Whether you’re an established brand or a new business looking to make your mark in the world, setting up SEO for new websites is one of the most important parts of the marketing process. 

It’s not just a matter of putting your products online and hoping for the best. It’s a finely tuned process of getting your brand found at the front and centre of the people looking for your products and services. 

Optimising your website through well-researched, good quality content means you’ll rank higher for the terms and keywords that people are searching for. The higher you rank, the more traffic you’ll get to your website. 

Sounds great, Neil. But where do I even start? 

Luckily, through years of trial and error in building successful digital marketing companies, I’ve done the heavy lifting for you! All you need to do is implement these 16 SEO tips that’ll give you some of the tools necessary to climb the search engine rankings. Are you ready to get the ultimate SEO for new websites and get them in front of new customers? Then let’s begin!

1. Get an SEO Audit

If you’re serious about SEO, this is vital. Before taking a giant leap into the unknown, be sure to get some small but important steps done first! 

A website audit gives you the perfect blueprint to work from. It tells you what pages are ranking well, and which ones are failing. By analysing where you need improvements, you’re making that first step towards ranking well on search engines. 

2. Keep Your Content Original 

Here’s a fact that people constantly overlook – Google LOVES unique content! It doesn’t matter what your industry is. Original content makes Google very happy, and if your content stands out from the crowd, it’s more likely to rank higher. 

A combination of strong keywords and original content is going to catch the attention of not only search engines, but also the people actively searching for your product or service. 

3. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors 

People often confuse monitoring competitors with copying their competitors. I assure you that when I say keep an eye on your competition, I mean analyse their website and content for rankings, links, keyword usage and traffic.

This allows you to further look into your own business and look at ways you can stand out in other ways from them. Not only this, it’ll offer insights into how you can rank for similar keywords through strong and well thought out content. 

4. Keep Your Word Count High

Keeping a long piece of content engaging is a fine art, but it’s one that you’ll need to master if you want to get that top ranking. 

An increased word count helps your website to:

• Establish itself as a thought leader in your industry

• Include more keywords and backlinks

• Answer any popular questions 

• Give Google a better understanding of what your content is about

All of which helps Google to rank your content higher! 

5. Make Your Content Evergreen

This is the unsung hero of many high-ranking pages. Evergreen content stays clear of buzzwords, pop-culture references, and recent news stories to ensure it stays relevant from the day that it’s published right up to years into the future.

While some content may live or die on the traffic it gets within a certain period of time, evergreen content endures, gradually growing and driving traffic to your website. 

6. Get Both Internal and External Links

Whether you’re linking internally to different pages on your website, or externally linking to other areas outside of your business pages, you’d better believe that what you choose to link matters a lot!

When you’re linking, keep the overall reader experience in mind, and be sure to link content that complements your blog or webpage. Lazy linking that doesn’t elevate your content will stop an engaging narrative in its tracks. 

7. Only Link When It Makes Sense! 

The quality of your links will directly affect your SEO, so don’t just force in links that make no sense. Take the time to research and read through the external links and ensure that they’re of good quality and from a reputable source. 

Popular branded websites or news outlets may give your brand a nice rub in terms of authenticity and thought leadership, but just one unnecessary link can undo all of that hard work. 

8. Get Your Website Structure Solid 

While it may not seem important at the moment, especially if you’re only planning on having a handful of pages on your website, your website’s architecture and structure need to be solid in anticipation of your growth. 

Trust me on this – a little work now saves you the hassle of a complete overhaul in the future. Essentially, by getting a solid structure now, you’re allowing Google to easily crawl your website and get you ranking higher. 

9. Stock up on Content Before You Go Live 

Take the pressure out of creating a constant stream of content by preparing some in advance. Set a number of blogs and articles you want to post each month and give yourself a head start of at least 8 weeks if possible.

With a pile of well-researched articles in your arsenal, you’ll be able to climb those search engine rankings while introducing yourself to the world with a bang! 

10. Keywords, Keywords, Keywords! 

How do you climb those search engine rankings? Through a combination of solid research and original content that contains the right keywords! 

There’s a fine line to walk here. Your main keyword needs to be strong, but not too competitive, and your secondary keywords need to be implemented carefully. Keyword stuffing achieves nothing, and Google can sniff out a poorly written blog that’s too keyword heavy in no time.

11. Aim for a Featured Snippets Ranking 

Featured snippets are at the top of the Google search results page for any subject, and are one of the biggest draws in terms of organic traffic. So, how do we make sure that your website stands a chance of getting in the mix? 

Through optimisation, of course!

This is where your research can come into play. If you’ve looked into what questions users are actively searching for, you can answer them in an engaging and concise manner. Not only will you be guiding a new customer to your website, but you’ll have solved a problem for them, and increased your chances of being ranked as a featured snippet!  

12. Make Your Meta Descriptions and Page Titles Matter 

Keywords aren’t just for the body of your content – they’re also a vital part of a customer finding you through your meta descriptions and page titles. 

These are two essential parts of your website in terms of SEO. You only have a short amount of words to capture the attention of a customer and entice them to click through to your website.

13. Learn to Fall in Love with SEO 

When I set up Writefully, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of clients who came to us because they could see how passionate we are about content and SEO. From an outside perspective, SEO can appear to be a very complicated process. But the truth is that SEO isn’t something to fear! 

Let’s face facts; SEO certainly isn’t going anywhere, so why not learn to work with it and discover the incredible potential it offers businesses. 

14. Don’t Lose the Human Touch

Implementing SEO doesn’t have to come at the expense of quality content. Don’t forget that no matter how far advancements in technology take us, you are communicating with human beings before anything else. 

All the research and keywords are useful tools that’ll get you far if implemented in the right way. But when it comes to triggering a response or action in a reader, there needs to be a beating heart at the centre of your content. 

15. SEO + Emotional Intent = SERP Success

How does the beating heart of that content inspire others to become loyal customers? Through a combination of sound SEO and finding the emotional intent behind the top searches within your industry. 

 

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