So you’re about to launch your new website, congrats! But you’re afraid the traffic won’t roll in like it has on your current business website. Below are five common SEO mistakes that are easy to make when launching a new website. Check them out to help ensure you’re set up for success.
1. Forgetting to Redirect
One of the first things on your to-do list is redirection! Once you’ve set up your new domain, work to ensure your old pages redirect to the new like pages/URLs. Be sure the redirects are permanent (also known as 301, which is a type of redirect). If you’re not sure how to do this, ask your SEO agency or web developer to help out. If you fail to do this, you will essentially flush at least some of your website’s accumulated SEO value down the drain.
2. Changing Your Code
Avoid removing or changing any major coded SEO elements. Doing so will also increase the chances of losing rankings. For example, leave elements like title tags and meta descriptions as is from day one.
3. Altering Your Content
In the same way that you don’t want to change your code, avoid changing your content too much as well. Altering important on-page content elements like headlines and header tags (H1, H2, etc.) will reduce that SEO ranking value. Leaving content as unchanged as possible will help you maintain your hard-earned rankings, versus having rankings potentially drop when your new site goes up.
4. Downsizing Your Content
Reducing the amount (i.e., length) of content on the site can be detrimental to your B2C or B2B SEO efforts as well. Oftentimes there are legitimate reasons to want to shorten or eliminate pages for the sake of user experience. If you need on-page content to look shorter and cleaner for this purpose, then keep in mind there are creative ways to layout the page differently while still keeping content length intact. You can break it up throughout the page or even put the information on different tabs. Design is important, but choose to work around it instead of eliminating ranked content.
5. Not Knowing Your Keywords
Focusing on the right keywords is key to SEO success. It’s important to do your best to get inside the head of your potential customers. What might they search for and what language do they use when searching for what you offer? Since they are an important part of your company SEO strategy, spend some good time researching and selecting some good target keywords. When done well, your site will get ranked for a lot of additional keyword variations over time (hundreds-thousands). But it’s good to pick some flagship keywords out of the gate.
Conclusion
Launching your new business website is exciting! It can also be complex with so many moving pieces. Remember that your first priority is to be aware of anything that has the potential to derail your rankings. Building a strong SEO strategy from day one around ranking protection will pay off in the short and long-term. It’s hard work and there are more than five elements that come into play, but the effort is well worth it. Then, after your new site is up and running, is the time to work on taking your rankings to the next level! As always, remember to keep going and never give up.
51 Responses to “5 SEO Mistakes When Launching Your New B2C or B2B Website”
Tori R.
It’s so smart to work around the design instead of eliminating content because that’ll work for you twice! It’ll keep the content you need to have higher rankings and make the user’s experience better. I’ll definitely have to see about changing things up instead of getting rid of them.
Matt Dalbey
So true!
Robert Pattinson
It’s nice to read through an article which explains about the SEO mistakes people find while launching a new website. Matt, you indeed have written it in a layman way so that anyone can understand and work accordingly. Thanks.
Matt Dalbey
Robert – Thanks for the feedback and kind words! Glad to hear the article was helpful!
tombanton
Thank you for sharing this information. It was useful and interesting.
Matt Dalbey
Glad you found it useful!
Jesper N.
Hey Matt
I had a client, that lost all their rankings when they published their new site, because they changed all urls, and forgot to tell their webdesigner. I came on to the project after 6 monts, and it took me 6 months to regain the lost rankings..
Matt Dalbey
Jesper – I’m very sorry to hear that, what a pain! But glad to hear you got the rankings back. Not changing URLs (or at least redirecting the old pages to the new) when updating a site is super important.
Sarah Del Rosario
everything you’ve shared is true, really great post. I will totally keep those things in mind, it surely helps me in improving my site and to avoid those mistakes.
Matt Dalbey
Glad to hear it was helpful for you Sarah! Have a great day!
Amelia Gomes
I am new in this field of SEO. These mistakes are really common to me. Thanks for sharing such useful ideas.
kumar babu
Thanks for this amazing article. I have been looking around for this since a very long time. Your article solved my problem. Exploring more articles in this website. Thanks.
