How to Rank a Brand New Website on Google and Other Search Engines
In a world where your website is quickly becoming your number one salesman and your online presence is the most important asset to your business, it is no surprise that SEO is a buzzword within digital marketing that simply isn’t going away. 68% of B2B buyers are researching online and have already decided what product or service they want and how much they are willing to pay before making initial contact with your business. This number increases to 88% with B2C buyers.
Once you begin to recognise the importance of an effective digital presence, only then can you fully understand the value of investing in not only your website, but methods of optimising the chance of being found via search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Being found on Google can be a real challenge when starting out. This is because with 380 new websites being created every minute, Google has to be certain that your website isn’t spammy, provides value to any potential visitors and is a legitimate business or personal asset. After all, it’s Google’s job to ensure that anyone who searches for information in Google is sent to the most relevant and useful web page.
I always like to think of Google and other search engines like a librarian. You ask the librarian to suggest a book, they recommend one on a certain topic which you have told them you are interested in and you go away and read it. Much like search engines there are 2 key concepts here. Firstly, the librarian has to have read the book, enjoyed it and understood what it was about before they can recommend it to someone else. Secondly, if they kept giving out terrible book suggestions, you would stop asking their opinion. Google is no different and they make their money from people asking for suggestions.
In all honesty and depending on competition, if you started now it would take between 6 and 24 months for your website to rank on Google. There is however a difference between a new website with an old domain and a new website with a new domain. A domain name carries a domain authority which has a huge influence on your ability to rank on Google but in this article, I am going to assume you have a new domain and a new website and you are looking to gain rankings quickly.
So What Can You do to Rank Your New Website That Has a New Domain Name?
The most important thing you can do is focus on user experience. By ensuring that your website loads quickly, has easy to find information, provides visitors with value and just looks nice, you are taking steps in the right direction to ensure the user experience is exceptional. Much like our example of a librarian earlier, if the book is boring, difficult to read and lacks substance, the librarian won’t recommend it to anyone. If it’s a phenomenal read that’s enticing from start to finish and is an enjoyable experience, they will recommend it. Google will only recommend websites if, by recommending them, they fulfil their own expectation of customer service.
To analyse your website speed (an important feature of user experience) click here. If it loads in less than 5 seconds you’re doing a good job and in less than 3 seconds you’re doing a great job. Then log into your Google Analytics and check your bounce rate (anything less than 50% is great), your average session duration (anything more than 2-3 minutes is good) and your behaviour flow (see where people are dropping off). If your website is doing well on all the above metrics then you know it is performing well and users are having a good experience.
Once you are certain that your user experience is good, it’s all about getting more users into the site and demonstrating this to Google. Much like our librarian, the more people that rave about the book the more they will recommend it to others. One simple thing we always do is use pay-per-click advertising, such as Google Adwords, to drive additional traffic into the site and get users interacting with it. The more traffic the more “reviews”. We would suggest using a £500/month budget on adwords and running this for 6 months to get a good volume of effective traffic into the site. Note that any old traffic won’t do. It needs to be done through effective keyword targeting by a professional to ensure that the right visitors are entering your site. Otherwise it’s the same as recommending someone interested in a romance book, to go and read The War Of The Worlds. It wont end well!
Then start working on your domain authority by creating backlinks, producing great content and networking. Domain authority is essentially a Google ranking system that grades your website from 0-100 based on how good it is. This should only ever be compared to your competition as opposed to the actual ranking itself and the higher your domain authority the easier it will be for you to rank on Google. Domain authority and ranking positions are not directly proportional but they are related. You can check what your and your competitors D.A’s are here.
So How Much Would it Cost to Get my Brand New Website to Rank on Google?
If you were to use a digital marketing agency in order to rank your brand new website on Google you should expect to pay around £500/ month over the course of a year (excluding the adwords spend) but this may vary based on your requirements.
Final thoughts
While you can do SEO yourself, if you are looking for quick and effective results you should be deploying the services of an expert. The most important things about SEO for a new site with a new domain name are user experience and domain authority. If you nail these two foundations you will see results, but please be patient, SEO is not a quick process.