Once I’ve created and launched a new website I look to promote it online using various SEO techniques. These techniques generally stay the same no matter what type of website I launch – be it a blog, business site or brochure site. Today I’d like to share with you my top ten tips to follow after launching a new site; hopefully these will help new developers and act as a nice reminder for those more experienced.
Backlinks are an essential building block to help your site and some of the methods below will help you gain those valuable backlinks, other methods will help spread the word about your site, help you inform search engines your site exists and help you track backlinks, errors and search queries.
Basic SEO for a New Website:
Be it BlogSpot, WordPress, Static Website or any other platform, when you are launching a new Website, there are few basic SEO techniques, which goes for every type. These SEO tips, should be followed by everyone, and if you have question regarding any of these tips, feel free to ask me via comments.
Before, we move ahead here are few articles worth reading:
- A guide for beginners to learn Keyword research
- 10 Keyword placement techniques for higher ranking
- How to rank#1 in Google Search
Create and submit sitemap
Sitemaps help search engines discover all the content on your site, essential for new and old websites alike. You should ensure your sitemap conforms to the sitemap protocol and there are many free and paid for website and software companies that can automatically create a Sitemap for you. If you are using WordPress, you can use Google XML sitemap plugin to create sitemap for you new WordPress site.
Webmaster’s tools
Google, Bing and Yahoo all have webmaster sections for you to log in and tell them about your site. Once you have confirmed you’re the site owner you can submit your sitemap you made above, view details of sites linking in to you, top keywords and any errors they find when crawling your site.
- Search engine optimization of blog using Google Webmaster tool
- How to get started with Bing Webmaster tool
Make your comments useful, not spammy as this will only waste your time when the editor deletes it. Comment on blogs relevant to your website and hopefully they’ll allow you a backlink. If not at least you are spreading word about your site to the relevant readers and you never know, they might have websites and add a link to you.
Social Bookmarking
Another useful way to spread word about your site and hopefully gain valuable links back is to take advantage of social bookmarking. Add pages (not just your homepage) from your site to some of the top bookmarking sites such as; Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon. It also useful if each page or blog post from your site offers readers the chance to share your site to their bookmarking account. Consider adding share buttons or a toolbar such as those offered by addthis.com to your pages.
Build up a good following of relevant businesses, clients and those in related industries and the benefits can be huge. Post useful tweets and occasionally throw in articles, news, or blog posts from your site with a link back to them. Don’t just jump right in for sell, sell, sell or you’re liable to put off followers. Add a tweetmeme.com button or similar to your pages too.
This site has over 500 million members so adding a page on here is a must. Add Facebook like buttons to your website too so that visitors can share your pages with their friends. We have a good number of articles, related to Facebook marketing for a new website. Here are few links, which will help you to get started:
Exchange links
Most webmasters are happy to link to good quality, relevant websites so try contacting a few direct. When gaining links always link to sub-pages or folders, don’t just concentrate on your homepage. Looking for a good tip at finding sites that will link to you? Google “Add Link” followed by your website niche for a list of relevant sites that you can submit links to. Though 2 way link-exchange is a big no. Also after Penguin update, I highly recommend you to get backlinks from relevant niche. Here are few more resources, to help you build links for your new Website:
Submit a press release
Announce to the world you’ve launched, what you offer and why you do it best. Ensure it’s a good, well written press release and if necessary hire someone to write it for you. Then you need to get your release out there. The web has some good auto-submit press release sites that can often gain you links back but also consider local press, trade magazines or any publications concentrating on your niche. Do remember, Matt Cutts (Google Sposkesperson), recently added that Press release doesn’t give SEO advantage, but reports from SEO world shows that Press release still helps in search engine ranking.
Internet Directories
Submit your site to good quality internet directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, Business.com, Yellow Pages and Best of the Web. Some of these are paid and none offer guaranteed inclusion so ensure you meet all terms and conditions before submitting your site. Some directories are deemed to offer good quality backlinks so it could be well worth the initial investment.
