If the eyes of search engines, new websites are uncharted waters. With few indexed pages, links and even visits, these infant sites have a lot of growing up to do before they’re seen as authoritative. As you add information to your site and expand your content, search engine ‘crawlers’ begin to form an opinion about this digital space, which affects how you perform in search results and thus your ultimate success.

So why leaves things up to chance? Designing and implementing an SEO strategy for your new website is like hitting the fast-forward button, speeding up your growth so that you land in top ranking pages as quickly as possible.

What is an SEO Strategy for a New Website?

What to find out more? Here’s our quick tip list on new site SEO strategy:

  1. Get the Domain Name Right

Your domain name is quite literally the name of your site, making it a critical component. As a completely new website, you have zero SEO equity. In plain terms, you have no existing presence in the digital world. This means that selecting an appropriate domain name is absolutely crucial for making a good impression and moving up through the search engine ranks.

Using trusted domain purchase sites, you can choose your perfect handle. Try to come up with a short, catchy name that people can easily recognize and remember. You may have greater success if you opt for a keyword related to your business, though it’s not essential. You’ll also need to think about the best suffix (‘.com’, ‘.net’ ‘.org) for your domain.

  1. Use a Suitable Host and CMS

Web hosting is essentially the renting of a digital space, keeping your website accessible and available to everyone online. A content management system (CMS) is more to do with publishing content, as in your site blog. In most cases, your web host provider is also your site builder, as popular sites offer integrated hosting services.

Regardless, it’s important to find the best fit for your needs. The quality of your host provider affects crucial factors such as the speed of their servers, and thus your website. This is especially valuable when you’re offering ecommerce, as a responsive and secure site conveys a feeling of authenticity to your customers.

  1. Set-up Analytical Tools

Before you start worrying about keywords and competition, you’ll need to ensure that you have the means to measure performance. Google Search Console is your key tool in the SEO kit, allowing you to gather data and determine the best next moves. This capable tool will give you info on such things as:

  • Organic Keywords
  • Click-through Rate (CTR)
  • Page Load Speed
  • Sitemap Condition
  • Bounce Rate
  • Crawl Errors

You can also use complementary tools like Google Analytics, which is more interested in data related to how people interact with your site. Generally speaking, the more information you can collect, the more informed your decisions are. Using these analytical tools gives you valuable insight into the effectiveness of your strategy, letting you know when you should adapt your SEO plan.

  1. Find your Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of an SEO strategy, largely because they are the bridge between what Google calls ‘search intent’ and the actual results pages. For instance, if you search for ‘sports shop Sydney,’ you’ll be met with plenty of nearby listings related to your search. In order to have the same success, you should prioritize long-tail, low-competition keywords that accurately reflect your offering.

As an experienced SEO agency based in Australia, we can tell you a lot about the importance of local businesses using this kind of keyword matching. With the increased exposure that these early wins bring, you’re in a better situation to compete on more popular keywords for higher profitability going forward.

What is an SEO Strategy for Website

Learning how your customers are searching for your product or service is critical. Once you understand that buyer journey, you can frame your website in a complementary way, aligning their search intent with your SEO strategy. When picking out keywords, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Does the keyword really represent my product or service?
  • Is the keyword representative of the kinds of questions your customers ask?
  • How many ways can the keyword be used, i.e. how valuable is it?
  • What is the keyword’s search volume?
  • What is the current difficulty (competition) of the keyword?
  • What kinds of pages (blog, landing, product, home) are dominating the keyword?

When you’ve compiled a keyword list, you can begin to construct what’s called a keyword map, arguably the most important element of your SEO strategy. Related keywords are grouped so that it’s clearer which should be prioritized on specific site pages. From all of this research comes proper URL link structures, headings and subheadings and of course metadata. If that all sounds a bit confusing, think about using pro SEO services to make things easier.

  1. Keep SEO Fresh

Even if you’ve found early success, any decent SEO strategy involves the regular updating of your website. Not only does it allow you to branch out into new keywords, it also helps you to retain your ranking with the keywords you’ve already invested in.

Whilst you will initially be busy establishing pages that have the biggest impact on revenue, mostly service and product landing pages, you’ll soon be creating additional content that keeps you in the SEO running. Whenever you create new content, have a solid idea of the target keywords and be especially attentive to your use of them in headings, subheadings and their natural use throughout the text body.

Assuming that you are staying conscious of customer search intent and using keywords that truly match, your content will become more valid as time goes on, meaning it will steadily climb higher in the rankings. Try to post consistently, but keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity. Every one of your pages has a cumulative effect on your overall SEO strategy, which means that star pages can help to hold up other pages across your website.

Finding Success with an SEO Strategy

A successful SEO strategy is mainly concerned with positive user experience, where you make yourself accessible to those that most benefit from your content and offerings. Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing, link farming and other shady black-hat SEO tactics.

Only those committed to doing proper research and delivering high quality information find long-term SEO success. And if you’re ever searching for SEO services in Sydney and surrounding areas, you know where to find us!