SEO for new websites is essential, given its importance in improving your site's visibility in search results and, in turn, increasing visits and sales. In this article, I'll walk you through the best steps to help improve your site's visibility in search results.

SEO for New Websites

Whatever your reason for creating a new website, you need to do SEO for it. To reach your target customers, you need to put in the work on your site to get it to the first page — this can be difficult at first, especially for new sites, but with continuous effort, you'll be able to achieve growth.

SEO Challenges for New Websites

SEO is vital to the success of any new website, but it comes with a set of challenges that must be overcome to succeed. Here are some of the key challenges new sites face with SEO:

  1. Lack of Data and Content

New sites often have limited content and only a few pages, making it hard for search engines to evaluate them and rank them highly.

  1. Lack of Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other sites pointing to yours. For new sites, it can be difficult to get high-quality links early on, which affects their ranking.

  1. No Track Record

Search engines rely on historical data to determine how trustworthy a site is. New sites don't have this track record, which makes them less trustworthy in the eyes of search engines.

  1. High Competition

Many fields are saturated with established, competing sites, making it hard for new sites to stand out and rank highly in search results.

  1. Improving the User Experience

The user experience may not be ideal at first, whether in terms of site speed, design, or compatibility with different devices — these factors affect a site's ranking in search engines.

  1. Understanding SEO Requirements

New site owners may lack sufficient experience and knowledge in SEO, leading them to apply ineffective strategies or even practices that can harm the site.

  1. Constant Search Algorithm Updates

Search engines like Google continuously update their algorithms. This means new sites need to stay up to date with the latest standards and changes to avoid penalties and improve their ranking.

  1. Building Trust and Credibility

Building trust with users and search engines takes time — new sites need time and effort to build their reputation and credibility in their field.

SEO for new sites requires serious effort to overcome these challenges. By producing high-quality content, building strong backlinks, improving the user experience, and understanding modern SEO requirements, new sites can overcome these challenges and achieve tangible success in search results.

Ways to Do SEO for New Websites

New sites start out without any practices in place to help them get a good ranking, and that's normal — what's not normal is staying that way. I've worked on new sites as an SEO specialist, and I've found that it takes effort, but with focus, I've managed to achieve results that doubled over the course of months.

So if you have a new site and want to do SEO for it, you should follow these tips to double your numbers.

  1. Run a Technical Site Audit

A technical site audit is a fundamental step in SEO, as it helps identify technical issues that could hold back your site's performance in search results. Start by checking your site's speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to make sure it loads quickly, and check mobile compatibility by trying the site yourself on your phone.

The audit also includes checking your robots.txt file settings and sitemap.xml to make sure search engines are being guided correctly, and checking internal and external links using tools like Screaming Frog to make sure there are no broken links.

In addition, the audit involves optimizing titles and meta descriptions to attract visitors, checking your code using the W3C Validator to make sure it's clean, and securing your site with an SSL certificate to ensure HTTPS is used. These technical steps help improve the user experience and increase trust in your site, which improves its ranking in search results and attracts more visitors.

  1. Work on Your Site's Structure

Site structure is how the pages and content within your site are organized, and it's a crucial step for SEO. Good site structure helps search engines understand your site's layout and index pages correctly. Here's how to work on your site's structure as part of your SEO: Organizing content hierarchically makes it easier for users and search engines to navigate your site.

Start with the homepage, then create your main category pages, and under each category, add subpages or articles, as shown in the following infographic:

Internal links help search engines discover other pages on your site and distribute "page authority" among them.

Add internal links between related pages to make navigation easier and boost pages' rankings in search engines. For example, if you're writing an article about "Turkish coffee," you can link to other articles about "coffee benefits" or "where coffee is grown."

Clear, understandable URLs help both users and search engines understand a page's content.

Keep URLs short and descriptive, and use relevant keywords. For example, instead of a long, complex URL like www.example.com/p123456, use a simple one like www.example.com/turkish-coffee.

A good user experience means visitors stay on your site longer, which improves its ranking in search engines.

Use clear, easy-to-use navigation menus, and provide an HTML sitemap to make it easier to reach all your pages. Make sure visitors can easily find what they're looking for.

  1. Use Keywords with a Low KGR

Targeting your keywords is one of the most important SEO factors for new sites — the keywords you choose to compete for greatly affect your site's ranking and, in turn, your traffic.

