Launching a new website is a very exciting yet perhaps nerve-racking time. Weeks and months have been spent designing the website and putting together its content.
However, there can be a worry that we perhaps get too caught up in the aesthetics of the site and making sure it looks fantastic (which is still important), yet the all-important search engine optimization, (SEO) is lost. Furthermore, concerns about redesigning an existing website with good search traffic could be that all of this disappears after being redesigned.
It’s important that you have a balanced combination of a site which both looks great to capture an audience in order to convert page visits into paying customers, as well as effective SEO including traffic, conversions and functionality according to Search Engine Watch.
So if you’re in the process of designing your website or are perhaps ready to launch, you might want to check that you have these three SEO considerations in place before your site goes live.
Redirects
One of the most important things you need to have checked is the site’s redirects. Existing websites will have a large number of pages which search engines have indexed. The launch of a new website means that these pages will be transferred to new URLs says Chris Osterhout, discussing 5 SEO Mistakes to Avoid When Launching a New Website.
In order to maintain that search engines can locate the site’s correct content, it’s essential that redirects have been put in place which will ensure that direct traffic is sent to the new site’s URLs.
You will need to audit and analyse where all of the incoming links are coming from and where they’re going to. Once the backward links have been located, you’ll need to map them with the pages to the new location using 301 directs as suggested by Search Engine Watch.
Without the redirects in place, those who try to follow the links to the site will come across errors which won’t do you any favours in helping you to increase your website’s ranking in the search results.
Duplicate Content
Duplicated content is a common occurrence in SEO and could occur for a couple of reasons. The first is that a page is available on multiple URLs as opposed to just one, an example of this could be if you have a product which can be accessed through more than one category page on an e-commerce site. If this is the case, you will have to determine which is the principal page.
Secondly, duplicate content occurs through plagiarised content from another website. As Google does not favour copied content, it’s best you ensure that you create all of your own content from scratch. Not only will this avoid issues to do with plagiarism, but it will also give you the opportunity to produce original, up-to-date and relevant content for your site.
It’s advisable to stay away from using automated content writing tools as these could still land you in trouble with Google, as well as the fact that your website’s content is a fundamental aspect of your digital campaign, which especially if you’re launching a new site, should not be overlooked.
Navigation
Speaking with James from Digitaloft specializing in creating easy to use, effective and search engine friendly websites, he said that: “The user experience is a critical element which plays an important role in determining the success of a website”. It’s simple really, if your audience cannot navigate around the site efficiently, this won’t earn links, mentions and ultimately customers. Therefore, before your site is launched it’s critical that you can easily navigate your website.
Even before your page has been located, you need to be thinking about how people are going to reach your site. In terms of your site’s URL, you might want to think about whether it can be shortened in some way and whether it ultimately represents the term that you would like to be ranked successfully for.
Once your audience has reached the site, you need to ensure that they can move around the site easily and quickly. Search Engine Journal suggests listing all of the page’s categories you require, highlighting the most important ones and deciding which pages need to be accessed from a particular point which will then help you to plan an effective navigation route. Once this is done, you can then put in place a ‘sub-navigation’ for the categories.
When looking at the best method of navigating the site, don’t forget that you also need to take into consideration what it will look like and how it will work on a mobile device.
Overall, what you have hopefully gained from reading this article is that ensuring that you have followed correct SEO procedures before launching your website is a critical element in helping to make sure that your site is successful in driving traffic, earning links and may hopefully convert into sales.
