5 Steps To Leverage On SEO With A Brand New Website
I often get the question, “How do I start with SEO on a brand new website.” My initial answer usually goes like this: “Well, how persistent and patient are you?”.
The reason why I ask is simply to determine if the person is serious about SEO or just expects it to be a “push button make money overnight.”
Working With SEO Is Like Gardening
Think about SEO, like gardening. Nothing you ever plant would grow overnight and be ready to be harvested the next morning.
You need to plant a seed, water it, get rid of the weeds, and perhaps add a little fertilizer — and then have patience.
If you hate gardening, then just visit the supermarket and buy your vegetables.
So nursing your kitchen garden and grow your vegetables is SEO. Buying your vegetables is SEM.
Or you can say SEM is for the rich, and SEO is for the smart people! I think you got the picture by now. ;-)
Still curious OK, let’s carry on!
Step One: The Foundation
First, you need to set the foundation — you have to treat your website like a business. You need to add the basics like contact information, terms of services, “about us,” and similar.
Set up social profiles around your website/business. Start with obvious ones like a Facebook Fan Page, A Twitter account, Instagram, and YouTube.
Make sure you add a link to your website from all those social properties — it helps to show both users and Google that you have a presence on the Internet.
Step Two: Keyword Research
OK, I assume you already have a website and a hosting account, so let us move on to the keyword research.
You need to target keywords that have decent search volume, so it is worth targeting. You also need to check how competitive the niche is if you want to be able to rank.
If you are new to keyword research, my partner in crime Fabian Pott has crafted this blog post about keyword research — it’s worth a visit.
Step Three: Content optimization
Now where you have found the right keyword to target, it is time to write some SEO-optimized content for your target keyword.
Research is essential — and it is not just about sprinkling your keyword inside the title and mention it a few times during the article — that was years ago!
Try to think this way — Google has already done the job and ranked 10 of your competitors on page one in Google — How nice of them!.
Now your job is finding out what those competitors did to claim their position one rankings.
You need to examine:
- How did they structure their content?
- How are they using headlines H1, H2, H3, etc.?
- What kind of words are they using?
- What is the average word count of the articles ranking
Going through all that content while trying to count words and look for similar phrases would be a pain in the behind — it is simply too time-consuming to do manually.
The good thing is that a tool can help you examine how your competitors are structuring their content and what you have to do to match them — or even make your content better.
Does it work? Oh yes! If you are curious about my process of creating SEO-optimized content, I made a blog post.
Step four: Link Building
When you have started the content creation process, you need to add a little extra love for your content with some external backlinks pointing to your content.
I am not talking about blackhat techniques spamming your website into oblivion.
I talk about building relevant contextual backlinks from authority sites within the same niche as your website.
You need to focus on relevant authority directories and especially websites that allow guest blogging for SEO.
For some reason, it seems like link building is one of the disciplines that troubles website owners, but it doesn’t need to be that complicated.
Once again, it is all about having the right tool. It should be easy to do the research and find link opportunities that match your keywords and niche.
You should also keep track of where you get a link, which you have contacted, who responded, and stuff like that.
A spreadsheet might keep you organized for a couple of days, but then there is a big chance that you lose the interest or the traction.
The good thing is that you can solve this with one piece of software — Link-Assitant. For more details, check my Link-Assistant review here.
Step Five: Being Persistent
The first four steps should be straightforward. The real challenge is being persistent.
If you want to rank in Google for many keywords and drive a ton of free traffic, you need to build up authority.
You need to show Google and your audience that you are worth a visit — so publishing quality content regularly is necessary.
You should aim for 1–2 articles per week — well-researched articles that are 1000–1500 words on average.
You don’t need to go crazy with your link building — 3–5 quality backlinks per week from authority websites should give your website a severe boost in authority (and rankings).
Conclusion:
SEO is a serious business that takes time and patience — but it is also incredibly inspiring.
Don’t expect rankings overnight with a brand new domain name — but if you keep adding quality content and authority links into the loop, you would see some serious magic happen.’’
I have seen examples of a SINGLE URL ranking for more than 1000 keywords — driving traffic worth more than $50.000 per month!
How would you feel if your website performed like that? Is it worth a little hard work?
If you have the budget, you might also consider a different route and try to buy an established website and further boost it using this strategy.
It is never too late to get started — and even it sounds like a lot of work, you can achieve great things with a little patience and five hours of work per week.
How many business opportunities offer you that?
So the choice is yours. Do you want to get started with SEO or keep buying traffic?
So take action and start now! :-)
All the best,
Brian
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