Best SEO practices for a new website in 2022

What is making a website if it’s not attracting visitors? You want traffic on your website, and to get that traffic, you need to rank your website on Google. It’s that simple.

What do we know about SEO?

We know that Search Engine Optimisation is the best way to get traffic to your website organically and directly from search engines. Many businesses still don’t use SEO strategies. Don’t make the same mistake. If you want the right kind of traffic on your website, you need to use SEO effectively. Drive traffic to your new website with the latest and best SEO practices.

6 best SEO practices you need to follow for ranking your new website

Proper keyword research

Keywords are the words your target audience is searching for, so if your website contains those keywords, Google will notice that your content or website is relevant to what the people are searching for and rank it better so that people find your website. There are plenty of tools on the internet that helps you narrow down your search for keywords, and you can pick and choose the exact keywords you want your website to represent. SEO courses help you learn tools and techniques that help you find relevant keywords for your website.

The positioning of these keywords in your content also matters. Keywords thoughtfully placed in titles, headlines, and meta descriptions will work better than keywords randomly scattered around in the content. It is also advisable to put your keywords in the content that appears at the top of your website, as Google identifies the content on the top of websites better and displays it with the search results.

Publish remarkable and relevant content

Give the people something worth coming back to. The better the quality of your content, the more your website will be shared among people. And people are more likely to click on a website sent to them by someone they trust rather than a website they found by themself on the internet. Publishing unique content also makes you stand out from the crowd. When more people realize that your website has something no other website does, you will automatically start ranking because Google will push your content as original and unique.

As long as you’re not compromising quality for quantity, your content will be received better by the audience. Also, if you can write long-form content, that will help you rank better on Google. Long-form content also has better potential to add long-tail keywords as they can be placed authentically in the content without your content looking like it’s stuffed with keywords.

Focus on getting backlinks

Backlinks translate to authority! Other websites link back to your content in their content only when your content is up to the mark. So getting backlinks can bring you significant traffic because readers will now know you are a trusted resource.

That being said, getting backlinks is not as easy as it sounds. If you’re creating content that can be found anywhere, there is a meager chance that anyone would backlink to your website since it is still new. So focus on creating original and helpful content that other blogs and articles will be able to relate to their material in some way. Have an exciting hook, exclusive content, or even controversial stance in your content that other websites will find interesting enough to mention.

Work on UX

If you’re making a website for an audience, you need the audience to have a good experience while they’re on the website. One of the main reasons a visitor can leave your website is page speed. So, improve the loading time of your website so that the audience doesn’t click out before they even get a chance to check out your content.

Make your content visually appealing by:

  • Creating sections for different topics and subtopics
  • Proper use of H1, H2, H3
  • Adding relevant and descriptive images
  • Avoiding intrusive pop-ups

Even the design of the website plays an important role. If your website isn’t distinctive enough, it won’t stand out in the viewers’ minds. So try to give it a unique view that will be on-brand to the business or company.

Practice internal linking

Internal linking is so much easier than backlinking. It shows consistency in your writing and helps you drive traffic to your content through association. Your links will have a higher chance of getting clicked as they will be the most relevant to the topic.

Interlinking also helps build authority to the page you’re linking to. When you work on building a page’s authority, it could help boost its ranking on Google. Content written around the same topic could help Google better understand your website and content, and Google will start pushing your content when people search for certain topics and keywords. So try linking back to those articles where you want to create more authority within the audience.

Optimize images

We already know images make for exciting content. They are visually fun to look at and act as a break from all the written content. Your images should be relevant to all written content, and if they add more context to your content, Google can’t see images.

So, optimize your images by:

  • Adding alt text that describes what’s in the image
  • Using good quality images
  • Keeping the file size small

Optimizing your images for your website means you’re making the images as convenient as possible for all readers. As a result, your images aren’t an inconvenience to them while reading your content, but it’s helping them understand the content better.

In conclusion

When you start a new website, your main objective is to rank it on Google and other search engines. So these SEO practices will help you rank your website better than it would’ve ranked otherwise. But these practices are in no way everything there is to SEO. To make the most of your website and optimize it to its best ability, you need to study SEO. An SEO course will help you immensely if you want to learn SEO techniques and become an SEO expert.