There are so many things to consider, when you’re setting up a brand new website (or blog).
There are handy AI tools for setting up websites, so you don’t have to do all of the work yourself, but even with those tools, there are steps you shouldn’t ever overlook, before you go live with your new website.
Neglecting Website Planning
Proper website pre-planning increases your chance of good, solid website traffic. Before you go live with your website, you need to do proper audience research, so you don’t risk building website features nobody will use.
It is a good idea to gather date from at least two sources; analytics from existing sites you own (or competitors), as well as direct feedback via surverys or interviews. This allows you to prioritize your content, get the right calls to action, and also website layout.
If, for example, 60 to 70% of your users will be browsing on their mobile or cellphone, go for a single column layout, and larger buttons, to make it easier for users to interact with.
Poor website structure will increase the bounce rate, and frustrate your visitors all-in-one. Aim for a maximum of 3 clicks from the homepage to any content on your site.
Use clear labels for your navigation, and keep the URL paths human-readable, for example: /products/mattress-model-x.
One of the biggest mistakes is ignoring SEO best practices. If you have poor SEO, it’ll harm your website’s visibility, crawlability (from search engines) and customers won’t be able to find your site; it’s as simple as that.
Fix your metadata, use keywords naturally and humanly within your content, remove duplicate pages, and ensure you have an XML sitemap, so search engines will be able to index your website correctly.
Poor Keyword Integration
Choosing keywords without intent will just waste your time, and limits your rankings. Do proper keyword research with keyword research tools.
Choose one primary keyword per page, and then 2-3 semantically related secondary keywords, so you don’t end up with keyword cannibalization.
Place your chosen keywords naturally within the post. Ensure you have them in your content title, the first 100 words, and at least of the H2 subheadings.
Always avoid keyword stuffing, and focus on helpful, readable and human content using variations of the keyword, and long-tail phrases.
Optimize your images with descriptive filenames (before uploading them to your site), and add ALT text containing relevant phrases for each piece of content.
Missing XML Sitemap
Like I mentioned above, your XML sitemap is super important for your website.
It will help to speed up discovery of your important pages, and it communicates their priority and update frequency for search engines to read.
Ensure you submit your sitemap URL to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, so they can easily crawl it.
Neglecting User Experience
We have all visited a website, and left almost immediately if you’re bombarded with obnoxious ads or a hard-to-use layout. Poor choices for your site’s layout, performance or site structure will increase bounce rates of your site visitors, reduce conversions and sales, and frustrate users.
Ensure your website design is fully responsive, that you have image and script optimization in use, like lazy loading your images, and ensure you have a clear navigation hierarchy that’s easy to use and understand.
Slow Page Load Times
Every second of delay, for a customer using your website, it lowers their engagement and the chance of a conversion.
Optimize your images by using WebP/AVIF files, defer non-critical JavaScript, and again, like I mentioned above, use lazy-load to help speed things up.
Broken Links
When you’re using a website, regardless of the type of website, there’s not much more annoying than broken links and 404 error messages, when simply trying to move around the website.
Crawl your website with a broken link checker, or a plugin, before you launch, to find any 4xx and 5xx errors.
Fix internal broken links immediately, and check the site regularly, as part of your site maintenance, to ensure you don’t end up with broken links going forward. You can create a custom 404 page, to help users find key content, if they do end up on a broken link.
Confusing Navigation
If users can’t find what they need within three clicks, they will leave your website entirely. Keep your top-level many to 5 to 7 clearly labeled items, and group related pages under predictable categories
Make sure you have an easy-to-find search box, so users can type in what they’re looking for.
You can even use heat map tools, to find out where your users are clicking, interacting and bouncing, to get an idea of what is and isn’t working on your website.