Just a quick post today. One of the most common questions I get asked is how to get to the top of Google Ireland‘s organic search results pages with a new website. While there isn't a one size fits all approach, below are my ‘Top 10 SEO Tips for New Websites' for ensuring strong organic ranking in Google.ie and other search engines when building a new site from scratch:
1. Choose a keyword-targeted .ie domain
If you're a landscape gardener, servicing clients in the Limerick City/County area, a domain name such as “landscapinglimerick.ie” would be perfect. If you're targeting the Irish market only, a .ie domain will give you an advantage over other domain TLDs. No worries if you don't have a .ie domain, just make sure you choose “Ireland” as your country in Google Search Console's International Targeting settings.
2. Don't scrimp on your web hosting
Host your site with a company that offers fast servers, solid security and efficient backup systems. My favourite web hosting companies are getflywheel.com and cloudways.com.
3. Use WordPress CMS to build your website
Build your website on the WordPress CMS platform. Very user friendly, some great integrated SEO functionality and plenty of themes & plugins available to create a professional looking site.
4. Set SEO-friendly permalinks
Make sure you activate SEO friendly permalink settings in WordPress admin. I adopt the custom structure “/%postname%/” on virtually all my websites.
5. Install Yoast's SEO plugin
Install the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast and follow the plugin configuration instructions here
6. Write SEO-friendly meta titles and descriptions
Write optimised meta titles & descriptions for each of your pages & posts.
7. Target one main keyword in your meta tags and H1 tag
Optimise each of your pages & posts for a specific keyword/search phrase. Include the main phrase you're targeting in the meta title & description and also the first H1 header tag and paragraph of your content. Don't use the keyword too often within the content as Google may interpret this as ‘keyword-stuffing' which could result in a penalty.
8. Start blogging for SEO
Set up a blog page within your WordPress website and publish relevant, informative articles regularly. Using our landscape gardener example, you could post articles about common landscaping/gardening problems such as ‘best time to sow a lawn' or ‘best bedding plants for cold weather'. The trick is to publish content which mirrors the information your prospective customers/clients are searching for online. By doing this, you will gain traffic from the SEO relevance of your content and, perhaps more importantly, your content has a good chance of being shared and linked to across social networks which will establish you as the ‘go to' person in your particular industry and location.
9. Set up a Google Business profile
Set up a Google Business Profile. Online searches for services are often appended with a geographical location, e.g. ‘landscaping limerick'. If there are relatively few suppliers of these services in your area, there's a good chance you will get a fairly high listing within Google's geographic search results. As these appear above the organic results, this is a great way of getting to the top of Google Ireland even if your website is relatively new.
10. Track your visitors & conversions with Google Analytics
Install Google Analytics tracking code to monitor your traffic and enable you to gauge where your visitors are coming from and how they are engaging with your site.
SEO obsessed, rugby-loving Welshman living in Ireland since 2002. Freelance SEO and Wordpress web design consultant based in Killaloe, Co Clare.
Am sure these SEO Tips can easily help in getting top ranking on search engine. One must need to maintain quality of their work for making sure that his website rank on top page of search engine.
All really good pieces of advice! I actually was not aware of the geographic IP thing. Do search engines like Google actually downgrade you specifically for foreign hosting, or is this just a side effect of trying to prioritize websites that are near to the person searching?
I really appreciate all of your recommendations for WordPress stuff. Not that I’m associated with the company, just a fan of the platform. The fact of the matter is that it’s incredibly flexible, and so far it’s been able to handle everything I’ve needed to do with a blog. More people should take advantage of it.
Hi Andrew, thanks for the comment. In relation to SEO importance of geographic IP address, various studies have shown there is a very high probability that this is something Google factors in to its ranking algorithm. How important it is in relation to other factors is a little more tricky to determine. I suppose with Google’s recent emphasis on delivering hyper targetted results depending on location, browsing history, interests etc. it’s only logical to surmise that this may well grow in importance over time.
Hi William , some good points . I just wanted to ask you about tip 8 in terms of setting up a blog on your WordPress . Could you elaborate on this please ? I’m using WordPress for my website , how would I incorporate this into my website ?
