You can get top rankings on Google even if you have a brand new blog with a brand new domain.
In this Blog post I’ll explain exactly how I’m doing this.
But before I do that, I want to first show some quick proof so that you know I’m speaking from experience and not from theory.
Proof #1 – My Domain is Only 5 Days Old
Here’s a screenshot of my domain registration with GoDaddy.
As you can see, I registered my domain “FreeYouNow.com” on Dec 30th, and today is Dec 4th so my domain is just 5 days old.
So you do NOT need an “aged” domain to get ranked.
Proof #2 – I’m Ranking #1 on Google for My Keyword
A few days ago I wrote a Blog post where I was targeting the keyword “Double Your Chances Weight Loss” and different variations of it.
I always try to make my titles speak to real human beings and not just focusing on keywords so the actual title of my post was “How to Double Your Chances of Sticking to a Weight Loss Plan”.
As you can see I’m ranking #1 on Google for the keyword “double your chances weight loss”.
Now, I know that this is not a super amazing highly searched keyword, but it is a long-tail keyword that people might search for and I’m trying to show how easy it can be to rank for long-tail keywords with a brand new Blog and a brand new domain.
How I Got My Blog / Domain to Rank So Fast
I think a lot of people completely overcomplicated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and try to game the system with unnecessary tactics and strategies that will just get you banned on Google.
Personally I prefer to keep things simple and to just give Google what it wants, and it seems to work for me pretty well.
Here’s what you need to do:
#1 – You Need Your Own Domain
Get your own domain because that way you’ll be building your own brand and you’ll also need it for one of the following steps to become a “Webmaster” with Google.
You can get a domain at GoDaddy.com for $10 or less.
#2 – You Need a Solid Blogging Platform
You need a solid blogging platform built around the WordPress blogging system.
Anything that you get for free is going to be crap and isn’t going to give you the features you need.
So don’t waste your time looking for some “free” blogging platform that’s good. You won’t find it.
I’m personally using Empower Network’s Kalatu platform which is awesome. It takes the ultra powerful WordPress platform and simplifies it and adds on a whole bunch of extra powerful tools to make your Blog ultra effective right out of the gate.
Click here to learn more about Kalatu.
#3 – You Need to Sign Up as a Webmaster With Google
Once you’ve got your Blog setup and running and your own domain registered and mapped to point to your Blog, you need to head over to Google Webmaster Tools and register yourself as a webmaster with Google.
Once you create an account with Google Webmaster Tools you’ll need to add your domain/site to the list.
Google has fairly good instructions on how to go about this, but just search for it on YouTube if you don’t know how to do this.
#4 – You Need to Setup a Sitemap With Google Webmaster Tools
Next, you’ll need to setup a Sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools.
A Sitemap is basically a tool which tells Google about all of your new content / blog posts that you write and kind of “nudges” Google to come check them out and index them.
It’s kind of like your website picking up the phone, calling Google and saying “Hey Google, guess what, I now have a new Blog available at my domain…come check it out when you got a minute.”
Sending a sitemap to Google doesn’t guarantee that Google will index every post you submit, but it significantly improves your chances.
Plus, once you have it setup once, the whole process is automated so that you never have to worry about it again.
What you’ll need is you’ll need a Blogging platform that supports Google Sitemaps. Luckily for us, the Kalatu platform comes with a built-in Sitemap plugin running so you don’t have to worry about it.
Here’s a screenshot from my Google Webmaster Tools system. As you can see, as of right now I’ve submitted 8 web pages from my site to Google (automatically), and Google has gone ahead and indexed 5 of them so far. Keep in mind that my Blog and domain are ONLY 5 days old so the fact that they already indexed 5 out of 8 pages is awesome.
#5 – You Need to Get Some EXTERNAL VOTES Pointing To Your Blog Post
This next step is where most people drop the ball.
It’s a very simple thing to do, but most people won’t do it because they don’t believe it could be this simple.
Essentially what you need to do is you need to get at least a COUPLE of EXTERNAL “votes” for your Blog post.
One way to do this is to leave comments on other people’s Blogs which allow you to add in your website URL in the comment box.
This is an example of a comment I left on someone’s Blog.
