Guide To Seo Setup On a New Website or Blog

Thinking about starting a new website or blog but don’t understand how to setup the Seo side of things?

Or maybe you have already setup your site and are searching for a beginners guide to learn more on what Seo is all about?

Seo setup requires a lot more than installing and configuring a plugin like WordPress Seo by Yoast.

In this post we”ll discuss best practice of Seo setup for beginners with new websites & blogs and also discuss what NOT to do so you don’t get banned or penalized by Google.

Visibility & Accessibility

One of the most important elements of Seo is Visibility & Accessibility. If the search engines and your site visitors can’t see your content then you have a problem.

Google webmaster tools will give you reports on all your broken links, 404 page not founds etc. Sign up for Google webmaster tools and make sure your content is findable by both Google and searchers.

Choosing Relevant Keywords

Best practice dictates choosing multiple word keywords or as some call them, key phrases.

Make sure they are both relevant to the overall content of your site and that the content of each page/post contains keywords & phrases as well as content which is relevant to the title of your page/post.

The page/post titles carry the most weight with the search engines however the content needs to be relevant to the title. Choosing keywords and key phrases which have low competition is recommended for beginners setting up a new site.

You can using a keyword tool to achieve this.

Quality Content Providing Value

Your main aim here is to solve the problem your site visitors need solved so provide a list of great solutions. My recommendation here is to write separate posts for each solution showing different methods & techniques and then write one post displaying a list of different solutions linked to those individual post.

Example:

How to backup your site using cPanel
How to backup your site using a plugin
How to backup your site manually

Then write a fourth post titled: 3 ways to backup your site.

This gives your reader a range of different solutions which are all displayed in a list but also link to separate posts which contain more specific content which they can choose from.

Its also a good idea to add a video explaining your content from a different angle using the same methods & techniques written in text on your post. I also recommend you write posts explaining the meaning of industry jargon. Example: What is CSS?

Your readers need to understand the meaning of certain terms and phrases before they can get a clear picture of what you’re on about.

Design, Layout & Usability

Based on my own personal experiences after moving one of my blogs from the Woo framework to Thesis is i have noticed a big increase in time on site and higher conversions as well as a big rise in subscriptions.

I put this down to a combination of little things including a cleaner layout, nicer design and easier access to old posts.

Google custom search is far more accurate than the default search box as well. The reason for this is by default all your images are stored by the month. If you want to change this you can by going to Settings > Media so all your images become stored in the same folder.

I did however make one big mistake which i’ll discuss later on which is part of the motivation behind writing this post.

A site needs to provide easy access to content which contains solutions as well as being easy on the eye. I’ve seen many sites chocker block full of stuff which makes it hard to find what you are looking for.

Basically, my favorite site is my own and i love it and want to improve it so my readers find it useful.

Social Network Seo

I have setup more than 10 social network groups and really need to fix my branding as it should be consistent across all networks. I have found Youtube and Twitter are great for targeted leads, making connections and establishing social proof, when you understand how to use them.

Tracking the success of social media campaigns is more important than ever and can now be achieved using Google real time analytics.

Social networking including Goolge plus are becoming an important part of future searching engine rankings like never before.

Link Building for Beginners

Writing content as a guest post is a great way to build links especially if the site you write for has a huge subscriber base and is related to your sites content.

Article spinning, Seo hyped directories, reciprocal links, link wheels, automated linking and building links through multiple forum registrations including paid links is bad and will get you penalized.

Caution: Be very careful setting up a forum or anything which offers or allows registration to your site. Spammers will register in the thousands to put a link on your site which connects your site to their’s which is probably low quality and connected to more low qaulity sites.

This will kill your credibility with Google and is very dangerous as you are still on probation when you start a new site.

I always try to keep my posts focused on the positives as i love WordPress but sometimes i have to get serious and speak out.

If you follow the Do’s and focus on the positives from this guide you’ll build targeted traffic from the search engines as well as natural, organic links based on the high value, relevancy and quality of your content. Good luck!

Here’s a great free guide to getting started with search engine optimization for beginners.
And try this beginners guide to creating SEO friendly content.

Whats been the most challenging element of setting up your site so far?

Have you spent much time configuring the settings on different SEO plugins?