With so many websites popping up each day, it is becoming a tough task to create a website and rank it on the first page of Google. This is because the internet is highly saturated. However, through proper SEO, you can rank a new website on Google in no time.
The main aim of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to optimize your website for search engine rankings. When you create a website, there are numerous points that you need to keep in mind when optimizing it for search engines, whether it's a new or an old one.
The optimization process often takes anywhere from 3 months to 1 year, depending on how much you have optimized the site and its content structure for search engines. Let's get started with some of the important steps to be taken.
Step #1: Deep Niche Research
A lot of people face the issue of ranking their website for a particular phrase. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to rank due to high competition even if you know that your content is better than that of your competitors, and Google has given you ample authority and trust as an author.
This means that Google does not think well enough about your niche. The solution? Find a new or easy-to-rank-for niche. Deep niche research should be done before creating the website to make sure there aren't any major or popular websites already ranking well on Google for some important keywords related to the topic of your site.
Doing niche research can save you time and money because if you've already found a difficult-to-rank-for niche, there is no point in creating the website. However, if you are struggling to find a profitable niche, we have a gift for you.
If you want to start a website on Amazon Affiliate, just contact us, and we will share 7 easy to rank niches with you that you can use to start your niche-based website.
Once the niches have been selected, experts recommend focusing on long-tail keywords rather than head terms. This is because a common misconception is that the probability of ranking high on Google for head phrases is much higher than for keywords with 3+ words or so.
The truth is, it's much easier to rank for keywords with long tails. The reason is that the competition level is also low. So this means that you should focus more on long-tail keywords rather than head phrases.
Step #2: (Google Trends) Find the Popularity of Your Niche
Especially beginners ignore this step or don't remember, which causes their website not to be ranked. It's a particularly important step because you want your content to be viewed by the maximum number of people. Remember, a niche with higher trends means more traffic leads to better conversions leads to more money.
Before creating a niche, it is highly recommended that you look into the Google trends section. Look for the keyword within the last 5 years and see how much interest has grown or declined over time. If you are sure that your product is good enough, then focus on niches where the competition level isn't very high but has a high Search Volume potential.
For example, I have searched "cat food" in Google trends to see how this niche is performing, and you can see the result below.
Always remember that checking trends is not enough, you have to follow the next steps in order to create a website that can rank on SERP. You should also check out the latest trends to look out for In 2022.
Step #3: Find Easy-to-Rank Keywords
Before creating your website, the first step you should do is do proper keyword research. Unfortunately, a lot of people make the mistake of not spending enough time on research here. First, they create a website and then start thinking about keyword research. But that's just not how it's done. According to our experience, SEO starts before purchasing a domain.
Consider which words best describe your company, what you do, and the services or products you provide. For example, let's say you will start a pet website related to "cat food or dog food," - whichever one you choose. Now, in the beginning of your SEO ranking efforts, you have to start with long-tail keywords.
For example
- What Are the Best Dry Food for Cats?
- What Is the Best Dry Food for Senior Cats?
- What Dog Food Can Cause Seizures?
- What Dog Foods Can Cause Cancer?
Types of Keywords
There are three types of keywords:
Low Competition and High Traffic:
These keywords have a high volume of searches, but not many people are competing for them. This means that if you rank your website in the top few search results for such keywords, you will get a massive amount of organic traffic since there is less competition.
In addition, these keywords may include long-tail keywords which provide more targeted search results to end-users. A long-tail keyword will usually have 4 or more words in it. They make up around 30% of all search queries users make on Google every day.
Low Competition and Medium Traffic:
These are medium-competition terms with medium to high monthly searches. If you want to easily rank your website on Google, these words are an ideal choice because there are just a few tough competitors in this category. That's why it's hard to compete with them, or gaining traffic is easy. These are what we call medium-tail keywords.
High Competition and High Traffic:
These are highly competitive terms with a high volume of monthly searches. Since there are so many competitors here, you will have to work hard to rank on Google's first page for these keywords.
