Use SEO to Get Your New Site Off to a Good Start - Going Live is Not a Rehearsal

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Forget about putting up "under construction" pages. Do you really want Google to index an effectively blank page? Of course not! When you’re ready to take your site live, do it with real content. Spend the time to write it if you must, but if you’re building a multi-page web site, don’t go live with less than five pages of real content. You shouldn’t have a problem with this; if you’re a business with a product, you’ll want a home page, an About Us page, probably an FAQ, and so on.

Look at the URL structure for those pages, especially your home page. Keep it simple! Remember, for an online business it’s all about being found. Dev Basu writing for Search Engine People notes that “Using simple static url’s or permalinks that are descriptive of your web site will help you rank better.”

While you’re at it, make sure your internal linking structure is set up properly, with appropriate links that all work correctly. Site navigation can be confusing to new visitors and search engine spiders. Make it easy. Make sure that every page on your site links to another page on your site; you don’t want any orphans here. You should also consider setting up breadcrumbs, so that your visitors know at a glance where they are.

How are you going to build up your content? One obvious example you’ll hear everywhere is through blogging. I used to think that every site should have a blog, but now I’m not so sure. If you don’t have someone who can write well and regularly on topics that are relevant to your web site, you may want to think twice. Also, is a blog really the best way to fulfill your site’s goals? As Aaron Wall observed in a recent column for Search Engine Land, “…if you are a local plumber, does it help you make any sales to talk about that one clogged toilet that took six hours to fix, flooded the house, and has reached legendary status amongst your peers?”

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