It’s not uncommon for businesses in the market for a new website to look for a way to save a little money, and that may mean an attempt to cut corners. It is an understandable thought.
Crucial parts of the process can be called into question, such as search engine optimization. While this may be a tempting road to go down, SEO is crucial to your website. It is much better to add in these initial stages, than to go back and add later. You want your website strong from the beginning.
There are SEO decisions that factor into every aspect of your website, from design, to copy, to back-end code. It is much more practical to make those decisions at the same time your website is being built, than to go back. Here are just some of my SEO best practices for a new website.
Essentially, making SEO decisions from the get-go is hugely important. For instance, if you have large headlines placed in images, instead of written in text, they are invisible to search engines. When you decide to have your SEO done later, these would need to be removed, in favor of text. This will create more work in the long run, and ultimately be more expensive.
Another example would be in your website copy. It’s a good idea to have your keywords placed in your website’s text. If you don’t yet know what your website’s keywords are at the time your copy is written, it will mean more extensive changes later on.
Waiting on SEO changes also means time lost, and your website will be playing catch up. It can be a waiting game for the search engines to register the SEO code, and rank your website accordingly.
You have no control over when the search engines come back to re-crawl your website for the appropriate code. You could go back and make these extensive changes, and be forced to wait months before they take effect. There’s little control in these circumstances. If the SEO is done at the beginning, your site will be much stronger from the start.
It can be tempting to slice away at what you want done, but if you complete the SEO for your new website at the onset, you will be happier in the long run.
If you need more help with SEO and content strategy for your new website, our team of top Chicago web designers and marketers can help you grow your digital presence organically and meet your business goals. Get in touch today!