Search Engine Optimisation - Friday, July 18, 2008 7:39 - 0 Comments

SEO For New Websites

Your strategy when planning seo for new websites should be different than it is for an existing site. There are both benefits and disadvantages when you start a project including seo for a new website. It can be a fun and exciting challenge and it is always exciting to see how small changes you make can have faster affects on rankings than they may have with an older site.

The main thing that makes optimising a new site different, is that you have no trust rank from Google. This is the same thing really as the sandbox term which is often used in internet marketing circles. Sandboxing is a process Google has to keep new websites down for a little while when they are first released. Like most things Google considers, this makes sense. In effect, Google is recommending which site you should visit when you enter a search term, and you wouldn't recommend a new product to someone when you had never tried it or heard unbiased opinions about it. That is the same in Googles eyes with a new website.

One of the luxuries with a new website is that you get to choose the domain name. This has become increasingly important to help speed up the process and just make it easier to rank a website at the top of Google. So before you build a site about homemade muesli lets says, and you use the domain name troysbreakfast.com, you should really do some investigation about what phrases people are typing into search engines when they look for muesli. Maybe homemademuesli.com.au is available and this will help you much more in both the long and short term. Firstly, you wll be able to get a ranking on Google much faster for the phrase 'homemade muesli' and similar terms. Also when it comes time to sell your business, your website will have more value, because the domain name is strong and more flexible.

So you have a good domain name, great. The next thing you need to consider is the format of your site. Flash and frames are not so good for SEO purposes. Yes absolutely you can get websites built in these formats (we have done it many times), but it will take longer and be more risky because the risk of choosing an SEO company who can not deliver will be higher.

The copy writing is very important. 'Content is king' is another phrase commonly used. From my experience, the best results are achieved, copy wise, when the business owner writes the copy and the seo optimises it for the keyphrases to be targetted. This usually dlivers the best balance of good information to the reader and good information for Google. The seo copywriter will balance out the right keyphrases you should be using in your text, in the right places, to get Googles attention.

Deciding which phrases to target with a new website is also an important step. If you are in a competitive industry, going straight for the biggest phrases, so for my silly example today 'muesli' may not be a good idea. It will take much longer to get a result with this direct approach with a new site. It is better to try and come in the side door, by targeting more specific phrases with less competition. There are many tools out there to help work out what phrases you could target, along with your common sense. I would go after phrases like 'homemade muesli', 'muesli supplier', 'muesli melbourne' 'muesli recipe' etc.

Targetting just a few keyphrases from the start also helps to get rankings for those phrases faster than trying to spread your effort over many phrases.

It is also important that the homepage especiallly is engaging to the visitor. If a new website has a high bounce rate, it will have a negative effect on the longevity of any quick rankings you do get. If people come and go quickly, Google will of course think, 'this site is new, i gave it a go, but noone stays here', down you go.

No matter how many new sites we make and optimise for both ourselves and our clients, it is always fun to see the early seo results for new websites. So enjoy it, and don't worry too much if you don't get where you want to in a few weeks, just keep working at it.

I am sure many people out there have other ideas about what is important here, so why not leave a comment or ask a question about it.

 Troy