines consider better than others with similar topics.
SEO is not something you just do and then forget about.
However, addressing the areas where you can achieve quick wins and focusing on what you can monitor and improve will give your website a head start and the chance to pay for itself in less time and work towards your goals.