There's a keyword-selection factor called KGR (Keyword Golden Ratio), which determines how strong the competition is for a keyword, and it's completely different from the metric called "keyword difficulty" found in some tools.

KGR is measured based on the number of sites targeting the same keyword and using it in their page title (title tag)

How to Calculate KGR

To calculate it correctly, you use a simple formula: the number of search results containing the keyword in the title, divided by the keyword's monthly search volume.

How Do You Get the Allintitle Number?

Allintitle is an advanced search operator that shows results for websites that have the keyword in their page title (title tag).

You use it like this:

Allintitle: keyword

[caption id="attachment_115" align="aligncenter" width="1173"] Google search results, February 2024[/caption]

You then divide the number of search results by the keyword's monthly search volume. If the result is less than 1, the keyword is easy to rank for in search results; if it's greater than 1, it may take some time to achieve a good ranking on Google for it.

  1. Analyze Competitor Content

Competitor analysis is something many site owners overlook, but it's extremely necessary — it's one of the basics of getting started with SEO. So you should analyze your competitors and the content their users engage with most, and here's how:
  1. Visit the competitor's blog
  2. Browse through their various articles
  3. Scroll down to the comments section on their articles
  4. Gather the articles that have comments from visitors.
  5. Then understand the ideas users are engaging with, so you understand what users like in your field and try to implement those ideas in your own way on your site.

  1. Use Structured Data

Structured data is one of the practices most commonly used incorrectly on websites — its purpose is to give search engines an idea of the type of content on your page. If you set up incorrect structured data, the search engine may misunderstand your page's content, and this is one of the biggest mistakes that leads to delaying your site's appearance in search engines.

So you need to understand your page's content carefully, identify the page's purpose, and then choose the type of structured data that fits its content — and if you need help with this, feel free to reach out to me.

  1. Write Comprehensive Content

When a site is new, it takes some serious work to earn the trust of search engines, and this is done by focusing on the quality of your pages' and articles' content.

When writing a page or article on your site, you should cover all the points related to the topic — when a search engine sees how comprehensive your content is, it may boost your site's ranking to the first page.

Comprehensive content also helps satisfy the user with your site alone, making them less likely to leave and go to a competing site.

So you should focus on your site's content and study every aspect of your topics.

  1. Focus on Internal Linking and Site Structure

An internal link is any link on a website that points to another page on the same site, and it's used by both visitors and search engines to find other content on the same site.

Search engines use your internal linking just like visitors do — to navigate your site and discover new pages. So a search engine won't see a page on your site if you haven't linked to it beforehand, meaning it won't get indexed.

So you should focus on internal linking and choose the pages you link to carefully, not randomly, to make it easier for search engines to reach your site's pages and, in turn, index them with a good ranking.

It also makes it easier for users to browse your site, which in turn keeps them on your site for as long as possible.

  1. Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are phrases made up of more than three words, such as: "how to improve search engine ranking" (four words).

Long keywords are usually less competitive than short ones, and the less competition there is, the easier it is to get a good ranking.

Long keywords are also more specific in their topics than short ones. For example: the keyword "social media" is a short keyword, and the search intent here is somewhat general — if you want to compete for it, you'd write an article covering everything about social media.

But the keyword "content marketing on social media" is a long-tail keyword, since here the user has narrowed down their search more than with the first phrase, and here you'd write only about content marketing on social media, not social media in general.

So you should pay attention to long-tail keywords, given their importance in SEO for new sites.

  1. Set a Content Publishing Schedule

Search engines always care about organization on websites — if you're organized on your site, you'll get a good ranking and earn the trust of search engines. One of the most important forms of organization on a site is setting a calendar for publishing your articles, done through the following steps:
  1. Decide how many articles to publish per week.
  2. Identify the days that bring the most visits to your site (Google Analytics).
  3. Identify the time of day that brings the most visits to your site (morning, afternoon, etc.).
  4. Create a schedule for publishing articles on the days and times your site sees the most traffic.
And if your site is completely new, you can use market research to understand your users' behavior online.

  1. Diversify Your Content Formats (Don't Be Boring)

Publishing articles is very important for SEO on new sites, but if you publish your articles in only one style, this can hurt your site and the user experience on it. So you should diversify your content formats — you can publish articles about statistics in your field, create an explanatory infographic on a specific topic in your field, or publish a video about something interesting...

