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A Quick & Dirty Checklist To Starting a Brand New Website

Are you looking to start an ecommerce business, an affiliate marketing blog, or service-based business? This checklist will help you implement the write SEO strategies to help you rank quickly. While most SEO strategies take six months to a year to implement, this checklist will help you get your first sale as soon as the website is done. Let’s take a look at how you can start finding the right domain, writing the right content, and getting backlinks within no time at all.

Tip #1: Find an aged domain that is relevant to your niche

Have you ever done a Google search and clicked the three dots next to the SERP? You will get a result that looks like this:



Many people think that aged domains are important because they have backlinks. The real power behind an aged domain is that it has a history with Google. Google is more interested in the fact that a business or individual once used the URL. While backlinks on an aged domain do help, people often get a domain with backlinks that are not relevant to the business and this does not help rankings.


Power Tip: How To Find An Old Domain:


Look at this website to find a suitable domain that has recently expired. Place the domain in the Wayback Machine. If the website was indexed within the last decade, this might be a suitable domain for your business.


Tip #2: Buy a domain that has a keyword, but is not an exact match domain

EMDs are great for ranking. However, the myth that EMDs work great for SEO is a myth for a reason. If you are a basement waterproofer, don’t buy locallansingbasementwaterproofingcompany.com. Consider a URL that is shorter, unique for your business, and also has the element of a keyword in it. WIth some element of a keyword in your domain, you will be able to create shorter filepaths/URL slugs for each of your important pages (such as /lansing) and won’t have to incorporate lengthy keywords into the URL slug. 


Tip #3: Pick an extremely high volume keyword for your products or services and then use long-tail easy variants of that keyword to create pages for the keywords you want to rank for.

Let’s consider a search term that people might use for a service business, such as HVAC. HVAC, by itself, is a super hard keyword to rank for. However, if you use a long-tail variant of that keyword, such as “affordable HVAC” and a city name, you are going to rank pretty quickly if your domain matches the criteria that has been established above.

Tip #4: Focus on creating MANY pages with similar content 

This may sound like an inherently bad strategy, but for easier keywords, this might not be the case. Location pages can use similar content and still stand an equal chance of ranking. The most important part of your content is that it matches the user intent of the search. You can easily create bulk pages for similar keywords, like a service keyword + location modifier (the city name), and create some slightly unique content for each page. 

Tip #5: Order backlinks that don’t take two weeks to finish

Guest blogging used to be an art form that people actually worked for. Today, everyone buys backlinks. The fact of life is that you’re going to have to buy backlinking services from companies that provide them. If you order one, just make sure that it doesn’t take weeks to get. If you are strapped for cash, The Hoth offers a $60 Link Foundations package that works great. The faster you get backlinks, the easier it will be to rank.


Tip #6: Utilize Google Merchant if you are an ecommerce store

Most people think that you only need Google Merchant for Google Shopping ads. That’s simply not true. There are free listings available through Google Merchant. Most people start their online search by looking at some of the free merchant listings. If you are selling products with a high keyword search volume, people will find you and do at least one order once every several days. Here are some more tips for getting more power out of your free listings:


  • If you have variable products, only surface the CHEAPEST option on Google Merchant. The lower price point will make you more visible. 
  • Make sure to fully describe your store on Google Merchant. If you are truly “woman owned and operated,” there is an option for that. Users can filter the search results for certain types of businesses.

Tip #7: Pick a fast theme for your website template

There are many free themes out there for ecommerce and other types of websites. For example, Debutify is a great theme by Shopify that has a “freemium” version. It’s faster than any Shopify template out there and after your website starts making money, you’ll find it a little bit easier to rank.ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