Photo courtesy of yodiyim @ Free Digital Photos

You have been working on a new website for your company for months. Perhaps you hired a Content Runner writer to produce the home page, about us page, service descriptions, a few blog posts, and other pages that describe what your organization is all about. Maybe you worked with a graphic design or web design company as well.

It was a ton of effort, but you have everything pulled together and you’re ready to make your mark on the World Wide Web. However, you need to complete several SEO-related tasks if you want anyone other than your co-workers to admire the new website. Below are several tips we have summarized from ClickMinded.com.

Choose and Promote Relevant Keywords

Be sure that you have several main keywords to help people find your site. If you’re not sure what makes the best keywords, we recommend using the Google Keyword Planner tool. After entering your website address and answering a few demographic questions, the site will return several suggested keywords and the amount of competition you would have for it.

If possible, incorporate one or more of your keywords into the URL people will enter to use your site. Although you may have already purchased a URL, it’s not too late to change it. This can help people remember the website address easier because they have made a mental connection between it and one of your main keywords.

Another place you want to be sure to have your keywords is in your title tag. It needs to be enticing enough to get people to click through to the website. The meta description for your website is a third place you need to be concerned with keywords. It should be approximately 160 characters and as concise and descriptive as possible. Lastly, make sure at least one keyword is in your H1 tag.

Top 10 Quick SEO Questions to Ask Yourself

The following are items you will want to check off your list before going live with your site:

  • Is it responsive on a mobile device? You can find out for sure at sites like ResponsiveTest.net.
  • Have you checked the download speed of your site?
  • Does your site have duplicate content? If so, this will get you penalized by Google.
  • Have you installed and do you know how to use Google Analytics?
  • Have you corrected missing title, 404 errors, broken links, re-directs, and other problems found by Google Search Console?
  • Have you spent time researching link profiles of your competitors? This can give you ideas for your own link-building strategy.
  • Are you linking to internal pages and are the links set up to be SEO friendly? For example, a good internal link should describe where the reader is being directed to and it should be relevant to what he or she is currently reading. This also gives search engines a better idea of what your site is about.
  • Have you established pages on all the big social media sites where you will list the new website address?
  • Do you have a plan in place to do an SEO audit of your site once it’s live?

As with most aspects of online marketing, you will get better at managing SEO the more you do it. If our staff can be of further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.