James – if you’re already using WordPress then it will have the blogging functionality built in. Most website themes are set up to display excerpts of blog posts on the home page. But it is possible to have a “static” home page and select an interior page to display blog posts via the WordPress admin Settings>Reading screen.
Thank you I am glad my blog is so informative and helpful
Great post, Villiam! LinkWithin and Yoast are just awesome and highly recommended. We’ve used it on Social Media Revolver since forever!
Wajid Khan
Amazing blog……..
It was really informative, i am working on some local projects and i was looking for some Local SEO tip that can improve ranking of keywords for local searches, this blog was helped me. Thank you for sharing such great information.
Excellent tips. A very helpful tips for the newbies. These things are must to do SEO. You just wrapped all the necessary check list in this post. In SEO, it is needed to provide original content in page. And Blogging also helps to drive traffic to your site. Thank you William for such a great post.
Nice article,thank you for sharing
Yeah you have one of the best sites and information around. we love to see more of it
Thanks for share informative info.
Iam a beginner of Search Engine Optimization techniques. Your post helped me to learn a lot. Thanks for the awesome Post!!
thanks alot for the good article and nice tips and here is a great website has some helpful tips about SEO
Nice SEO tips man. Hope i can improve my website with this tips
hiii thanks for this post…………..
“SEO or search engine optimisation is a part of the internet marketing mix with the objective to increase position of a website (or a web page) in the organic search results. Together with other online marketing disciplines, SEO Service falls under the category of search engine marketing or “SEM” which is often attributed to paid listings only. Sites which appear higher in the search engine results are more frequently visited and as a result enjoy higher amount of traffic.”
I also am using WordPress and it has taken a long time but I am seeing results for my efforts. I do believe now that in your description Humming Bird likes you to try and include Who You Are, Where You Are, What You Do. Now I am open to correction on this if anybody knows any different.
I am also trying to improve my traffic by offering a FREE Guide to visitors who visit my site. I have just uploaded the first edition.
Thanks alot for the good article. SEO !!!!
Learned a lot from this post, thanks for the great SEO tips to improve my projects.
SEO pluingin by Yoast is really good . Slowly ranking my website.
Thanks for the post
As always Content is King. To be able to combat against Panda-Penguin updates, every blogger must leverage and invest more with unique content.
I have managed to get a customers website in the top ten on Google.ie for agreed key words. On my system it is listed at number 4 on Opera, Firefox, Chrome etc. When I go to the customers premises, which is less than a mile away, it is not in the top 10 and shows at number 35 on Google.ie. Any ideas? (Another Welshman in Ireland (20 years) and I played rugby for nearly 40 years.)
Hi Peter. Thanks for stopping by. There could be a number of reasons for the variation in rankings. It’s most probably the result of “search personalization” which you can read about here – https://www.blastam.com/blog/how-to-accurately-check-google-search-rankings You’ll get a more accurate ranking indicator by using a tool such as https://serpbook.com/ which allows you to choose search location (i.e. Ireland).
Hi Nice Information and good post
Nice SEO tips . Hope i can improve my website with this tips. thanks for sharing…..
Thanks for updating new information about seo. It helped me a lot to improve my businesses. Also share your new updated details about seo in your website. Thanks.
Hi
Great post, Nice informative and helpful
post. I really enjoy for this status and best seo tips. Thanks for sharing.
Web designing is very important and it is more than more than web designing nowadays. SEO is becoming important for survival of web designing. Tip number 10 is new to me and now I’m going to install Google Analytics tracking code definitely to monitor my web traffic.
Nice tips for optimizing WordPress Site. Thank you so much for sharing.
Excellent SEO tips For New Website. Very supportive tips for the newbies. These tricks are must to do SEO. In SEO, it is needed to offer original content in page. Thank you William.
Excellent SEO tips For New Website. Very supportive tips for the newbies. These tricks are must to do SEO. In SEO, it is needed to offer original content in page. Thank you.
very nice tips >thank you sharing such a tips and informative one.
Actual informative tips to new websites owners. Great sharing for us.
