8 Effective SEO Strategies for New Websites

8 Effective SEO Strategies for New Websites
  • 8 min read

Starting a new business isn’t easy. Launching a new website isn’t easy. Getting the word out about your new website? You guessed it—it isn’t easy.

However, there are multiple SEO strategies for new websites you can use to get traffic quicker and rank higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). 

So fuel up your spaceship and strap up because we’re taking a trip to the unstable and ever-changing SEO planet.

1. Keyword Research

This is arguably the most important step in SEO. Without proper keyword research, you could end up writing amazing blog posts that no one will ever find. The good news is, there’s no shortage of SEO browser extensions and research tools you can add to your arsenal.

Keywords Everywhere is a great free option. With it, you can simply type your target keyword on Google’s search bar, and it will show you its search volume and other related keywords.

Below is an example of the information that pops up when searching for the keyword “best electric vehicles.”

Doing proper keyword research to find what you need to rank on Google

As you can see, the monthly search volume for that keyword in the United States is 6,600.

But what search volume should you aim for?

Well, this depends on what the goal of the blog post is. If the goal is to sell your (or an affiliate) product, you could target keywords with at least 300 searches per month. However, if your goal is to monetize with advertising, aiming for keywords that receive more than 1,000 searches per month is a better idea.

Besides monthly search volume, another metric you want to check is keyword difficulty. This can be done using Ahref’s free Keyword Difficulty Checker

For new websites, it’s often best to aim for keywords with low difficulty—anything from 1 to 30 should be okay. As your website grows, you can begin targeting keywords with higher difficulty.If you’re looking to go beyond keyword research and perform in-depth SEO analysis, there are other more advanced tools like Outranking.io that use artificial intelligence to get better insights into SERPs.

There are many SEO tools available to help improve your SERP rankings

2. High-Quality Content

Of course, sprinkling keywords inside your blog post alone won’t guarantee you that number one spot on Google SERPs. 

The quality of the content you publish is also important. When writing content, you want to make sure that you satisfy search intent and provide value to your visitors.

Search intent, also known as user intent, is the reason why someone is searching for a particular query in a search engine. 

Search intent should always be your leading SEO approach because that is what your readers are looking for

For example, when someone searches for the keyword “best protein powders,” the majority of the results are blog posts with a list of different protein powders. They’re not informational articles talking about why protein powders are good for your health.

On the other hand, search results for the keyword “keto diet” show articles that cover the basics of the keto diet, such as what it is, the different types, benefits, and more.

Another way to make sure that your content is seen as high quality is to give visitors actionable tips. Many website owners write vague content that only tells people “what to do,” not “how to do it.”

Creating high-quality content is definitely time-consuming, but it’s one of the most effective SEO strategies for new websites. In a survey conducted by Statista, 91% of marketers mentioned they were using content marketing to promote their business.

If you’re looking to scale your content creation process, a copywriting tool like Jarvis can be beneficial as well. This tool uses artificial intelligence to write human-like content, marketing copy, social media captions, sales pages, cold emails, and more—even nonprofits use it to make their processes more efficient.

3. Guest Posting

Another way Google decides whether or not to trust and rank your website is through backlinks.

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from one website to a page on another website.

If Google sees that a lot of popular websites in your niche are linking to yours, it will start trusting your site more and assume it’s high quality, which will lead to an increase in rankings—think of backlinks as “votes of confidence” from one website to another.

One of the most effective ways to get these backlinks is through guest posting. 

Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, is when you publish content on another website with the main purpose of getting a link back to yours. This is a win-win for both parties involved—the host gets free content and you get a backlink.

Guest posts can be an effective way to scale your content

However, this goes beyond backlinks. Guest posting will also allow you to tap on the referring site’s audience, helping you drive more traffic to your new website and establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

When looking for websites to contribute to, you want to look for those with a similar or higher domain authority (DA) than yours. 

Domain authority is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how likely your website is to rank in SERPs. The higher the DA, the better.

To find a website’s DA, you can use a free tool like Ahref’s Domain Authority Checker or Moz’s toolbar. Keep in mind that each of these tools has its own way of measuring DA, so you’ll get a different value from each. Just make sure that you compare DA within the same tool and not across. 

Now, Google also takes into consideration the relevance of the backlinks, so you don’t want to just get a bunch of links from websites that are unrelated to yours. 

For example, if you have an electric vehicle company, getting a backlink from a fitness website won’t be of much help. Plus, most users visiting that fitness website won’t be interested in electric vehicles, so you won’t get much referral traffic.

4. Website Speed and Accessibility

Besides quality content and backlinks, Google also takes user experience metrics called Core Web Vitals as ranking factors. These Core Web Vitals measure and evaluate the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of websites.

Your website speed and responsiveness can be measured using a tool like PageSpeed Insights.

When it comes to site speed, there are a ton of things you can do to improve it. Here’s a list of the most important ones:

  • Using a fast web host – Shared hosts tend to overcrowd their servers. This leads to poor performance, frequent downtimes, and more security vulnerabilities. For mission-critical websites, it’s typically a good idea to use a managed and fast WordPress host like Rocket.net.
  • Using a lightweight theme – All-in-one themes might seem like a good idea—after all, they have everything you need and more. However, all the extra features you’re not using will still require processing power by your server, which can cause slow page speeds. When choosing a theme, make sure that you go for a lightweight one like GeneratePress that only has the features you need.
  • Compressing images – One of the most common mistakes people make is uploading images to their library without compressing them. You can easily optimize images using a free tool like TinyPNG.
  • Using a caching plugin – Caching plugins can do miracles when it comes to site speed. Basically, they will store copies of your website in a temporary location so that the user doesn’t have to load everything when visiting again.

When it comes to website accessibility, you want to make sure that:

  • Your website has readable size text
  • Clickable elements are not too close together
  • Color contrast is good
  • Your theme is mobile-responsive
  • Your images have alt text

5. Shareable Content

Not only should your content be valuable but also be something that people want to link to and share with others.

A good way to make this happen is by creating unique content or articles that go against conventional wisdom. If you’re a new website publishing the same type of content other websites already have, people will be more likely to link to the more authoritative website. 

However, if you write about a unique point of view or go against conventional wisdom, you’ll get people’s attention and encourage them to share and engage with your content. Now, when writing about things that go against conventional wisdom, you must ensure that you include references and research, not just mention things that aren’t truthful. 

Here are some other things you can include in your articles to generate more backlinks:

  • Original images 
  • Data and research
  • Original charts
  • Quotes from experts in your industry

6. Form Relationships

Networking is a great SEO strategy for new websites. Instead of thinking of others in your niche as competitors, think of them as potential partners. Don’t be afraid to reach out, leave comments on their blog posts and social media platforms, and share their content.

Remember how we talked about guest posting earlier?

Well, a good way to increase the likelihood of your guest post pitch being accepted is by making yourself known before even pitching—and engaging with others in your industry is a good way of achieving this.

Another option is to reach out to companies that are related to yours but aren’t direct competitors. For example, if you have a business that sells protein powders, you could connect with fitness websites that focus on things like workouts or recipes instead of supplements.

7. Good Website Structure

Website structure refers to how you organize your website’s content.

How you structure your website is important because it helps visitors easily navigate through your site and Google crawlers move through web pages to find new content, which can speed up indexing and boost your search engine rankings.

Start with the basics, having a good website structure is key to success

If you wait until you’ve written many blog posts and added several product pages to think about website structure, it’ll take a lot of work to declutter and organize everything—that’s why it’s best to start thinking about it before even launching your new website.

Here are a few tips to help you build an SEO site structure:

  • Link to your most valuable content on your homepage – The majority of your traffic will land on your homepage, so make sure that you include links to your most popular blog posts or products.
  • Use categories and tags – These will help you keep your topics organized and Google better understand what your site’s about. A common WordPress SEO mistake people make is not using categories and tags properly. Remember, categories are used for general topics whereas tags are used to describe specific details about the blog post.
  • Link to other relevant articles on your site. Good internal linking will allow you to pass “link juice” or “rank” to other pages on your site.

8. Create Content Before Launching

If you’re reading this list of SEO strategies for new websites before having even created yours, make sure that you have content up before launching. 

Many people ask themselves if they should publish all of their content before launching or publish an article every week or every month instead. 

Since it can take some time for Google to give you some love and start ranking your posts, it’s best to publish everything you’ve got right away. You can then focus on creating a publishing schedule for new content.

But what type of content should you publish?

You can aim to have 3 to 5 pillar posts ready to go. Pillar posts are very in-depth blog posts that cover a particular topic/keyword you want to rank for. 

Let’s Start Ranking

When it comes to effective SEO strategies, there’s much more that can be done. However, as a new website owner, you must take it one step at a time and focus on the basics before moving on to more advanced strategies.

First of all, you will likely want to get things rolling by adding a WordPress SEO plugin.

Check out some of best such as YoastRank Math or SEOPress that are all excellent choices to help optimize your SEO for success, and feature many useful tutorials to get you started.

If you try to tackle everything at once, you could end up feeling overwhelmed and not making any progress. SEO is a long-term game, so be sure to do it right from the very beginning.

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