New website : SEO approach and strategy
-
We are a small startup company looking at starting a complaints website in India having user generated content(complaints) .
Would some one help me to draw overall strategies on how we can achieve good traffic over one year. We realise that there is no magic wand to improve positions in search ranking for a site which hosts user generated content esp. since we dont know what key words to target.
In this context i was looking form some expert suggestion on how we can go ahead with the SEO for the next 1 year ..
We are open to paying for the services if you prove that you have the required experience . Otherwise any suggestions from other who have experience in such situations are welcome ...
-
It's not as bad as it sounds
-
Thanks Shelly - appreciate the positive feedback!!! Hope I never have to use Blacklisted Loans though....
-
Good shout from Kerian. I would definitely recommend giving it a thorough read. I've just re-read it myself and I learnt some new tips once again.
-
The previous posts are right on point. The best place to start is with a clear focus of who you are and what your website will be offering others (what is your brand in clear terms). I’d also suggest reading “The Art of SEO”. You’ll learn how to research your competitors to see who’s linking to them and what keywords they are targeting. Keyword research and building a strong link-building strategy will be a critical part to your success. Once you have a strong set of keywords and you have a general idea of who you would like to target for links, you’ll then need to think about what kind of content you can develop to attract the attention of those you need links from.
To be a bit more specific to a site such as yours, it sounds like you are looking to build a website revolving around consumer complaints about products, brands, business, etc. Some likely places to research for keywords might be www.complaints.com or www.complaintsboard.com. Research them (and many other competitors) using SEOmoz’s Competitive Link Finder, Open Site Explorer, or other tools.
A place to work from regarding a link-building strategy may be in the form of a video broadcast that discusses some of the most egregious offenders (complaints) or bad brand PR. You could drive traffic to the site through twitter, facebook, and youTube campaigns to build popularity and interest. It is always important to put yourself in the shoes of your target consumers and try to visualize what they would want to gain from visiting your website and what might initially pull them in (link bait).
Anyway, I hope this helps you on your path to SEO success and if I can be of any further help, let me know.
-Ryan
-
Hi
The best place to start isn't far from general good business practices and marketing practices, with just a bit of common sense SEO sprinkled in.
-
Define a good solid brand.
-
Clearly define your product, and its unique selling proposition - what is it, why is it different? And what are its benefits that will make someone want to use it?
-
Then keyword research... what are the non-brand generic terms that people already use to talk about what your product will offer? Us this page on seomoz to get started with ideas.
-
Let your keyword research help dictate your information architecture, navigation, and site architecture. Each page should target 1-3 keywords, with the homepage being your main product keyword.
-
Use the beginners guide to SEO and this on-page optimization tool to help optimize each page correctly.
-
On launch day you should begin tracking with analytics, webmaster tools and track rankings.
-
Then you can start backlinking and social sharing. Use this page for ideas.
...the list goes on, but the MOST IMPORTANT THING is getting your architecture right from the beginning. Even Matt Cutts himself says if you get architecture right from the beginning you'll save yourself tons of time and aggravation later on.
Good luck!
-Dan
-
-
Hi
I would recommend starting with this to at least get an appreication for the business of SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Read the questions and answers here on the forum and spend time looking at the blog posts and Webinars that indeed confirm that there is no magic wand
Update: On re-reading this I also realised that it may have been a bit trite. The most important thing is that from the beginning you are thinking of it and it is part of your focus. Make the entire team aware of the importance of this.