When you leave USEFUL and RELEVANT comments on people’s Blogs they WILL approve them, and most Blogs allow you to include a link back to your Blog with each comment.
In the example above the word “Paul Piotrowski” is a link back to this Blog.
What you want to do is you want to go out there and leave some useful comments on people’s Blog posts and link back to your Blog post!
You only need a few of these to get on Google’s radar screen.
Another way to get some external “votes” back to your post is to post your Blog post on Facebook like I did here:
By sharing a link to my Blog post on Facebook, this gives me yet another “vote” or link to my specific Blog post from an external domain (in this case Facebook).
The trick here is to get a few links that point back to your individual POST and NOT just your main domain.
Make sure you are just going out and getting a few links here and there from REAL websites and make sure if you use Blog comments that they are real comments left on real blogs.
In other words, don’t try to cheat by going out there and buying some stupid “10,000 links for $5” package on Fiverr or some junk like that thinking that “more is better”.
What you want is NATURAL exposure for your Blog, not some kind of system for “gaming” Google.
#6 – Send Your Blog Post to Your Email List
Now here’s where I think a BIG secret lies that most people in the SEO world don’t really talk about.
What you want to do is you want to have an EMAIL list on a platform like AWeber which allows you to send out an email blast whenever you write a Blog post.
A platform like Kalatu has AWeber integration built right into it so it helps you to build an email list from scratch if you don’t have one, but even if you just have 3 people on your email list you want to start emailing them every time you write a Blog post.
Here’s why you want to do this.
When you send out an email blast to your email list, SOME of the people WILL click through to read your Blog post.
When they click through to read your Blog post, your Blog post will load up in their browser and as it loads it will also trigger the loading of the Google Analytics tracking script (covered later in this post).
This is important because statistically speaking the people who are going to sign up for your email list are going to be those people who like you the most and who trust you the most.
So when you send THOSE people to your Blog FIRST, it will give your Google Analytics stats the best chance of looking good, as opposed to the type of stats you might get from some other traffic source of “cold” traffic.
Let me explain why Google Analytics is important in the next step here…
#7 – The Importance of Google Analytics Integration
You want to make sure that you integrate Google Analytics into your Blog. If you’re using the Kalatu platform, this is super easy as it has Google Analytics Integration built right in.
All you have to do is setup a free Google Analytics account and then paste your Tracking ID into Kalatu and click “Save”.
It’s that simple. Kalatu takes care of the rest.
Now, once you have Google Analytics installed and you send out an email blast to your email list (of any size really), when people visit that Blog post they will trigger the Google Analytics Script every time they load the page.
When the Google Analytics tracking script is triggered, Google starts to track the number of visitors going to your individual blog post page as well as some very important STATS.
Do you see what I mean?
When I published my post, I sent out an email to my email list and a bunch of people came to visit my post.
As you can see, we’re not talking about ASTRONOMICAL numbers either. We’re only talking about 60-70 people visiting that post.
BUT, those 60-70 people visiting my Blog give Google some early indicators (STATS) about the content on that page, such as:
- Avg. Time on Page – My stats show Google that people stayed 2 minutes and 41 seconds on my page – on average. In “Internet Time” that is an eternity. This is a GOOD sign for Google, as opposed to if they stayed like 3 seconds.
- Bounce Rate – The stats also show Google that my page has an 85.11% bounce rate. This is not bad either. Basically Google just doesn’t want to see a 99% bounce rate.
- Pageviews & Unique Pageviews – This tells Google how many times this page has been seen and by how many people. In my case it was seen 68 times by 59 unique people.
Once Google sees and records these types of statistics for this page, it will KNOW that this page is a real page, with real content, which seems to be valuable since people are hanging around and reading the content and not just leaving after 2 seconds.
When Google sees this, it now will give you a chance to rank for whatever keywords it deems appropriate for the post based on your Blog post title and content.
Eliminating RISK for Google
At first, what I’ve written above may seem a bit complicated but keep in mind that MOST of it can be greatly simplified simply by using Kalatu as a Blogging platform since it has a lot of the necessary features you need already built in, without the need to go looking for WordPress plugins, or worrying about modifying codes or scripts or anything of that nature.
