Growing a New Site

Be Passionate

If you aren’t passionate about your topic of choice, stop now. People will notice if you aren’t.

Content First

Forget about the look of the site. Forget about how to monetise it. Write 5 articles as the first thing you do. Make them long-form – 1500+ words each. One needs to be exceptional – better than any other article online for the precise topic you are writing about, using any of the following:

  • Interviews
  • Infographic
  • Step-by-step instructions
  • Top Ten list
  • List of top resources
  • In-depth reviews of a niche aspect of a product type – like vacuum cleaner suction strengths
  • Tie-in various resources – movies, blogs, products – around a tight theme
  • Curated nostalgia
  • Meta-analysis with academic sources
  • Broad overview with opinions, insights and a lot of external links
  • A free tool or auto-updating data
  • Have more – if people are making a top 10 list, make a top 50
  • Cite sources – academia does this for a reason, you are not just making stuff up

Regardless, you need to be seen as an expert, not a $0.50/word SEO article.

And it needs to be share-worthy. Ideally an authoritative article with an infographic that you clearly offer for sharing.

Think of it as your Masters thesis.

Have a convincing author tagline with a headshot.

Get a Brand

It can be your personal name (you must have a good pic as well) or a brand name that is catchy. It needs to be short and authoritative and with an available .com domain name. Ideally a domain that used to be used by a site on a similar theme, and with existing backlinks. I am proud of buying evryone.com which was once a radio station site and is now about equality. Not perfect but lots of backlinks and is brandable.

Site Look

This can of course change with time, so OK is good enough to begin with. You can’t get to this step without writing 5 articles, because if you cannot do that the rest is pointless.

Easiest is WordPress and one of the free, default themes. Get rid of sidebars. Get a logo made (there are many cheap options). Give it a background image or at least a pleasant colour.

Promote Your Best Article

Google looks for organic, natural growth, so get some genuine interest first, before trying any less-genuine boosters:

  • Share on the socials
  • Comment on social posts, if it can be useful/relevant – you want a retweet from an influencer
  • Comment on relevant blog/news articles
  • Suggest your article as a resource for sites on the same theme
  • Tell someone you have given them a great review
  • Find dead links and offer your article as a replacement
  • Keep an eye out on HARO

Boost Your Best Article

It is natural for one page of your site to get all the glory. Don’t apply equal measures to every page – promoting those or future pages can come later.

  • Advertise – this mostly won’t work (and is a whole other topic) but if it works, knowing sooner is better. You can return to it at any time
  • Mention it in your socials. The golden rule is a ratio something like 6 curated posts, 3 original non-promotional posts, and 1 promotional
  • Write smaller articles elsewhere that point to the main one. Make sure it is all paraphrased and not just copied.

Be Fast

Keep a close eye on your specialty topic and respond quickly. Be the first to comment on articles and social posts. The first get noticed more by both author and readers. They therefore get liked more.

Write opinions or overviews on something brand new, and do it first. This can also get you ranking on Google organically, and if you show up first you get read more and linked to more and are first for longer.

Be obsessively watching and reacting.

Keep At It

Overnight success is rare for anyone, anywhere. More content on your site is a signal to Google. It gives more content for people to discover, and better odds of being discovered.

And that process of “what should I write next”, if you are passionate about the topic, will find new and unique angles, with greater odds of being discovered.

Monetise

People are less likely to link to your site if it is full of ads. Leave this to last. Twitter famously left this to last and it worked out OK. Anything can be monetised.