How should I start?
-
Hello Everyone,
I have just launched a new education website for the UK market. Its been a very long time since I did any link building or SEO. I dabbled in it for my own business almost 10 years ago and although I was (and I am) an amateur it was nevertheless very successful and effective. It felt like you could get some links and rank without throwing a huge amount of money at it. However, it seems a minefield now. It also feels like if you don't have deep pockets you don't have a hope in getting ranking. And my budgets are very limited.
I am looking for advice in terms of what I should do to get this website to rank and get a decent amount of traffic. I am hoping Moz members can help me with this.
I have a website which I published less than a week ago. It has now been indexed by Google. On a positive note, I believe its a very powerful exact match domain. And as its education, it has a lot of content or pages, which will only grow.
I am happy to post the domain here, I don't know if I should?
On the negative side of things, it obviously has no history or links. So if you were trying to rank a new website, what would you start with? What would you do first and second etc? Do people still get directory and forum links? Are they useful? It seems like its mainly blog articles now. Please educate me a little. I am trying to read up as much as I can. But there is a lot to take in.
Thanks.
Ryan
-
Thanks for sharing the information it really helped me alot https://www.lyricsauto.com
-
I request you to read what is SEO and how it changes over time.
-
Yeah - check it out. It runs about 50-60 USD per month but it's well worth it for what it does for your site.
-
That helps. I am already doing most of that apart from Yext. I have never heard of that before.
-
Hello! Can you tell me more about what you're looking to accomplish with the site so I can tailor my feedback? Thanks!
-
Hey Ryan,
I was doing SEO 10 years ago and it's so much different these days. The exact match keyword phrase domain was gold at that time (2008). You could put up a site and it would be within the top 10 for that keyword phrase in 2-4 weeks. It's much different now. It's still a positive that you have the exact keyword in the domain. That will help you as you get your hands dirty into some SEO.
Given that - here's where I would start:
1. Do your keyword research using the Google Keyword Planner. I would assemble a list of 40-60 phrases to target that combine both longtail and general keyword phrases. Long tail keyword phrases make great blog posts to write about. Make sure the content is relevant to the visitor too.
2. Do some competitor link building research - the Moz link tool (https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/linking-domains) can help you identify links that your competition has acquired so that you can start to build a backlink portfolio.
3. Submit your sitemaps to both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
4. If you have the funds and a physical address, sign up for yext.com. Claiming your local profiles will help build you a backlink portfolio which will help
Does that help? Let me know if you have other questions. SEO is much harder these days but you have to take the slow and steady approach to win in the long run.
-
Hi John,
Thanks for responding. The website is: https://gcse.co.uk
Since you are American, the words GCSE may not much to you. Its basically the compulsory exam all high school students in the UK take. So for this sector, its the best domain you could have (in some ways)!
We are going to re-adjust the product and service offering a tiny bit. As being online (just) one week has made us realise a few things. Instead of providing subscription-based instant tutoring service, we may focus on booking tutors online and providing mock exam or revision app (which is both web and app) based.
I have even had people ask me to turn it into a free resource based site!
However, getting traffic is the key for us. And getting links back in is proving to be an expensive exercise.
Thanks.
Ryan
-
Hey Ryan! Congrats on the new site. Did you happen to build the website in WordPress? I can give you some tips on how I would start but it would be super helpful to know a little bit more about your site structure. Thanks - John
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best way to start building links without paying for them?
I am starting new websites for my clients and want to know where to start. I understand that rich, engaging content gets links naturally, but how do we get links to rich content that noone has ever seen?
Link Building | | Prestonp0 -
Link building - where to start?
Okay - we have around 200 natural links pointing to our domain, some good, some not so good; today I've spent some time removing any bad, spammy links pointing to our business domain and we're just about there. Now I'd like to start a link building strategy. To be fair, I've assumed for the past year or so that link building is dead, unless you can get natural, really good links - which in the mobility and elderly products industry can be quite difficult. I have recently created a blog on our website - could RSS feeds be a benefit too?
Link Building | | LiamMcArthur0 -
Starting SEO For My E-commerce Site?
Hey guys, So I'm starting SEO for my e-commerce furniture store and I'm a little confused. Right now the only links I have are from sponsored posts. How do I get links from other sources? What other sources are there besides sponsored posts? I submitted my site to Dmoz.org and I was also going to submit it to the Yahoo directory. I have contacted a few personal home decor blogs but have not heard back from those people. Could someone steer me in the right direction. Thanks a ton!
Link Building | | The_Kiwi_Man0 -
When do backlinks start helping?
I have been working hard at getting quality backlinks but I had a lot of keywords slip in rankings this week. This may because I have been extremely busy for a week and haven't added a lot of content to my site. But I thought the backlinks would be helping. How long does it take backlinks to start boosting your site and what results should I see? I am focusing on getting backlinks from a site with a PR of 7. The others have a PR of 4-5. They are the BEST sites in my niche.
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
Best way of starting link building to a new website?
I am doing SEO for a security keyholding company and would like to build up some quality links from related and high PR sites. Submitting profiles to directories is incredibly time consuming. I am thinking of outsourcing a link building campaign to a link building company, but know Google advises against this. Does anyone recommend a cost effective and ethical link building service out there? Or are there any link building techniques to use that will help me out? What I want to be sure of is that a link building campaign won’t get my websites penalised in search engines and the links are from quality and related websites. Many thanks in advance
Link Building | | AlexBarnes0 -
Outsourcing Link Building - What Low LEvel Links Should One Start With 1st
Outsourcing Link Building - What Low Level Links Should I start with if my interest is get free immediate traffic as a direct result from placing links or what ever out there and what should I outsource 1st and why ? What questions should I ask my self that will help me determine where I should start with low level links ?
Link Building | | helpwanted0 -
When rebuilding a site, when should you start building links?
We are in the process of completely rebuilding our web presence. We went ahead and started a blog using Hubspot while we are redesigning everything and writing all new content. The new site will be live in early August. The question is when do we start making a big push with Linkbuilding? I am currently trying to promote the Blog but I'm wondering about linkbuilding for the rest of the site? Do we wait until the new site is live or do we start doing it now? The new site will be completely different from the old site?
Link Building | | emcadoo0 -
New website start of SEO
I have a new domain name starting its SEO have added it to Pro Dashboard campaign of my ac. Started doing is Research with competitiors backlink analysis as well. 1. If i do i say 10-30 back link requests in a day for 1 domain name using research of the analaysis tools will it be ok or it will be high numbers to start with ? 2. Shall i in start itself of SEO start doing blog commenting or not recommended. 3. Having same email id and name for 3-5 blog comments day for new domain with same email di and same name cannot it hit to any spam issue ? Asking however i read blogs and then only do good post of comment to ensure that it also contribute something in name of fresh good content to the comment box area to get good approval rate as well. I want to know the basic numbers to start with SEO for fresh new domain and how shall it be progressive in numbers etc. Will wait for reply of the community members...
Link Building | | anand20100