Are you ready with the new website for your business? SEO – Search Engine optimization will certainly improve your overall website’s searchability & visibility. Organic SEO is the buzz everywhere and many start-up companies are proving their results without spending amount on keywords. What’s the secret behind it? SEO is a long-term process, not an overnight success. The latest algorithm will definitely create an impact on your SEO results but as a digital marketer, it’s our duty to rebuild the results by implementing many different strategies. Today, we are going to look out some easy things you can do to build an SEO friendly website. Here are the basics things to be covered for your new website.

First, analyze your website and prepare the SEO report. Based on the report fix those issues and step into the next stage. What I should analyze?

1. Google Search Preview – Preview of your homepage title and description in Google Search Engine.
2. Page Speed Score & Page load time – How fast does your website load? Track the performance of your website speed. Try it out from GTMetrix.
3. Page Title & Meta Description – They are the core part of SEO on-page optimization and the result of well-optimized title and meta description will drive more traffic to your website. The meta description length is between 120 – 158 characters, up to 920 pixels. The title length is between 50 – 60 characters, up to 600 pixels. Source – Moz.
4. Robots.txt – Welcome the search engine to crawl your website using Robots.txt file. You can also disallow some search engines if you are not interested.
5. Sitemap – Blueprint of your website where Google can easily identify it. An XML sitemap is very important and mandatory for all websites.
6. H1, H2, H3 Header Tags – Communicate the search engines easily using the Header Tags. One H1 tag is compulsory for each page.
7. Image Alt text – The search engine will utilize the Image Alt text attribute for searching and indexing.
8. Text to HTML ratio – Content is the key to any website. Low text to HTML ratio indicates little content for the search engine to index. It should be at least 10% and ideal above 20%
9. Web Analytics – Did you connected the site with Google Analytics? It is recommended to utilize it.
10. Custom 404 page – Default error page is very generic and not user friendly. Redirect the user to the homepage with the customized 404 page
11. Broken Link Check – Broken or dead links can negatively impact your crawl rate and website traffic. Tip – Use Xenu’s Link Sleuth free tool to check your broken links.
12. URL Canonicalization – Domain name with WWW and without can be considered as different pages causing duplicate content for search engines.
13. Email Address Obfuscation – It is recommended to obfuscate email addresses posted in public. Convert email id as an image and use it on the website. (Don’t forget to give alt-text)

Tip of the day – To check the Google last indexing date for your website, type cache: your website URL in the search bar.

There are many free SEO audit tools available on Google. Use it efficiently and fix your website with the mentioned points.

The next step is to integrate the Google Analytics UA code into your website. Check out the steps below and start the process now.

Step 1 – Go to Google Analytics and sign in with the required Gmail Id.

Step 2 – Once signed in Go to Admin -> Click +Create Account

Step 3 – Give Account Name, Website Name, Website URL, Industry Category and time zone. Click Create

Step 4 – Copy paste the UA code, Tracking Script into your website and if you have WordPress site copy the code into respective SEO plugin.

Step 5 – Press CTRL + U and press CTRL + F. Search for UA- and double-check your code.

All set!! Hurray, watch out the audience insights, traffic overview of your website in detail. If you need a basic tutorial about Google Analytics to reach me – anandhkfreelance@gmail.com

After adding the UA code, it is recommended to create a property in Google Search Console.

Step 1 – Go to Search Console and left corner click Add property

Step 2 – Select the property type. Copy &  paste your website URL in URL prefix and select continue.

Step 2 – Go to Google search console -> Index -> Sitemap -> Add a new sitemap. Enter sitemap.xml and give submit.

Google will fetch all your URL and you can check the status at Submitted Sitemap.

Step 3 – Ownership verification to be done properly.  Select any one of the verification methods and verify the ownership detail.

I will recommend HTML File verification. Download the file and upload to your server and verify it.

Everything is done now and your website is almost ready. The final step is to submit your sitemap.

Step 1 – Go to www.xml-sitemaps.com and give your website URL to generate a new sitemap.

Step 2 – Copy paste the XML sitemap into your server. If you running a WordPress site just install any of the SEO plugins and skip this step.

Step 2 – Go to Google search console -> Index -> Sitemap -> Add a new sitemap. Enter sitemap.xml and give submit.

Google will fetch all your URL and you can check the status at Submitted Sitemap.

Wrapping up:

Follow all these instructions for a new website before kickstarting the on-page or off-page optimization. It’s not easy to bring rank in Google and you should consider many SEO factors before implementing it. For further queries please ping me – anandhkfreelance@gmail.com

Image Source – Google Console & Google Analytics