Hi, great advice I recently made a website using the Wix template platform, My friend had told me about using a .ie hosting service so i have just purchased one. In tip 7 – Could you explain how to include your main search phrase in the meta title while also using the particular phrase for that page ?
Thank you
Thank you so much William this is really good seo tips for new website i am already work on this strategy 🙂
Very Nice Information. Really Helpful. Thanks for sharing this excellent post
Just commented about local search on one of your other articles and see you’ve already covered it here so apologies for that (bit like preaching to the converted!). I’m quite interested in the hosting location as well as have used Blacknight for a .co.uk site, and it’s pretty hard to evaluate if there are any consequences.
Google Webmaster country targetting is an option, and for .co.uk it automatically sets that as the target region. I suspect if you give the right indicators then it possibly sorts it out. Hving said that I would agree with your own view – ie, keep it local. Apart from anything else response times are probably better and page load speed seems to be in the mix.
Nice tips. we will follow all for any news website SEO. Thanks guys for sharing.
Thanks for sharing!
Valuable information. Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic on the World Wide Web. After-all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic.
hi all very well talk about all these thing but if a person does not understand can you point in right direction and give a 1 of cost for set up Thanks Declan
Thanks for your comment Declan. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained before, it’s just not possible to give a ‘one-off cost’ or quote. There are so many variables to consider.
Tip 8, definitely my favourite. People ussually think blogging is difficult and a lot of work. But I don’t think so. As small Slovenian SEO blogger, specially on furniture market, I am blogging daily on different projects for 4 years now. And I think one blogger has far enough time for one poste per week. Consistency is the key.
Some great information related to optimising websites in your blog. this has given me a better insight into small things I should be tweaking on a regular basis. Currently, I am using a lot of these SEO techniques but your blog answers a lot of questions to the problems I encounter.
Valuable information. everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic.The chances are good that your web designer hasn’t properly optimized your website for search. From the content to the page titles, your website needs to be properly optimized so search engines can better understand what your website is about and what search terms your are trying to target.
Hey William, valuable tips given that you’re still getting comments three years later. Everything you’ve got above is still relevant, so as much as everything changes, some things stay the same. 😉 Good man. Gary
Solid tips, we just need to pick up on optimised meta tags but we’ve got the others. And a blog.
Thanks
Jim
Great article William, always Content is the kind. I believe that in 2018 the most important factors are the mobile optimization plus speed optimization. Good read.
Hey William,
you’re doing a good job here, keep up the great work 😉
John
Great Tips for SEO. Please keep sharing.
Wow. Such an Informative Blog. I used all the techniques. Actually, I have a website and I applied all of these techniques and it really helpful. some of my keywords start appearing in search results of Google.
Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks For sharing useful seo tips. You share the point five is very useful for new website. WordPress plugin is important for SEO. Lot’s of benefits for install the seo plugins. Great tips!
solid tips like this stand the test of time 😉
Gary
Nice seo tips for website…
I am digital marketing expert and also use the above some technique that are still working..
your tips will really help me to promote your brand..
Thank you so much, William, this is really good SEO tips for a new website.
Hey William, all of these points are awesome I applied all of these tips on my blog and i see the amazing results I was not optimizing meta tags but after reading this I optimized the meta tags on of my published blog posts and today I see the results. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Excellent Post,
I have just read this valuable post . It helps me a lot in my current project. Thanks for sharing such a great post.
These are really awesome tips thanks a lot for sharing
Thanks for sharing this excellent SEO tips. We all know without SEO for New Website its misunderstanding to go on. Very supportive tips for the newbies. These tricks are must to do SEO. In SEO, it is needed to offer original content in the page. Thank you.
Informative post, Thanks for sharing strategy for New Website..
Hi, I am a beginner of SEO techniques. Your post helped me a lot. This is really a good seo tips. Thanks for the sharing.
Wow i love to read that 10 SEO Tips , Thanks for sharing this post with us.
I got some great insights from your blog. I think these are evergreen points to focus on while doing SEO, but people miss these basic points. Thanks for sharing.
Anyone building a wordpress website needs to have a good understanging of how to optimise bloat.
Good read even in 2022.