How to do SEO Setup for a New Website: A beginner's Guide

Creating a new website isn’t a big deal anymore. The real challenge is to ensure that your site is optimized for search engines from the beginning. Before you rush to get your content in front of people, it’s important to ensure that your site is ready for search engines to crawl and index.

Before carrying out keyword research, content planning, backlinks building, and competitor analysis, here are five basic SEO setups for a new website you must look after:

Discourage Search Engines from Crawling Your New Website Initially

When you first set up your website, it’s advisable to discourage search engines from crawling it until you have enough content and the site is properly set up.

This is because search engines index web pages to determine their search rankings. Your site may not be fully ready, lacking in content or proper structure, which could negatively impact your future search rankings.

If your site is built on WordPress you can easily discourage the search engine from crawling your site in the beginning by following the steps:

1. Login to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Go to settings and click on the reading.
3. You can see the search engine visibility section, check the box, and save it to discourage the search engines from crawling your site.
4. After you have properly set up your website, you can uncheck the box and save the setting for the search engines to crawl your website.

Proper Configuration of robots.txt File

The robots.txt file is a critical component that tells search engine bots which section of your site they should and shouldn’t crawl. It’s important to configure this file correctly to ensure that search engines can index your site properly.

A misconfigured robots.txt file can prevent search engines from indexing your site at all, which would be detrimental to your SEO efforts. Here is the information you must know before creating the robots.txt file for your website :

• Name and Place the File Correctly: Make sure the file is named “robots.txt” ” (not Robots.txt, robots.TXT, or otherwise) and it’s located in the main directory of your website. This makes sure search engines can find it.
• Structure: One robots.txt file can have multiple lines of user agents and directives (allows, disallows, crawl-delays).
• Formatting: Each set of user-agent directives is separated by a line break.
• Use Simple Commands: Write commands in the file to tell search engine bots what they can and cannot look at on your site.
  
  

Basic format:
User-agent: [user-agent name]Disallow: [URL string not to be crawled]

A basic command includes a “User-agent” (the bot) and “Disallow” (the part of your site they can’t crawl).

Be Clear: Make sure your instructions are clear to avoid accidentally blocking search engines from your site.

• Remember It’s Public: Anyone can see your robots.txt file, so don’t try to hide sensitive information with it. Add /robots.txt to the end of any root domain to see if that website has a robots.txt file!
• Separate Files for Subdomains: If your site has subdomains (like blog.example.com), each one needs its own robots.txt file.
• Include Sitemap: Include sitemap in the robots.txt file. Adding a sitemap in the robots.txt file helps search engines find all your pages more easily.

Example: https://aruntamang.com.np/robots.txt

Sitemap Proper Configuration

A sitemap file lists all the important pages of your website, making it easier for search engines to find and index your content. Ensuring that your sitemap is properly configured and submitted to search engines is a key step in helping improve your site’s visibility.

Here is the information you must know before building a sitemap for your website:

• Sitemap Generation: You can generate the sitemap for your website automatically or manually. If you’re using WordPress, plugins like Rankmath, Yoast, or All in One SEO these plugins can automatically generate a sitemap for you. But you need to make sure that you have only the required sitemap for your website.
• Sitemap Size and Limits: Keep in mind that sitemaps have size limits—50MB (uncompressed) and 50,000 URLs. If your sitemap exceeds these limits, you’ll need to split it into multiple sitemaps. Consider creating a sitemap index file to manage multiple sitemaps efficiently, which can also be submitted to Google for better tracking of search performance in the Search Console.
• Encoding and Location: Ensure your sitemap is UTF-8 encoded. While sitemaps can technically be placed anywhere on your site, placing them in the root directory is recommended. This ensures the sitemap can influence the indexing of all site files.
• URL Formatting: Use fully qualified, absolute URLs in your sitemap. For instance, instead of listing a page as /mypage.html, specify the complete URL: https://www.example.com/mypage.html . This precision helps Google crawl your site more effectively.
• Content Inclusion: Only include URLs in your sitemap that you want to appear in Google’s search results. For sites with separate URLs for mobile and desktop versions of a page, it’s advisable to include only one version in your sitemap. If you choose to list both, make sure to annotate the URLs to distinguish between desktop and mobile versions.

Proper Setup for GA4 and GSC

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Search Console (GSC) are tools that provide insights into your website’s performance and its visibility in search results. Setting up these tools correctly from the start will allow you to track your website’s traffic and search performance, and make informed decisions based on data.

Set up Google Business Profile

For local businesses, setting up a Google Business Profile account is a simple yet effective way to enhance your online presence. It allows your business to appear in local search results and on Google Maps, which can drive more traffic to your website and increase your visibility to potential customers.

These five basic SEO setups are crucial for ensuring that your new website is search-engine friendly. By taking these steps, you can lay a solid foundation for your site’s future SEO success and improve your chances of ranking well in search results.

Do you agree? Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below.