Setting up a new website is an exciting time but if you don’t optimize it or undertake digital marketing practices it will be difficult to get it in front of the right audience.

Here we’ll take a look at the basics to get your site ranking higher in the search results as well as increasing your exposure across the web.

Simplify things

A longwinded and confusing website will just frustrate the user. If you are a small business advertising a product then give the user what they want, which should be a simple journey to the product page.

Set up Social Channels

Integrating social platforms will increase your exposure and enable users to share your content with their friends and colleagues. The obvious channels are Facebook and Twitter but Google+ is another excellent form of social sharing.

The benefit of sharing content through Google+ is author rank in SERPs. Here is a great guide on how to set up Google+ author rank and how it can benefit your business.

SEO Tips

By using some basic on-page and off-page SEO techniques you will almost certainly improve your search rankings. The main things to get right when considering on-page practices are page titles, correct URLs and making sure that all of your links work.

Keep your page titles short and snappy with optimized keywords. This will help search engines identify your site and the same goes for URLs. Keep them clean with sub folders relating to specific relevant pages. What you don’t want and what Google is not fond of is a really long URL with lots of numbers and questions marks in it.

When it comes to off-page techniques make sure you are producing fresh unique content, which can be shared through your social media channels and interact with your audience through blog posts and social media.

Inform Your Existing Database

If you had a previous website or if you just have a list of contacts associated with your business, update them to your new database to send content, newsletters and updates about your brand/business.

When you are setting up your new website think what your audience wants and how to keep them coming back to your site. Undertake the SEO basics and make your site interactive so users can easily access and share your content.

About The Guest Author: Ben Walker  is an SEO/marketing executive at vouchercloud, specialising in digital content and social media marketing and SEO practices.

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