Just Launched New Site - First Steps to Get it to Rank?
-
Good Morning Mozzers...
We just recently launched a brand new site and now the fun part begins: trying to get it to appear in the SERPS.
I'm wondering if you guys can share your best and most proven secrets/tricks to get brand new sites to rank in Google.... For example, what are the first directories you add the site to? What are some links you try and aquire first?
Looking for some tips and ideas for a brand new site.
Thanks in advance.
-
Thanks for your advice --- very very helpful -- greatly appreciated.
-
Hi Prime,
On the presumption that your onsite SEO is complete and your content is indeed excellent I would do the following.My no1 tip on getting your site index'd would simply to be to simply fetch as google and submit the main page. Set up your analytics and then focus on your local SEO. Do all your local listings, and basically everything moz recommends about local SEO. This should be plenty for you to be index'd.
Then I would stop thinking about "Link Building" in the traditional sense.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking
links = ranks = clicks = visitorsinstead try to think of it as
publicity = visitors = natural links = ranks = more visitorsTake some of your excellent content and begin marketing it. Get social media happy, g twitter, facebook, google+ and every other platform you can think of active. Social media activity is a good ranking factor, use it. Get active on niche forums, other niche websites and begin spreading your brand. By this I don't mean spamming forums with links to your website I mean offering excellent advice and relevant links where appropriate. Ensure profiles are complete with links to your website so when you have helped someone and they check you out they find their way back. If you have a marketing budget get some PPC to begin driving traffic, and look at other forms of advertising. If your content really is excellent odd links will begin to sprout up.
This achieves 2 things. It spreads your brand and builds relationships and reputations within your niche.
I would do this from anywhere from 2 to 6 months. Asking for links as a new website even if your content is top notch is hard and has a very low success rate. Asking for a link from a website you have spent 2-6 months supporting and having a presence on is a lot easier. Especially if you can design a piece of content you know that site needs. Is a certain question being asked a lot on a website? Make something providing the answer then approach them with the content.
Alternatively make the first move. Found another website that cracking in your niche but not directly competitive? Review them, award them, and tell them about it. Websites like to brag when they receive a 5* award or review and will often link back to it.
Don't act to receive a link, act to advertise your brand.
I apologise if this isn't a direct answer to "how to link build". But i wanted to stress the difficulty of link building, even more so for new sites. I would rather spend 6 months of time on social media, building relationships and working myself into a position into the niche to ask for a high authority link with some success rather than spend 6 months of NO responses from link requests.
-
Link building for any site is a huge subject - certainly not something you can cover here.
However, your best links are going to come from amazing content / linkable assets. If you have something that your niche are going to enjoy reading, then you will find links will happen.
If you are happy performing outreach, you can speed this process up and let key influencers know what you have, but tread carefully... If you just started to Tweet someone you have never spoken to before and asked for links, it can be taken badly and you can ruin your chances for the future.
Here are a few resources to read:
-- MOZ beginners guide to link building -- Backlinkto -- Point Blank SEO -- Post Penguin Link Building (Disclaimer... This is my site)
Hopefully you will get some good pointers from there.
-Andy
-
ok - great advice on the blogging outreach attempts, will definitely try that.
Any other tips/suggestions?
I'll report back on how all of the tips and suggestions worked out.
Thanks
-
I don't know what market your website is in but maybe there are a few blogs/news websites that would write a small article about how your website is new and launching, maybe you have something unique that people will be happy to share with their readers?
It might be worth trying to come up with an outreach strategy and target website owners directly about how your new website is so amazing, and new, and useful etc.
Local directories are good to start with but I don't think its as easy as there being a specific set of link building tips that people run through when they first launch (although if I'm wrong I would love to know them!!).
-
Hey Andy,
I agree with everything that you just said, but after all on page optimization is complete, and we are confident that our content is excellent (we are constantly adding new, high quality content), where do you begin in the link building world?
Got to start somewhere, niche directories may not help for link purposes, but at least they will drive targeted traffic ...
But I'm looking for ideas on how to get started with link building for new websites.
Thanks again
-
Hi,
...what are the first directories you add the site to? What are some links you try and aquire first?
I wouldn't be starting here. Directories for the most part are pretty useless, unless you are adding yourself to a niche / local one that might help with specifics.
