How to properly setup a website for the first time

[Blitzburgh]

Good morning,

I am fairly proficient at SEO and understand a lot of the required elements - but am in no way an expert, which is why I am here now.

We are in the process of setting up a brand new website (true PHP -Laravel)

This will be for a nationwide website and will need to attract from the north, south, east and west.

Although I have no worries about putting my domain out here, the site is not live and I don't want to possibly have a broken link pointing to me before I even launch - so I will give you an example URL and work from there.

I will tell you it is a DOT Rentals website and we will call the business Widgets. So the URL is Widgets.Rentals

There is no .com, .net - nothing. It is an exact match domain. The site operates as peer to peer - meaning customers will upload their widgets, photos, etc. of their widgets for rent.

Now, having said that, let me ask this. If you were setting up this website - how would you recommend we do this right - right from the beginning?

Since the customers (not the vendors) will search for widget rentals in a specific location - would you recommend that we maintain Geo Location with Google with a URL like this?

Widget.Rentals/Orlando-Florida-beautiful-widgets-for-rent-at-a-great-price

Or is it better to not Geo Locate? Widget.Rentals/beautiful-widgets-for-rent-at-a-great-price
I have a lot more in regards to setting up the site like Title bars, headers 1, 2, 3 - Alt text images, etc.

But for now would appreciate the collective best advice from the group.

Mike

[Dalessi]

Hi,

As long as people will be able to search and get results based on what they are looking for including location I would use "GEO" locations. That will possible help in the search engines and get them to index pages by location and not only the products or services you are offering.

[Blitzburgh]

So you believe we should identify city and state in the URL. (Possibly city and country for internation) correct?

Also, does it matter to SEO if the Title and the URL match? Or should they be different

i.e. URL - Widget.Rentals/Orlando-Florida-beautiful-widgets-for-rent-at-a-great-price

TITLE - Orlando Florida beautiful widgets for rent at a great price

versus

**URL - Widget.Rentals/Orlando-Florida-beautiful-widgets-for-rent-at-a-great-price

TITLE - Find the best widgets for rent in the Orlando area** The reason I ask is because it is a lot easier to code in the first scenario than the 2nd. But, if #2 is the game winner - we will make it happen.