How to Rank a 3-Month-Old Website in Google

A few months ago, I launched an e-commerce business selling garden supplies to local communities and homeowners. I’ve done everything right since then to make sure that my website gets found on Google, but it still isn’t ranking very well. Does this mean that I’m doing something wrong? Can my site ever rank highly enough to compete with the big players? What else can I do to help it rank? Fortunately, there are answers to all of these questions, and they lie in learning how to rank a 3-month-old website on Google.

The Basics

You might be able to rank your site quickly and effectively if you use SEO keywords properly. Focus on building relevant links and acquiring domain authority, backlinks, and page authority by publishing fresh content at regular intervals. The more often your website is updated, with good content that provides value for users, the more likely it is that you will get targeted traffic. Good luck!

Research Keywords and Topics

After three months, you will probably have gathered enough information about your target audience that you can put together an SEO strategy without trying. However, doing some research before you begin is always a good idea. The following are key questions that you should attempt to answer: What words do people use when they’re looking for your product or service? How many other companies offer these products or services? What have they done well and what have they done poorly? Are there any review sites where people discuss these products or services? What keywords do they use most often and why do you think those terms are so popular? What kind of content would be helpful to potential customers? Can it be created in-house or is it worth outsourcing?

Prepare Content Assets

While it’s possible to rank a three-month-old website, your chances are slim unless you have quality content assets. In order for someone to search how do I rank my new website?, they probably aren’t satisfied with their results from doing generic searches and need niche or unique information that can be found only on your site. Make sure you create plenty of high-quality content about topics related to your topic that is optimized for search engines and serve it up with good links.

Build an Audience with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a great resource for SEO because it contains three important elements that are fundamental to any website’s SEO campaign: company information, personal information, and professional connections. The first two are easy enough—include your company’s name, address, and phone number on your page. More importantly, use your own personal profile as an opportunity to entice prospective clients by including details about yourself that demonstrate your industry knowledge and expertise. LinkedIn allows you to add links at will (here's how), so use that function judiciously throughout your profile.

Build an Audience with Facebook

To successfully rank any website, you need an audience. Even if you have a stellar product and terrific content, it won’t matter without people engaging with your brand. One way to build an audience is by using Facebook ads. Though Facebook doesn’t necessarily influence search results directly, that doesn’t mean it can’t help push more people toward your site. The key is understanding how Facebook and search engines work together: Google might show ads from Facebook (or other third parties) within its SERPs, but those advertisers don’t determine what appears there; they simply bid on ad space like everyone else.

Build an Audience with Twitter

Research suggests that social media is an important ranking factor. This means building a Twitter following could help your website rise higher on search results pages. But don't set up Twitter just to get links back to your site—make sure you’re tweeting valuable information, like industry trends and commentary. (You can even use Buffer to schedule tweets with custom images and links, so that’s one less thing you have to worry about.) As your following grows, so will your chances of being noticed by publishers or bloggers who share great content for similar audiences. Just be careful: Your Twitter account is also another valuable brand asset; if you start spamming others, you risk damaging your brand’s reputation—and thus its ranking power over time.

Get Influencers Talking About You and Your Brand

If you want your business to grow, you need customers. And if you want people talking about your business on social media, you need customers and happy customers. The quickest way for strangers on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to learn about your business is through customer advocacy—when your existing customers talk about how awesome you are. An easy way to encourage these types of referrals is by having an influencer program built into your website. It can include an area where users can leave testimonials and share their feelings with other site visitors.

Focus on Email Marketing

Your biggest mistake might be focusing too much on social media marketing. The big reason is that it doesn’t really provide any tangible results (like sales), and it can take a lot of time away from more important aspects of your business. Focus instead on email marketing—it has been proven effective at increasing sales, and you don’t have to worry about changing algorithms or not being able to reach people who aren’t online every day. Plus, it takes less time than social media.

Keep Updating your Website With Fresh Content

One of the most important things you can do for your website is keeping it fresh with new content. While there’s no magic number, it’s a good idea to update at least once per month. When creating content on your website, make sure you include keywords in both headlines and body text as well as provide links to other pages on your site that provide additional information about certain topics or industries related to your business. You should also be sure that all links are working correctly. Once you publish each post, consider sharing it across social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. This will help increase traffic and improve SEO rankings even more!

Optimize Your On-Page SEO Elements

On-page SEO refers to the optimization of your website's elements (pages and content) on their own page. It includes optimizing your page titles, meta descriptions, headings, paragraphs, alt tags, images' alt tags, and internal links. In addition to your on-page SEO elements, you need external links coming from other websites. External links can come from sites such as blogs or forums where you post guest posts or include one of your website's pages within your own forum signature line using a text link(s). The following are simple steps that anyone with little experience in SEO can take toward optimizing their web pages for maximum Google search ranking results

Optimize For User Experience on Mobile Devices

If you’re not sure if your site is mobile-friendly, plug it into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. This will show you how well your site performs across multiple mobile devices. It also lists recommendations for optimizing your site for performance on smaller screens, but if you don’t have time for a deep dive into that topic then just look at whether or not pages load without horizontal scrolling and pinch zooming. If they do, you’re good to go! If not, there are lots of tools out there that can help (or check out Mobile Search Engine Optimization: A Guide For Searchers and Site Owners).