Srikanta Padhy
Very important points you have mentioned. Definitely, it will remind me while launching the new site…Thanks for sharing these insights.
shweta
Very informative.
Rubhavan
In addition to these, not creating back links from high authority sites can also damage your SEO ranking. I believe back links, along with guest posts are the key to your website’s success
Patrick Ross
I like what you said about making sure that your old webpages redirect to your new ones to help your SEO rankings. My sister wants to make sure that her business is easy to find in the coming months. I’ll share this information with her so that she can look into her options for SEO services that can help her with this.
Mariam Praise
Thanks for the ideas that you have here! I do have a blog site and would love to optimize these helpful tips for it. I’ll definitely check back for more.
arad
great content really helped me know and understand new aspects about the topic , looking forward to more such blogs.
Jyoti
Basic things to remember while doing SEO. These focal points of SEO shouldn’t be avoid while Optimizing the new/old site.
Thanks for sharing informative points.
Satyajeet
This is very informative post. Things to keep in mind while designing new site explained in simple words.
Matt Dalbey
Glad to hear you found it helpful!
Robert
This tutorial saved me! Clear information for someone who would not even call themselves a beginner yet! Look forward to reading more from you Matt!
Matt Dalbey
That’s great to hear Robert! Thanks for the comment.
Surya Nivas
wonderful article and the content is top notch……
AQIB KHAN
This is useful information for us. Thanks for sharing such a good information.
binicar menorca
Thanks
sam
That’s a really great post on SEO. Thank you
Matt Dalbey
Glad you liked it Sam!
Nicole
My heart just gave a little fright to the 3rd mistake. The “Altering Your Content” factor. Because, I just did that yesterday to some of my pages. And then, I went to retraced back my footsteps right away on what are those things which I’ve tweaked or edited a little bit. But… I think I’m good. I’ve edited only some words and they’re not one of the content elements that you’ve mentioned in your article and not my focused keywords as well. Thank you very much for this heads up and informative article, Matt!
Richard Bishara
Amazing Post with great content, Thank You for sharing.
ATOZ
Hello , thanks for sharing this blog this is very helpfull for me
Matt Dalbey
Great to hear!
Erin J Daniel
I’m really impressed with your writing skills and your website format. Is that a paid theme, or did you customize it yourself? Either way, this blog was really helpful, it’s rare to see a nice blog like this one these days.
Matt Dalbey
Thanks for your kind words Erin! Feel free to reach out if you’d like to talk more about the site.
Keerthi.P
Very quick and short read to avoid SEO mistakes
nalini
very nice explanation to create a new website to avoid these mistakes…
Matt Dalbey
Thanks for your kind words Nalini
Pamela Ivie
This is quite an interesting blog and is explained very well.
Matt Dalbey
Thanks Pamela
Dinesh
Thanks for these valuable tips. I will keep this in mind while launching my new website
Matt Dalbey
Glad to hear they were helpful!
george marhsal
Thanks for such a great post. I really enjoyed reading it.
Matt Dalbey
I’m glad it was helpful George! Thanks for the feedback.
Raman
Extremely informative blog! Learnt about the SEO mistakes which should be avoided during launching a new website. Thank you!
Matt Dalbey
Glad you found it helpful!
Sara L. Bryant
Hi, This is the perfect blog for a beginner. I think these are key tips to make a website more effective. Thanks for sharing.
Matt Dalbey
Thanks for the feedback Sara. Glad you liked the post.
important tips
Hi there, just became alert to your blog through Google, and found that it
is really informative. I am going to watch out
for brussels. I will appreciate if you continue this in future.
A lot of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!
Matt Dalbey
Thanks for the feedback and encouragement.
janshon
I think it has been very good writing and we have benefited a lot
Stirling Berry
I wish I had read this article before I recently updated our website. At least I will be better prepared should we need to do another major update in the future. Thank you for the helpful information.