Due to the recent Coronavirus outbreak, many businesses have had to move into the online space. There is a need to be online, not just to keep track of what is going on, but also to make money, especially in this period. Business owners who haven’t really had much of an experience in working online, are now struggling to create websites in order to get clients and sales.
As we all know, the virtual world is a highly competitive place. If you want to sell your product or service online, your website needs to stand out from the crowd! How can you achieve this? You must have heard of SEO, quite a few people have, but not many have a clear idea of what it is about. In this article, We’ll talk you through the basics of SEO and answer the question of why new websites need SEO at all?
What is SEO and how does it work?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of your website’s visibility and traffic. In other words, it’s a strategy that aims to improve your site’s ranking in search engines results. How does it work? SEO identifies which keywords and phrases your target audience uses when looking for products or services you render, and then ranks them high in search results. It’s easier said than done! Before diving into the topic, let’s go through some key factors:
How do Search Engines work?
In order to show up in searches, search engines scan your website’s content. They do this in order to get a better understanding of what your site is about, it’s authority, UX, and so on… This helps search engines deliver relevant and useful results to their users. In other words, your website has to on the Search engines result page (SERPs).
What is Crawling?
Crawling is a process in which the bots of Google go through a website and get page details such as images, titles, linked pages, keywords, and more. Regardless of the form, they can only be discovered by links.
What is Indexing?
After successfully crawling the website, Google indexes the pages, which will ultimately make the website visible and accessible for searchers.
How does Ranking work?
Ranking is the ordering of search results based on relevance, authority and other factors. When someone searches on Google, it scans their index for the important content and then displays the results that solves the user’s query.
Why does a Brand-new website need SEO?
- It helps in building your brand.
- It earns your websites more traffic.
- It is not a paid service.
- It helps your target audience to find your site easier.
- It improves your website’s authority and credibility.
- It helps you to stay ahead of your competitors.
- It improves user experience.
How to get started with SEO?
1. Web design and UX
First of all, you need to make sure that you have a great website. This will enhance user experience and make your website easy to navigate to the users. How? Websites are scanned, not read. Graphics and visuals have a way of conveying messages. It is important to make sure your site is clear, and simple. Post original contents that are accessible and credible. People need to trust your site.
2. Keyword Research
When setting up your SEO campaign, the first thing you have to do is discovering what your target audience is looking for in terms of words (keywords). These will represent your targeted keywords. For instance, you provide health services. You need to optimize keywords that will make your site rank high when people search for health related topics. When determining keywords, you need to consider a few factors.
Search Volume: The more people are searching for products or services with your keywords, the higher the competition is. There is a need to put into consideration how many people are actually in need of the given keyword. If no one is searching for it, then you have no audience. At the beginning, it’s ideal to target keywords with low-medium search volume, because those are the ones which can be ranked in shorter time.
Relevance:How relevant are the services or product you are selling with the keywords? It is not just about getting traffic, you have to get traffic from the right searchers?
Competition: You need to understand the competition involved in ranking your website, especially when you’re not the only one offering the services with the specific keywords. In other words, it is imperative to know and understand:
- Who your prospective clients are?
- What they want?
- What problem they have?
- What type of language they use?
- Who else they’re buying from?
Once you have answers to the questions above, you can get on with creating your keyword list, and also work on getting additional keywords to input into keyword tools like Google’s keyword tool. Then you can run a number of searches with various keywords. Also, you can use comprehensive keyword tools to know what your other websites are ranking for.
You could also get some ideas by reviewing the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic.
3. On-Page Optimization
The next step after creating your keyword list is to implement the targeted keywords into your site’s content. Each page on the website should contain a at least one keyword and also other few related keywords. There are some critical elements you need to understand as you work on driving traffic to your site.
Title tags: You can see title tags at the top of your browser. It is different from your page’s primary headline. The title tag is what web users see on a Google search results of your webpage.
Meta descriptions: This is your site’s additional ad copy. It may not always show, but if you have a compelling description people can’t resist, then you can increase traffic on your site.
Body content: This is the actual content of your page, and it is very important for you to put unique contents that will engage users.
Alt attributes: It is an HTML element that lets you to offer other information for an image if a people can’t see it, since images can break after a while.
URL structure: The structure of website’s URL is vital from a tracking point and also to monitor the shareability. Make your URL short and descriptive, and avoid excess keywords.
Schema and Mark Up: Having taken care of all the on-page elements, Schema mark up gives your listing some additional points in the search results. However, it is not a ranking factor presently.
3. Content marketing and Link building
Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to any other page, it’s called a backlink. Without links, your site won’t show up in search result listings. Search engines like Google use backlinks as a ranking signal because when one website links to another, it means they believe the content is noteworthy. Simply put, you need to get backlinks from relevant, high authority sources in order to improve your website’s ranking. You can try guest posting, blog commenting, web 2.0 link building, but the ultimate best way of getting backlinks is building cooperation/relationships with editors/authors from your industry.
Track your performance!
- Establish a specific end goal for the website.
- Make sure that your website’s performance is measurable and trackable.
- Be specific when setting your goals!
- Focus on engagement metrics, conversion rate, how much time people spend on your page, paged per visit, bounce rate, scroll depth and search traffic. The best way to do this is by using Google Analytics (GA). GA:
- Allows you to view and monitor the traffic on your site,
- Allows you to view the total sessions, users, and page views over a specific period of time on your site.
- Makes it possible for you to know how many visits a particular page has received.
Now that you know a bit about SEO and how it can boost your online business, what’s your next step? Write down your plans. Prioritize. Focus on the things you are good at, the services you can provide, your audience and competitors. Create content, build relationships, provide value!
The ultimate goal of SEO is to drive targeted traffic to your site and get more exposure, but this can only be done by focusing on all the above mentioned factors. Now, if you’re ready to take your online business to the next level but don’t know how to get started, then maybe we can give you a helping hand! Our digital marketing agency specializes in ranking brand new sites! Our SEO specialists have the right experience to build up the authority of your new website and to grow your traffic.
So, in order to assist you, we’ve released a custom SEO package specifically for new website’s and blogs!
Learn more about our ‘Brand-new website SEO’ package here:
