According to Starbright, when creating your business website, there are a few foundational elements which need to be implemented from the planning and development stages in order to boost its search visibility. The company unpacks each of these elements and what is considered important during these phases to improve your website’s visibility.
Stage 1 – website copywriting
With the help of search engine marketing specialists and keyword research, website copywriters will create content that contains the search phrases that’s relevant to your business. The inclusion of these words shouldn’t be unnatural and should be crafted in a way that creates an excellent user experience.
By combining great copywriting with keyword research, the likelihood of your website appearing in search results above the websites of your competitors improves. As an added benefit, creating the content before your website is designed will give the designer insights on the way the website structure should be planned. This will ensure that navigation will be easy for the user and search engines, which is a ranking factor.
Stage 2 – web design
Experienced website designers will always keep user experience and ease of navigation in mind. One of the most important elements of user experience is the website’s responsiveness, which makes it accessible to visitors accessing the site from their phones or tablets.
Additionally, there should be clear next steps for the user on each of the pages. Next steps enhance user experience and reduces your website bounce rate, which will in turn contribute a great deal to your keywords’ rankings.
Stage 3: website development
Leading website development companies use the latest technologies on both the content management system (website platform) they use to build your website and on the server (from a reliable hosting company). With this, they ensure that they create your website with the use of lightweight code that downloads quickly, a key ranking factor on Google since 2010.
In the website development phase, a quality controller will also check other elements that have a big impact on a positive user experience:
• Font size and colour – that makes the content easy to read
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• Tap element sizes – which is especially important for mobile users
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• Page layout – keeping the important content in places of prominence even when the user changes devices between completing a goal.
Stage 4: post-launch optimisation and continued improvement
Once your website has been launched, you should make it easy to find with the help of SEO and digital marketing services. Some website development and digital marketing companies offer a once-off SEO service that helps Google find and index your site for their search results pages. The once-off SEO service will include various technical elements but will focus on adding keywords to the relevant meta-tags to improve Google’s understanding of your website.
Keep in mind that a once-off SEO service won’t be the magic bullet that dominates Google’s results pages, it’s merely the final step in the website development process that gets your business noticed by Google’s bots.
A well-executed digital marketing strategy that includes SEO, content creation, Google Paid Advertising (Google Ads) and Social Media marketing will be the differentiating factor when you’re looking to grow your business.
STARBRIGHT (+27 12) 004 0080 starbright.co.za
