How to SEO Your Website Fast

Most websites grow gradually. As their content and inbound links increase, their positions in search engine results improve. Some websites shoot to the top of search engine results for their targeted keywords in a short time — and then drop out of sight when search engine bots recognize the black hat SEO techniques used. Can your site do well for your targeted keywords fast if you stay within acceptable search engine optimization practices? There are no guarantees, but there are steps you can take to help speed up the SEO process before even choosing a domain name.

Register an expired domain

Recently expired domains that pointed to websites probably still have inbound links to them. In addition, while established domains get a more favorable reception with bots. Other factors may outweigh these advantages of older domains when you aren't in an SEO rush. But when getting to the top of search engine results fast is your main goal, using a previously used domain gives you a head start. Look for a domain that pointed to a site with content related to your site. Those inbound links won't last if the new site at the domain isn't relevant to visitors at sites linking to it. Even if the links stay, they'll be more useful for SEO purposes if they're at sites with content related to your site. Be sure to research expired domains before using them. See what types of sites they pointed to via the WayBack Machine. Search for them online, and check what types of sites link to them by searching for "link:example.com" (replacing "example.com" with the real domain, of course).

These articles have more information on using expired domains:

• Expired Domain Traffic
• The Domain Name Gold Rush

Use an existing design

If you don't have time to design a suitable website immediately, use a pre-made template for now or choose a web host that offers a website builder. If using a pre-made template, look for one that has valid (correct) coding or that at least doesn't use deprecated coding. The use of CSS specifications reduces the amount of coding considerably and increases the ratio of text to coding, which is good for SEO.

You can check for errors via The W3C Markup Validation Service. For more information about coding, see Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content From Design.

Alternatively, you can start (and possibly keep) your site in a blog format. Blog programs are free and easy to use, and built-in RSS feeds get your content to search engines immediately. Our article SEO Your Blog discusses blog SEO in more detail.

Research keywords

Finding the most suitable keyword terms and then optimizing your site for them is the most important step for SEO at any speed. But when you want to launch your site as soon as possible, research keywords for just a few pages for now or even just for the Home page. Find the most important keyword phrases to get you started; you can add more keywords later.

To learn more about keyword research, see the SEO and Search Engine Optimization category for this blog.

Write content

Even the most basic websites need content. Give people as well as bots reasons to come to your site. Inform the audience what your site is about, what you offer, and how to contact you. Use your keywords in the page title, in the heading tags, and in context.

See our Website Content blog category for articles on how to write for websites.

Avoid black hat SEO techniques

Black hat SEO techniques are unethical techniques used to try to increase a site's position in search results. For example, keyword stuffing (repeating keywords more than they'd be used naturally in text) and using invisible text (text that bots can see but humans can't) are black hat techniques. They add nothing to the site except to make bots rank the site higher for the targeted keywords.

While black hat techniques often work at first, they don't work in the long run. Search engine bots are continually getting better at detecting black hat techniques. Your site might rank first for a targeted keyword one day, but the next day, it might be gone. Not just gone from the first page of search results, but gone from the search results altogether, possibly forever. Black hat techniques are too risky to use even when getting good search results positions fast is your main goal.

For more reading, see Black Hat & Gray Hat Tactics: Is It Really Worth It?.

Submit your site to search engines

Submitting your website to major search engines isn't necessary when you have inbound links. Bots will find your site when they come crawling from sites linking to yours. But if you're really anxious get the search engines coming, sending them a personal invitation might speed up the process.

If you submit your site to search engines, submit it only once. Also, don't take the shortcut of using automated software. Doing so could result in your site being ignored or banned. And since the vast majority of traffic will come from the big three — Google, Yahoo, and MSN — you don't need to spend time submitting to other search engines.

Common search engine submission pages are linked to on Pandia's Search Engine Submissions & Registration chart.

Get inbound links and more inbound links

Once your site has content for the public, work on getting inbound links. Together with choosing and using suitable keywords, acquiring inbound links is a key aspect of SEO. Should you aim for quality or quantity? When working on SEO more gradually, you have time to seek out only quality inbound links. And links from relevant sites with a high PR (page rank) are much more valuable than links from low-PR sites or sites with unrelated content. But when you're trying to SEO your site as fast as possible, you take what you can get — within limits.

Precautions when seeking inbound links:

• Avoid link farms, which are sites created just to provide other sites with links. For SEO purposes, you don't want to be associated with such sites.
• Don't pay for links. Doing so goes against Google's quality guidelines. For tips on acquiring inbound links, see The Competition's Links.

Add to and polish your content

When you create more quality, useful content, more people will link to your site. And both bots and people will have reasons to return to it. But if you add nothing to your site after you launch it, it may slip in search engine results. Adding and optimizing new content is part of long-term SEO.

Keep building your site, provide more and better information, and research and use more relevant keywords, and you'll have a site that continues to do better with search engines and people.