Having a site which performs well from an SEO-perspective in 2019 is no easy task. In fact, as many websites succeed in gaining page one rankings, there are dozens more trailing behind on page two, three and beyond. Which is why good implementation from day one is vitally important.

With that in mind, here is everything you need to do in order to ensure that your site has good SEO implementation from the start in order to ensure good rankings and traffic.

Have the Right Plugins

First things first, there are a few plugins which you may want to install on your site before you set off on your journey to complete SEO optimization. This is simple but can be quite important if you want everything to run smoothly. Some good starter plugins for SEO include:

  • Yoast – meta data, page analysis, XML sitemap implementation. This plugin is great for all round SEO needs.
  • W3 Total Cache – site speed is vital in the world of mobile-first indexing. So, speed up user experience on your site with a good caching plugin.
  • WP Security & Firewall – a good security plugin is vital for SEO and otherwise, to protect your site.
  • EWWW Image Optimizer – this compresses images to ensure fast loading.
  • YARPP – keep people on site and bounce rates low with Yet Another Related Post Plugin.

Do the Research

One of the biggest things you will read up about in the world of SEO optimization is keyword research. It’s a vital way to ensure that your website ranks for what you want it to. For that reason, doing this right from day one is extremely important. You can start this by using Google’s Keyword Planner, accessed for Google Ads.

Now, there is a debate over how accurate the data provided by Google is. Which leads many people to using alternative sources for keyword research (AHRefs being a popular alternative). However, unless you have strong feelings in this regard either way it should be fine for you to use Keyword Planner and effectively discover the keywords that will work best for your site.

For a new site, you want to pick relevant keywords, but with a relatively low amount of competition. So, this can mean choosing keywords that perhaps don’t get thousands of searches per month but will hopefully be more attainable for your smaller site. Of course, you can optimize a few pages for more long-term, harder, keyword goals. But, at first at least, you should be more realistic with the keywords you choose to set as your SEO targets.

Optimize All of Your Metadata

Once you have the right keywords, then comes implementation. This means making sure that you can edit and update your metadata on the site. Which is where some advanced website knowledge or a plugin (such as Yoast) is needed. For ease, especially when optimizing a lot of pages for a blog, a plugin is likely the best solution for your implementation needs.

As soon as you can change your meta titles and descriptions, simply include your pages chosen keywords in order to ensure SEO optimization.

Optimize the Rest of the Site

Once you have the key SEO optimization out of the way, considering everything else. Other areas to optimize include:

  • Content: write comprehensive, detailed, content which is optimized for your keyword (1 keyword mention for every 100 words).
  • Images: keep file sizes as low as possible and make sure you fill out their alt descriptions for great user experience.
  • Titles: putting your target keyword in H1, H2, etc. tags can be important for optimization.
  • Page Layout: what looks good may not translate well to mobile, so make sure you test both variations before setting anything live.
  • Site Structure: make sure all the most important pages on your site is easy to navigate to and preferably on the main site menu (this increases their prominence in the eyes of search engines).
  • Site Map: create and submit a sitemap to Google Search Console to enable easier crawls.

This is, of course, by no means an extensive list of how to best optimize your site for SEO. But it is a good starting point and can help you to improve the overall performance of your site in results from day one.

Set Up Tracking

Next, you need to ensure that site tracking is up and running on your site. This means setting up things like Google Analytics, Search Console and whatever else you need to track the performance of your site in the long term. The fact is that without the right tracking involved there is no way for you to know whether your site is getting any hits or not. Obviously, there are a few tracking tools available, but Google tends to be the most comprehensive and the most recognizable throughout digital marketing. It is also easy to implement, only requiring a small piece of code to be placed in the header.php file on your WordPress (or whatever CMS it happens to be) site.

As soon as tracking is active on your site, you are ready for everything to be live and for your SEO to work its magic on your rankings.

Final Thoughts

As soon as you have everything in place… you’re not done, not by a longshot. SEO isn’t something you can just implement and leave to do its own thing. That’s a mistake a business or website makes at its own peril. Implement, monitor and adjust. It’s the basic, but all so important, principle of SEO which sets the good sites apart from the bad. Make sure your site is one of the good ones.

Author Bio

Zack Halliwell is a writer in the health and marketing niche, giving advice on anything from the perfect branding to the latest app development London news. When not writing he can be found on long mountain walks with his dog, Batman.