• 17.03.202417.03.2024
• admin

Today, creating a website that brings traffic is not something out of reach and is available to almost everyone. However, at the initial stage, the site hides many errors and, as a rule, is not ready for comprehensive promotion. In addition, Google is wary of new sites: it indexes and ranks them more slowly.

SEO promotion helps not only to get traffic, but also to get into the first search results for queries relevant to you. Results from the promotion of a new site can be obtained only a few months after the start. So why devote time and resources to development at the initial development stage , you ask? 

This is exactly what I will talk about in this article, and I will also provide a step-by-step way to optimize the site.

Benefits of site optimization at the development stage

There are only three advantages, but you will probably like them.

1. Economy .

You will not have to allocate additional funds for finishing and improving the created site and make changes to the structure, on which enough has already been spent. There is no need for this if the site is SEO-adapted from the beginning. 

Investments will pay off faster and profits can be made sooner if SEO requirements have been taken into account at the development stage.

2. A pre-planned structure that is already optimized for SEO .

Making changes to the structure of the site can affect traffic and lead to its loss from those pages that have already entered the index. In addition, the expansion of the structure may cause the need to move to a new server. 

Correcting all these potential errors and flaws early on will allow you to launch a site with a high initial search potential.

3. Quick result .

All the above-mentioned actions and measures have a negative impact on the most important thing — time, the most important resource in the promotion of sites. 

But you should not be afraid that the fulfillment of SEO requirements will affect the increase in the terms of site development. By spending more time optimizing the resource at the initial stage, you will win in the end and get a great result.

Step-by-step optimization at the development stage

The main goal of SEO for a new site is to create a resource that would meet all the current requirements of search engines. All the actions of the SEO specialist are aimed at ensuring that users can get to know and evaluate the site immediately after its launch and start of work.

Here I smoothly approach the stages of SEO promotion. Of course, I have no right to claim that this strategy is the only correct one, but as experience shows, it is effective and shows good results.

Basic niche and competitor analysis

This is a necessary stage of website optimization, which allows you to study the specifics of the business and the target audience, determine: 

• your company’s place in the market; 
• the number and quality of competitors in the niche; 
• seasonality (if any); 
• competitors’ mistakes that can be turned into your advantages. 

For example, use keywords that your competitors have lost so that your pages can rank for them. 

At this stage, objective factors affecting successful promotion are taken into account.

Niche research helps, first of all, to assess competitors, their strengths and weaknesses. It highlights the company’s advantages that allow it to successfully compete in the market. This is one of the main stages of SEO when developing a site, because a further strategy is built on its basis.

Collecting the semantic core

The semantic core is the basis of the entire process of planning and creating sites. 

By working on the semantic core, you can understand what requests the site is aimed at, and optimally adjust it to the interests of the target audience. This depends on the visibility of the resource in search engines, and therefore the number of visitors. In addition, it helps to plan the content strategy, creating high-quality content that meets the needs of users.

Specialists select relevant and similar queries, search prompts that are most closely related to the company’s activities. Then clustering keywords by landing pages is the most important part of this process. 

Clustering is the division of keywords into groups based on their meaning to organize information. Incorrect clustering can cause an increase in the rejection rate and a decrease in positions in the search results.

Elaboration of the structure of the site

The structure of the site is its hierarchical organization, which determines the way the pages are arranged and interconnected. In the context of SEO, the correct structure of the site allows search engines to effectively index the content, improves the ranking of the site in search results and helps to increase the visibility of the site for key queries.

This is achieved thanks to:

• optimal placement of menus and sections;
• convenient breakdown of goods into categories and subcategories;
• logical sequence of information blocks.

Visualization of the structure of the site can be done with the help of Mind map — intelligent maps that help to visualize information in the form of a hierarchy. 

One of the examples of Mind map site structure

Internal optimization

This stage aims to create pages relevant to the user’s request and increase their positions in the search. Here are the main tasks of an SEO specialist in internal optimization:

1. Compilation of metadata (Title, Description, H1) for all pages of the site. With their help, the search bot can better understand the content of the page. The more understandable the meta tags are to the robot, the more likely it is to show the page in search results.
2. Organization of headings H1-H6 . These titles are primarily scanned by search bots, and search results are formed based on their keywords.
3. Optimization of filtering pages . Filter pages are search results in product categories based on various user-specified parameters. Their optimization is necessary to improve the visibility of the site, the growth of positions in the issue and organic traffic.

   This happens due to medium- and low-frequency requests, increasing the level of trust in the site among users and reducing the rate of rejections. Properly optimizing your filter pages will help you turn them into traffic-generating pages.

4. Content creation . It is important that the content of each page is not just a set of words interspersed with key phrases, but is readable, meaningful, coherent and relevant. Texts on the site are written not only for search robots, but also for people.

   It also makes sense to think about creating a blog. This will allow you to attract more of the target audience and increase their interest due to the regular publication of new content in it.

