SEO Website Setup Step 2 – SEO Foundations

Having selected your niche and keywords, you’re now ready to build the real foundation of your website.

This step takes you through everything from domain and hosting choices to the technical setup and essential tools.

When done right, it means your site is fast, crawlable, mobile-friendly, secure and ready for search engines and visitors.

Website Setup & Technical SEO Basics

“Technical SEO” sounds complex, but really it’s about making sure search engines can crawl, index, and trust your site, and users can use your site easily on any device.

In 2025, the emphasis is stronger than ever: user experience matters big time, and search engines (especially Google) expect sites to be technically sound.

A few critical macro-areas:

Let’s break them down as they relate to the blog, affiliate, or business site types.

Domain & Hosting

Choosing the Right Domain

Your domain name is your identity online – choose smart. Two main kinds:

What to consider:

• If you plan to expand beyond one niche, a brandable domain gives flexibility
• If you’re laser-focused on one niche and want immediate relevance, a keyword-rich domain can help
• Avoid being overly generic, spammy or limiting (what if you expand later?)

Best Hosting Options

Hosting affects uptime, speed, security – all of which impact SEO and user experience. Here are the options:

Tip: Even if you start small, ensure your hosting provider has a strong reputation for speed, uptime, and support. Because poor hosting will hold back your SEO no matter how good your content is.

Website Type & Themes

Blog/News Websites

If you are setting up a blog or news-style site (e.g., frequent posts, updates, commentary), you’ll want:

• A theme that supports frequent publishing and categorisation
• Good navigation, tags/categories, author support
• A layout that scales as you add more posts

Affiliate/Authority Sites

For niche affiliate or authority sites (reviews, product-comparisons, guides) you’ll need:

• Clean design that builds trust (affiliate disclosure, user-friendly design)
• Ability to showcase products, review formats, comparison tables
• A theme with built-in schema support (so reviews, rich results work)

Business/Service Websites

If your site represents a business or service (local or global), you’ll need:

• Clear service pages, location pages (if local)
• Strong call-to-action, testimonials/pricing sections
• A theme optimised for conversions + local SEO if applicable

Choosing the Right Theme

Whatever type you choose, the theme must tick three boxes:

• Fast performance: lightweight code, minimal bloat
• SEO-friendly: good markup, schema support, clean HTML, mobile-friendly
• Mobile-first and responsive: in 2025, mobile performance is non-optional.

Tip: Before activating the theme, test its demo for speed (using PageSpeed Insights or Lighthouse), check mobile display, verify it supports schema and doesn’t load too many unnecessary elements/plugins.

Plugins & Tools

Since many websites use WordPress, here are the plugins and tools you’ll want to install early:

These help with metadata, sitemap generation, schema markup, canonical tags, and more. Also optimise images (WebP/AVIF), lazy-load, defer non-critical JS/CSS – these are must-haves in 2025. Security and HTTPS aren’t optional anymore; they impact rankings and trust.

Technical Setup Checklist

Here’s a clear checklist of the key technical items you should set up before or immediately after launch:

Must check those –

Final Thoughts

Step 2 – laying your SEO foundations is absolutely critical. Without a technically solid site, even the best content and backlinks may struggle to rank well.

In 2025, search engines expect sites to be secure, mobile-optimized, fast, and structured for both users and crawlers.

Once you’ve completed these foundations, you’re ready to move on to On-Page SEO and Content Strategy, which will be covered in Step 3.