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Before Content (B.C.): Laying the Foundations of a Search Engine-Optimized Blog

June 10, 2016 - Last Modified: June 17, 2016 by Christopher Jan Benitez

Content has been hailed as king when it comes to SEO and digital marketing for the past several years. It is true that relevant content is the key to pushing your site’s visibility further. It is also the primary building block that you use for every facet of your online business – from marketing emails to link-building.

Despite this, you cannot neglect to prepare the essential foundations before you start laying the bricks.

You may have the best content in the world. However, if it is published in a sub-par website with a forgettable and confusing domain name, then it will all be for naught.

So before you focus on content, make sure you have established the following essential foundations for a search engine optimised website.

Domain Name

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The role of the domain names when it comes to search engine optimisation has changed over the years, but it remained a relevant factor nonetheless. To establish a strong SEO foundation for your site, you should remember the following domain name practices:

Use .com

One of the most consistent factors in the search engine performance of domain names is the use of the ‘.com’ top-level domain (TLD). About 75% of all websites in the world use the .com extension. This being said, a large fraction of users will assume that a company’s official website has the .com extension.

Keep It Simple

Another rule that search engine marketers play by is to keep everything simple. Domain names that are shorter, more memorable, and are easier to spell tend to perform significantly better than overly-complicated ones. Remember that you want your site to be memorable and not to confuse to your visitors. This is why using up to two, easy-to-spell words is the best practice.

Be Brandable

Finally, your domain name must be highly brandable. It should be a domain that will let your audience know what your company is about without having to click on your site.

Choosing a domain name should not be rushed, so it is important to take your time and explore every possible option. After coming up with the perfect domain name, the next step is to have it registered with a domain registration service such as NameCheap, Name.com, and 1&1.

Hosting Plan

It is true that lower pricing is more attractive for those who only want to have a site up and to run. However, for the SEO-conscious, a small price tag simply isn’t enough. Keep in mind that choosing a web hosting with SEO in mind boils down to the factors listed below.

Reliability: Uptime and Downtime

Crawlers, also known as “spiders”, may visit your site and follow its internal linking structure multiple times a day. This way, services – particularly search engines – can gain access to updated information about your site. This is a crucial process for indexing a site in SERPs.

The periods in which your site is accessible are measured as uptime. On the other hand, downtime measures the time in which your site is inaccessible. This is usually due to problems with the web host’s server. If spiders attempt to visit your site during downtimes, affected pages will be logged as inaccessible. Over time, your site is at risk of being marked as unreliable, thus hurting your search engine rankings.

Speed

In 2010, Google officially stated that page loading speed is an essential SEO factor since it directly affects user experience. 40% of web users will leave a site if it takes more than three seconds to load.

This is why it is important to choose a web host that’s reliable in terms of speed. Learn to check legitimate reviews for each host before committing. You can also use a tool such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights to monitor manually your page speed. Just be sure you’ve applied the necessary on-page optimisations to maximise speed to make sure you are not falsely accusing your host.

Shared, VPS, and Dedicated Hosting

Shared hosting means you’ll be sharing resources such as CPU, memory, disk space, and so on with other accounts on a server. VPS or Virtual Private Server hosting is quite similar, but you get to maintain and access a bigger space and bandwidth allocation. You may also configure anything within your VPS. You can customise your server’s configuration, install custom software, control user access, and so on.

Lastly, dedicated hosting means you get exclusive access to your very own server. You have full access to all the available resources and configurations. This is essential for websites that run resource-heavy applications. Some of the best web hosts that offer dedicated hosting plans include Temok, among others.

Content Management System

Image Source: Pixabay

After choosing the best domain name and hosting plan, you need to select the perfect Content Management System or CMS to put everything into place. A great CMS will allow you to optimise your pages, customise your layout, and publish your content in the best light possible.

Remember that a full-fledged CMS is different from website builders that offer limited customization options. These website builders include blogging platforms that are suited only for blogs and not business websites. Although they are capable of ranking decently with search engines, website builders will never offer the same level of flexibility and functionality as popular CMS platforms like WordPress and SquareSpace.

