So, you’ve just published your site on Weebly, or are about to and want to make sure you’ve done everything you can to make your site SEO friendly.
There are some issues that will only arise once your page has been up and online for a while, and you’ve started creating content. However, there are many things you can do to ensure your website looks great to search engines and to users as well, right off the bat. Getting started off on the right foot is always better than to have to go back and fix a bunch of errors!
Pages on Your Site
Whether your site has a single page, or many pages, you need to be clear on the purpose that each page serves and what kind of content it will have. For instance, you can have your homepage which gives a clear, immediate picture of what it is you do, and how you can help the visitor solve their problem. Your goal is to get them to keep going to your product pages, sign up for your newsletter, or any other action you’ve clearly defined. Your Contact page has the objective of a user filling your contact form, chatting with you via livechat, or connecting with you via social media. Each individual product page aims to describe the product to a potential buyer, give them the price and have them add it to their cart. When each page of your site has a defined objective, it will become much easier to pick the right keywords, URLs and write your product descriptions.
Pick the Correct Keywords
Now that each of your pages has a clear purpose, picking keywords becomes easier. Keep in mind:
Have simple, descriptive URLs
- The less generic you are with your keywords, the better. Focusing on a keyword like “realtor” is much less effective than focusing on “realtor in University City, West Philadelphia, PA”, or “realtor near Drexel Campus, Philadelphia PA”. A huge number of people are searching for ‘realtor’, but the ones searching for the more specific keywords that are relevant to you, are the ones you want.
- Keyphrases - although because of the term ‘word’, a keyword appears to be a single ‘word’, don’t assume that it has to be just one. We also call them keyphrases, because they definitely don’t have to be a single word! You can choose to optimize for an entire sentence, if it makes sense for your business. Don’t limit yourself!
Have simple, descriptive URLs
- Your URLs should be in sync with your keywords, and ideally contain them.
- If you want to edit your product URLs to have them include a keyword, follow these instructions.
Page Speed
If you haven’t yet launched, or are brand new, your page may not have any speed issues...yet. This is something you need to be consistently checking for, using Google’s tool, or checking if your website’s free SEO report (available on your Weebly dashboard) points out any speed problems. A clunky, slow website is annoying for a website visitor and extremely annoying for a visitor that’s on their mobile device.
Verify Your Site with Google Search Console
There are only benefits to doing this, and although it sounds a little complicated, Weebly has some great instructions here. Sometimes we speak with small business websites who published their sites months ago and can’t even find themselves on Google when they search for their own name and website! Verifying with Google Search Console ensures this doesn’t happen.
Blog
The sooner you get started with original content on your blog, the better! Don’t post about random things every week, but have a planned out idea of what you’re going to write about, when you’ll publish it, and what the reader will want to do after reading it (buy your product? contact you? share your post?). Blogging is one of the funner aspects of maintaining a website and a great way to get in touch with potential customers or business partners. Setting up your blog is not scary at all and creating your first post is a walk in the park.
Perform SEO Audits and Don’t Get Scammed
Whether or not you decide to use a paid tool to manage your SEO, you should perform a monthly check on whether any technical issues have appeared on your site, as well as monitor your keyword rankings. Remember, increasing your traffic from 0-60,000 in a few days is not what SEO is about, and beware of anyone or agency who guarantees this, or Page 1 Google results.
If you pay attention to these things, you’ve already started off miles ahead of most other website owners!
If you pay attention to these things, you’ve already started off miles ahead of most other website owners!
Larissa Murillo Larissa is the Marketing Manager at MarketGoo, an SEO application for businesses looking to optimize their websites for search engines.