SEO for a New Website: 10 Unknown Things You Need to Know

If you're thinking about launching a new website, there's no better time than now. Website creation has never been easier, and with the right platform and some solid SEO knowledge, you can launch a site and dominate the search engine results page in no time.

Why is SEO important for a new website?

When starting a new website, one of your top priorities should be search engine optimization. SEO helps make your site more visible to search engines using on-site and off-site optimization techniques and best practices. If done correctly, it can result in more traffic and conversions from your target audience.

There are a number of different things you can do to optimize your site, but the goal is always the same: to improve your visibility and attract more visitors to your site. SEO can be a complex and time-consuming process, but it's worth it if you want your site to succeed.

10 Things You Need to Know About SEO for New Websites

SEO has evolved over the years. In the early days of SEO, all you needed to do to get to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) was stuff your content with as many keywords as possible. But now, Google's algorithm has become a lot more sophisticated. There's a system in place to identify spam sites and low-quality content and Google buries them in the search rankings where no one will find them.

Although many ranking factors are known, a lot of them are shrouded in mystery. Google has been quite secretive about the inner workings of its algorithm, but it leaves just enough clues for webmasters, SEO professionals, writers, and content creators to build websites that provide helpful and valuable information.

Here are 10 SEO things you need to know before creating a new website.

1. Create "People-First" Content

When you create a new website, one of the first things you think about is how to get to the first page of Google search results. After all, that's where everyone wants to be. So, the tendency is to create content for search engines and not for humans. This sends signals to Google that your content is not satisfying to the searchers.

You may think that keyword-rich content and metadata are the only things that matter, but if your content isn't helpful, it won't rank well.

Your content must be useful and give value to your readers. This has always been important, but it's become even more so since Google's recent "helpful content" update.

2. E-A-T Matters to Google

According to Google's Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) is one of the signals that Google uses to determine if the content is helpful to the readers. This means that your site must demonstrate these three important characteristics.

Let's face it, anyone can create content about a certain topic, but not everyone is an expert on the subject matter. This expertise builds authority and trust. New websites will experience low traffic in the beginning, but by consistently creating high-quality content that shows E-A-T. This will show Google that you know what you're talking about and that you're a trusted source of information.

To further build your E-A-T, you must get involved in the online community and show your knowledge through interactions and discussions. You can also participate in industry events and networking opportunities to further demonstrate your expertise and connect them to your content.

3. Don't Just Build Links, Build Relationships

Backlinks are a key factor in any SEO campaign. Backlinks are seen as a vote of confidence by search engines. The more backlinks a website has, the more authority it has in the eyes of search engines.

A few high-quality backlinks from reputable websites can be more valuable than hundreds of low-quality links. Focus on building relationships with the websites that link to you. These relationships can be beneficial in the future and may even lead to more backlinks down the road.

4. Create a Dedicated Page for Your Videos

If you want maximum exposure for your videos, you must create text-rich content that will supplement your videos. Don't just share links and rely on YouTube or other video-sharing platforms. You need to give your videos a little more boost by creating articles about the topics featured in the videos.

Together with relevant titles, descriptions, and keywords, creating an article gives a lot of SEO juice that will make it easier for search engines to find your video content and make it available for searchers.

5. Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

Google is using mobile-first indexing, which means that the mobile version of your website is primarily used for indexing and ranking. This is in recognition of the growing importance of mobile devices in the way people access the internet. So, it's important to make your website mobile-friendly. One way to do this is to use a responsive design so that your website automatically adjusts to different screen sizes of mobile devices.

Mobile-first indexing is not just about ranking websites higher in search results; it's also about making sure that your pages give a positive user experience when people access your site using smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.

Part of improving your site's mobile friendliness is page speed. Make sure that pages load faster on mobile phones.

6. Internal Linking for SEO is a powerful ranking signal

When it comes to ranking signals in SEO, internal linking is often overlooked. It's simply the process of linking pages within your website. It's important for SEO because internal links help Google understand the structure of your website and the relationships between pages. This helps Google index your website more effectively and can also lead to better search rankings.

When adding internal links to your content, make sure to use keyword-rich anchor text. This will help Google understand what the linked page is about. It also helps users intuitively navigate your site, which can improve their user experience.

To get the most benefit from internal linking, focus on link quality and don't forget to keep your linking structure logical and easy to follow. This helps increase average session duration and keeps users on your website.

7. Use Relevant Keywords in the Right Places

Keywords are the driving force for any SEO content marketing strategy. This means finding the relevant keywords and putting them in strategic places - titles, headings, alt tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, and internal and external links.

It also means using keywords in a way that makes sense so that they flow naturally and don't look like they've been forced into the text. The search engine algorithm will know if you're stuffing your content with keywords and penalize your site for it. It's a surefire way to harm your site's ranking.

8. Use Clickable Table of Contents for Long Content

Adding a table of contents for long-form articles has several benefits:

• Helps break up your content into more manageable chunks
• Makes your content more scannable and easier to read
• Makes topics easier to find and points users to the answers they're looking for
• Creates jumplinks in the search engine results page
• Helps reduce your bounce rate
• Makes your site more user-friendly overall

All of these factors can ultimately lead to better SEO results. So, if you're looking for a way to give your site a boost, implementing a clickable table of contents is definitely worth considering.

9. AI-generated content is a red flag

Google mentioned in its Quality Guidelines that it may take action against sites that abuse automatically generated content. It's not saying that the technology is bad per se, but if it's used to "game" the system and manipulate search rankings, then it has no place in search rankings.

Here are some cases where your site will certainly get into trouble for using auto-generated content using AI tools.

• Generated text that does not make sense but contains search keywords
• Translated text using AI software that has not been reviewed or curated by a human
• Generated content from scraping RSS feeds
• Stitching content from different page sources without adding value for the readers

10. Avoid creating low-quality content for affiliate and product review pages

If you're thinking of creating a product review site or a purely affiliate site, you'll be walking on thin ice if your strategy is to just copy the product description and reviews directly from the merchants' pages. Google considers this low-quality or thin content.

To avoid being penalized in the search ranking, you have to create original product reviews that add substantial value to existing information - adding videos, discussing pros and cons in depth, and actually using the products. This increases the likelihood of your site performing well in search rankings.

New websites don't automatically get on page one of search results. It takes time to get indexed and ranked but knowing this information can accelerate the indexing and ranking of your new website.