Few scenarios to avoid pitfalls of building a website without compromising on the quality:
- Build it fast to start growing traffic ASAP
- Close the ‘brand website’ topic quickly to focus the clients
Output => v1 of your online presence with the necessary foundations as a robust base for the online strategy to perform
Don’t forget the final objectives which are:
- grow your business (online & offline)
- grow your online reach (if your target customer are online which is the case in most of the industries now)
Here is a checklist of actions (👇👇👇) to take to build good WordPress as fast as possible.
3 keys aspects
- SEO friendly
- Data-driven
- Performance – Fast loading speed
Suggested pre-requisites:
- Set-up a Google Account as a shared space for all the stakeholders
- Set up a new profile with Chrome browser to bookmark all the important links
Get a WordPress hosting with 1 click installer
Nowadays, most of the 1 click installer helps to set the WordPress environment quickly and based on the best practice.
Let’s avoid the potential mistakes of a manual installation. Cheers to automation!
Our inputs:
- Greengeek and their customer support is pretty efficient so far.
Set up and configure Analytics tools
Data is important to support future decisions on the online strategy.
Depending on your online, some of the following tools
Our inputs:
- Google Tag Manager
- Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager
- Heap Analytics via Google Tag Manager
- Hotjar via Google Tag Manager
Set up and configure Google Search Console
More data to help to follow the important keywords for your business and brand in the future SEO strategy
Don’t forget to link the Google Search Console with Google Analytics.
Configure the sitemap and submit to Google Search Console
In the plugin Yoast is installed, the site is accessible at yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml
How to submit the sitemap on Google Search Console
- Connect to your newly created Google Search Console account
- Click on ‘Sitemap’ on the left side menu under the section ‘Index’
- Input the sitemap URL (eg. https://le-briand.fr/sitemap_index.xml)
- Click on the CTA ‘Submit’ at the end of the input field
Google start processing the sitemap and might take a but of time. Let’s it work and jump to the next item in the checklist.
Write down the legal mention
A few resources to help you
- https://www.economie.gouv.fr/entreprises/site-internet-mentions-obligatoires
- http://generateur-de-mentions-legales.com/generateur/
- https://www.subdelirium.com/generateur-de-mentions-legales/#generateur
For the project, the ‘Creative Commons’ licence can be relevant.
Here is an example of legal mention for a digital platform under the ‘Creative Commons’ licence: https://wechatwiki.com/terms-and-conditions/
Install relevant plugin
Be careful: the more you add the heavier the site becomes
- SEO
- Performance
- Jetpack
- Smush for the images
- WP super cache
- autoptimize
- Layout
- Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg
- Ultimate Shortcode
- Back-up
- UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore
Disable RSS feed
This is a default configuration by WordPress. In certain case, it can relevant to keep it
WordPress Disable RSS Feed
Configure robots.txt
Inform the Search Engine crawlers what you want to crawl and what you don’t want them to crawl
Do not confuse: CRAWL vs. INDEX
Crawling is when the Search Engine crawlers are enabled to come to visit the page. You can tell them not to visit some pages such as the pages in your plugin directory (/wp-content/plugins/)
Indexing is when the Search Engine crawlers are enabled to add the page to the SERP.
They aren’t mutually inclusive.
User-Agent: * Allow: /wp-content/uploads/ Allow: /wp-content/uploads/wechat-marketing-for-business-open-library-logo-circle.png Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php Disallow: /readme.html Disallow: /refer/ Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/ht_kb-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/ht_kb_category-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/page-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/blog/post-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/blog/page-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/blog/category-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/blog/post_tag-sitemap.xml Sitemap: https://wechatwiki.com/blog/author-sitemap.xml
Configure .htaccess
List of rules to be applied to the .htaccess file
Link search console to Analytics
https://www.monsterinsights.com/docs/how-to-connect-google-search-console-to-google-analytics/
https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2018/03/06/how-connect-google-analytics-and-search-console/
Add all the properties in the search console
Domain + URL prefix
Add separate Search Console properties for all URL variations that your site supports, including:
- https
- http
- www
- non-www.
Analytics
Link Analytics to GTM
Create the 3 views in Analytics
Clean the data in the ‘Master’ view
Define an architect based on a quick keywords research
Our imput:
Submit sitemap
Create a Child Theme for the Twenty Twenty Theme
Twenty Twenty: An Introduction to the New Default WordPress Theme
Get first backlinks
Time to start your own! But don’t spend too much time on it because the most important comes afterwards.
If you are not confident it fast enough to focus on the business or if you don’t feel like it, the labo can help to build a WordPress website up to its potential starting from 1 600$.