SEO Tips For New Websites – Beginner’s Guide
You’ve launched your new website hoping to draw in more consumers than ever before.
But if no one hears about your business’s new site launch, how will they be able to see all that you offer?
This is why search engine optimisation (SEO) methods – which can earn businesses free traffic from major search engines like Google and Bing – are an essential component of digital marketing for any flourishing organisation.
As it is known, free website traffic is the lifeblood of many organisations, thus helping them rise faster than their competitors, who lack organic traffic-generating strategies.
Marketers want more search leads through organic traffic because they result in 8.5X more clicks than paid search results and the reason why SEO is preferred.
One of the most challenging obstacles you will encounter while getting your website ranked highly in search engines is figuring out how to leverage SEO without breaking your bank account.
Unfortunately, SEO is not as simple as a cakewalk. Nor is it a one-time deal; SEO has to be a consistent investment you make when building your site.
Even if you have a pretty good idea of the best way to go about it, it can still be very tricky when deciding where to spend all of your marketing efforts.
The sources that are the right ones to achieve your website ranking goals within a reasonable time frame are even tricker to choose.
SEO seems technical, but anyone with patience can do it. All you need is time and effort to make the most of every project.
Here are some tips for beginners who are looking to build their website’s online presence:
1 – Domain Name
If you’re starting up a new business, you must choose a good domain name to play a catalyst to enhance your prominent online presence.
It should impart some idea of your business products or services to your target audience. It needs to be short, memorable, and simple, so it’s easy for current and future clients to recall your domain.
Your website’s domain name is a factor that search engine crawlers consider when ranking you in Google.
This is how crawlers decipher what your website is all about based on the words contained in your domain name.
Ideally, your domain name will reflect a primary keyword that you want to rank for, with the end goal being that searchers will be able to easily find you when they’re looking for your service or product online.
To do so, use an SEO tool to test out some variations of your service or product, paying close attention to keywords they are focused on.
2 – Setup Google Analytics and Google Search Console Accounts
If you do nothing else, install performance tracking software. It’s one of the best SEO tips that will allow you to see how your site performs on search engines.
By installing performance tracking software, you can stay more organised and see for yourself if there are any areas of improvement worth focusing on.
Easy-to-use but packed with powerful features, Google analytics is a convenient web analytics tool for most website owners. It provides a wealth of information that you can use to analyse your site’s traffic and improve its appeal to visitors.
Required a little know-how to get started, but if you’re using a WP plugin such as the most popular one through thousands of bloggers – Google Analytics by Monster Insights, then it’s even easier to gauge your data.
Google search console that offers you many benefits when optimising your site. If your website is not included in the top results, you need to maintain high-quality content, free of errors, and properly optimised according to Google’s guidelines.
Use Google Search Console to help improve the way your site is read or crawled by Google and determine where you need improving.
It can include making sure all of your pages and content are easy to navigate and find and that users will click on your website links in the organic search results.
This one tool will help you find the solution if you’re noticing a drop off in traffic.
3 – Sitemap Submission
As a Google Partner, you can use the Google Search Console to manage and report on your SEO twofold.
First, as an invaluable tool that allows you to upload a sitemap of your site; moreover, it is a way to monitor your website’s performance and optimise it according to industry standards and best practices.
When you upload a sitemap, Google can crawl your site, examine it closely, and index the posted helpful information.
It does this to account for any modifications that have occurred since their last visit so they can ensure your customers always see the most up-to-date content.
When an update occurs on your site, resubmitting your sitemap will prompt Google to check back in on its next visit so it can update its index.
4 – Prepare Robots.txt
Taking care of a site can be very difficult, and the responsibilities range from simple to complex. Robots need instructions, and robots.txt files live in the root directory of your server.
Using this small but handy file, you can instruct crawling robots which parts of your site they should go to and which parts to avoid, like the cart page or check-out page for E-commerce sites.
Test your robots.txt file to make sure you’re blocking any pages on your site that you don’t want search engines to access. Make sure there are sections of the site that only people with specific permissions can see.
5 – Target Low Competition Keywords
When you first launch your site, it will have a low traffic ranking. This means it will rank lower than established competitors for high competition keywords.
The best way to generate new website traffic is to target keywords with low competition, also known as long-tail keywords, because they are easier to rank highly for after getting optimised for higher ranking in search engines.
