If SEO is to any site, what status updates are to any facebook profile, then without it, you may as well be non-existent.
A site that lacks any basic SEO optimization is a site that may not even exist in the index of any search engine.
Let’s imagine for a minute that search engines, like Google and Bing, are actually feeds on your facebook wall… Yep, there’s Johnny, letting the world know what his thoughts on noisy parrots and the logic behind decaffeinated coffee is.
Now, let’s imagine your site is a status update, if you don’t let the world know what you think of noisy parrots, no one will know.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. But if your site is to search engines, what a status update is to facebook – then no one will know your site even exists, it won’t appear in their facebook feed – it won’t appear in any search engine’s index. It won’t appear when someone is searching for it.
Give your site a platform
Your site needs to announce itself to search engines, announce itself to the world-wide-web. Stand proud upon raised hill, and claim unreservedly, “Hear me now! I am developed, I am optimized! I should be indexed!”.
But your site needs you to give it a voice, to carefully raise its podium of soil up, layer by layer, with the bare hands of considerate SEO.
Now your site has updated its status, it appears in your feed and you notice it! It has all the makings of a decent status update, and you feel inclined to “like” it.
You may think to yourself, “Well, look at this delightful and thoughtful contribution to the world of social networking – let’s give it the exposure it deserves and share it with the rest of the world.”
Except you’re actually a search engine (hello Google) and the status update is a new site.
Don't set up shop in a ghost town
Search Engines can’t promote your site if there’s nothing to promote. Launching a new site with little to no optimisation is like setting up shop in a dead town with no sign hanging outside your window to let the tumble-weed know you’re actually open and willing to sell your needful things.
So why develop and design your site without SEO in mind? If you plan to receive a consistent and steady stream of visitors to your site everyday, you’ll need to consider SEO in conjunction with web development.
The more the merrier!
It wasn’t too long ago you could still consider a site as one comprehensive whole. Like a nice wholesome loaf of bread. But then we realised we prefer our loaves pre-sliced, with GI-this and GI-that, suddenly fibre content is an important thing to consider and loaves just seem to be getting smaller (or is it the breadboxes?).
Today, we can easily recognise the far extending reach of the online platform to millions of people everywhere, anywhere, and at any time.
- The world wide web is saturated every day with approximately 571 websites created and launched every 60 seconds, a total of 3,57 billion indexed web pages,
- At least 986 million active sites. You can actually watch that number increase here.
- From 1 website in 1991 to over 700 million in 2013, the number of websites is expected to reach 1 billion in total by June 2014.
This only accounts for the small portion of the web the average Joe has access to, the familiar part of the internet we see everyday, which is about 10% of the total web – the rest is all “Deep Web”, unindexed and hidden sites. You don’t want your site to end up there if you want Joe to find it.
Make it easy to find, use and share
Making sites accessible to more people has become an important part of the development process.
Accessibility Check-List:
- Responsive and Adaptive Design (fits all screens)
- Browser and device compatibility (plays nicely with everyone/thing)
- Load time and performance optimisation (make it fast and furious – caching, gzip compression, minifying scripts)
- Social networking (if necessary, only if necessary)
- SEO (get it found online)
The above reflects how the scope of development has been expanding to accommodate additional aspects, fast becoming crucial as part of the process. A few search engine optimization fundamentals and basics can very easily be covered and implemented before site launch.
Got these SEO basics covered?
- Permalink structures (e.g: SEF, “search engine friendly” urls),
- The right kind of .htaccess rules (e.g: 301 redirects from www. version to non www. versions to avoid site duplication),
- A robots.txt file and an XML sitemap,
- Google Analytics integration and competitor research on ranking terms/phrases and keywords.
Incorporating SEO into your initial site development will give your site the online introduction it needs. Web SEO is in the unique position to offer both, we understand the importance of web development in conjunction with attentive SEO.
Contact Us to get an idea of how we can make the two work together for you.
Still not convinced you may need a touch of SEO?
Get insight into the daily estimated size of the world wide web.
