Your website's gone live - what's next?
Posted on 4th December 2019
So, all your hard work has finally paid off and your new small business website has launched.
Everything’s working fine, the content is fully optimised, and the search engines are beavering away behind the scenes to get everything indexed. You can just sit back and relax now, right? Wrong! In fact, this is the worst thing you can do.
Not having a post-launch plan is probably the number one reason why new websites don’t get results.
Ideally, your plan should have been prepared during the briefing stage, so that everything’s ready to go when the site goes live.
However, all is not lost if you don’t have one. Provided you act quickly, you should be able to make up most of the lost ground.
Here are our top 5 activities to make your new website work harder for your business:
1. Create new content
If you don’t keep adding fresh content to your site, you can’t expect people to keep coming back. So revisit your main pages regularly, updating or removing out of date content and adding new information.
Regular blogging is important, too, as interesting and relevant articles will help to position you as an expert in your field.
Using different types of content such as images, infographics, videos, and podcasts will help to boost your search engine rankings - as well as adding extra interest to your site. The more interactive features, the better!
2. Maximise your use of social media
Posting high quality content on your social media pages is a great way to get more traffic flowing to your website. It stands to reason that if people like what they read or see on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn et al., they’ll want to find out more about your business.
So, bring your profile pages up to date and get posting! If you need to build up your following, there are lots of things you can do to attract your target audience’s attention.
A good place to start is social media content curation. This means finding content that’s likely to engage your target audience and sharing it on your own social media pages.
Of course, creating your own content is important, too. And make sure you engage with your followers effectively: replying to their comments, sharing their posts, and starting those all-important conversations that turn prospects into paying customers.
3. Register with business directories
This is a good move for search engine optimisation in general terms, but especially for businesses that rely on local trade. Your ‘go to’ directory should always be Google My Business, which you can use to help people find your location, read about your products and services, and encourage clients to leave reviews.
Other directories include Yell.com, Freeindex, and Cylex, as well as trade directories such as Trusted Trader, Check-a-Trade, and Trade Pages.
You’ll probably find some location-specific directories in your area, too, such as those run by local councils or business networking groups.
4. Explore backlink opportunities
On top of links from your social media accounts and business directories, what other opportunities are there?
Links to your website from reputable websites will help improve your search engine rankings and increase your domain authority, especially if there’s a clear synergy between the two sites.
For example, a clothing manufacturer could try guest blogging for a model agency, and vice versa.
5. Analyse site performance
It’s important to know how your site’s doing, right from the get-go. The sooner you start gathering and analysing data on performance, the sooner you’ll spot what needs to be changed or improved.
Two key tools for doing this are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Google Analytics provides a wealth of information on how people find and interact with your website. The sheer amount of data can be a little intimidating, so it’s best to focus on top level metrics to start with, such as new and returning visitor numbers, top page views, traffic sources, organic keywords and so on.
Google Search Console is a free service that gives you insights into your website’s presence in Google search results - e.g. how often your site appears in the results and the number of click-throughs for different queries.
It’s also a useful tool for troubleshooting, as you can set up alerts for issues such as indexing or spam problems that might affect your site.
Need help with your post-launch plan?
At it’seeze Web Design Nottingham, discussing the next steps after your new site goes live is all part of the service.
All our customers benefit from ongoing support and advice, and we also offer a choice of SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC) packages to help maximise your return on investment in your new website.
To find out more, call us on 0115 777 3001 or drop us a line today.
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