However, if your website manages to get to the top search results, you will receive massive traffic through organic rankings. Therefore, we can use short-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords generally will contain only 1 to 4 words.
You may also like: Google PPC Pricing
How to do Keyword Research
Today, doing keyword research is easy because you have tons of tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Google AdWords, to name a few. SEMrush and Ahrefs will provide you with detailed information on the keywords you can use for your website, including search volume and competition level.
Let's do Keyword Research using Ahrefs
Doing keyword research by using Ahrefs is easy. If you know how to do it, you will get detailed information about the keywords you want to rank your website on Google. If you don't know, don't worry because we'll share the steps with you below.
1) Log in to your Ahrefs and go to keywords explorer, enter your seed keyword, select the country, and search engine, and hit the enter button.
2) After that you will see the statistics of your keywords according to your selected option like this.
3) On the left side, there will be two options. related keywords and matching keywords you have to open both pages in different tabs.
4) I have chosen matching terms to find keywords. Now you have to apply some filters.
- Keyword Difficulty (KD): 0-30
- Search Volume: 0-10
- Word count: 4-Max (minimum 4)
- Include: You have to include words like is, how, what, best, top, which, who, where, and why. Depends on your intent.
- Exclude: You have to exclude keywords like Amazon, Walmart, near me, and eBay to find the best keywords you can rank. You will get something like this. You can click on the export button to download this data.
5) Let's say I have chosen the keyword "how to make easy cat food at home" from this list. In the list, it shows that the keyword has 10 searches per month. Now let me show you something you will not believe.
The website ranking on 1st position on this keyword is getting roughly 10 thousand clicks from this keyword according to Ahrefs, but in reality, it will be nearly 15 thousand clicks.
6) Now, we are not saying that you should work blindly on any keyword. But, still, you have to do a competitor analysis, check who ranks, and then start working on that. So that's how you can do keyword research. Now that you have an idea about how to do keyword research, let's move to competitor research.
First of all, you have to cover informational keywords and then go for commercial or money keywords. You can also use other tools like SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, Keyword.io. SurferSEO, Writerzen, and many more.
Pro Tip: Start Working on Keywords with Zero Volume
Yes, you heard that right. Keywords with zero volume are golden keywords that most people ignore. Why? Because everyone is thinking, "The more volume, the better." And they're right. The more volume, the better your website will rank for that keyword. But who cares about those keywords with high volumes that almost everybody is targeting now? It's competition central.
Your time will be much better spent finding and ranking a new website using low-volume keywords than competing against Google juggernauts like Wikipedia and Amazon for common keywords like "dog food" or "coupon for GoDaddy." But, unfortunately, that's what most people are doing – competing against big websites – and you can beat your competitors here by ignoring them altogether.
Why Will it Work?
It may seem counterintuitive to use such a niche keyword, but if nobody is paying attention to it, then chances are your website will rank first on Google for that keyword. And best of all, people will see your website and not some popular website with a bunch of backlinks.
A Real Example
Search this long-tail keyword on Google, "how to stop dogs from killing cats," skip the first 2 results and check the third one in Arches. You don't have Ahrefs? Don't worry, here you go.
A website covering a keyword and appearing in the third position got 637 organic traffic and ranked on 184 more keywords, but in reality, it will be more than 1 thousand clicks. I skip the first two because I want to show you that the third page is getting this much traffic by targeting a keyword with zero volume. Can you guess the first two?
Step #4: Competitor Research
Finding the right keywords is not enough. You still have to do competitor research to make sure that you are on the right track. To check for competition, you need to search your main keyword on Google and explore the top 10 results.
How Can You Decide That the Keyword Is Easy to Rank?
- A keyword or question doesn’t show up in the title of any of the articles at the top of (SERP).
- None of the articles on the SERP directly answer the question or target the topic (You’ll have to open and scan each article to make sure).
- If a series of forums show up at the top of the first-page search results, you can also consider this a Golden keyword.
