Site SEO work from the start or after a while?

[Cedric]

What's the best timing of implementing SEO initiatives for a new website? It's a debate that often splits opinions and I wanted to put it out here in our forum to gain more insights from your diverse experiences.

There are two sides of thoughts that I've encountered, and I'm sure you all have too. The first one says for 'SEO from the Start'. Those who follow this method believe that incorporating SEO strategies right from the conception phase of the website can enhance visibility, create a strong foundation for future content, and reduce the need for significant overhauls down the line.

On the other hand, we have the 'SEO after a While' approach. Supporters of this approach suggest that, while SEO is indeed important, it isn't necessary to kick-start with an aggressive SEO campaign. They argue that content and user experience should be the primary focus in the initial stages, and once the site starts gaining some traction, more complex SEO strategies can be applied. After all, you can change the SEO of any article after a while, or just improve your overall existing SEO.

Here are a few questions to consider:

1. Which strategy do you prefer or think is more efficient - 'SEO from the Start' or 'SEO after a While'?
2. If you have chosen one strategy over the other in the past, what were your results? Do you think you would have had a different outcome with the other approach?
3. Do you think the nature of the website or the target audience plays a role in this decision? For instance, do e-commerce sites or blogs benefit more from starting SEO earlier than, say, a forum?
4. What are the potential pros and cons of both approaches, in your experience?

Let us know what you think.

 

[Joeychgo]

Ok, well first we have to identify if we're talking about on site or off site SEO.

In short, on site SEO is what you do to your website to make it easy for the search engines to find and navigate. Offsite SEO includes the things you do outside of your site such as link building. This helps make you easy to find by these same search engines.

On site SEO should be from the start and ongoing. As times change and your forum develops, certain things will become more popular than others so you may want to highlight those things to search engines. You do this with things like internal linking structure..

Off site SEO is generally all about links coming back to your site. Not just the main page, but also to specific portions of your site and to specific content as well. I believe you should start by getting links to the main page, but as time goes on move more toward linking to specific content, such as really good articles your members create. This can also depend on the subject matter of the forum as well.

Point being, your SEO strategy should change and adapt as time goes on to meet the specifics of your site.