On this page
Quick answer: Get indexed through Search Console, give every page a unique title and description, create one page per service, keep the site fast and mobile-friendly, verify your Google Business Profile and collect reviews.
The checklist
- Website verified in Google Search Console
- Sitemap submitted
- Every page has a unique, descriptive title and description
- One clear page per service
- One main heading (H1) per page, with clear subheadings
- Your area mentioned naturally where relevant
- Google Business Profile verified and complete
- Business name, phone and address identical everywhere
- Reviews requested after every job
- Pages load quickly on a phone
- Content checked and updated every few months
Page titles
The title is usually the blue link in Google results. Make it describe the page, for example "Website Design in Cape Town | Your Business". Google sets no character limit, but long titles are cut off in results, so put the important words first. Every page needs a different title.
Meta descriptions
The short text under the link. Google doesn't always use it, and there is no length limit, but a clear one- or two-sentence summary that makes people want to click works best.
Headings
Use one main heading per page, then subheadings that break the content into sections. They help both readers and Google understand the page.
Sitemap and robots.txt
The sitemap lists your pages for Google. Robots.txt tells search engines which areas not to crawl. Make sure robots.txt doesn't accidentally block your whole site after launch.
Canonical tags and duplicates
A canonical tag tells Google which version of similar pages is the main one, so they don't compete with each other. Avoid publishing near-identical pages that only swap a town name.
Speed and mobile
Google measures real-user experience with Core Web Vitals. Good targets are a largest contentful paint (LCP) within 2.5 seconds, interaction to next paint (INP) under 200 milliseconds and cumulative layout shift (CLS) under 0.1. Compressed images and light pages help most.
Security
Use HTTPS on every page, and redirect the http and non-www versions of your site to one main address.
Web Development from Digitalx, priced in writing before we start.