Follow all best practices with your site. Ensure that you have thoughtful and well phrased page titles that describe the page. Make sure your content is amazing (average isn't going to cut the mustard). Spend additional time to ensure this happens. Don't fall into the trap of overusing keywords and make sure your site is well configured to avoid duplicate pages.
There is so much to cover here, that I would suggest you spend some time reading over the MOZ Beginners Guide. This will give you a good grounding into what you should be doing.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Transferring website onto a new domain and it has disappeared in the rankings
Hi, First time posting! Our website was page 1 for just about all local searches (legal related). Due to a rebrand we took the site over onto a new domain name and it has totally dropped - on average pages 8-9, even for local searches. The transfer was done back in May, I did expect a hit but I assumed it would recover fairly quickly but it doesn't seem to be the case. Any ideas/advice/tips would be greatly appreciated 🙂 Jamie
Technical SEO | | jamiericey0 -
Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google
While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built. Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed. What is the best way to solve this problem? I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | melen0 -
Are these redirects damaging my rankings
Hi, just been going through my google webmaster tools and i have found a number of soft 404 errors and was shocked to see these redirects going to my home page. | URL | Response Code | Detected |
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
| --- | --- | --- |<colgroup><col style="width: 45px;"><col style="width: 80px;"><col><col style="width: 120px;"><col style="width: 90px;"></colgroup>
| | 1 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity | | 7/25/13 |
| | 2 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1068-coronation-street-nick-proposes-to-leanne | | 7/28/13 |
| | 3 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1086-coronation-street-fiz-nearly-gets-tyrone-in-trouble-with-kirsty | | 7/28/13 |
| | 4 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1155-coronation-street-kylie-considers-telling-david-about-her-affair | | 7/28/13 |
| | 5 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1157-coronation-street-fiz-is-worried-when-kirsty-pays-her-a-visit | | 7/28/13 |
| | 6 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/750-actress-hilary-duff-is-sued-over-car-accident | | 7/25/13 |
| | 7 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/843-what-your-dogs-bottom-scooting-behaviour%E2%80%99-really-meansI would have thought that the developer who upgraded my site would have either had these blocked or directed them to the correct page. i am now guessing that there are going to be hundreds of these appearing and would like some serious advice.normally with old pages i would have them going to the relevant articles or pages but it seems the developer has redirected hundreds of these to my home page, which i guess is going to confuse google. i would like to know if this will confuse google have all these pages going to my home page.i have tried to find out where the developer in my site has redirected the pages as they are not in my htaccess file, i use joomla.can anyone let me know what i should be doing with these to solve the problemmany thanks |0 -
Site Map
For a long time our site map used to be http://www.efurniturehouse.com/sitemap.xml recently our hosting company changed the site map to: http://www.efurniturehouse.com/xml-sitemap.ashx I went ahead and submitted the new site maps to both Google Webmaster and Bing. I submitted the Google one on Monday and it states PENDING. ( A day later this pending) I just submitted the map to Bing. I now have 2 site maps on each. 1)Is having 2 a problem Will they ignore the old site map or can we delete and if so when can we delete I appreciate your input Regards Tony www.eFurnitureHouse.com
Technical SEO | | OCFurniture0 -
We just fixed a Meta refresh, unified our link profile and now our rankings are going crazy
Crazy in a bad way!I am hoping that perhaps some of you have experienced this scenario before and can shed some light on what might be happening.Here is what happened:We recently fixed a meta refresh that was on our site's homepage. It was completely fragmenting our link profile. All of our external links were being counted towards one URL, and our internal links were counting for the other URL. In addition to that, our most authoritative URL, because it was subject to a meta refresh, was not passing any of its authority to our other pages.Here is what happened to our link profile:Total External Links: Before - 2,757 After - **4,311 **Total Internal Links: Befpre - 125 After - 3,221
