SEO Recap – "In the Beginning"

The title of this post is actually an answer. The question is, “When should I start doing SEO for my website?” IN THE BEGINNING. Trying to do SEO later is not impossible, but it is much harder to optimize a website that has been built without consideration for search engines than one that has been optimized from square one.

Calling in an SEO firm after you’ve already slapped a site together can cost you money and time trying to get ranked for your desired search terms. It can be done, but it will just give you a handicap out of the gate and set you behind your competitors. So, if you are just now thinking about a website, don’t wait until you have it half way or even all the way built before asking a reliable SEO firm to review it. Get input from the planning stages, buy a domain name that accurately reflects you, and start SEO at the beginning.

Since the inception of the World Wide Web, more and more brick and mortar businesses are starting websites in addition to the completely virtual online businesses that spring up at the rate of thousands per day. As more people turn online to search for products or providers, those who provide those products or services have to be visible in order to get a fair share of the businesses. Let’s face it; a Yellow Pages ad just doesn’t cut it anymore.

SEO has to be budgeted for – good help isn’t cheap! You want your content to be properly optimized (which means you’ll need an excellent online copywriter – beware of so called ‘SEO’ writers – they’ll slap together keyword rich content that brings no value to the reader and expect you to be impressed!). You’ll need solid inbound links (watch out for linking schemes that either have you paying for links or exchanging them with zillions of other websites). You’ll need a well put together advertising campaign, and a solid social media presence.

You’ll also require that your site be put together to be easily indexed and easily navigated by search engine spiders and people alike. This means paying attention to page hierarchy, and including sitemaps that let the spiders and visitors know where to go so they don’t get lost.

Your domain name should be keyword rich and accurately describe what you offer. Your content should also be keyword optimized, as well as valuable and informative, seek out links for each page, and raise your PageRank with one way niche links that bring greater value. Include meta-tags to help search engines identify your content, and use videos and images with proper attribution and tagging to spiders know what they are. Avoid too much flash and make your webpages load as fast as possible,. Also use a good host so your site will be up at least 95% of the time – you don’t want to lose traffic because of a bad server.

There’s a lot more to SEO, but those are the things to remember when building your site from scratch!