93% of all online activity starts with a search engine.

Out of all the people who make a search, 47% will click

on the first three listings. That’s almost half the traffic.

The above given statistics from a 2018 report can be very intimidating for new business owners as getting to those top three probably seems impossible right now.

We can’t promise absolute results but we can surely divulge some of the industry secrets to give you a head start on this uphill journey.

Listed below are some of the best practices in SEO every new business owner should be following in 2019.

Offer something fresh

You’re brand new (pun intended), you’ve got no reputation to keep up. You have the freedom to create a completely new brand identity. Take full advantage of it. Do something exciting. Take a chance (don’t decide to become reckless and offensive though. We don’t mean that kind of a chance). People love original ideas and whatever the opposite of cookie cutter is.

Show the receipts

Lay solid foundations for whatever you’re claiming. Sweeping statements and unsupported arguments will get you nowhere. In fact they will do a lot more harm than good. Google is getting wiser too.

It says at Google’s help center, “give visitors the information they are looking for”. This is the first point. So, do that. Don’t beat around the bush, wasting everybody’s time.

Have a top notch layout for your website

Be smart when planning your website layout. A clear, well structured website will be easy to access and visitors will be more likely to stick around. The best practice here is to have one static link connected to all the other landing pages (service pages for example, accessible through a link that says ‘Services’).

Rely on natural links

The days of tit for tats and shady SEO techniques are over. Search engines are raising the bar. If your content is good and you make it accessible by sharing it on as many platform as you can, people will respond on their own. These are the kind of links that will actually help with your search engine visibility too.

Don’t hide keywords

If, in order to increase you visibility, you are using hundreds of keywords under ‘cloaks’ the search engine will know and it will doubt your intentions and rightly so. It will not want to help you out. Don’t do that. That puts everyone off.

Don’t put important text in images

While we’re on the topic of keywords, the ones that you do use should not come inside pictures or graphics. Write them out. The text in the image cannot be read by crawlers so you will have a hard time getting organic traffic.

Don’t create pointless content

It is now time to look past superficial, nonsense content (basically content just for the sake of content). Put out original quality material that actually gives something new to the reader. Start discussions. With so much of the same thing going around, be a breath of fresh air.

Optimize your headings

Be clear in your content structuring and use accurate headings with clear diction. If you’re waiting for the reader to read the whole paragraph to understand what the heading meant, then you’re in some trouble because that reader is already gone. Most people will skim through big blocks of text.

Hire people who get you

Make the right choice if you decide to take help from a digital marketing service. There are two kinds; the good ones (like us) and the bad ones who will only pull a few tricks that the search engine will see right through and all your money goes down the drain.

The good SEO support services will help you out with content and better structuring. That’s what you need in 2019.

Submit Sitemaps

This is like letting the search engine in on your plan so it can help you. It will learn where things are and you can identify which pages should be prioritized over others with similar content.

robots.txt

This type of file can be both helpful and harmful to your optimization so know its uses before deciding on using it.

Using robot.txt files you can let the search engine know which pages you want crawled and which you don’t. The pages that the crawlers don’t get to will not be shown with other search results. The algorithm will see to it.

On the other hand, you can use the same kind of file, allow the search engine access to your CSS and JavaScript to win its favor.

Work on page loading speed

Google uses this as a deciding factor on whether the audience would want to see your webpage or not. And it’s not wrong in doing that because if a page is taking too long to load the visitor is very likely to leave it to pursue one of the other hundreds of options.

That’s about it. Well there are many more, but we’ll go into more detail some other day. This is a good start.

As they say, work smarter not harder except in this case you’ve got to work pretty hard too. The good news is that this is how everyone did it. In digital marketing rarely does anyone just ‘get lucky’. So it’s fair game.

If you work for it and do your research beforehand, there is no reason why you wouldn’t make it to that top three list.