Search Engine Optimization for New Websites

By: Meital Sharon

SEO for a new website is one of the greatest opportunities and challenges of search engine optimization. When involved in new website development, SEO specialists get a chance, alongside the web dev team, to be involved and influence the site’s design, logic and information architecture. This is more than desirable, and will actually result in much more efficient and consistent SEO process down the road.

This article will describe a few important factors that should be considered when embarking on the task of new website development: 

• Information architecture – the connection between the website's purpose and its structure. 
• Keyword strategy – primary search strings through which the website owner wishes to draw traffic from search engines. 
• External links – listing the website in directories and in sites which are contextually related to it, in order to improve rankings in central keyword strings.

Information Architecture – First Step

The website's purpose will be the basis of its structure, meaning, that if the website is intended to be an online product shopping platform, then access to products in general and to leading products specifically should be comfortable and obvious, using navigation menus, links from text and buttons. On the other hand, if the website's purpose is to create contacts with potential clients, than the contact form should be at the heart of the website, and the surfer's attention should be drawn to it. This influences page grid design, navigation and linking items, and funnel tools.

After the website's goal has been defined, its information architecture should be considered. In other words, this is the manner in which the website's goal will be expressed in its structure. The most important recommendation at this stage is creating a hierarchy which is as flat as possible. This means that e should create a website in which it is possible to reach each page with as few clicks as possible. This means, that if the website is a coffee machine sale website, it is better to place the product catalogue in the navigation bar, and from each it should be possible to reach each part of the catalogue with one click.

Another important recommendation regarding the website's structure is to create a bread crumb trail shown on every internal page. The bread crumb trail provides orientation to surfers as for their location at any given time, and demonstrates the site's hierarchy in a "flat" manner. If you will look at the head of this page, for example, you can see that you are on the "Search Engine Optimization for new websites" page, inside the "SEM Articles" directory. The bread crumb trail helps surfers understand their relative location in the website and helps the search engine reach each page in the website relatively easily.

An example of a bread crumb trail in the ICMI website

Keyword Targeting Strategy – Second Step

Search engine optimization is a process affected by recognition of relevant keywords for each site. Jerusalem's tourism portal, for example, will not necessary reap any benefits from its pages ranking higher for keyword strings such as "mortgage for houses in Jerusalem". The keyword strategy determines, through a comprehensive keyword research, what words are used by surfers when searching for the type of content we are promoting, meaning, what are the important keywords for fulfilling the given website's goal. For example, if the website is the Israel Diamond Portal, we should check which is the more common search string among surfers: diamond suppliers or diamond trade and decide on which content to promote which string.

After the important keywords have been identified, the keyword strategy details a way of promoting specific target pages for search strings found in the first research stage. After establishing a keyword strategy it is possible to deal with the different textual elements of specific pages: 

• The page's title. 
• The page's description. 
• The primary headline and the secondary headlines. 
• The text itself.

External Links – Third Step

After the website has been planned and developed, and after unique and relevant content has been posted on it, the time comes to ensure that other sites will establish links to your website. The first step is listing the website in important, popular directories such as Yahoo Directory, Business.com, DMOZ and others, choosing the most relevant category. One should think well of the keywords which are linked, and of the website description, and use wording in light of keyword strategy. Some directories require one time or recurring fees for adding new websites, and this payment should be taken into account in budget considerations.

Another means which is just as important for creating link popularity is adding links from sites which are contextually related, meaning, from sites which deal with the same topic as the website, or a similar topic. For example, if the website deals with international flights, it is important to examine link sources including: tourism portals, tourism forums, tourist agencies, or any site related to the international flight industry.

Link popularity is one of the most important factors in determining the website's ranking for competitive keyword strings, and therefore you should establish as many links as possible, from appropriate sites. On the other hand, you should avoid using unrelated sites, link farms or sites containing spam.

The Sandbox Effect (or dampening filter)

Despite of the tremendous work and expectation of seeing the website come up in Google and Yahoo search results, or those of any other search engine, the results of the SEO process are usually far from obvious right away upon the website's launch. This is because new websites on new domains, with no previous web presence history, suffer from the sand box effect. The sand box effect is a term describing the period of time required by Google to examine whether the website is a deserving one, with high quality content, a website that others find relevant and worth visiting and linking to. The time spent by a website in the sandbox differs from site to site, and can be as short as two months, or as long as a year, in some cases. It is only after this test period, when the links to the site are found to be stable (this process is called in optimization terms "link aging") that Google starts showing the website pages in search results for popular keyword strings.

Good luck.
 

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