Google’s John Mueller offered a useful technical SEO tip for those launching a new site that can help your site get picked up by Google faster by avoiding one common mistake.
High Priority For Site Launch
Launching a website is a chance to take everything learned from previous experiences and apply them with the benefit of hindsight. There’s no better teacher for success than failure because lessons learned from mistakes are never forgotten.
Someone who recently registered a new domain started a discussion on Reddit asking what the top three considerations for launching a successful website were, before anything else has been done. The person asking the question preemptively ruled out the obvious answer of adding the domain to Google Search Console and set the ground rule that the niche or type of business didn’t matter. What did matter was that the suggestions must be important for scaling traffic within the first six months of the website.
They asked:
“Let’s say you have a brand new domain and you’ve been given a task to build traffic in the next 6 months. The niche, business does not matter, and the basics like ‘adding domain to Google search console’ don’t matter.
Tell me what are the first 3, high-priority things you’ll implement.”
The Most Upvoted Answer
It’s somewhat surprising that the most upvoted answer, with 83 votes, was one that offered the most obvious suggestions.
The top upvoted answer was:
“Create landing pages/content for your lowest funnel keyword opportunities and work your way up.”
It’s a matter of course that the information architecture of the site should be planned out ahead of time (things like keywords, topics, key pages, a complete org-chart style map of categories with room left for expanding topical coverage, and an interlinking strategy). The upvoted answer is absolutely correct but it’s also fairly obvious.
The rest of that highly upvoted response:
“Claim brand on top social medias.
Build easiest citations and directories that I know get indexed. Plus niche relevant ones.
Start reactive digital PR as main initial link building campaign.”
The obviousness of that upvoted answer is in contrast with the not so obvious quality of Mueller’s response.
Related: How to Launch a New Website: A Complete Guide
John Mueller Advice On SEO Preparation
John Mueller’s advice is excellent and offers an insight into a technical issue that is easy to overlook.
He wrote:
“Just throwing this out there – if you don’t have a site ready, either keep DNS disabled or put up a custom holding page. Don’t use a generic server / CMS holding page. It generally takes longer for a site that’s known to be parked / duplicate to get recognized as a normal site than it does for a site to be initially picked up.”
Keep DNS Disabled
DNS stands for Domain Name System and is a reference to the backend process of converting a domain name to the IP address where the actual content exists. All content exists at an IP address, not at the domain name. The domain name just points to where the content is. By keeping DNS disabled what happens is that Google doesn’t discover the domain pointing to anything so it essentially doesn’t exist.
See also: Google: Don’t Choose Cheap TLDs, Avoid Spam Risks
Don’t Use Generic Server/CMS Holding Page
A generic server holding page is the same as a parked domain, it’s like a false signal to Google that something exists at the IP address that a domain name resolves to.
The effect of Mueller’s advice regarding disabling a DNS and not using a generic holding page is to keep the domain name from resolving to a holding page (assuming that a registrar’s holding page is also turned off). This keeps Google from detecting the domain and finding a generic “nothing here” holding page.
Mueller’s advice points to the technical issue that Google will recognize and index a site faster if a generic version is never activated and the domain name essentially doesn’t exist.
So if you want your website to be picked up and indexed quickly then it’s best to not use a generic domain holding page.
Other Considerations
The following is my advice based on creating scores of brands and websites.
Setting up a brand new site is an opportunity to apply everything you’ve learned from creating other sites. Here are a few things that I think are helpful to consider when planning a new website.
1. Create A Defensive Moat Around Your Domain
A moat is a deep ditch filled with water that’s built around a castle as a barrier against enemies. Something that I’ve always done is to register as many variations of a domain as necessary.
Singular/Plural Domains
If your domain name contains a singular word, check if the plural version is available to register. For example, if your domain is LauraWebDesign.com then it will be useful to register LauraWebDesigns, LaurasWebDesigns, and LaurasWebDesign. This will keeps someone else from setting up a business with a confusingly similar domain name.
Register Available gTLDs (and others)
General Top-Level Domains are .com, .net, .org, etc. If you have the dot com, make sure to register the other variations if they’re available. Sometimes it makes sense to register cTLDs (country code domains) like .co or a TLD (Top Level Domain) like .ai.
Register Word Order Variations
Sometimes changing the order of words makes a similar domain name, like WebDesignLaura and LauraWebDesign. If you think it’s likely another business might register it then you should register it first.
2. Plan To Be Bigger
Sometimes people unintentionally limit themselves to a single topic with their domain name choice because it makes sense in terms of higher conversions and trust. But then after a few years they discover they want to grow into related topics but they can’t because they boxed themselves in with the niche-specific domain.
That’s why I like brand names and more general domains that will allow me to add more topics. Why limit yourself with a running shoe domain when you can buy a brand-name shoes domain or one that doesn’t even have shoes in the domain? I always think about how a domain might impede growth before committing to one. That way if I want to expand to related topics, I can just create another category and I’m good.
3. Create A Symbol For The Site
Another thing I like to do is create a unique mascot or a symbol that represents the site and will look good as a 64×64, 32×32, and 16×16 icon. I have paid artists and graphic designers to create an original image for me. The maximum I’ve paid is $1,200 for a set of images to use across a site. The artwork doesn’t have to be that expensive; what matters most is that it’s unique, is helpful if it can work well as an icon (but it doesn’t have to), will look good on a baseball hat, t-shirt or a mug and that people really like. People are visual and I’ve had good success using symbols to represent the brand.
Many Considerations Before Launching A Site
As you can see, there are many things to consider before launching a site that are beyond the obvious ones like researching a keyword. What John Mueller suggested is directly related to SEO and is worth considering.
Read Mueller’s advice here:
Brand New Domain: What are the first 3 things you’ll do?
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero
