A good start to good SEO is building important foundations for future SEO which is difficult to undo if you start down the wrong path.
- SEO starts with keyword research. I use a couple of Google keyword research tools and organise the results in an email to you.
- Sharing the keyword research with your web designers, copywriters, social media marketers, and your ad agency/PR company if you have them.
- Buying exact-match domain names based on the keywords research.
What is in a web design brief for good SEO?
- Pages must be indexable by search engines.
- Use a lightweight WordPress theme. I like the Sydney WordPress theme for fast loading web pages.
- Keep the site elegant, professional and simple.
- Minimal use of javascript (js) and css
- Page URLs must have keywords in them. That includes;
- No stop words like: the, in, at, of. No dirty URL with numbers and weird marks #?!-*%20.
- Image file name need keywords
- Please read image optimisation
- Optimise all images before uploading
- Correct image formats
- Hero (header images can be 1920 x 1080 ie 16:9 rati) others should be in the ratios:
- 4:3 eg 800x600px or 600x400px or 400x300px
- 1:1 eg 512x512px or 720x720px
- Page titles need to be a mix of upper and lower case. Eg the home page, Web Design Brief
- Only install FREE plugins unless you want to be at the mercy of plugin price rises every time a paid plugin license is required:
- Elementor page builder plugin.
- Yoast SEO. I’ll install the Premium version later as part of the plan for both higher-level SEO plans.
- EWWW Image optimiser
- Litespeed cache management
- AkiSmet
- delete “Hello Dolly”
- On the server select
- File compression
- Latest or second latest version of PHP. (In WordPress check site health to see if there are any things needed in PHP)
- Enable Lightspeed plugin
- Redirect http and www to httpS
- Please create a dofollow link to the new site from your web designer’s portfolio page.
- Credit to a web page author, Eg Author Perth influencer, Ben Grummels.
- Footer text: © 2024 Your Business Name. Designed by XXX? Marketing by SEO Perth.
CONCLUSION
When starting a new website it is important for web designers to go down the right path with good building blocks for a good SEO foundation.