SEO for New Websites: What Actually Matters (and What Doesn't)
You just launched a new website. It looks great. Now you're waiting for people to find it on Google. And you're waiting. And waiting.
Here's the thing: Google doesn't automatically know your site exists, and even when it does find your site, it won't rank you well unless you've got the basics covered. The good news is that the basics aren't complicated. Most of them are things your developer should be handling as part of the build.
The Stuff That Actually Matters
Page titles and descriptions
Every page on your site needs a clear title and a short description. These are the text that shows up in Google search results. The title should say what the page is about, and the description should give people a reason to click.
A good title: "Custom Software Development | Orion Studios" A bad title: "Home | My Company"
Your developer can set these up. If they didn't, ask them to.
Your site needs to work on phones
Over 60% of all web traffic now comes from phones and tablets, and Google uses mobile-first indexing for 100% of websites as of 2024. That means Google looks at the mobile version of your site first when deciding how to rank it. If your site is hard to use on a phone (tiny text, buttons too close together, content spilling off the screen), your rankings will suffer no matter how good the desktop version is.
Pull your site up on your phone right now. Is it easy to read? Can you tap buttons without zooming in? Can you find what you're looking for? If the answer to any of these is no, fixing that should be your top priority.
Page speed
Slow sites rank lower and lose visitors. People will wait about 3 seconds for a page to load. After that, they leave. The biggest culprit is usually images that are way too large. A 5MB photo that could have been compressed to 200KB will make your whole site feel sluggish.
Ask your developer about image optimization. On a modern site, this should be handled automatically.
Clean, readable URLs
Your page addresses should make sense to a human. "/services" is good. "/page?id=47&cat=3" is bad. When someone sees your URL in search results, it should give them a clue about what's on the page.
HTTPS (the padlock icon)
Your site needs to run on HTTPS. This has been table stakes for years now. If your site shows a "Not Secure" warning in the browser, that scares people away and hurts your search rankings. Your hosting provider should handle this for free.
Quick Wins You Can Do This Week
Set up Google Search Console. It's a free tool from Google that shows you how your site appears in search results, what searches bring people to your site, and any problems Google found when looking at your pages. It takes about 15 minutes to set up and it's incredibly useful.
Create a sitemap. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your site so Google knows what to look at. Most website platforms generate one automatically. Check if yours does by going to yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
Add alt text to your images. Alt text is a short description of what an image shows. It helps Google understand your images, and it also helps people who use screen readers. Keep it simple and descriptive: "Team meeting in office" not "IMG_4523."
What Doesn't Matter (Despite What You May Have Heard)
Keyword stuffing. Cramming your target keyword into every sentence makes your content sound weird and Google has been penalizing this for years. Write naturally. Use the words your customers would use. That's it.
Meta keywords. There's a "keywords" meta tag that used to matter 15+ years ago. Google ignores it now. Don't waste your time on it.
Obsessing over exact keyword density. There's no magic percentage. Write about your topic thoroughly and naturally, and the keywords take care of themselves.
Buying backlinks. Some SEO companies will sell you hundreds of links from random websites. This used to work. Now it can get your site penalized. Don't do it.
The Single Most Important Thing
If you only do one thing for SEO, do this: create genuinely useful content that answers questions your customers are actually asking.
Every blog post, every FAQ, every guide you write is a new opportunity for someone to find you through Google. The businesses that show up in search results are the ones producing real, helpful content on a regular basis.
Everything else on this list is important, but content is what separates the sites that get found from the ones that don't.
What We Build Into Every Site
When we build a website, SEO basics are part of the package. That means proper page titles, structured data, automated sitemaps, image optimization, fast load times, and mobile-first design. We don't treat SEO as an add-on because it shouldn't be one. It's just part of building a website properly.