Featured article by Peter Christie, Independent Technology Author
Starting a new website whether for fun or for business purpose can be exciting, fun, and challenging. Most people create a new website for business purposes and they need that website to help bring in sales. But where do you start? Some people are under the impression if you create a good website that is enough. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Although some websites can take months to develop promotion and marketing of the website will be ongoing and it can take six to twelve months to start getting traffic from the search engines.
The following steps are to help get you on the right track. SEO can be very technical and there are lots of mistakes that can cost you time and money. Using these steps below will keep you focused on work works.
Technical SEO Fundamentals
Before you create your website you will want to choose a content management system. A good content management system will make it easier to add new pages, add photos, create a blog, and most any other aspects of running a website. Three of the most popular systems are WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Hands down the most popular one is WordPress. There are so many plugins you can add that make running a website super easy.
You will then want to plan out the sections you will have on your website. This is often referred to as the website hierarchy. Basically, it’s a way to organize your content by topic. You will want to link to your important pages early and often throughout your website. If you create a page that should bring you in traffic that page should not be buried five clicks away from the homepage.
Start a Blog
If you don’t have plans to start a blog with your new website, change that. Blogs are very powerful and help you get more traffic for your website. That is if you create quality content to go on your blog. Don’t just crank out short poorly researched and written articles. Aim for high-quality excellence and create ultimate resources that people will want to read. If your articles are very informative and actionable people may even link to them as a resource.
How to Research Content Ideas
One of the most important things you can do to help increase your SEO is to create content for your website. But not just any type of content but rather content that will bring in targeted visitors to your website. To do this you can uses tools like SEMRush and Answer the Public. Both tools are great for finding questions about your topics. This will then arm you with the details you need to create content for your website.
Create Social Media Accounts
Social media can be very important to help to promote your website and its content. Be sure to claim the important social media profiles right away for your new website. At the very least you should be active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Social media is about engagement. Follow people within your industry and interact with them. Building these relationships will be beneficial once they are established. A good way to do so is to share their content and comment on their posts as much as possible. Eventually, they will do the same for you and that helps get your content more attention. Which ultimately increases the chances other will share and link to your content.
Start Building Links
We learned from an SEO Company Los Angeles, California the best way to build links. They recommend when your website is new to try and contribute to popular blogs within your niche. This gets your brand out there and you can usually get a link out of it. Sure, it will be hard work and you will have to pitch these high authority blogs and article idea.
Local Link Opportunities
People often overlook local link building opportunities. This is a great way of getting quality links that usually require little work. Look for businesses in your city that you can partner with. Think about a partnership where you can provide that business with a discount code that can place on their website and you do the same for them.
In addition to discounts, some local websites have local directory pages where they list other merchants. You can search online to for your city name plus the words; resources, directory, links, guides, and businesses to find opportunities.
Giveaways
No matter if you have a physical product or a service you can offer a giveaway. Simply announcing you are giving something away won’t earn you any links. However, you can reach out to bloggers within your niche and let them know about your giveaway. If the giveaway is good and you perform enough outreach to bloggers you may gain some good links out of it.
Business Listings
A very natural form of links is business listings. This isn’t the most powerful links you can get but they are very fundamental and are an important part of good link graph. You will find that some business listings will give you “nofollow” links and some regular links. A nofollow link tells the search engines not to count the link. It’s OK and not a sign of quality. A good backlink profile will have a mix of both types of links.
Takeaways
Starting a new website can be exciting but it is a lot of hard work. If you are on top of the important aspects of SEO your roadmap to success will be easier. Don’t get discouraged and keep plugging away.
Author Bio:
Peter Christie is a tech blogger and an avid hiker. When he’s not writing about tech he can be seen hiking around California with his dog Sadie
