What Are the First SEO Steps You’ll Take on My Website?
If you want your website to rank on Google, whether it’s 10 days or 10 years old, we focus on customer research and website architecture as our first SEO steps. We figure out what keywords your competitors are ranking for, what keywords you should be ranking for, then create a user-friendly website architecture built around those keywords that attract site visitors and show Google you’re an expert in your field.
Whether you’ve just launched your new website, or you’re trying to improve the SEO on an existing website, the first SEO steps we take are the same.
- Dive into keyword research and set up SEO-friendly website architecture
- Disavow any bad backlinks (i.e. not from trusted or relevant websites)
- Build quality backlinks (i.e. from trusted or relevant websites)
- Improve your content (whether that’s upgrading current content or creating new content)
SEO is a long-term process, so you won’t jump to the top of Google within a few days. But you can cripple your ranking potential by researching the wrong keywords and creating poor website architecture. Starting off on the right foot can save you hours and hours of work down the line, not to mention the cost that goes towards scrubbing out your SEO mistakes and starting over.
So here’s how we set your site up for success with the first SEO steps.
The importance of getting your first SEO steps right
Your customers go to Google looking for home improvement help, but what is Google looking for?
Most contractors only focus on the first part of that sentence – their customers.
It makes sense to think about your customers, after all, they’re the ones who’ll be paying your bills and putting money in your bank account. But if you want your website to rank on Google, you need to think about what Google is looking for too.
Put simply, Google wants to find content that provides the best solution to your customer’s problems.
It’s up to Google to make a captain’s call on which content is the best, and they make that decision by factoring in:
- Relevance: Is your content relevant to a customer’s search?
- Quality: Is your content reliable, trustworthy and full of expertise?
- User Experience: Is your content on a fast site that’s easy to use on smartphones?
At Tradie Digital we take those 3 pillars of SEO into account when setting up your SEO-friendly website. Without planning ahead to tick each of these boxes, your site will end up a mess with irrelevant content that lacks quality and is scattered across random pages.
We plan every SEO campaign to end with awesome content and high-quality link building strategies – but it all starts with your website architecture.
What is website architecture?
Website architecture is the floorplan of your website.
Before we write a single line of code, or pick any colour scheme, we roll out a blueprint of what your site will look like when it’s done – just like an architect drawing up blueprints for a home.
Good website architecture is easy to use. That means it’s easy for people to move from one page to the next because they understand what each page is about; and easy for Google to see what your website is about based on the keywords on each page. Get either of those crucial considerations wrong and your site is screwed.
Good website architecture answers the question “what will I find here?”.
So when potential customers land on a page they can clearly see the topic, and explore your content knowing it’s going to solve their problems. Same goes for Google who can clearly see the topic, and is more likely to rank your content knowing that content is going to solve people’s problems.
Remember, both humans and Google want content that helps people, and making that content easy to find is at the heart of what we do with every website at Tradie Digital.
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The connection between your first SEO steps and getting more leads
An SEO-friendly website is designed to bring you extra leads, without any effort on your part.
If you have to chase up referrals and drop flyers in hundreds of letterboxes, you’re sacrificing your free time to try and earn leads. A site built for SEO can rank on Google and attract visitors while you relax with the kids (or at the pub). People request quotes and make bookings on your site 24/7, bringing you the extra leads you want without the extra work.
Whether you’re starting a site from scratch or looking to have your current website improved, research comes before any of the ‘content creation’ and ‘link building’ most agencies throw around as their Ace in the hole. That means we:
- Research your current site structure (if you have one)
- Research your competition’s site structure
- Research keywords your target audience is using
This research helps us structure your website around your target keywords, as well as the keywords your competition are ranking for. Without this step your site will be a random assortment of pages without a plan. You could be the best electrician in your area, but if you build your core services pages around the wrong keywords, then no one will find you.
With the wrong keywords, every customer who Googles “emergency electrician near me” or “cheap surge protection help” will find your competition on Google – while your site, built without a plan, doesn’t have the right keywords built into each page.
Our goal is to structure your website so that each key service you offer has its own page, built around closely related keywords with commercial intent. That means we don’t care about people searching for ‘lightbulb’, but we do care about people searching for ‘LED light bulb replacement near me’.
What SEO steps come after website architecture?
Content and backlinks.
Too many agencies make SEO more confusing than it needs to be.
Once we’ve built your website’s architecture, we focus on creating problem-solving content and earning backlinks from relevant, high-quality sites.
With these 3 pillars in place, your website has the potential to rank on Google, get more traffic, and turn that traffic into interested leads and paying customers. It’s not rocket science, and it all starts with doing our homework and creating a website architecture that’s easy for people to browse, and easy for Google to find.
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