SEO tips for a new website 101

So you’ve worked hard on your website/blog and have uploaded it to your hosting, checked it works, read and re-read all of the pages, installed google analytics and are now sitting back to admire your handy work. A month later you check your google analytics and you realise you’ve only had 10 visitors and the majority of them have been you.

If you have just launched your website here is a checklist of things you MUST do to give your website the best chance of success and whats even better is that they are all FREE!

• Ensure all pages have unique Meta Titles, Descriptions and (to a lesser extent) Keywords.
• Make sure all headings utilise H1 tags and sub headings H2. All text should be in paragraph tags.
• Ensure all pages have textual content that can be indexed by the search engine spiders
• Make your site isn’t available at both http://webphoria.co.uk and http://www.webphoria.co.uk as this is regarded as duplicate content – use htaccess to redirect one to the other
• Rewrite all your URL’s to friendly versions i.e. www.mysite.com/our-services/ is better than www.mysite.com/page.php?id=1
• Ensure all content is keyword rich and utilises iteration for your primary keywords
• Ensure all images are named what they are i.e. building-contractor.jpg as opposed to pic.jpg
• Ensure all images have both an ALT and TITLE and describe the image
• Submit your site to Google
• Set up your Google Webmaster Tools account – find it here
• Submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools – create one here
• Upload a robots.txt file – have a look at our file and copy it
• Include links to your profiles social networking site such as Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn ect
• Submit your website to some high ranked directories such as DMOZ or download a free directory list from Vilesilencer
• If you have an e-commerce website then submit your products to Google Merchant Centre (hurry as it wont be free for much longer)
• Submit your site to Google Places for Business and Bing Local
• Approach other companies that complement yours and request a link be placed on their site to yours

Got any more tips?

Post them in our comments box and we will add them to this checklist. Good luck!