It’s Time To Launch!
So, you finally finished the project and you are ready to launch your client’s new cat toy website.
But are you really ready? Probably not. There are a number of things you should review before you set that new site free for everyone (including the search engine crawlers) to see. In no particular order, here are my 10 points:
1. Title and Description Tags
There are dozens of tips and tricks that can help a website rank well.
One of THE most important things you can do to help a new site rank is to make sure that there are unique Title and Description tags on every page of the site that clarify for the search engines what each page is about. Creating these tags can be very time consuming as it requires a lot of work, including:
• Researching and understanding the content of the page
• With the clients help, picking the keyword phrases that best fit the product and/or services of the website.
• Researching these keyword phrases to determine which phrases can provide the most possible traffic.
• Writing the tags and making sure that they are not too long as they will be truncated by the search engines.
- Posting the tags on each page of the website.
2. Create “schema” markup
Does your client have a brick and mortar location? Do they have testimonials on their website? These are just two of many reasons to use schema markup on a website. For specific details, Google Webmaster Tools can help. If you want more info on tags that can be added to a specific page of your site, you can check that as well on Google Webmaster Tools. Just enter the URL you want to know more about.
Schema tags are made for the search engines, not humans, although information such as contact info can be displayed on the web page. I highly recommend adding schema tags to the “contact us” page at the very least. If it is possible to add contact info with schema tags to the footer of every page on the site, that is even better.
Here is an example of schema markup for contact information:
<div itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/FoodEstablishment”> <link itemprop=”additionalType” href=“http://www.productontology.org/id/Delicatessen” /> <span itemprop=”name”>Name of Business</span> <div itemprop=”address” itemscope itemtype=“http://schema.org/PostalAddress”> <span itemprop=”streetAddress”>100 Fourth St.</span> <span itemprop=”addressLocality”>Santa Rosa</span>, <span itemprop=”addressRegion”>CA</span> <span itemprop=”postalCode”>95404</span> </div> <span itemprop=”telephone”>(555) 555-5555</span> </div>
Google has said that they do not rank one site above another because one has schema markup and the other does not, but they also say that a site may get more traffic due to the markup because the information in the search results is more complete and may therefore standout to viewers.
3. Make sure your pages have enough quality content
Each page on your site should have at least 200-250 words on it. This may seem like a lot, but actually it really is not that difficult to write content for each page with the help of the site owner. If you know enough about the subject matter, you should expound upon it as best you can. Pages with thin quality, such as 50-100 words and one or two images will not rank as well as pages filled with quality, focused content.
4. Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.)
This is incredibly important: every page on the site should have a descriptive <h1> tag that best describes the content of the page. Many times this is the exact same information in the Title tag, but it does not have to be so. Variations between the title and the H1 header can give the search engines a better picture of the overall content of the page.
You should also take into consideration any content on the page that should be considered a sub-heading and apply an <h2> tag to the description of the sub-section. You can use other header tags to create a hierarchy similar to an outline or list.
If the default size for your tags don’t suit your page design, use CSS to adjust it to look as you want, but don’t just leave them out because you don’t like how they look on the page.
5. Responsive design should be used whenever possible
There is little doubt that a mobile friendly website will rank better then one that is not mobile friendly, all else being equal. If you have not yet viewed your creation on a smartphone and a tablet, you really should do so before making it live. Not only is this a good SEO practice, you can avoid the embarrassment of having an angry client call you complaining that her site looks like garbage on a small screen.
6. Make contact information as easy as possible to find
Whenever possible, the contact information, at the very least the phone number, should be prominently displayed on the page somewhere near the top, preferably at the very top and most definitely above the fold. This is particularly important on mobile devices as visitors using a phone to find a business most likely would like to contact them by clicking the phone number.
7. Don’t use images for important text
Always put important information in text, not in an image. This is especially important for contact information, like a phone number or an email address as mentioned above. If you have content that you want to prominently display, use text and alter it using CSS. If for some reason the client insists on a graphic for something, make sure to use an ALT tag at the very least.
8. Image ALT tags
Every image should have an <alt> tag. The ALT tag is particularly important as it is read aloud to blind users on a screen reader and is displayed to visitors that have images turned off. It is considered by Google to be one of the hundreds of “signals” they use in determining ranking because it creates a higher quality user experience.
Google uses ALT tags to help determine the best images for a visitors query and can help an image show up in the results pages for a search, thus increasing visibility.
9. Use an XML site map and make sure to submit it to the search engines.
There are many site map generators out there and many times there is one built-in to a plugin that you may already be using for the website. Make sure to have separate site maps for your pages, posts, images and even the post categories as this will ensure that the search engines are aware of all of the information located on the site.
10. Use informative file names for pages, images and other files.
Hopefully you thought of this before you created your site. Ranking can be improved if your website is created using URLs such as www.example.com/choosing-cat-toys as opposed to www.example.com/pageid=468. Also, having a descriptive name such as my-cat-loves-this-stuff.jpg is much better then IMG0003490877.jpg. Make sure to utilize this in as many places as you can including PDFs and video files.
But That’s Not All!
There are dozens of other tips and tricks that can help a website rank well. If you are a one-stop-shop as far as web development is concerned, I recommend subscribing to the news feeds of some of these sites to keep on top of the moving target that is SEO:
Thanks, Marc, these are important basics to remember and apply. You may recall that coach Vince Lombardi always emphasized returning to the basics as the foundation of a winning strategy.