- Two to three websites have domain authority between 10 to 30.
Step #5: Create SEO-Optimized Content
Creating SEO-friendly and useful content is the only way to rank on Google. Your content should be unique and target a specific audience which will help you connect with them, and in return, you will receive targeted traffic that trusts your website.
Quality content includes using subheaders, internal linking, and catchy title tags. Keep the keywords you chose earlier in mind while writing your content; include them naturally within the text as it will help with ranking on Google. Content Optimization for Google requires a few basic things to rank on page one of SERP.
10 Google Hacks to get Ranking Within 3 Months
- Write catchy title tags and meta descriptions to increase the click-through rate.
- Keep your content with the intent of the keyword but write better and more than your competitors. This means writing long-form content.
- Use subtitles in your article.
- Add images when it is necessary to add some visual appeal and include keywords in alt tags.
- Make sure you have internal links from one page of your website to another so that Google understands the flow between different pages of your website.
- If you want to take your high-quality content to another level then add videos and infographics into the mix.
- Optimize pages for your target keywords.
- Use outbound or external links.
- Use LSI keywords or search terms in your body content.
- Optimize for local search.
On-Page SEO is more than just optimizing your content. It includes a lot of factors that you have to keep in mind.
Step #6: Improve Your Website’s User Experience
source: neilpatel.com
Now let's proceed to the website design. After following all the above steps, if the design of your website is not good, then there is no point in doing the hard work.
Good design will increase your traffic and trust towards your website, which will help you rank on top of Google. If your site belongs to an e-commerce niche then it’s smart to pay attention to product pages that need more optimization than other pages. User experience also includes conversion rate, so focus on the design and layout of your site.
Various Ways to Improve User Experience
There are three ways you can use to improve the website design to get a better user experience.
Information Architecture:
Organize your website content into a hierarchical structure that's logical and makes sense to both Google and human visitors. Clear, simple labels will help the search engine understand what belongs where. Make sure that people can easily find what they're looking for on your site through effective navigation systems with clear URLs.
Visual Hierarchy:
A clean layout is important not only from an SEO standpoint but also from a UX standpoint as well. A user should be able to read about the product easily without any distractions from other elements on the page such as ads or images. This way you will have users converting into customers which will eventually be a great achievement for your e-commerce business as well as for ranking on Google.
Design Quality:
Good design never goes out of style. Keep your design up to date by using the best tools/software available in the market today. Whether your website is e-commerce or a personal blog, always choose good-quality images which are relevant to the topic being discussed on the page. Try not to use stock photos because customers look for customization and uniqueness in their online shopping experience.
Popular brands have higher chances of ranking due to their trustworthiness among users. Generally, Google tends to rank big sites more easily because they have less chance of getting penalties for breaking rules. So, if you want to make sure that your website ranks on top for competitive keywords then try to follow these rules beforehand and watch your site start to play with the big names.
Step #7: Improve the Quality of your Site
Improving the quality of websites includes different things that are common but also equally important.
Website Page Speed
According to research by stable wp, the best websites with optimized speed load under 2 seconds. Google sees page load time as a ranking signal in the mobile search results. So, if you want to rank highly on Google, then make sure to optimize your website for speed and user experience as well.
Have a Mobile-Friendly Site
Everyone's on their phone all the time. The share of mobile searches has increased to roughly 60%. Therefore, having a mobile-friendly site is very important when it comes to ranking in search engines regardless of whether you are an e-commerce business or not.
Being mobile-friendly means your site should be compatible with small devices such as iPhones, iPad, Android phones, etc. because everyone is always on the go and users want to access information at their convenience. So, your website must be user-friendly regardless of any device they use because if users have a poor experience then you can kiss your rankings goodbye.
According to statistics, more than half of the web traffic worldwide is from mobile users. In the first quarter of 2021, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 54.8% of global website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50% mark since the beginning of 2017.
