Best SEO Strategies To Rank A New Website (James Dooley Chats With Craig Campbell)

James Dooley: Best SEO strategies to rank a brand new website. Today I’m joined with Craig Campbell.

If someone has a brand new website and wants to rank it in Google or Bing, what are the first recommendations and strategies you would look at?

Craig Campbell: I would first need to understand whether they are going super local or nationwide.

If it is a new website and new business, I would usually start super local. That means getting citations, the Google Business Profile and all that setup done first. There is still a phenomenal amount of traffic available through Google Business Profiles, and they are relatively easy to manipulate and rank. That would be the first thing I would do.

James Dooley: From there, I would define the entity.

Who are you? I would create the About page explaining who you are, what you do, the founding date, who the founder is and all the E-E-A-T style signals. It is really about defining who you are and why you are awesome. Once that is done, you can use the About page with link building and third party websites. What would be the next step after the Google Business Profile and entity definition? Would you build blog posts or links first?

Craig Campbell: I would probably start with content first.

There is no point building links to content that does not exist. You can usually get some easy wins from low competition terms and low hanging fruit. I would start publishing content early.

James Dooley: How aggressive would you go with the content?

If there were 150 pages planned, would you launch them all at once or drip feed them?

Craig Campbell: I would always do it cluster by cluster.

Launching 150 pages immediately on a brand new site is not something I would do. The site has no trust or authority at that point. I think article velocity matters. It should look natural. You also need to think about whether the business can handle the leads if things take off quickly. I have seen businesses grow too fast and the wheels fall off.

James Dooley: Once the website is built, the entity is defined and a couple of clusters are live, I would start focusing on off-page signals.

I would build out the social fortress. That means Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr and all the social profiles around the brand. Then business listings and NAP consistency. At that point I am not chasing powerful dofollow links. I am focusing on repeated entity validation. After that, I would start building power.

Craig Campbell: Yeah. Link building then becomes important.

Your homepage has no authority as a brand new site, so you need links to push the domain. That can be guest posts, Chamber of Commerce links, PR syndication or anything cost-effective that builds trust and mentions. The citations are more for trust and validation. The links are for power.

James Dooley: I would also do a press release in month one or two.

Something explaining the launch of the business or office. That repeats the NAP, the entity and who you are. After the guest posts and press releases are indexed, would you start building tier two links or just keep building more guest posts?

Craig Campbell: That depends on what the competition is doing.

Do you really need tier twos, or would the money be better spent on stronger PR and trust signals? You could do higher profile digital PR campaigns and get stronger brand mentions instead.

James Dooley: So proper digital PR campaigns with high authority links?

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

If you land links from sites like The Sun, that can massively move the DR and trust of the domain. You need some of those stronger links if you want to push a local business into a DR35 or DR40 range.

James Dooley: Once the article velocity and link velocity are established, what about anchor text?

At what point would you introduce exact match anchors?

Craig Campbell: I am not against exact match anchors.

I see them as the icing on the cake. You still want branded anchors, naked URLs and partial match anchors to make up the majority. But at some point, introducing a few exact match anchors is completely fine. I just keep the ratio cautious.

James Dooley: Then you move into viral campaigns and CTR signals.

For local SEO, you do not need huge amounts of traffic. Even boosting Facebook posts, Instagram posts, LinkedIn updates or Quora ads can help. Those posts can rank for long-tail keywords and help define the entity further.

Craig Campbell: Yeah. I think people overcomplicate it with fancy CTR tools and proxies.

Sometimes spending a few pounds a day on Facebook ads is cheaper and more effective. You are getting real traffic from real devices in the target area. You do not need huge numbers locally. Most local competitors do not even understand virality or CTR properly.

James Dooley: CTR manipulation is definitely not new.

People were using tools like HitLeap and Crowd Search years ago. Now people are just finally realising how effective user signals can be. When people ask for the best SEO strategy for a new website, the reality is that you need to reverse engineer competitors. Check their links, content, internal linking and gaps. Then keep repeating and improving.

Craig Campbell: Exactly.

The answer is already there. What is the competitor doing that you are not? Sometimes it is links. Sometimes it is internal linking. Sometimes it is technical SEO. No one has ever come to me with everything fully dialled in and still massively underperforming. Usually there is something basic missing. You just keep refining and pushing. If someone gets 16 guest posts, I want 17. You have to keep testing and competing because there is no god-given right to rank number one.

James Dooley: What about domain strategy for a new website?

Should someone choose a brand domain, partial match domain or exact match domain?

Craig Campbell: There is no perfect answer.

Exact match domains still work very well. They also seem to get trusted heavily by large language models. But branded domains are more sellable long term. Personally, I would probably do both.

James Dooley: I agree.

Exact match domains work brilliantly in Bing, and Bing powers ChatGPT citations. If you were using an exact match domain, the main difference for me would be being more aggressive with branded anchors and branded search signals.

Craig Campbell: Yeah. I would probably hammer the branded searches even harder.

But everything else stays largely the same. You still need the About page, social fortress, PR, links and entity validation.

James Dooley: To anyone watching this, hope you enjoyed the discussion on the best SEO strategies to rank a brand new website and exact match domains.

Craig Campbell, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Craig Campbell: Cheers.