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
-
Hreflang and canonical tag for new country specific website - different base domain
I have a little different situation compared to most other questions which asks for hreflang and canonical tags for country specific version of websites. This is an SEO related question and I was hoping to get some insight on your recommendations. We have an existing Australian website - say - ausnight.com.au now we want to launch a UK version of this website - the domain is - uknight.co.uk please note, we are not only changing from .com.au to .co.uk.... but the base domain name as well changed - from ausnight to uknight as you can understand, the audience for both websites is different. Both websites has most pages same with same contents.... the questions I have is - Should we put canonical tag on the new website pages? If we don't put canon tag on new website pages, what is the impact on the SEO ranking of current website? I believe we need to put hreflang tag on both websites to tell google that we have another language version (en-au vs en-gb) of the same page. Is this correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TinoSharp0 -
Best SEO Strategy
Hi fellow Mozers: I have a question about strategy. I have a client who is a major real estate developer in our region. They build and sell condominiums and also built and manage several major rental apartments. All rental properties have their own websites and there is also a corporate website, which has been around for many years and has decent domain authority (+/- 40). The original intent of the corporate website was to communicate central brand positioning points, attract investors and offer individual profiles of all major properties. My client is interested in developing an organic search strategy which will reach consumers looking to rent apartments. Typical search strings would include the family whose core string would be 'apartments in Baltimore.' (Currently, the client runs PPC for each one of their properties. This is expensive and highly competitive.) In doing research, we've found that there are two local competitors who are able to break on to Page 1 and appear beside the National 'apartment search guides' who dominate the Page 1 SERPS (like apartments.com). The two local competitors have websites of either the same or lower authority than our client's; one has a better link profile, the other is comparable. Here's our problem: our local competitors only build and manage apartments. So, then, the home pages and all the content of their sites ONLY talk about apartment rental related information. Our client's apartment business is actually larger in scope than either local competitor but is only one of their major real estate verticals. So my question is this: if we want to build out a bunch of content which will rank competitively with our local competition, are we better off creating a new area of the corporate site, creating targeted content and resources appropriate for apartment seekers OR would we be better off creating an entirely new site, just devoted to the same? I'm wondering if a new section will ever rank well against competitors whose root domains actually feature content which is only rental related? Likewise, I'm wondering whether we'd be giving up too much, in terms of authority, by creating an entirely new site? I've also only found examples in the industry where an entirely new site was created, so it makes me question the strategy of building out a rental-specific section of a site which also contains information about their condo business. For instance, the Related Companies are a huge builder in the East; they have a corporate site and a site called https//relatedrentals.com . Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Can I define that one area of my website is a regualr news (no subscription) and the other part of the website is news that only subscribers can read?
Hi I have a client that have a news website, he asked me if he can define one area of his website to be a regular news that google can show on google news search results (no subscription) and the other part of the website is news that only subscribers can read? Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut1 -
How to find the redirects on website
I want to find the complete internal redirects on website. Just internally linked. How to find such?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
How to Submit My new Website in All Search Engines
Hello Everyone, Can Any body help to suggest Good software, or Any other to easily Submit my website , to All Search Engines ? ? Any expert Can help please, Thanx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | falguniinnovative0 -
Domain switch planned - new domain accessible - until the switch: redirect from new to old domain with 307?
Hi there, We are going to switch our local domain oldsite.at to newsite.com in November. As our IT department wants to use the newsite.com already for email traffic till then, the domain newsite.com has to be accessible for public and currently shows the default Apache page without useful content. The old domain has quite some trust, the new domain is a first time registered domain (not known by search engines yet and no published anyhow). The domain was parked till now. I am aware of the steps to take for the switch itself, but: **what to do with the newsite.com domain until everything is prepared for the switch? **I suppose users or search engines find the domain and as there is no useful information available it harms us already. My idea was to 307 redirect newsite.com to the oldsite.at but the concern is that this causes problems as soon as we switch the domain and redirecting with 301 from oldsite.at to newsite.com? Do you have any objections or other recommendations? Thank you a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | comicron0 -
Suggestions for a SEO Review
I think it would be beneficial to have a third party seo review of the network of sites my team and I manage and was wondering if any of you had suggestions for what sort of tests should be done or that we should expect to see done during one of these reviews. We are a small team who has varying seo experience and have been working hard to make improvements to our sites in the past year. Most of our sites have been completely overhauled in the last 12-16 months and seo work that had not been done in the past has been setup, along with some corrections that may have been harming seo. We believe we are on the right track and have learned a good amount about seo in that time, but it would be nice to have some "expert" feedback outside of our office to get a clearer picture on anything we may be missing or some suggested improvements. A sort of double check on the work we have done.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unikey0 -
Future-proof website to optimize SEO.
Hi All, This is my first post and hopefully a question that could help others in similar positions. Say we are trying to rank for the keyword "security testing tools". Product name is "Sectest" and its a security testing tool. *We currently have an "SEO" section that is purely good content and the idea with this is to be able to rank for "security testing tools" talking about what to expect and look for in such tools and relevant content - Linking to our product page at the end of it. structure is brand.com/security-testing/tools and that would have a link to brank.com/products/sectest Obviously product pages would get their meta tags and content re-written so we don't compete for the same keywords. Is this approach optimal? or would google want us to link directly to the product page instead of "information" about security testing tools? Nobody in our sector is taking this approach and we have already started it, but I am starting to wonder if I am getting into big trouble further down the line. Thanks and best regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JorgeGarcia0