How to Rank a New Website from Scratch

2. Keyword Research

The next step involves carrying out keyword research, helping you understand what your audience are searching for. This helps you tailor your content to ensure you answer their questions.

Keyword Research Tools

We recommend the following keyword research tools”

• Google Keyword Planner
• Ahrefs
• SEMrush

Ensure that you focus on keywords that have:

• Low competition
• Search intent
• Topical clusters

3. High Quality Content

This step involves creating high quality content. Remember content is king when it comes to SEO and Google loves fresh, valuable, and relevant content. For content creation, we recommend:

• Aiming for a minimum of six hundred words
• Use your main keyword in the title, headers, and naturally within the body of the textually
• Add internal links to relevant pages on your website
• Make use of images, videos, and infographics to improve user engagement
• Keep paragraphs short and use bullet points

Your website should have different content types from blog posts and how to guides to tutorials, case studies, industry news, and product reviews. 

4. On-Page SEO

Every element of your webpage and content should be optimised, ensuring that your visitors and search engines understand the content with ease. Follow the best practices recommended below:

• Title tag – incorporate your keyword, keeping the title to no more than sixty characters
• Meta description – include your main keyword, keeping text to less than one hundred and sixty characters
• URL – keep it short, clear, descriptive, and include your primary keyword
• Headers – organise your content logically using H1, H2, H3, etc. headers
• Image Alt Text – describe your images using your relevant keywords
• Linking – connect related content on your website 

5. Backlinks

Backlinks are important in SEO and very important when it comes to ranking a new website from scratch. Backlinks are votes of confidence that come from a high domain authority website linking back to yours. It is very important that you acquire backlinks naturally and ethically. We recommend:

• Guest posting – writing blogs that are posted on relevant blog sites in your niche
• Broken link building – finding broken links on site relevant to your industry and offering your content as a replacement
• HARO – Help a Reporter Out by responding to queries for mentions
• Directory listings – submit your website to industry directories

6. Domain Authority

Search engines focus on authority and trustworthiness when it comes to displaying your website in results. This means focusing on improving your domain authority, aligning with E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). To establish domain authority, you can:

• Create an About Us page with credentials and photographs
• Add author bios to blog posts
• Get mentions in reputable publications
• Encourage customer reviews
• Ensure your website is HTTPS

7. Promotion

Even when writing the best content, it needs to be promoted in order to get noticed. To ensure your content is seen by the right audience, we recommend:

• Sharing your content on social media
• Join relevant social media groups
• Run email campaigns
• Use influencer outreach to have your content shared
• Submit posts to LinkedIn articles

8. Monitoring and Tracking

Now, with the basics in place, it's important to constantly monitor and track your progress, adapting your strategy as needed. Remember SEO is an ongoing process that needs adjusting from time to time. Ensure you monitor:

• Keyword rankings
• Organic website traffic
• Bounce rates
• Session duration
• Backlink profile growth
• Technical issues

In order to monitor and analyse your online performance, you can use Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, or SEMrush.

Conclusion

Let's be honest, ranking a new website from scratch requires a tailored strategy, consistent effort, and patience. The good news is that it is possible when you focus on the eight steps above. Are you ready to improve your online visibility? Implement these strategies today, or contact the Genie Crawl team for a free, no obligation quote.