When launching a new website or product online, there are many things you need to think about from techniques to marketing. Imagine you have found a great idea but nobody will find it! So the main thing you need to care about is to rank your website and get indexed by Google. But is it possible to rank on the first positions of Google’ search engine results in a few days or weeks?
While previously SEOs were promising first-page ranking using black hat techniques, today’s paradigm has evolved. We are facing a more content-driven era, user-focused SEO approach. Results can take longer but it is worth it in the long run.
Target your market
You cannot rank without any keywords. You need to decide which ones you want to be founded and thus ranked on. The best practice is to choose long-tail keywords as they provide wider opportunities. Long-tail keywords consist of more than four keywords and often respond to queries users are likely to search. Long-tail keywords also have the benefit to receive less competition. Even if smaller traffic is associated with long-tail keywords, it is way easier to rank on the first positions compare to short keywords. Develop different long-tail keywords to add up traffic. According to Moz’s studies, long-tail queries represent more than 80% of all organic traffic on the Internet.
Long-tail keywords are essential to rank on the first terms of your website’s life because it would be impossible with popular short keywords. Neil Patel gave the example of “mobile phone”. He based his analysis on a keyword grading from Moz to show that this keyword is highly competitive.
The sites on the first page of Google have extraordinarily high Domain Authority — as high as 100 (Wikipedia) and 95 (Samsung). You don’t stand a chance.
In the other hand, long tail keywords offer better CTA, more impressions and conversions.
So long-tail keywords are the first step of your indexation.
Build your website on good foundations
Your SEO needs to rely on a good architecture. Your CMS (content management system) matters to offer the best performances. There are different CMS but I would recommend WordPress as it is the world’s most popular one. Indeed, it is easy to use, powerful, editable and offer great SEO services. WordPress also offer nice themes to build your website. You should however pay attention to supports offered by the theme you picked, its speed and weight performances and if your theme is mobile friendly.
Then, in order to optimize your SEO, you should install an SEO plugin because WordPress alone is not enough. We have written an article on that subject, so you will be able to choose the right one regarding your needs.
Don’t hurry, only allow your site to get indexed when it’s ready
You don’t want your website to be visible by everyone if it is not completely ready. You can tell search engines not to crawl your website by creating a robots.txt. You can also add a nofollow or noindex tags by going to the WordPress’ privacy settings. When you are ready, just remove those tags.
Create content and be regular
Content is the heart of SEO. The best way to get your website well ranked is to create a bunch of qualitative content before to get your site crawled and indexed. While quality is important, length also have an impact. While the exact definition of long copy is not established, content over 800 words seem to rank higher.
We have already written a post about that subject, but to be concise, studies like the ones by SerpIQ showed that long content get extra SEO boost in the SERPs compared to short content. Your articles should be user-focused, qualitative and informative. They also should integrate your long-tail keywords (in your title, body, Hn, tag).
You have created enough content to get your website well indexed. Great. But this is not a reason to stop writing fresh articles. Google’ bots often crawl your website to analyze its content and its freshness. The periodicity of your content influences its rankings. Indeed, recently updated websites with new content will be more likely to rank above more authoritative sites that don’t publish that often.
Advertise
What’s the value of creating content if no one reads it? Google takes into account how users perceived your website. They study user metrics like CTR (click-through rate) on SERPs and dwell time. This last one refers to the time between the moment where a user clicks on a result and the moment when he comes back from the website. If that time is higher than a minute or two, it means the visitor has consumed your content. Below that average, it reveals that your content was not relevant. CTR is also a ranking factor for Google and the more people you have clicking on your site, the higher your rankings.
So how can you get more searches and visitors and then more rankings? By promoting. The key to attract more visitors, get more clicks and a better visibility is to promote and advertise your content. There are many ways to promote your content. It can be done through:
- Social media posts (on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest…)
- Ads on social media
- Emailing
- PR with influencers (asking them to share your content)
- Forums
- Comments on related blogs
- PPC
Social signals get more and more impact on your SEO. They refer to any interactions with your content made on social media like ‘Retweet’, ‘Likes’, ‘Pins’, etc… The more you get, the better your content goes to Google’ eyes.
To sum up, get your new website indexed and ranked by Google is not that hard. If you follow these steps, it will be easier to get found by potential visitors and customers!