Kalatu simplifies a LOT of this.
Secondly, remember that MOST of this is also one-time setup stuff which only needs to be done once in the beginning and then it just works automatically for all your future Blog posts.
Thirdly, understanding this process becomes MUCH simpler if you think of it from the perspective of ELIMINATING RISK for Google instead of trying to PROVE AWESOMENESS.
In other words, in order to rank well in Google, you don’t necessarily have to prove your Blog is AWESOME to them, you just have to ELIMINATE THE RISK that your Blog is SPAM / JUNK.
Does that make sense?
Google WANTS to include your content in their search engine, as long as you can prove to them that it’s not just SPAM / JUNK.
And the way we are doing this is as follows:
- Domain Ownership – By spending $10 to buy a domain we’re showing Google that we are willing to invest at least $10 into our site.
- Good Platform – By using a platform like Kalatu, build on WordPress, we’re showing Google that we’re running our site on a solid platform.
- Claiming Ownership – By becoming a Webmaster of our domain we declare to Google “Hey Google, I own this domain and I vouch for it. This is a good site, it’s not spam or junk.”
- Regular Content – By writing content on a regular basis, we show Google that this site contains timely and relevant information.
- Natural Links to Content – By sharing link to your Blog post on your Facebook timeline, you’re showing Google “Hey Google, my Blog post is good, I’m proud of it and I’ll gladly share it with my friends.”
- Emailing Your List – By emailing your Blog post to your list you’re showing Google “Hey Google, I’m proud enough of my Blog post to send it to my email list.”
- Good Starter Stats – When your initial group of friends and email subscribers visit your site, THEY tell Google “Hey, this content is pretty good, I’ll hang out and read it.” with their stats.
Make sense?
I mean just think about how much RISK you’ve eliminated for Google with all of the above. What are the chances that your site/Blog Post is some spam or junk post if you’ve done all of the above?
Chances are that your post is NOT going to be spammy / crappy content right?
From my 8+ years of experience as a Blogger, I have bought many different SEO courses and I’ve listened to many different so called SEO Experts, and so many of them complicate everything so much to the point where you simply can’t keep up with all the daily changes in the so called Google Algorithm.
But in reality what I have found is that if you follow the simple strategies outlined above, which follow ALL of Google’s rules, you can get your content to rank very quickly and very well, even if you’re starting from complete scratch with a brand new Blog on a brand new domain.
I hope you enjoyed this article, and if you’d like to join my team of Bloggers and learn how to make money blogging about your passions, click here to get started.
Tamara Hawk says
OMG Paul, this is the most helpful post so far this year!!! (looking forward to more BTW)
I have done EVERYTHING on this list except for #6. I do have quite a few people signed up for my blog updates so every time I post a new blog they get an email.
Thing is, they were getting the whole article in the email!!! They had no reason at all to be clicking through to my website to read the post, they already had it!
I just changed it now, before I did my post for today. People are now just getting a couple sentences of my post and have to click through to read the rest. I will let you know how my stats and google analytics change!
I really appreciate this. I expect it will make a big difference in my rankings…
Paul Piotrowski says
Exactly. By having to click through to your Blog they essentially act as your “seed” traffic which tells Google what kind of quality your post is. Since they already signed up to your list and probably trust you, they are more likely to give Google some good solid stats in terms of hanging out and reading your posts etc. This should give Google a good indication article quality.
Chris says
Paul this rocks, I am so exited after reading your article. Implementing commencing. Thanks
Paul Piotrowski says
Glad you liked it Chris.
Suzanne Sobers says
Great value here Paul. A very comprehensive article full of valuable tips that a newbie can really use.
Paul Piotrowski says
Thanks Suzanne. Glad you enjoyed it and found it valuable.
Fabio says
Great post Paul,
amazingly full of value and real experience!
Thanks for sharing
Fabio
Paul Piotrowski says
Thanks Fabio. Glad you found value in me sharing my experience with Kalatu so far.
Harrison Rodrigues says
This blog post is awesome I am a newbie myself so I appreciate all the value that you putt in on this blog post! thanks for sharing Paul!