Top Ten Things to Start Your Website
To get your website to #1 spot in a search engine organically is going to take some time – just getting on page 1 is going to take some time BUT you can get into the search engines within 24 hours of your website being launched.
This is really important. Getting indexed by the search engines means you have somehow got that search engine robot to come to your website and read the information on your pages. The robot in turn evaluates that information and the keywords and rates it against all the other websites with similar information and like a good librarian, the search engine then adds your information to their index results. You might be the last result of 15 million but you are there. If you don’t tell them you are there, they may never know.
The search engines can find you page in two ways. You can tell them you are there or they can find you by skipping someone else’s site and following a link from their site to yours. I suggest you employ strategies that encompass both these opportunities.
I cannot stress this point enough – do not wait until the site is “finished” to start promoting it. You need to start promoting it immediately so that you site gets indexed by the search engines). Each time the search engines come back to your site they will see when information is changed or newly created. This is important to search engines because it then recognizes that there is activity on the site. This is why you should get your site listed in directories sooner rather than later because in the beginning you are going to be making lots of changes and making lots of additions.
Top Ten Things to Do When Starting A Website
- Set up a FREE Google Analytics account and set it up the tracking code on the website.
- Set up a Site Map on your website and submit that site map to Google.
- This will immediately get the robots on to your site and build your pages in the index for searches.
- you will need a Joomla! extension for this or you need to add the code to the template file. We recommend an extension in this case. Changing code on the template will be overwritten any time you update the template.
- Ensure each of your pages has an optimised meta title specific to the content of the page.
- Ensure each of your pages has an optimised H1 tag (also known as “article title” for Joomla!
- Ensure each of your articles are over 300 words and that the content reads well and that it includes your critical keyword or keyword phrase no less than 3 times.
- Create a FREE google maps listing
- Set up FREE Webmaster Tools account
- this allows you to see if there are broken links on your site and from this account you will be able to get suggestions from Google on how to tweak your pages to make them better for the search engines and your visitors which will ultimately lead to increasing your ranking.
- http://www.google.com.au/webmasters/
- Submit your website url to search engine directories
- There are a number of free tools out there be careful about who you use as many will be looking for add-ons or will collect your email and biz info which could in turn be sold.
- I use a tool called Search Engine Booster – your site is submitted to over 400 of the top search engines. It also checks your site against competitor websites, their keywords and site details and you get step by step optimisation reports, website analysis and suggestions for site changes, meta tag generator, sitewide link checker to make sure broken links are managed before you get penalised. Webmaster Tools will do most of this for you but it won’t submit your site to various search engines.
- You can use it on up to 5 sites, if you’re interested in purchasing this it is available on our site: https://websitetogo.com.au/website-extras/search-engine-booster
- Browse the net and find places, portals, directories where you can list information about your website with a link to your website
- Put on your customer’s hat. Make sure your articles are readable from a visitors perspective. What are they coming to you for? Does your website provide that information to them in less than 2 clicks?
After you’ve done all that, make sure your site is performing properly, that images are reduced for web, that the pages load fast and that your site looks and feels good. If you want us to walk you through a critical evaluation and provide an individual consultation on your website please feel free to book and appointment with us.
If you want us to do all these things for you, setting up all the accounts and submitting your site and managing things, this can also be arranged. Give us a shout and we can put together a plan of what needs to be done.
Unlike the famous quote from the baseball movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come” – just building the site isn’t enough… ;).