The very basics of SEO
So now your site has been developed and all the kinks have been worked out. Before writing the final check, check out the site for some basic SEO. Make sure that every page of your new site shows something specific to that page. If your site is call “Joe’s Bird Site”, you don’t want every page to have a title of “Joe’s Bird Site”. You want something like “Joe’s Bird Site – Cages, Toys, Food and more …” for the home page and “Bird Cages for all breeds- Joe’s Bird Site” for the main cage page. Each page should have a title that is descriptive of the page and should also include the name of the site. The page description should also be different for each page and dependant on the content of the page. It should also include several keywords that are content specific. Your web designer should have done this but before you sign off you should make sure it has been done properly.
After you’ve confirmed that the title and description tags of the page are being handled appropriately move on and make sure that your web designer has included Google Analytics code. If he hasn’t done it, get it done, even if it costs you a bit more. You can monitor your site statistics very easily within the Google analytics page if the code has been included and verified. You will need to set up your own Google account for this but it is free. An email address and password are all you’ll need. Once this is done start visiting Google analytics pages regularly to see how well things are going. If this is your first web site it will take time for the numbers of visitors to start climbing and for the numbers to start telling you much but there will be some interesting numbers that you can start looking for right away. Are people coming to your home page and moving on to other pages or are they simply leaving. Are the key words that are used to find you the keywords you expected/want people to use or not. These two indicators alone will start to tell you if your website is working the way you want it to.
These are very basic concerns about SEO when just starting up and they are part of the web, but don’t forget a very simple and effective way of getting the word out – make sure your web address is on everything you print or publish in any way. Business Card, ads, email signature. List it with professional groups you belong to. All of this will help to bring in traffic.