How to Increase Search Engine Rank For a Brand New Website

To increase search engine rank for a brand new website, you are presented with slightly different challenges than a business with a website that's been around for awhile. Let me first clarify that by new website I mean, completely new. Not a redesigned or redeveloped website, but a business, organization or start-up that has never had a website before.

To start off you are presented with some obstacles. Lack of history and lack of inbound links.

When launching a new website you'll be using a domain name that carries no authority whatsoever. While this rank factor isn't as important as it was in the past, it is still a rank factor. The search engine, specifically Google, doesn't know whether or not your domain name is trustworthy. This is referred to as Page Rank, which you'll earn over time from a variety of factors.

One of the factors that increases Page Rank is the inbound links to your website. Because you'll be launching a brand new site and domain name, you'll have no inbound links. Your second hurdle.

Earlier in the week I spoke on How to Rank Better in Google. Everything in this post will apply to helping your new website rank better, but for your purposes I'll add a few other focus points.

Create Good Content, Then Create More Good Content

 We covered this a little bit in the other post, but this will be incredibly important for your new website. The best way to accomplish this is by using the blog functionality of your website...hopefully you have it. If you don't, you need it. You will want to create this content as much as your capabilities will allow...if you can blog once a day, do it! But understand this, the content must be good and it must be useful.

Before you start typing away, start brainstorming all of the problems, questions, concerns, or opportunities that your potential customer will have. These may not be directly associated with your products or services, but instead the problems that would eventually lead someone to your products or services.

I can't stress enough how important this step is for your new website.

Get Some Inbound Links

Let me be clear in saying that link building is not sending out an email blast to 1000 strangers asking for a link. This effort cannot be spammy. In order for this to be effective it will rely on the quality of that content you plan on creating. The links that your website gets should be from websites that are related to your website in subject, industry, customer base, etc.

How To Get Those Links

This is the hard part. You need people to know you exist, but you can just start yelling out, "Look at me, look at me!". People will ignore you. What you can do is increase your activity on social media and other blog sites. Engage with people in these locations, but don't make it one sided. Make sure that you are on LinkedIn, connecting with people, and sharing your content and other related content. Think about joining LinkedIn Groups where there are people there that are in a related situation or industry. Do the same one the other social platforms as well. If you engage with others genuinely, eventually they will check you out. If your content is good enough, your links will grow. Keep in mind, this doesn't have to happen overnight. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't move as quickly as you'd hoped.

SEO and Sponsored Advertising

These are the items covered in the post, "How to Rank Better in Google". With a new website, consider starting off immediately with sponsored advertising. This will start getting your website noticed much faster than SEO. It will help generate traffic while you wait for your organic rank to improve. Hopefully your website is good enough that you'll start generating leads and sales quickly!

I wish I could have told you that it only took a flick of a switch to help increase your search engine rank on your new website, but that is just not the case. It will take time and hard work, but it will pay off very well in the end!