By keeping these SEO factors in mind when creating your new website or shop, your foundation will be solid. This will allow you to continue building your SEO strategy over time.
Tip: Google’s goal is to provide users with complete and accurate information as quickly as possible. Have your website designed according to this principle and you’ll be safe for future algorithm updates.
Loadingspeed
The loading speed of your new website or online store is a very important SEO factor. Do you make your visitors wait several seconds for your page to load completely? Have you added so many animations that your image only appears after 2 seconds? Then you have some work to do. Your visitors want to be helped as quickly as possible.
Tip: Use file types for the web (such as webp) to keep your loading speed optimal.
Navigation and structure
It is essential that your website has a clear and logical structure. This means clear navigation, menus, links and categories. A well-structured website makes it easier for Google to understand, crawl, and index your content. At the same time, it allows users to navigate your website effortlessly.
Before starting your new website, think carefully about its structure:
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Minimize the number of clicks to reach any page. From your homepage, users should be able to reach an article or concept within 4 clicks.
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Maintain a logical click path. (Home > Blog > Category > Article)
Tip: Work from the bottom up when designing your site architecture. Start with detailed pages and build upward until you arrive at a comprehensive homepage.
Also make sure your URLs are SEO-friendly.
- Create readable URLs: Both visitors and search engines should immediately understand what the page is about.
- Example:
www.company.com/category-1/article455improve this towww.company.com/clothing/black-shorts
- Example:
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Keep URLs short: When writing a blog post about a specific keyword, you don’t need to include the full title in the URL, just the core keyword.
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Example:
www.company.com/blog/how-to-wash-a-wool-sweaterimprove this towww.company.com/blog/wash-wool-sweater
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Tip: Writing a blog post titled “5 tips for washing clothes”? Use a URL like /tips-washing-clothes. If you later update the article from 5 to 7 tips, you won’t need to change the URL, avoiding broken links or unnecessary redirects.
Last but not least, use internal links to make navigation even easier. Ensure users can click from your homepage to product pages, from there to product categories, and so on. Also make sure users can always return to the homepage within a maximum of four clicks.
Mobile-friendliness
We live in a mobile-first society. This means that most searches are performed on a mobile device (i.e., a smartphone). That is why it is essential that your website is mobile-friendly. Google will even crawl the mobile version of your site first and only then the desktop version.
When creating your new website or web shop, focus on mobile responsiveness to boost your SEO.
Website security
In addition to user-friendliness, search engines such as Google attach great importance to security. You need an SSL certificate and therefore an HTTPS connection to secure your website. If you don’t do this, Google will place you somewhere at the bottom of the rankings.
We include this certificate as a standard feature in the hosting package.
Robots.txt
Okay, now it’s going to get very technical. With a robots.txt file, you provide search engines with a lot of important information. In this file, you define which pages search engines are allowed to view and which they are not.
This file is placed in the main folder of your website. When a search engine crawls your website, it first looks for your robots.txt file. If you don’t have one, the search engine will crawl all your pages and URLs. This is often a disadvantage for your crawl budget, especially for larger webshops.
Note: a website’s crawl budget is the number of pages on your site that Google can and wants to crawl every day.
XML-sitemap
An XML sitemap is an overview of all (important) pages of your website. They serve as a guide for crawling and indexing your website smoothly.
Plug-ins
Are you building your new site or shop in WordPress? Then there are several plug-ins available that will give your SEO a boost in the right direction.
Install an all-in-one SEO plug-in. This means you don’t need to install any additional plug-ins. This reduces the load on your website and makes it easier to use. All your settings are centralized in one plug-in:
- An all-in-one SEO tool that allows you to implement several important optimizations, even with limited SEO knowledge. This tool offers many useful features for SEO specialists.
- Automatically ensures an up-to-date sitemap.
- All necessary SEO elements that need to be filled in are provided almost automatically.
- Boost your local SEO by entering your company details in a user-friendly way.
- Easy to link to Google Analytics.
Some examples: SEOpress, Yoast, etc.
Keywords
Once you have integrated all of the above technical SEO factors into your new website or online store, you can get started with the content.
To begin, first conduct a keyword research.
- Organize a big brainstorming session: gather everyone from your organization and have them write down words or terms that are important to your business. How does your target audience search for your products or services?
- Conduct competitive research: what words do your competitors use in their texts? Which keywords do they focus on?
- Create a clear list: collect all potential keywords in a clear list in Excel or spreadsheets.
- Check the search volume: use SEO tools such as Ahrefs to check how often your keywords are searched for. In the beginning, pay particular attention to small differences in your main keyword, such as ‘clothing store’ or ‘clothing shop’. You will build your first pages around these keywords.
- Incorporate your keywords into your text: do you have a clothing store that focuses on sustainable clothing? Then use the keyword ‘clothing store’ on your homepage and create a separate page for ‘sustainable clothing’. You will use this page later as a content cluster, which you can read more about below.
Incorporate these keywords into your texts, URLs, and meta descriptions.
Content clusters
Is there a lot of competition for your keyword? Don’t let that discourage you. Build a powerful content cluster to secure one of those top positions. Create a page with information about your main keyword. Keep your focus on user-friendliness and use internal links to provide more information.
Do you mention somewhere that sustainable clothing has many advantages? Then, later in your SEO process, create a blog about the advantages of sustainable clothing and add an internal link from your main page and back.
Images
The content part of SEO does not only consist of texts. Your images also have a huge impact on your search engine optimization. It is very important that you use the right photos on your website. As mentioned earlier, they can slow down your loading speed. Optimize the size of your images from the start.
In addition, it is also best to include your keyword in the title of your images and in the alt-tag.
I want a new website or online store, but I want to keep my SEO ranking. What should I do?
If you already have a website or webshop and want to maintain your search engine rankings, you need to perform an SEO migration. This allows you to transfer the SEO value of your old website to your new website. You keep your search engine rankings and lose a minimum of organic traffic.
Important: define in advance what needs to be done before, during, and after your migration in a clear strategy.
Want to further develop your SEO strategy? Then contact our partner Digital Climax.
