When you create a website or if you're making a site migration, it is vital to speak to SEO experts at the initial stage or you might end up spending a fortune in the future to fix preventable SEO-related problems. You may be asking why you should bother considering SEO.
My only question to you is: why would you not want your website to be found in search engines after spending so much time and money on creating it?
I've listed the six most important aspects of SEO you should take into account if you are going to create a website (even if you already have one).
1. Domain and Hosting
Search engines give advantage to local ccTLDs and value websites that are hosted on local web servers. This is a significant local authority and trust indicator for search engines which would be really beneficial for your geo-targeting campaigns in the future.
2. Localize Keywords in Subfolders
Depending on the language of your target country, consider using local characters in subfolders if they have higher search volume. They would give you a better chance to rank for your target keywords.
e.g. www.example.com/leitarorð
3. URLs
Use hyphens as keywords separator and ensure that your site navigation structure does not exceed three levels. You would always want to encode them in UTF-8 standards.
4. Localized Content
Content (and the marketing of it) is king. It is important to have native writers to produce your web content and ads. It is vital to reach out to your target audience in their local slang (and also to use their humor). For example, if you’re searching for Tube information outside UK, the local SERPs will not return similar results as you would find in Google UK. In Europe, they call it “metro” while in North America they call it “subway.” It is “LRT” in Malaysia, “SMRT” in Singapore, “MTR” in Hong Kong and “TTC” in Toronto.
5. Google Panda
Google Panda is an algorithm released by Google in 2011 to crack down thin pages, low quality content and duplicates. You always need to ensure that your web content is unique and of a high quality. Google loves content freshness, so try to update your site with new content at least weekly. Blogs are extremely popular and effective.
6. Responsive Design
Mobilegeddon, mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse, mobocalypse and all sorts of "geddon" and "pocalypse" were trending in the first half of 2015. Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm in April this year to help boost mobile friendly websites in mobile search results. Responsive design websites gives excellent user experience to users as well as placing all SEO efforts in one place. Do invest in responsive design because you'll only need to build one site, rather than multiple versions. It is the most cost-effective option and helps you stay ahead of your competition.
Lyn KanLyn Kan is a Senior SEO Specialist at London School of Business and Finance. She specialises in technical and international creative SEO as well as web analytics. Connect with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
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