Starting from Scratch

By Alex Faiers

We all know that the success of any website is measured by the amount of targeted quality traffic it receives, and most of us now also know that this involves some degree of search engine optimisation. But what about in the case of a brand new website? What about a new idea, or a new company that wants to compete, but will be doing so for the first time, and on a brand new domain name?

At my agency, we are often asked to include search engine optimisation in new site briefing documents and meetings, but usually at the end as a footnote. "Oh, and also, we want to be number one on Google" they say…If only it were that simple.

Search engines have smartened up a whole lot over the last few years, and there are now many important factors involved in making a successful website. When you are starting from scratch, your competition has one hell of a head start.

Should this put you off? Of course not. But you need to know what it is you are looking at - what lies ahead. The reality of this task is all too often frustrating to many a client.

The low down

Just why are new sites facing such an uphill struggle? At the end of the day, it's all about convincing the search engines that your site is what it says it is - and not only that, that it's the best site for your targeted keyword or phrase, and deserves to be listed number one. What qualifies your site, when thousands of other sites, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions, have been around for years? You have to convince them, and that is done in many ways. The most basic of which is inbound links. If hundreds of other sites all link to yours telling the search engines you are a site dedicated to widgets, well that's going to go some way in to convincing them that you are!

A lot of people realise the importance of links and many website owners will now launch a site and buy links to raise the profile of the site expecting instant results. It very rarely has that effect. Why? The Google Sandbox effect.

What is it? It's simple - new sites don't get indexed in Google! Of course, it's a tad more complicated, but a lot of brand new sites get ignored for up to six months before getting decent results. And it makes sense really - how can a new site about widgets be better than one that has evolved over years, already gets tons of traffic, and has thousands of inbound links? And I'm afraid to say, there is no way around it.

The Google Sandbox is a theory reasonably well known in the SEO industry, and all though it's not proven, the idea makes a lot of sense. It is Googles response to site owners buying links to improve their rankings. There is very little they can do to stop people trading links from website to website, but a clean and easy solution is to just block new sites for a length of time.

What can you do?

Accepting that you are not going to get top rankings from day one is important. You have time to cover off the basics. Use an SEO savvy agency to design and build the site. Ask for standards complaint code. Write good quality original and relevant content. Add it to the site regularly; every day, every week - just keep adding good quality copy. And get your site out there.

Hundreds of links popping up on day one aren't going to help you in any way. Organically growing natural links are what you want. How do you get them? Again, more content. It's often called link baiting, where you add such good content that people will find useful that you will naturally get people wanting to link to your site anyway. Give something useful away for free - ask for links back. Set up a two-way link campaign. Submit your site to the engines and directories. Send out an online press release. Make some noise and people will start to look. Make your site an authority on your subject and the engines will have to sit up and take notice. Just don't expect miracles from day one.

One important point to mention is your targeted keywords and phrases. If you are an online mortgage broker trying to build mortgage leads for example, and you try and target the keyword 'mortgage', you are in for very long hard campaign with very little rewards. 'Mortgage' is so competitive and so generic, you are never going to see the results you want unless you have an untold financial resource and years to waste before seeing even marginal rankings.

However, if you target the long tail keyword, the targeted phrase that is specifically what you offer, let's say, 'South Wales buy to let mortgage', you may see that your results are easier to achieve. The results will be quicker and give you exactly the type of traffic you are after, leading to higher conversion rates. Keyword research is a long topic, one that warrants its own series of articles, but neglect it at your peril!

And as a parting slice of inspiration, we recently took a brand new client site from nowhere on a brand new domain, to number one for their primary keyword in three months, and that was going some. As long as you are in for the long term and see the benefit of an SEO commitment, you can achieve solid results with a brand new site - it just takes some time, and a whole lot of effort! Good luck.

About the Author
Alex Faiers is one of the founders of Addictivity, a London based web design agency providing online marketing and search engine optimisation services to their worldwide client base.

Starting From Scratch
Using Articles Effectively To Promote Your Web Site
Top Ten Traffic Building Tips For Your Website
5 Ways To Create Content to Drive Traffic to Your Site
How to Choose a Good Domain Name?
Search Engine Friendly Design
Eight Simple Steps For Enhancing Your Website
Do You Need a Website or a Web Designer?
HTML - Guidelines for Authoring
Web Page Optimisation
Google's SEO Advice For Your Website: Content
Top Dirty Linking Tricks
RSS... And The 10 MOST Powerful Reasons WHY You Should Be Using It