Chapter 10: Setting up a new website

When you’re creating a new website, whether it’s the first site for your company or a new segment for a product, taking care of SEO from the get-go is a great idea. If you don’t do it now, it might require so much rework that it becomes very expensive and time-consuming later on.

This chapter is very similar to the last chapter (Migration) in the work the SEO team needs to do. If you read that, feel free to skim through this one.

What your SEO team needs to do

If you plan to get your team to execute this, broadly, they need to focus on these areas:

• URL Structures
• Internal linking
• Managing backlinks
• Suggest pages to create based on SEO data
• Technical SEO, because it’s better to wrap this up now vs later
• Setting up redirects to ensure pages are mapped correctly 
• Optimize any pages being created for the right keywords (finding the right keywords is the toughest part in this)

Rough plan for new website

When setting up a new website, divide it into three phases: Pre-Setup, During Setup, and Post-Setup.

Pre-Setup

1. New pages: Identify what new pages to create based on keyword research.
2. Page structure: Provide SEO pointers for page design to the design team.
3. URL structure: Suggest URL structures for SEO and clean analytics.
4. Footer & header links: Finalize the right set of links to add here. You’ll share suggestions for SEO, but you’ll also have to incorporate other stakeholders’ demands. 
5. Keyword-page map: Create a spreadsheet that clearly shows which page is optimized for which keyword so that you’re intentional about creating the pages and also, you can avoid cannibalisation.
6. 404 page: Make sure you have a good 404 error page in place.
7. Phase on phase plan: Most companies don’t (can’t) go live with the entire website in one go so break it down into phases. Help create this phase by phase plan for the team.
8. Talk to developers: Make sure your dev team isn’t making the most common mistakes that can easily be avoided now, but will become a problem later on.

During Setup (1 Month)

1. Development flow: Talk to your dev team to finalize the development timeline and staging process.
2. Review staging pages: Check the pages from an SEO perspective in staging before going live.
3. Go live: On the launch day, run a crawl to fix critical issues if you find anything.
4. Check if tools are still working: Google Search Console for SEO and anything else you use.
5. Check tech issues in GSC: Look for any other technical issues you see popping up like 404s.
6. Check indexing: Monitor indexing and reindexing weekly.(Very important)
7. Resolve tech issues: Right after taking the website live, start fixing any remaining technical issues you had deprioritised earlier.

Post-Setup

1. Drop report: Create a report one month after taking your website live to track changes in traffic and leads.

Monitoring success and what to expect?

When your website goes live, you should expect to feel a lot of excitement. 

Within a week, you should start seeing things getting indexed. If your website is not getting indexed, that could be a reason for concern. You need to check your Google Search Console to see why that’s happening.

During the development phase (even in migration), check each page from both a technical and SEO perspective. Make sure your tech stack is still functioning correctly. Open up the app and check for any technical issues.