Conclusion

SEO is a very landscape that requires tremendous effort every step of the way. Although great content can propel awareness of your brand, you still need a great domain name, a reliable web host, and a comprehensive CMS to establish your online authority. Search engines simply love a brandable site that’s accessible and can offer a meaningful experience to users. Moreover, with these foundations checked, you can reap the maximum benefits of your content strategy.

Image Source: Freerange Stock

{ 13 Responses }

Tim philander says:

All those factors are really helpful before starting a blog. Especially hosting plans and content management system are an essential factors. By acting upon the above mentioned factors success will be there for you as a blogger so as to attracts your viewers.
Akinde Hafiz says:

Hey Benny, Thanks for this wonderful post. This is one good reason a blogger should research before starting a blog. Yes, content is key, but if SEO isn't considered, the content is as good as a crawler. You are very correct about using ".com", but I think keeping it simple and brandable will more likely make the blog a household name and attract visitors. Thanks
- Christopher Jan Benitez says:
  
  Thanks for the comments, Akinde! I strongly feel that SEO is a big part of a blog's success because it helps generate passive traffic to the blog, if done correctly. The tips I shared above should at least provide newbies clear guidelines on how they can proceed with building an optimized blog. Regarding .com domain extension, while I think it is ideal to have this extension for your blog, URL. keeping it simple is just as important, if not more. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if your site's URL ends in .net, .org, .biz, or whatever, as long as the URL is easy to type out and is memorable.
Gabu says:

I wanna become a blogger, thanks for sharing!
- Christopher Jan Benitez says:
  
  Thanks! You should start with building the foundations of your blog as stated above to build an awesome one that people will read.
Mukesh Dutta says:

Wonderful post! I find many newbie bloggers start blogging but do not give importance to branding. They need to understand that a blog is not just a blog, it's their brand. They need to treat it as a brand. Branding is essentially important for for those bloggers who want to make money from their blogs and when it comes to making money, it comes to the business sphere. And an online business can not go far without proper branding. I don't want to demotivate newbie bloggers. It's just an advice to do the brainstorming for one's branding before it's too late. Thanks, Mukesh
- Christopher Jan Benitez says:
  
  You hit the nail on the head, Mukesh! Figuring out your brand before starting out your blog allows you to target a specific segment of your audience and build content tailor-made to their needs and wants. Doing so successfully will help elevate your blog to greater heights!
Lakshmi Bai Nagumanthri says:

It is an amazing post, you have explained it very clearly. Mostly people get confused with the methods for SEO explained on different sites but this post made the basics clear. Most of us miss out choosing a proper web host, as it might be problematic when the crawler visits the site and the server is down.
- Christopher Jan Benitez says:
  
  Thanks for the post. The web hosting you choose will serve as the foundation of your blog's SEO strategy. The site speed, uptime, and reliability are dependent on your web hosting, so you need to choose the best one for you that meets the three criteria aforementioned.
Kamal Jain says:

Yeah I have been using .com extensions on my each site these days! Anyways I like to use hostgator for my hosting account. Thanks for sharing the article :D
- Christopher Jan Benitez says:
  
  Thanks as well, Kamal! Choosing .com for your web domain is ideal because it's the most popular domain extension. And there's a reason why HostGator is the choice of making site builders like you :)
Jack says:

I think you have nailed it in this post. These are the fundamentals when it comes to making websites. I really like Bluehost as they offer reasonably fast server response times. I have never used a dedicated server to host any of my websites but I guess this option will be fantastic for someone with a larger site!
- Christopher Jan Benitez says:
  
  Thanks for the kind words, Jack! A dedicated server is perfect for medium to large sites that are receiving hundreds and thousands of traffic day. You want the infrastructure to accommodate as many possible visitors to your site, and a dedicated server affords you this advantage.

Before Content (B.C.): Laying the Foundations of a Search Engine-Optimized Blog