Today’s guest post is by Alex Adekola. Alex has been developing websites and engaging in organic search optimization since 2002. He has watched the evolution of web and search, and time and time again has placed companies on the top of Google, increasing their bottom line and carving out a niche for Incept Design in the Tampa Bay area. By focusing only on Google, Incept Design has developed a strong expertise in creating strategies to effectively leverage Google to achieve client objectives.
Sujan Patel recently wrote about five things you could do to help boost a brand new domain, and I thought to myself that this is a challenge that many SEO consultants face constantly; it can be a long battle in the SERPs against a domain that has been well-established embedded for the keywords you want. Here are five more strategies that I’ve come up with to help win the battle.
Getting Started
When starting out, there are a few things you can do to when registering your domain name. Be sure to select a time longer than just a year; especially if you are planning on a longer-term strategy.
Also, be sure to select a domain with one of your keywords in the domain. Avoid using hyphens or non-TLD domains extensions unless appropriate, like .tv for a video website. Lastly, don’t go crazy and choose a domain that looks spammy or is unreadable in a logical sense to humans.
In addition to adding a breadcrumb, and proper onsite optimization and semantic structure, be sure to create an XML sitemap and submit it to Google so your new site can be crawled and indexed. Only do this after you have created and built a website with robust content and preferably more of it than your competitors.
Speed Kills
After minifying your css and .js be sure to setup and configure a CDN to distribute your content on servers across the world. Utilizing css sprites will also speed up your website. This simple step is one that many SEO consultants either skip over, or lack the know-how to implement. Keep in mind that a quick site affects usability, especially on mobile devices. Speed could be the difference between number one and two.
Pristine Real Estate Only
Be sure to choose a reputable host on a separate IP than your private network. I would avoid common shared hosting environments, as you have no control over the actions of others on your IP block. This could leave you scrambling trying to figure out why you dropped when it could nothing you did, but someone else on your IP block spamming.
Security Builds Trust
Installing and configuring an SSL certificate on your website is another trust indicator that 90% of your competitors are not using. Be sure to go with a 256 bit encryption vs 128. It’s more secure and brings more trust.
Getting Quality Links
Like Sujan mentioned, focus on high-quality links during the first year of your domain’s existence. And after that, I really would focus on high-quality links since there is no benefit to low-quality links. There are a lot of places you can build high-quality links. The first places I would start include: BBB Online Directory, Yahoo Local, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Facebook and Twitter.
Bonus
Lastly, update your website more frequently and with better content than the websites you are competing against. Remember your goal is to prove to Google that your website is the best resource on the web for whatever topic you are optimizing for. White papers, coupons, special offers, webinars, SlideShare presentations, Podcasts, apps, and tools all make great link bait. What can you give to the community you are serving?
Check out some of Alex’s other posts: Social Fresh East Recap – Day 1 and Social Fresh East Recap – Day 2.