Secure You're with HTTPS
An SSL is very important as it encrypts the connection between your site and the visitor's browser. Since Google has updated its algorithm to favor sites with SSL certificates, make sure to get an SSL for your website. Otherwise, you risk that users will leave your page before even getting a chance to see your content - which would result in lower rankings.
Use Schema Markup
We use Schema Markup to provide information to search engines to rank your content with relevancy. It also gives an SEO boost for certain types of content that use Schema, even if it doesn't experience high rankings in search results.
Structured data markup is a relatively low-cost, easy way to use structured data on your website so search engines can find the page more easily. It also provides additional user interface elements on phones and tablets, making them easier for users to interact with your website.
Step #8: Off-Page SEO (Backlinks Creation)
Let's come to one of the hardest parts of SEO which is creating backlinks for your site. So, without wasting time, let's start creating backlinks for our new website.
Social Signals
Before creating backlinks for your website, the first step is to create social accounts and pages to create trust for Google and your audience. Because having a presence on social media platforms is one of the trust factors that most people don't know and you can take advantage of it.
With that being said, you should create profiles on major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest to start getting likes and followers. This will help in the future when you link to your site from these pages because people will recognize it and click on them without a second thought.
Business Directories
After creating social links, the next step is to create business directory links if you have a local business because it has a very high trust factor and is easy to create. There are many directories that you can use such as Yelp, Yellow Pages, Tripadvisor, etc. All you have to do is sign up for a free or paid account depending on their terms and conditions.
Make sure the directory is relevant to your niche because otherwise, it will be useless for SEO purposes. The more directory links you create, the higher your site will rank in search engines which means more traffic to your business so make sure to put extra effort when creating backlinks.
You can also create these types of links for amazon affiliate websites because the trust factor is very high and easy to build.
Create a Presence on Forums
Forums can help you build trust, and authority and provide backlinks for your site on the internet. You can also get direct clients from forums by answering their queries or helping them out with something. There are 2 types of forums you can choose from:
- General Forums: If you have a general website about almost anything then you should create an account on popular forums related to your niche because it will help in building authority and trust while providing quality information for free. But make sure to choose the right category so that users don't get confused and give you negative feedback instead of linking to your site.
- Niche Forums: You can also create an account on forums that are extremely relevant with a high number of members but make sure they allow new members otherwise it's useless trying to join such an exclusive forum. It might be very hard initially (if it doesn't allow new members to insert links) because you have to prove yourself as being a relevant authority figure before getting allowed to post.
Guest Post
When you start getting a minimum of 1 to 2 thousand visitors to your website per month, you should start guest posting on authority websites. This will help in obtaining high-quality backlinks from trusted websites and can help increase your site's Quoted Search Results (QSR). This term is used to represent the exact number of web results that are present on Google for any exact search phrase. It sometimes takes months to get a good link but it's completely worth it because of the benefits you get out of it.
Broken Link Building
Let's say you noticed that people are searching for information on the new iPhone X xs iPhone Max. You can find sites with broken links using Ahrefs. Find relevant expired pages on top websites and create content with newer data. Pitch the website owner with your query to get a backlink. This way you can get editorial links.
Create Infographics & Videos
You don't need to design anything for these types of content so that's one less thing you have to worry about. You can hire any freelancer from Upwork or Fiverr to create good infographics or video content for you. Make sure it's unique and provides some valuable information otherwise Google won't like it and won't rank your site high.
Build Relationships
One of the most effective tactics is to make use of people's generosity by asking them politely if they could link to your website from their blog post, share on social media or just mention it in one of their articles which will help establish yourself as an authority figure and may even do the same with few other bloggers because everyone wants to get recognized.
Gain Traffic from Quora
If you have a question-answer website, then an interesting way to gain traffic is through Quora. It provides high-quality backlinks from a trusted website and also increases your site's QSR (domain rating). It might take some time for people to notice you on Quora but once they do, they will start asking questions that are relevant to your niche which will help in getting targeted traffic while building high-quality backlinks.
