As we step into the new decade, there is no excuse for having a bad website that isn’t helping your business attract sales. SEO managers are knowledgeable about the changes that they need to perform to keep their websites in top SERPs. If we have to put it bluntly, the SEO of your website is the key to make or break your online presence. In this article, we will be discussing how as a new website owner, you can follow the essential SEO tips to get your website on the first page of SERPs.
Importance Of SEO In Present Day
It doesn’t matter if you are a company that hires a roofer, or an IT consulting firm, a pharmacy, or even a home builder, you need a website, period. Right now, the number of active websites on the internet is 1.5 billion for the 4.58 billion unique Internet users (source).On the other hand, if we look at the social media side of things, the active users that log in once a week on their social accounts are 4.14 billion(source). Also, every second, millions of people are clicking on the search button on Google’s homepage. As a result, each day, Google receives 3.5 billion search queries.
So if you are thinking, having a website isn’t necessary for your business, you need to think again. Each day more than 2 million new pages get uploaded. Once you are done reading this blog, there will be more than 200 new posts online (source). So in all this bustle, you might think your posts and web pages will not be able to perform well. Don’t worry, with this article we will help you figure out the most important SEO techniques which you can implement from day one of posting your blog.
There’s one more thing that you need to keep in mind before proceeding further. SEO is not a sprint, rather it’s more like a marathon where you need to churn in different SEO techniques for at least 3 to 4 months without thinking about the results. Only after that, your website will gain a position in the SERPs.
What is SEO?
If you don’t know what SEO is then don’t stress over it. It’s nothing too complicated. In fact, it is pretty easy to understand its functionality and importance. Also, that’s what we are aiming to do in this article. So let’s start with the very basic question, what is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a technique of ranking your website higher on SERPs in the unpaid section and getting all the traffic organically. It might sound easy, right? But why do you want to be on the top of the search engine organically? Why can’t you just buy the ads and work with them?
The main problem with buying ads without having a great website is that you have to pay extra money for your ads. Also, Google knows you are bribing them to get to the top of the ranking. So no matter how much money you have to spend on ads, it will nowhere be as efficient as getting organic leads without paying anything to the search engine(s).
When it comes to doing SEO, there’s your website, a search engine, and your potential viewers. If you have an article, for example, with the title of “Top 10 Smartphones to Buy in 2021,” then in 90% of the cases, you want people searching for the best smartphones to purchase in 2021 to land on your post.
SEO Tips for New Websites to Rank Higher on SERPs
Given below, we have talked about in length what you need to do as a website owner for ranking higher on SERP.
1. Setup Your Website’s Google Analytics to Track Your Traffic
The very first thing you need to do when you have created a website is to set up your Google Analytics. If you are not going to think about doing any SEO work on your website right now. This is the best way to start your website’s SEO journey. Google Analytics is one of the most powerful website analytics out there in the market. Also, it provides its services at no cost.
Google Analytics lets you track how many people have visited your website and the page(s) they have opened. Along with this, you get to know how much time they have spent on the website. It is a pretty helpful tool as it will let you know which content of your website intrigues more interest in your readers.
To use Google Analytics, you need to have some information on how to use it. But if you have created a website on WordPress, which is the most popular site builder, then you can find plenty of beginner-friendly Google Analytics alternatives.
Google Analytics, nonetheless, can be quickly learned by taking in the help of Google Digital Garage. It is a platform created by Google to help people understand their software and implementations.
2. At the Outset, Keep Your Target on Low Competition Keywords
So now you have a little knowledge of Google Analytics, and you saw one of the sections on Google Analytics is the keyword. Well, what is it then? See, when you first launch your website, Google will give it a low authority. Meaning, it treats the content on your website as to have a lower value for the user.
It’s common, and you don’t have to feel bad about it. Also, your website’s authority being lower will make it near impossible for you to rank against the top competitors of your niche. As a result, the more sensible approach to gain traffic is to target the keywords that are less competitive.
Indeed, to find less competitive keywords, you need to do a lot of research and brainstorm. But all the research done at the initial phase of your keyword research will help you climb the SERP rankings.
On the other hand, no one is stopping you from using higher ranking keywords, but as we said, it would be hard to beat the competition this early no matter how great your content is.
3. Get the Link Juice from Other Websites With Relevant Content
Linking out your website to other blogs will make your website gain authority. Some SEO managers think linking some other websites on your page will make your traffic bounce to other pages. But all the top websites that you see on the internet do provide outbound links in their blogs.
This is due to one fact; link building is one of the pillars of SEO, and even if you are linking to your direct competition, that could be helpful too. You might think how? Well, the simple answer is because it will help your users.
When you are linking a website to your page, it makes your website more valuable as the traffic sent from the link is traceable. If you were to read some of the famous blogs, you would find out that most of them do insert 3-4 out links to some other websites.
On the other hand, you can post your links to some other websites if they allow you to. There are a number of websites on the internet on which you can write a blog post and then put up your link. It is known as guest posting, and some sites allow one link per post. Some other sites allow two or more.
Google ranks websites higher than the other websites which don’t have links directed to them. As it makes Google think that the content which is posted on the linked site is more critical and needs to be shown to more people.
4. Create an Easily Readable Content
We all look for content on the internet, and the sites that are able to provide us easy-to-read content are the ones we prefer the most. There is no doubt in the statement that high-quality content is the cornerstone of your SEO. Your content is the first thing that the user gets to see when they visit your website.
By content, we mean anything that you publish on the internet. It does not have to be posted on your website only. But it can be a post on your social handle as well. Now, after marking out the keywords, you want to insert them correctly in your content so the search engine can find them easily. Also, don’t overstuff the content with keywords.
Keyword stuffing is one of the oldest techniques done by SEO managers in hopes of getting a higher ranking. But now, in 2021, it does the complete opposite of it because Google bots can now understand the keyword stuffing and rank your website accordingly.
Make sure you are writing for your viewers, and not for the product or for the service that you are trying to sell. After viewers, come search engines. In addition to this, content has to be in proper format and needs to be enticing. Otherwise, there are tons of websites that are creating the same content and writing on the same topic as yours.
You need to pay attention to the topic, its title, keywords, quality, length, and freshness. Yes, even the freshness. If you have put a list, for instance, of the Top 10 Best High-end Smartphones and one of the tech giants has launched a new flagship, you need to provide your inputs on the same. If it is worthy of a spot in your list, you need to update the post and add that smartphone.
5. Focus On Creating Indexable Content
Creating content is one thing, but creating indexable content is another. You must come up with content that can be easily read by search engine spiders. Content is said to be the living force of a website, and it’s what search engines are looking for to give a website a higher ranking.
A lot of content that we create in terms of visuals doesn’t make it to the search engine’s readability criteria. One of the best examples is that even right now, Google’s crawlers are unable to understand what is written in the images or the animations like GIFS.
Even though these visuals will help the reader understand the concept in a much better way, for Google, it’s almost of no value. But that doesn’t make you stop posting images on your website. You can use alt-text to provide Google information about the content.
It is a good practice to inform the search engine about what’s being written or depicted in images; GIFS and even in videos. You can add relevant keywords in the alt-text of your image.
6. Create Internal Links to Newly Created Pages
Internal links are like backlinks from one page of your website to the other. They help visitors navigate the website. This method of link sharing is helpful in building and distributing the link authority throughout your site.
This method is certainly effective when you are posting new information on your website and want your viewers to read it. You might have seen the example of internal linking in lots of websites that sell products. Even Apple uses it to showcase their new products and take users straight to them from their home page.
You can search for the relevant keyword that you are using in the new post, and find them in your previous post as well. Once you find those keywords in your previous post, create an internal link on them and direct them to your latest post in which you have used it as your primary keyword. This will increase the traffic of your older posts as well as to your latest post, which you have just posted.
7. Improve the User Experience of Your Website
Nobody wants to see a website that is a bit uncanny to the eyes. Everyone is looking for a smooth user experience and wants to jump from one page to the other without having to waste time loading.
User experience is crucial for your website to rank well. It would be best if you thought about different ways to make it easier for your viewers to find what they are looking for when they click on your website’s URL in a search engine.
If your website is filled with lots of ads, it will make your website look untrustworthy and amateurish as well. When the user is not happy, he will leave the website in a short time resulting in an increased bounce rate, which is not a good thing.
When a website is easy to navigate and doesn’t have lots of ads on it, users can easily find the content that they are looking for. Also, during their quest to find the answer, they are likely going to spend a few more minutes reading about it. As a result, the bounce rate will decrease, and your website’s authority will see an upward trend.
8. Work on Increasing Your Website Speed
Think of yourself as a user, how much time do you wait for a page to load? It’s probably less than 5 seconds. So you need to make your website load time fast. This can be done by hosting your website on a reliable service provider that provides nearly 100% uptime and significant bandwidth. Also, it would help if you look for simple yet attractive themes that don’t stress your viewer’s internet connection.
One thing you can do is keep the size of videos, photos, and gifs small so the browser doesn’t have to take much time to load them up, and everything on your webpage pops on the user screen almost instantaneously. Just a fact, the probability of increased bounce rate increases by 32% as page load times extend from 1 second to 3 seconds.
9. Keep a Close Watch On-Page Titles and Description
A page title or blog title is what your viewer is going to see when they are searching for the results in a search engine. Page titles are the most crucial aspect of SEO. If you do it properly, tons of traffic will flock to your website.
Each page on your website needs to have a unique title along with a relevant meta description. Both the description and the title of the page need to describe the content of your web page correctly. Also, don’t make the two long as it might confuse the readers. In the end, you want your title to help users understand what the page is all about as well as motivate them to click.
10. Create Mobile-Friendly Sites
In 2021, more than 85% of the searches are being done on mobile. Nowadays, it is much easier to have a smartphone that can run an internet application than buying a computer or a laptop. Most of the new users who are joining the internet right now are typing their first search query via smartphone.
If you take a look at your analytics data, you will find out that most of the users are coming from mobile searches. We can’t really go deep in detail on how to perform the SEO of your website based on mobile searches but you need to have a website that is pretty snappy on smartphones.
Even think about yourself, how long will you wait for a page to get loaded on your mobile phone? Before 5 seconds, viewers cancel an unloaded webpage and open another link to find the answer to their query.
As a result, your page gets a higher bounce rate. Likewise, it can make your website shift or go down to the second page of SERPs, which nobody likes to go to these days.
Conclusion
We do hope this blog helped you in finding knowledge that you have been missing in starting the SEO of your website. You can surely hire someone to do this, and there are several professional SEO marketers that you can find on the internet. But in the end, you need to know what they are doing with your website.
Just commit to your SEO initiation, and eventually, you will start seeing results in the next 6 months. It is tempting to use paid ads to get leads, but it is hard to get the same number of leads organically without spending a single buck. Maybe with all your hard work, your next blog will rank on the top of SERPs. Wish you luck!
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