Don’t stop your SEO Effort!
This one’s simple, don’t steam ahead, and do all this in one weekend and then forget about it! You need to constantly work hard, publish fresh new content, talk to your twitter followers, post updates to Facebook, build a good reputation on forums and blogs, get to know press contacts and keep them up-to-date with how you’re doing and eventually the web will build trust in your site.
Do remember, SEO is an ongoing effort, and you should keep monitoring your site for progress. You can try tools like SEOMOZ, which will crawl your new Website like a search engine bot, and will give you recommendation to improve your site. So there you have it, the top ten basic SEO things I do to launch a site. I hope some of you found this useful, feel free to share what you do too!
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loved this post and i find many posts useful to advanced bloggers and also for beginners. I started my first blog by inspiring Harsh sir blogging journey. I started my blog on Blogspot that i cant spend money on domain and hosting.
Can i get a backlink for my blog sumanmatety.blogspot.com named tittle as TechBySuman which is my name.
Thanks Harsh sir.
Thank you Daniel. Im really hoping to use the above SEO tips to improve my website.. By the way in the last point i think “SEOMOZ” link is not working..
Great SEO point discovered for a new blogger. Dear Daniel thanks for sharing
Actually SEO is all about between of search and searchers. Domain age, baclink, relevancy, content, title, description, images, canonical, link building, these are the number of things which is most helpful for SEO. Actually this is very well explained article.
Hello Daniel,
Amazing Post! I read your blog & I got the informative information which is really useful for other SEOs. These all techniques are amazing way helpful to promotion of your blog & website.
Thanks For Sharing.
Hello Daniel,
Execellent Post! Thanks for sharing your experience with us. These SEO techniques are really effective and helpful for the other SEOs. Good job.
Great article Daniel- Is social bookmarking still a must? I’ve read several contradictory articles that now claim it is sitting firmly in the spam file!
Great Article Harsh,
Can you please provide me the links of some basic e-book on SEO techniques !
Thanks for the post. I loved the part specific to press release. I was not aware of that. Googled it arnd and found that its super awesome for seo. Thanks for a wonderful post 🙂
i have done all except exchanging links and submitting press releases! i guess i should get on with my site maintenance 😀
Hey, you’ve missed an important thing! You should ping the search engine after you created a sitemap, and if you have a photoblog, create an image sitemap. ;D
Thanks.
Nice stuff!
I am still struggling at getting my Blog indexed. 🙁
But these tips will surely assist me. 🙂
great basic stuff to know and focus on , i have been looking for this , and i need it really ! thank you for the tips and what you shared ! well done 😉
Be careful your social bookmarking on Stumbleupon, better to ask some friend to do it for you. You will get a better result.
Note; I have noticed that several of my back links showing on Google webmaster tool appear to be from no follow blog, therefore I didn’t take much attention regarding do follow or no follow as long as I can enjoy reading and community. 😉
Daniel, what about forum posting and Yahoo answer? Are they still good? If you have to give all these tips some points, how much would you rate each of them from largest to smallest? Thank you.
yupp…thanks…i always love SEO tips whether they are told or before
Very Well written article Daniel. Thanks a lot for sharing. These tips will surely help for my new website.
I am not believing in link exchange. It is always good to do organic link building such as blog commenting, guest blogging, article submission etc.
Thanks, Helpful tips for beginners 🙂
I have to admit that I should probably be more focused on the basic SEO stuff, the free ways to climb the search engines, but I always seem to forget about the basics.
These all points are really helpful in promotion of your blog or website.
Definately, one must be following these points to make thier blogs or website successful.
Daniel Bramley nice tips but if you work continue these tips developed the strong ‘SEO’.last is more important.
Sometimes, there will be nofollow comments area in some blogs. In that case, guest posts will be useful to get exposer with dofollow links to improve new website’e SEO.
Thanks for the list.