Market competitiveness is key to any SEO campaign and, by using Google’s keyword planner, you can get a very accurate idea about how competitive a term is.
If possible, use less competitive keywords since this may help your SEO efforts grow steadily. You don’t want to just sniper other people’s terms without making an impact on the web yourself.
6 – Keywords In The Title
Titles are essential for capturing the attention of your audience.
When using the website by someone searching on a particular subject, keywords used as titles may influence them to select any particular page from those being displayed.
This is well known for people into SEO, and in an SEO company, their placements hold much impact in rankings.
There’s a causal link between the keywords in your page’s title tag and rankings on search engines, so make the most of this technique.
You should also include your keyword in your meta description.
7 – Work On Strong Linking
One of the primary ways to navigate through the internet is through links. Links connect one page to other pages on a website, crucial for shaping your online reputation and how major search engines perceive you.
In other words, every time a webpage or blog publishes your content or mentions your company, that webpage becomes an active part of your online reputation.
Inbound links remain a large part of search results ranking. If one were to ensure quality links pointing towards your site, the chances of ranking at the top positions on SERPs would be higher.
You can do so many things to build links, but half of them are doomed to fail.
Cracking down on spammy link-building is the main reason why Google updated their algorithm over two years back, so now good old-fashioned marketing and PR works wonders in getting the target audience interested in reading more about your business (and hopefully coming back for more).
8 – Add Internal Links
It takes all kinds of links from links with different powers to build your site’s overall power.
Link juice is one of the most common types found on web pages that act as critical signals to ranking performance.
When you link out to another page, here’s how it works: if Google trusts the other page, it sends over some of its trust authority (or ranking ability) to your site!
Kind of like giving a part of their powers to push down your competitors in the SERPs!
So if you have a page that receives much traffic and wants to help with the rankings of other pages, add an internal link from the highly trafficked landing page to the pages whose rankings you’d like to see an increase.
Just don’t go overboard: too many links will dilute your link juice and won’t provide any benefit in the long run.
9 – Optimise The Images
Many people search for products by doing an image search. They then like what they see and visit the product website directly.
That’s if you have lots of images on your site! If this is you, turn your images into SEO opportunities by optimising them for Google’s image search algorithm.
Image Alt text is essentially a description that should pop up in place of an image should it cannot load, either because the website is being accessed from a device that doesn’t support images or if the user has disabled images altogether.
This way, you can make sure your users always receive a pleasant experience when visiting your site.
All you have to do is add a description of your product to the Alt text tag.
For example, <img src=photo-of-handmade-chocolate.png alt=” the delicious homemade chocolate photo”>
As you can see from the above example, changing the file name of an image that would otherwise be a random number like 23427491.png to something search engine friendly is often enough to boost organic traffic to your site.
10 – Keep Yourself Updated With The Latest Trend
Search Engine Optimisation is like the technology world’s version of home improvement. It requires frequent attention over many months and years.
This is more than simply creating a website and then forgetting about it, hoping your customers will find your firm out of sheer luck (which won’t be happening!).
Regular site audits are crucial to identifying problems and making improvements to ensure that your website’s architecture is up-to-date with recent changes in SEO techniques.
Reading blogs from industry experts will help you gain a better understanding of how search engine optimisation works as well as great tips for optimising your new website.
11 – Prepare everything before going live
If you want to make sure your content starts strongly, ensure that all the permanent pages are in place before launch.
Many customers use search engines to find out what a company has to offer, so this must be one of the first things they encounter when looking for your brand or product!
Conduct thorough keyword research by determining key terms and phrases ahead of time and plant relevant keywords throughout your website and landing pages before launch.
You should update and expand your website regularly. One way that bloggers do this is by publishing a new post every week.
One method of achieving this goal is by having one month’s worth of content lined up in advance. A comprehensive editorial calendar helps you stay organised and keep track of your content, which you can assign relevant keywords for SEO purposes.
Conclusion
Some of these SEO tips may sound intimidating when you’re trying to “learn it” because of its reputation as a complicated practice that’s been somewhat in mystery.
Many articles have been written about what comes next, but the reality is that sometimes things have to be tried.
It’s important not to put so much pressure on yourself or let fear set in by continuing to read more about these topics – instead, try implementing the information in this article and see how it works for you.
Keep in mind that there is no right or wrong way when it comes to these SEO tips! Whatever strategy feels right is the one that you should pursue.