My website doesn't rank high in search engines (I don't have content yet)

Great content will pay off. Google and other search engines are now doing a great job in punishing websites which try to rank high with "black hat" techniques, but they also reward sites which do create great content.

Search engines love content. A lot of content = a lot of traffic. But how to offer unique content on your website without stealing, and without spending a lot of time (or money) to create some? 

Fortunately, sometimes there is free content out there which is up for grabs. Frequently organizations or institutions who are not internet-savvy don't know that the content they have could be put online (or made directly accessible to search engines, i.e. not hidden in a database). 

For example, imagine you're a new website for lawyers. What information might be out there which is not directly accessible on websites today? Maybe there is some government database with tons lawsuits, with a description of the lawsuit and the outcome etc. Maybe it's even accessible via the web, but only through a search form (so search engines don't crawl that data). Approach the governmental body in charge and ask them if you can use the data and make it accessible to users in a userfriendly form. Maybe they agree to it - why shouldn't they? They may also have an interest in their content getting found.

Just like you (should), other websites are constantly seeking to get unique content on their site, to increase their readership and enhance their ranking in search engines. Therefore many allow guest posting, i.e. where guests provide an article and are permitted to place one or two links back to their site in return. 

A service for which guest blogging made all the difference is Buffer (read their story here). 

Search for high-ranking websites in your niche and ask them if you could write a guest post for them. Not all accept guest posts - you'll see that if you check who is posting on their site. A longlist of high-traffic sites which allow guest posting can be found here. 

This is important for two reasons:

1. Search engines need to know what your site is about (obviously) and the title tags give them an important clue.
   
   
2. The title tag will show up in the search results. If people don't click on it (i.e. a low 'click-through-rate') search engines will punish your site, because they aim to display only the most relevant content to users, and if users don't click on it, search engines see that as an indicator that your content is not relevant - and your ranking goes down.
   
   

See a detailed description of how to give your websites proper title tags on MOZ. 

See a detailed description of this on SearchEngineWatch

Although search engines only understand text, they do recognize the existence videos and pictures, and often regard a mix of several different content types as possibly more informative than text-only, and reward it accordingly in the rankings. 

If you manage to get links to your site, make sure that they are descriptive, e.g. a site linking to you with the anchor text (= text in the link) such as "Check out this great site to find solutions to all your problems" is not as valuable as "Check out Solutionbay, the no.1 site to find solutions to all your problems."

If you don't have a blog yet, then consider starting one. It's a great way to get into the habit of producing regular content, which will build up over time, getting you nice traffic from search engines as well as from other sites linking to it (provided your content is good!). 

If you're struggling with ideas what to write about, check out the solutions for "I don't know what to write about".