Building a website that gets found

Choose the platform for the site you'll actually run

For visibility, the platform matters less than people fear: WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, Webflow and hand-built sites can all rank and all be cited by AI assistants. What matters: you can edit titles and descriptions per page, add schema markup, get HTTPS automatically, and the pages render their text without requiring JavaScript. Pick the one you'll keep updated; an actively maintained Wix site beats an abandoned custom build every time.

The pages every site needs

• A homepage that answers 'what is this and for whom' in its first two sentences.
• One page per main service, product or topic, not everything crammed onto one page.
• A real About page (who runs this) and a Contact page; trust raters check both.
• A Privacy page; it's expected by users, regulators and quality raters alike.
• If you serve an area: your name, address and phone, identical everywhere.

Foundations to set on day one

• HTTPS from the start (free on every modern platform) and one canonical host.
• A title and meta description written for every page before it goes live.
• The mobile viewport tag: most platforms include it; verify on a phone anyway.
• An XML sitemap referenced from robots.txt, usually one setting.
• Decide deliberately whether AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot…) are allowed.
• Organization schema saying who you are, so engines and assistants can identify you.

Common mistakes

Launching behind a 'coming soon' noindex and forgetting to remove it. Buying a domain and pointing it at a parked page for months (age helps; parked age doesn't build content signals). Building the whole site as images or JavaScript with no readable text. Waiting for the site to be 'perfect' before publishing anything: engines reward sites that exist and improve.