Step 5: Protect Your Search Engine Optimized Pages Written by Rebecca Churt at Hubspot.com Visuals by patmillssullivan November 5, 2016 (a repost) Getting found online is essential to improving the rest of your site's metrics. If no one is coming to your site, how can you increase new leads, reconversions, or sales? Here are some tips to designing your new website with SEO in mind: Document your most search-valued pages. Use your marketing analytics to figure out which pages receive the most traffic and inbound links, convert the most leads, and ultimately cover the most influential topics in your industry. If you plan to move any of these highly valuable pages, make sure you create the proper 301 redirects. Create a 301 redirect strategy. Speaking of 301 redirects, this is extremely important in terms of retaining the traffic and link value associated with a given page. Create a spreadsheet to record and map out your 301 redirects (old URLs vs. new URLs). Then hand this document over to someone technical for proper implementation. Do your keyword research. For every page on your newly designed site, pick one keyword/topic that the page will focus on. Once you determine the keyword(s), use [...]

Written by Rebecca Churt at Hubspot.com Visuals by patmillssullivan November 5, 2016 (a repost) While we don’t recommend obsessing over your competitors, it can help to know how you compare. Run your website through HubSpot's free Marketing Grader tool to generate a report card of how your website and marketing is performing. (Or, if you're already a HubSpot customer, use our Competitors tool .) Use these diagnostic tools to evaluate your competitors' websites as well, so you're aware of their strengths and weaknesses. Next, take a look at your competitors' websites, and take note of what you like -- and what you don’t. This is not meant to make you a copycat, but rather to help you realize what you can do better. Once you conduct your analysis, put together a list of action items highlighting some areas for improvement and what you can do differently than your competitors. For more information, check out our comprehensive blog post about how to conduct a competitive analysis .