WHEN SHOULD YOU DO SEO? BEFORE, AFTER OR DURING?
Have you started an online business and are wondering if it is appropriate to think about SEO? Do you want to digitize your company but do not know when it is appropriate to start optimizing the site for search engine positioning? I'll tell you a secret: it's essential to start doing SEO before even launching the site. Below I explain why.
As an SEO consultant, I often felt asked when it was the best time to start doing SEO and if it was really necessary for your online business.
I personally believe that every time a client asks if SEO is needed or not , a consultant dies.
Doing SEO, or applying all the strategies and optimizations aimed at positioning a site in the best interesting positions in order to convey organic traffic in target and convert visitors into customers , is something increasingly fundamental and that should be done BEFORE the online publication of the project, before the goods are in the e-commerce warehouse and before they start making the first mistakes.
SEO is in fact a fundamental element of Web Marketing and online business should develop following the formulation of a positioning strategy. When you go online, you must not make the mistake of believing that everything is simple and fast: you have to plan, develop strategies and only start practicing afterwards, just like you would do with an offline business.
SEO at the base of a project
In theory, all new activities should begin to develop SEO strategies before starting the project .
Of course, positioning is only one piece of a much larger puzzle in which there are many other pieces, such as advertising and social media marketing, but in most cases SEO is not something more, but an element essential for the success of the activity being launched.
Starting an e-commerce , or any other online reality, without having first thought about SEO, is like starting to build a house without having first thought of contacting architects and engineers to design it.
But why think about SEO before starting a business? What are the precautions to consider when starting an online site?
Let's see them together.
1. Market analysis and keyword research
When starting an online business, it is fundamental to have carried out a detailed market analysis that sets the objectives of the business in the short, medium and long term , which defines what the market gaps are in which competitors are less present. , or even absent, and, in conclusion, understand if the project will be successful. The market analysis will also give the opportunity to carry out a first study of the keywords for which to optimize the site.
The data obtained from the analysis must in fact be integrated with the keyword research , i.e. the phase of study, analysis and research of the keywords that will show where to go to work in conscious demand through SEO and in latent demand through advertising. The search for keywords will allow you to highlight the most important keywords for the site and therefore how to go about developing the entire marketing strategy and architecture of the site.
The study of keywords is an indispensable part of online business and its correct development can make the difference between a successful business and an incredible disaster. The keywords are not used to write some articles to bring traffic to the site, but are used to outline its architecture and outline all the funnels that will allow you to conclude sales and achieve the objectives set.
Thanks to keyword research, it will be possible to go and see which are the commercial keys for which it will be easier to position oneself, so as to start the site, already ensuring the first economic returns, to invest in further strategies and optimizations to make the project bigger and bigger. profitable.
2. Site architecture and internal links
One of the factors that most influences the organic positioning of a website is its architecture. The structure of the site is in fact essential to give the right weight to each page, to create a structure that can be easily scanned by bots and to create a logical ordering of information based on your business.
One of the first considerations to make when dealing with a new SEO project is precisely to go and define, following the identification of the keywords to be used, a site architecture that allows you to better position the most important keywords, not to create conflicts or competitions between pages and to ensure that every content is properly positioned.
In the case of projects already started with incorrect site architectures, intervening can be quite complex, long and expensive. It could mean changing the theme, changing URLs and changing numerous other aspects of the website to create an appropriate structure. For this reason, it would be good to start with SEO before putting the site online.
To Read: SEO for E-commerce: Improve positioning and sales in online stores
3. Permalink and HTTPS
URLs and permalinks play a very important role in both SEO and user experience and for this reason they must always be structured and optimized in an SEO consultancy. Unfortunately, modifying permalinks in order to create SEO friendly URLs is an invasive operation , especially when doing it on large portals.
In this case it will be essential to make sure that you correctly manage all the redirects , or to import that the old urls refer to the new optimized ones, and even in the case of correct jobs, perhaps carried out directly by hatches with the integration of some lines of code, they can entail a momentary drop in traffic.
Even more problematic is the transition from HTTP to HTTPS , especially for large websites and e-commerce. Today, having an SSL protocol is essential and you must therefore do your best to prepare for the transition to HTTPS. This operation must be carried out with knowledge of the cause and competence, because there is the risk of causing some major problems.
The absence of 301 redirects from the http to the https version of the site, the mixed contents, or mixed contents, and the presence of internal links without HTTPS are just some of the problems that can damage the positioning.
4. UX and Responsive Design
Following the latest updates, Google has become increasingly important for accesses from mobile devices , as can be seen from the launch of the Mobile First Index which follows Google's trends and declarations over the past 5 years. This means that having a mobile friendly site with a responsive theme is also increasingly important for Best SEO NYC.
However, intervening on projects without a responsive or poorly optimized theme is much more complex than starting from scratch with an optimized project right from the start.
The same is true for UX , or User Experience , which plays a fundamental role not only in SEO but also in the increase in conversions. It goes without saying that to increase usability and user experience it is essential to intervene on the site in a more or less massive way.
5. Company Blog and Editorial Plan
Powerful indbound marketing tool and unfailing ally in positioning on search engines, the corporate blog, also known as corporate blog, is today the most fundamental to build a solid brand reputation and improve positioning . Although the development and management of a blog can be easily managed during construction, starting from the beginning with the presence of some articles and a well-made editorial plan will allow the site to benefit both in terms of speed of indexing that of positioning.
Structuring a corporate blog should be a fundamental point of the SEO and marketing strategy in general that underlies the project. The presence of quality content also allows you to develop an effective internal linking strategy thanks to which you can improve the positioning of the most important pages of the site. For many online realities, the presence of a blog is fundamental for the success of the online project and for this reason it is important that you start developing SEO from the beginning.
Conclusions
As you will have understood, SEO does not mean tricks and optimizations to be applied randomly on projects already started, but it means developing a strategy and a project that together with the other tools of Web Marketing allows to obtain the best relevant positions so that the online business reaches the set objectives.
Believing that SEO is only a "plus" and not a fundamental building block for starting an online business is one of the most serious mistakes that can be made when starting a digital project. For this reason it is essential that SEO consultations are requested before the website is started, so that we can optimize the work and speed up the economic return . Of course, SEO optimizations and link building can work wonders even on well-established sites, but if you want to do things well and in the most effective way, you need to think about it first.
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