Creating a top-ranking site takes time, but with the right strategies, you may be able to hasten the journey. Any comprehensive SEO strategy for new sites should pay special attention to these 6 steps.
1. Strategic Keyword Use
It can be difficult to build rank when you focus on the most popular keywords relevant to your business that the competition has already been utilising in their content for years. Even if your content is valuable, the webpage will likely remain lower-ranked given how new it is. A good option is to focus on less popular versions of the top keywords.
For instance, if “London cabs” is the top keyword, you can instead opt to target “London taxi cabs”. Using related or (LSI) keywords also allows for a similar effect as they closely relate to the main keyword you would be targeting. You can also opt to add modifiers like “best” or “top” to the keywords you are using. By building rank on these lesser-used words and phrases, you can edge closer to top page visibility.
Try to include keywords at the beginning of title tags, in page URLs, and within the first 100 words of your content. Placing them early on in your content will make it easier for Google to detect them and ascertain the relevance of the article.
2. Meta Descriptions
These are the brief descriptions that appear below the title of the content on the search results page. What is indicated here often influences an online user’s decision to click through. If you want to positively influence online users, you have to get creative with these descriptions beyond just including keywords.
Depending on the nature of the content, you will want to appeal to your audience. You have about 150 words to work with in convincing them. You can choose to be funny, succinctly informative, be keyword-focused, unusual, interesting, and much more. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and think of what you can briefly state that will entice them to choose you over other results.
3. Link Building
With a new website, you are unlikely to already have any internal links that will help with ranking. Do however include them to help with navigation and encourage search engine crawlers to visit all your web pages. Adding links to older content with every new posting can also help boost the older content page’s ranking.
Be sure to include quality outbound links. The links should be relevant to the content you are publishing and connect your webpage to an authoritative and high-quality source. This will help the web crawlers discern that your content is valuable and informative. Get started on this with all your content and in time, it may earn your web pages quality inbound links.
4. Content Length
When it comes to building rank, longer content is desirable. Google tends to rank longer content higher than brief posts. This may be because there is often more keyword usage and the idea that more content means more value is being imparted to readers. It is also easier to incorporate long-tail keywords when there is longer content to work with.
Google considers longer content as having more relevance and authenticity. Work with content creators that know how to do the necessary research that will result in quality content. Also, ensure that the content is grammatically correct.
5. Page Optimisation
User experience is important to Google. To deliver on this, you need to ensure that your page loading speed is fast. Drag can cause users to lose interest ad return to search results for an alternative. There are online tools you can use to check your page speed and that can offer guidance on what you can do to improve it.
Also, ensure that your site is mobile-friendly and responsive. The mobile version of your site is also being indexed by Google and may influence its ranking. There are also online tools you can use to test this aspect of your site.
6. Social Media Marketing
You can help boost the visibility, traffic, and ranking of your site using your social following. Create posts and share new content on your social media pages. Every time someone clicks through to the content or shares it with others, your ranking improves.
There are plugins you can use to monitor this traffic and see the impact on your rankings. You can use this analysis to determine what social media channels and types of content have the strongest impact on ranking. This will allow you to quickly modify your SEO strategy so your future efforts result in better results.