Technical SEO | | danatanseo
Total Links: Before - 2,882 After - 7,532Yeah....huge change. Great right? Well, I have been tracking a set of keywords that were ranking from spots 10-30 in Google. There are about 66 keywords in the set. I started tracking them because at MozCon last July Fabio Riccotta suggested that targeting keywords showing up on page 2 or 3 of the results might be easier to improve than terms that were on the bottom of page 1. So, take a look at this. The first column shows where a particular keyword ranked on 11/8 and the second column shows where it is ranking today and the third column shows the change. For obvious reasons I haven't included the keywords.11/8 11/14 Change****10 44 -34
10 26 -16
10 28 -18
10 34 -24
10 25 -15
15 29 -14
16 33 -17
16 32 -16
17 24 -7
17 53 -36
17 41 -24
18 27 -9
19 42 -23
19 35 -16
19 - Not in top 200
19 30 -11
19 25 -6
19 43 -24
20 33 -13
20 41 -21
20 34 -14
21 46 -25
21 - Not in top 200
21 33 -12
21 40 -19
21 61 -40
22 46 -24
22 35 -13
22 46 -24
23 51 -28
23 49 -26
24 43 -19
24 47 -23
24 45 -21
24 39 -15
25 45 -20
25 50 -25
26 39 -13
26 118 - 92
26 30 -4
26 139 -113
26 57 -31
27 48 -21
27 47 -20
27 47 -20
27 45 -18
27 48 -21
27 59 -32
27 55 -28
27 40 -13
27 48 -21
27 51 -24
27 43 -16
28 66 -38
28 49 -21
28 51 -23
28 58 -30
29 58 -29
29 43 -14
29 41 -12
29 49 -20
29 60 -31
30 42 -12
31 - Not in top 200
31 59 -28
31 68 -37
31 53 -22Needless to say, this is exactly the opposite of what I expected to see after fixing the meta refresh problem. I wouldn't think anything of normal fluctuation, but every single one of these keywords moved down, almost consistently 20-25 spots. The further down a keyword was to begin with, it seems the further it dropped.What do you make of this? Could Google be penalizing us because our link profile changed so dramatically in a short period of time? I should say that we have never taken part in spammy link-building schemes, nor have we ever been contacted by Google with any kind of suspicious link warnings. We've been online since 1996 and are an e-commerce site doing #RCS. Thanks all!0 -
Not ranking on Google
Hi all, I am optimising a site which is a hotel directory for a small island in the Mediterranean - Malta. The site is www.maltahotelsonline.com. I did a keyword research and optimised the page. However I am now at link building stage. Since we do not have many links the site is still not ranking very well for the desired keywords (ranking fine on Bing and Yahoo yet not on Google). As a result there isn't much traffic on the site. 1. Is there any particular issue that you can spot on this site that is not allowing it to rank well on Google? 2. Any suggestions on link-building please?
Technical SEO | | ICON_Malta0 -
How is this site doing this?
http://www.meccabingo.com It shows a splash / promotion page yet you check the cache and it's the real homepage, they are doing this so they don't lose rankings but how are they redirecting users to that but Google is caching the real homepage? is it friendly? thanks!!
Technical SEO | | AdiRste0 -
301 an old site to a newer site...
Hi First, to be upfront - these are not my websites, I'm asking because they are trying to compete in my niche. Here's the details, then the questions... There is a website that is a few months old with about 200 indexed pages and about 20 links, call this newsite.com There is a website that is a few years old with over 10,000 indexed pages and over 20,000 links, call this oldsite.com newsite.com acquired oldsite.com and set a 301 redirect so every page of oldsite.com is re-directed to the front page of newsite.com newsite.com & oldsite.com are on the same topic, the 301 occurred in the past week. Now, oldsite.com is out of the SERPs and newsite.com is pretty much ranking in the same spot (top 10) for the main term. Here are my questions; 1. The 10,000 pages on oldsite.com had plenty of internal links - they no longer exists, so I imagine when the dust settles - it will be like oldsite.com is a one page site that re-diretcts to newsite.com ... How long will a ranking boost last for? 2. With the re-direct setup to completely forget about the structure and content of oldsite.com, it's clear to me that it was setup to pass the 'Link Juice' from oldsite.com to newsite.com ... Do the major SE's see this as a form of SPAM (manipulating the rankings), or do they see it as a good way to combine two or more websites? 3. Does this work? Is everybody doing it? Should I be doing it? ... or are there better ways for me to combat this type of competition (eg we could make a lot of great content for the money spent buying oldsite.com - but we certainly wouldn't get such an immediate increase to traffic)?
Technical SEO | | RR5000