May 1st, 2010 by Susie

A search engine optimization strategy starts with the development of the website. Before you ever start worrying about going live and travelling up the rankings, you should look carefully at how your site has been put together.

Ideally, your site builder will be someone knowledgeable about SEO link building and search engine algorithms, and who plans ahead and has a methodical approach. What you don’t want is someone whose sole intent is to get the site up and running as quickly as possible, so he can pocket the cash. This will only give your search engine optimisation company more work to do later. So, once the site builder announces they’re finished, spend a few extra quid and get a good search engine optimization company to give it the once over.

The first thing they’ll probably do is see how the URLs will read to the search engines. Remember, the more accessible the page is to the search bots, the quicker it will move up the ranking system. Overlong and complicated URLs can do immense damage to the reputation of both commercial and static websites. Quite often, an SEO company can tell a site has been built by an amateur, simply by the URL structuring.

Both the domain name and URLs of a site must be short enough to be easily typed into the address bar of the browser. The longer a URL is, the more likely it is that errors will crop up as it’s being retyped. So use tactical judgement with directories, sub-directories and word usage. This includes using relevant keywords in both the domain name and URLs. If the site structure is well-organised, this won’t be a problem, but an internet marketing company will want to make sure your site categories and sub-categories are matched to its URL directories and sub-directories.

Another thing that’s important to search engine optimisation is duplicated content. This doesn’t mean just watching that your site builder hasn’t filled your pages with plagiarised content. It means making sure your own original content isn’t stolen once you go live. Freelancing sites are full of requests for screen scapers and rewriters to work for a pittance. Don’t let these sites crawl their way up the rankings on the back of your hard work – start with a DMCA complaint to Google.

However, internet marketing includes checking your own site developer hasn’t been duplicitous by reproducing content across multiple URLs. You need to work closely during construction to ensure content isn’t just being repeated from one URL to the next. If the site has gone live, get a search engine optimisation company to check it over.

Generally, the page most likely to generate duplicate content to the search engines is the home page. It can end up being indexed with 4 different URLs – meaning 3 duplicated pages (www.your-domain.com; www.your-domain.com/index.html; your-domain.com; your-domain.com/ index.html).

This can spread to product pages, and is an SEO nightmare. To protect your internet presence, management of your site is a must both during and after construction.

Link to us

If you want to link to this blog, copy and paste the following HTML code to your website.