Tips For Early SEO Success

I had the opportunity to work with quite a few SaaS teams both at early and mature stages of growth and here's how the SEO strategy for new sites is different from old sites.

I've highlighted only the strategy for new sites here. The example is from a client in a crowded market. If you're in a less competitive market, results can be even better.

Some of the key SEO takeaways for new sites:

1. An important part of SEO for a new site is to constantly produce new content . If you stop for a week or two, you'll see the effect as I've demonstrated below. Ideally, you should publish 2 posts of 1000+ words each to stay in the game.

Also, when you start writing on a topic (say email marketing) write 10-12 posts and create internal links between them before moving on to a new topic to build authority.

2. Track your performance through Google Search Console. You'll know what keywords you are ranking for. Once you know that, you can include those new keywords in your content to expand them. Double benefit- you get ideas for lengthier content and you get a chance to update posts regularly. Google likes that.

3. Keyword research is the essential and yet the most overlooked part. Make sure you keep your keywords in the title, URL, metadata and top paragraph of the content.

"How To" keywords have increased 20% in 2020 and yet many established sites are not targeting them. Take advantage of targeting "How To" topics which are easy to rank for.

Also, the trick is to not force your keywords in the content or title- you don't want to create a bad user experience for the readers.

The keyword's usage should be natural and if you don't want to be repetitive in keyword usage, just use LSI keywords instead of the exact keyword inside the paragraphs. Google still understands and you can rank for the LSI keyword as well. (here's a free tool to get them)

4. Remember the key is to give readers best experience. Why do lengthier posts rank better? because they keep a user in the page for a longer time which increases "average session duration"- Google loves that. Same is true when you decrease page load speed.

5. Backlinks are important but difficult to get. You can still share your posts in other platforms like twitter, reddit etc. Just don't do it to spam because if you get too many downvotes/dislikes Google can associate that with your page and penalize you for that.

Bonus Tip

If you are writing a post like "Best Email Marketing Tips For 2021" and you already have a similar post for 2020, don't create a new page. Change the title of the old post and update it with additional content. Best is to keep the URL short and generic (like best-email-marketing-tools)

That way you will not cannibalize your own content, and since your old page is already registered with search engines, it will rank easily.

That's it for now. Let me know about your digital marketing questions.