Extra: Promote Your New Blog
If you have time and budget remaining, you can promote your new blog on Facebook groups. Recently, Facebook has launched a new system that you can use to establish partnerships with different groups.
Let's say you have a website related to "cooking". There are plenty of groups on Facebook related to this and you can contact their admin to share the link to your website by paying a little fee.
Step #9: Use Other Search Engines
source: reliablesoft.net
As of September 21, 2021, according to Statista, Google has an 86.64% market share and that means there is 14% still remaining. There is no doubt that Google is the largest search engine, but you can also use other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, or DuckDuckGo to get even more traffic. You should also learn how search engines work.
2 Reasons Why You Should Other These Search Engines
- Even though they don't have as much market share as Google, there is still a big number of users using them so there is no harm in trying out new platforms. Make sure to integrate each search engine into your website because that way it will be easier for people to find your site through another source instead of only Google which means getting organic traffic from different sources.
- Other search engines index websites easily within a few days or weeks but Google takes time and it could take months to get indexed by Google and rank well for your keywords.
Step #10: Be Persistent
A lot of people give up quickly because they didn't get the results they wanted within a few weeks. But it's important to be persistent, even (or especially) when your site is not ranking well on Google. Changing your website or content might help in getting higher rankings in search engines which will help in increasing traffic and visitors.
Bonus Tip: Monetize your Website
You can rank your website by following the steps shared above, but when it comes to monetizing your website, people get confused. You can monetize your website by inserting Adsense or other advertisements like Amazon Affiliate, promoting products and software in your niche.
The Top Monetization Programs for a Website
Google Adsense
You can add Adsense ads to your website. It depends upon the keywords you have targeted and how many advertisers may want to advertise their products or services on your site. If you have a lot of traffic, you might find quite a good number of advertisers because they will earn more by paying less (i.e., people clicking their ads). You have to ensure you set up your preferred ads properly like Microsoft ads, Google ads, and so on, or hire an expert.
Affiliate Marketing
Generally, this is a great way to monetize any blog or website. The idea behind it is that you promote other brands' products on your platform and earn a commission for every sale that you make through your links. A typical example is the Amazon Affiliate Program. As one of the most popular affiliate programs, it pays a decent commission for every product sold through your site.
ClickBank
This is another great program that lets you market digital products for commissions. It's very easy to get started with ClickBank if you know how to write sales copy because people are interested in learning new things and the commission rates are also quite good.
Product Creation
You can create your product or hire someone to create it. Then, put them on sale using any affiliate programs like the ones mentioned above. This way, you get paid for developing your product too.
Let's move forward to some frequently asked questions.
How Long Does It Take Google to Rank a New Website?
Usually, a website takes 3 to 5 months to secure a good position on Google, but there are also some other factors that might delay this process. For example, the amount of relevant content plays a role, so it's helpful if you keep uploading good-quality articles every few days to shorten the time it takes for your site to be ranked.
How Long Does It Take for a Website to Get Indexed by Google?
To know whether your site is indexed or not, all you have to do is type in this phrase into Google "site:YOURWEBSITE.COM". If nothing pops up then that probably means it hasn't been indexed yet and needs more time. You can also check it from the Google search console from the section of coverage.
How to Improve Google Search Results for Google My Business?
To improve the ranking of your Google My Business page, you should be writing lots of quality content about your business. You should also make sure to include keywords in your URL, title, and description which will help search engines find your blog. And try to be as specific as possible which means instead of using "home remedies" you could use "natural remedies for acne."
Final Thoughts
The steps and information we have shared above are a good way to get started but it doesn't end here. There is a lot more you can do and we strongly recommend exploring other options and learning more about SEO for yourself.
Try to keep up with the latest trends in SEO by reading articles from reliable sources like Moz or Backlinko because they publish what's working today.
We hope this article helped you better understand the steps you can take to rank new websites on Google. If you'd like to have a team of digital marketing experts work with you on your SEO, social media marketing, or content marketing campaigns, please schedule some time with us here. We'd be excited to share some insights and show you how we can help you succeed.
