Originally published 9 December 2014. Rewritten in October 2026 because most of the original advice no longer applied. The original date is kept so nobody mistakes this for new research; the content is current.
If you are launching a website, or inheriting one, these are the things to get right before you spend a dollar on promotion. They have not changed as much as the industry would like you to think. What has changed is the order.
Start with the technical floor
Before content, before keywords, make sure Google can fetch the site and that it loads fast. That means: HTTPS everywhere; one version of every URL (with or without www, with or without a trailing slash, not both); an XML sitemap submitted in Search Console; a robots.txt that does not block anything important; and pages that pass Core Web Vitals on a phone. A fast, clean site with ten pages will outrank a slow, messy site with a hundred.
Decide what each page is for
Every page should answer one question for one kind of visitor. “Plumber Marrickville” is a question. “Our services” is not. List the things you do and the places you do them, and give each a page only if you can write something useful and specific about it. Resist the urge to create a page for every suburb in Sydney with the same text; that is the kind of scaled content Google’s spam policies describe.
Titles, headings and descriptions
The title tag is still the most important on-page element. Make it a clear description of the page in roughly 50 to 60 characters, with the main phrase near the front and your brand at the end. The H1 should say the same thing in human terms. The meta description does not affect ranking but it is your advert in the results, so write it as one. Meta keywords do nothing and have not since 2009; leave them out.
Put a person on the site
Google’s helpful content guidance asks who wrote this and what their experience is. An about page with a real name, a real history and a photo does more for trust than any amount of “we are passionate about results”. Add the author to posts. Put the business entity in the footer.
Claim the Business Profile on day one
If customers can come to you or you go to them, your Google Business Profile matters as much as your website. Claim it, complete it, add photos, and start asking for reviews from the first happy customer. The map pack is where local search is decided.
Structured data
A small block of JSON-LD telling Google what the business is, who runs it, what it offers and what the FAQs are helps both classic results and AI answers understand the page. Most SEO plugins add a basic version; a service business should add the Service and FAQ types by hand or with a snippet.
Measure from the start
Set up Search Console and GA4 before launch, and set up GA4 to record enquiries (form submissions and phone taps), not just visits. In three months you will want to know what changed, and you cannot measure a baseline you never recorded.
Then keep going
A site that is launched and left alone drifts backwards. Review it quarterly: what is ranking, what is not, what has changed in your business, what competitors have added. The basics are easy; the discipline is the hard part.