Diversifying your content formats shows off your expertise in your field, and it's also something users appreciate, giving them the motivation to browse your site and stay on it as long as possible.

  1. Collaborate with Influencers in Your Field

With the evolution of technology and new social media platforms, many influential figures have emerged across various fields, leading marketers to focus on collaborating with these influencers, which has resulted in success in many experiments and projects.

But your success in this depends on how you choose your influencers — you should choose them very carefully based on how relevant they are to your field.

There are tools that can help, such as BuzzSumo, which offers a feature called Find Influencers to help you find influencers in your field — just search your field, and their names will appear.

Reach out to them, build good relationships, and look for a way to collaborate with them that benefits your website.

  1. Pay Attention to Your Audience's Social Media Behavior

The main goal of publishing articles on your site is to reach your target customers, so it's important to publish articles about what interests them and answer their questions. What can help you find this out is following the social media platforms your target audience uses most, tracking their behavior, figuring out what they like, and learning their most common questions.

Then create a content plan with articles that answer their questions, and publish the types of content they'd enjoy.

  1. Zero-Search-Volume Keywords

Keywords are the foundation for reaching your customers, and how you choose them determines your position relative to competitors, so you should choose them carefully.

One of the most reliable approaches for SEO on new sites is choosing zero-search-volume keywords — these are extremely specific long-tail keywords, and in most cases, they won't have data in keyword research tools, such as competition level or monthly search volume.

Their advantages include:

So you should pay attention to them, given their advantages for new sites in getting a good ranking in search engines.

  1. Pay Attention to Image Alt Text

Alt text is the written text that appears in place of an image on a page if the image fails to load in the user's browser.

Even though it's extremely important, it's often neglected, and this is one of the reasons a site's appearance in search engines gets delayed. Its importance lies in helping screen readers describe the image for visually impaired users, in addition to helping improve your site's ranking in search engines.

So you should pay attention to it, use it correctly, make it descriptive of the image's content, and try to include the keyword in it.

  1. Create Social Media Accounts (You Are a Brand!)

Presenting yourself as a brand to search engines helps improve your ranking in search results, and one of the most important practices to help with this is creating social media accounts and linking them to your site.

In addition, social media platforms are an excellent source of visits to your website.

  1. Upload Images in WebP Format

Using images in your articles is one of the best SEO practices, but using them incorrectly will negatively affect your site.

One of the best practices for using images on your site is uploading them in WebP format, and there are many tools that can help you with that.

Converting images to WebP format and using alt text together will increase your chances of ranking well in search engines.

  1. Set Up GSC and GA Accounts

After implementing SEO practices on your site, you need to continuously measure the results of those practices. There are many free tools that can help, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Through them, you can see the results of your efforts on your site, which helps you make future decisions.

  1. Share Your Content on Social Media Channels

Creating pages on social media is important for SEO on new sites, as we discussed earlier, in addition to the importance of sharing your articles on them — it's a form of marketing for your articles and leads to more visits to your site.

Tip: Don't share your content until a week has passed since you published it on your website, so that search engines understand your site is the original source of the content, and so you can confirm the content was well received by your site's visitors.

  1. Keep Testing

Learning what works in search engines comes from trying out many different practices, measuring the results of each one, and identifying what brings your site positive results so you can keep doing it.

But this is an ongoing process we do continuously to ensure the site's continued excellence and success.

Additional resources

Tools for checking your site's Google ranking

SEO Strategy for a New Website

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SEO for a new website requires a comprehensive strategy that covers several aspects, to make sure the site appears in search results and attracts your target customers. Below is a complete SEO strategy for a new website:

  1. Keyword Analysis

  1. Content Optimization

  1. Work on Site Structure

  1. Handle the Technical Side

  1. Analyze Competitors

  1. Build Backlinks

  1. Social Media

  1. Analysis and Monitoring

Free SEO Tools

There are tools that can help you with SEO for more than one task, such as:

Now It's Your Turn

SEO for new websites is extremely important, and it's the cornerstone of building your brand identity — if you need help with it, don't hesitate to reach out to me.

Now try one of the practices mentioned and let me know how it went and what you think!

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