5. Development of internal relinking. Links between site pages are needed to improve navigation and help search engines understand the structure of the site. Thanks to internal linking, you can increase the relevance of resource pages in search results, increase site traffic and speed up indexing.
6. Compliance of the site with the main metrics. This stage is necessary to achieve the best performance indicators. Key metrics help determine how well a site meets user expectations and search engine requirements. These metrics include:

• loading speed – users don’t like to wait, so making your site load faster can increase visitor satisfaction and reduce bounce rates. An indicator of 90 to 100 points will be considered the best;
• time spent on the site — if the visitor spends a lot of time on your resource, this indicates his interest and satisfaction with the content;
• bounce rate — a high bounce rate (70% or higher) indicates that users are not finding what they need or are having problems using the site.

  By immediately creating a quality resource and working on the loading speed of the content, you can encourage users to visit the site and stay on it longer. By optimizing the site for these metrics, you can not only improve the user experience, but also increase the credibility of your resource in the eyes of search engines. Ultimately, this leads to an increase in the visibility of the site in the search results.

7. Analytics settings. Installing analytics tools, such as Google Analytics 4, will allow you to track site traffic and user behavior, as well as understand promotion results.

   With the help of systematically collected data, it will be possible to analyze traffic channels, search queries and the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. On the basis of these data, specialists summarize and make the necessary corrections.

8. Adaptation for mobile devices . Adaptive design has a positive effect on the site’s usability, audience coverage, and the level of loyalty and responsiveness to the resource among users. In addition, the mobile version has priority over the desktop version thanks to the Mobile First Index, and search engines pay a lot of attention to mobile optimization.

Technical SEO promotion

At this stage, the SEO specialist gives the developer a list of technical rules and standards that a functional site must meet. Their implementation is a mandatory part of resource optimization. Here are the requirements:

1. Formation of an understandable URL (page link). The URL reflects the user’s path on the site, so it should be understandable to a person and consist of simple descriptive words.
2. Setting pagination pages available for indexing . Pagination pages are a method of dividing the content of a site into several separate pages in order to facilitate navigation and user interaction with a large amount of information.

   Pagination pages need optimization first of all to promote the resource and get maximum traffic. They must be available for indexing, therefore, it is necessary to make sure that there are links to all pages of the pagination in the html code of the site.

3. Working with images on the site involves their optimization taking into account the following factors:

• choosing the right image format – WebP and AVIF provide better image compression (about 25-35%) than other formats, and JPEG or PNG can be used as a fallback;
• replacing GIF images with video can increase the efficiency of content display, provide better compression and quality;
• improving the quality of content and loading speed – the attractiveness of images directly depends on the quality, users are more likely to go to the site if the image thumbnail is clear in the search results;
• optimization of the file name and registration of alt and title attributes for pictures so that they are informative and contain keywords;
• ensuring adaptability so that images are displayed correctly on different devices, including mobile.

  Taking into account these requirements, the images on the site will effectively contribute to its aesthetics, user experience and optimization for search engines.

4. Configuring redirects . A redirect is redirecting a user from one URL to another, typically used to provide access to relevant content.

   Correct setting can solve a number of big problems, such as eliminating duplicates, sticking domains, maintaining link weight when changing the page address, etc. Redirects will help maintain SEO relevance and traffic when URLs and site structure change.

5. Creating a robots.txt file . The file contains instructions for search engines. It indicates which pages and files should be scanned. It is necessary to ensure that the file is configured correctly and contains the correct UTF-8 encoding characters so that the robots can process them correctly.

   The result of creating the file should be the correct scanning of the site pages.

6. Generating an xml sitemap— a list of important site pages you want to promote. With the help of a map, it will be easier for search bots to scan these pages. It is also necessary to ensure that the file contains accurate and correct URLs. You can submit sitemap.xml to search engines via Google Search Console or robots.txt.
7. Configuring HTTP headers. HTTP headers — additional information about the resource or about the search query itself. They indicate various parameters of data transmission, such as content type, encoding, caching, security, and more.

   Optimizing HTTP headers speeds up loading for users and indexing of pages. Search results show the date the page was last updated, which helps them rank high in search results.

8. Using the rel=”canonical” tag . The tag prevents duplicates. Thanks to it, the page where it is written will be perceived by search bots as priority or canonical for indexing. It is she who will be displayed in the organic output and will receive a number of links from other pages with similar content.
9. Setting up a 404 page . First, search engines understand that the page is unavailable, which in turn can prevent further indexing of such a page and consumption of search engine resources.

   Second, providing information that the page was not found helps improve the user experience.

10. Implementation of micro-markup is a method of adding structured information to a web page in order to better understand its content by search engines. It helps search bots recognize text and other page elements and correlate them with a certain type of data, since bots are still imperfect in determining the meaning of content.

    Sections on the site should be highlighted with appropriate micro-markup, for example, Product, Offer, Price, Organization, Review, Breadcrumbs, etc. and configured using the schema.org library. Thus, the robot will provide the necessary information upon the corresponding request of the user.

    As a result, you can improve the user experience, get an attractive snippet in the output, and increase clickability.

Conclusions

1. Summarizing all of the above, I would like to note that SEO at the site development stage is a necessity. Rejection of the services of SEO specialists at the development stage will have a negative impact on the cost of time and money.
2. Engaging SEO specialists at the initial stage of developing a new site allows you to immediately create the right resource that will appeal to users and search engines, will receive good conversion and demonstrate high sales.
3. It is also important to note that early stage SEO is a time-consuming process. Therefore, you need to be patient, which will be rewarded with excellent results of search promotion and high efficiency of working with clients.