Having a search engine optimized website could be the difference from getting the traffic you want or staying invisible. SEO traffic takes up 70% of a company’s overall traffic, so it needs to be taken very seriously. This means a strong SEO foundation needs to be built from day one. Even if you don’t know anything about SEO, it is very easy to learn. Here are a couple tips to build a strong foundation for your website:

  • Narrow your niche: Determine who is going to view your website. The more you narrow down and define your niche, the easier it will be to cater to their needs and optimize your site. Here are a couple questions you could ask yourself:
    • Who is your ideal customer?
    • What do they do for a living?
    • What gender and age are they?
    • Where do they live?
    • What’s their favorite way to receive information?
    • What buzzwords are used often?
    • Who else are they following?
      Knowing your potential audience helps a website get popular quickly, as long as you focus on catering to your niche and your niche only.
  • Prioritize mobile: Google has switched over to mobile-first indexing, as about 60% of searches are carried out on mobile devices. This means that the mobile versions of websites are being indexed before desktop versions.
  • Make sure your website is fast: Google announced a new ranking algorithm specifically for mobile search known as the “speed update”, meaning mobile sites should be given the same treatment as desktop sites. Statistics show that if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors will leave your website and 80% of those visitors won’t return. How can you improve mobile pages’ loading speed?
    • Use a browser cache
    • Compress all images
    • Use a content delivery network (CDN), which reduces latency and makes your website load up to three times faster
  • Have a Plan for Content: Makes sure your content is aligned with your business objectives in a organized manner
  • Optimize On-Page SEO: Create high-quality content that uses keywords that matches your user’s intent
  • Set up Google Analytics: ensures you are collecting data from the beginning in order to see who is viewing your page, how they found it, and the number of sessions, as well as who is linking to your page and what content is being linked the post
  • Create a Sitemap: Sitemaps help your site more visible to search engines and provides users with more accurate search results. It also helps your site get indexed and ranked, with the highest rankings getting the most organic traffic.