What to Do When You Launch Your Website [8 Things to Consider]

The Internet has taken the world by storm and now more and more businesses are coming online. But, if we talk about the U.K, then around 2 million small businesses still don’t have a website in the U.K (Source: EM360Tech). This means there is still time for you to get ahead of the game by getting your website ready.

So if you have already launched your website or are in the process, then there are some things that you should do to ensure you get a constant stream of high converting traffic. This way, you can establish an online brand and get a good ROI as well.

So there are eight factors that you should consider right after launching your website. We have talked about them in this guide with a detailed explanation, have a look at them below:

1. Focus on SEO – [Very Important]

When it comes to doing the most important things when you have successfully launched your website, SEO is the first thing your mind should go towards. This is because search engines drive 93% of all website traffic (SEO Tribunal). Also, the primary purpose of building a website is to drive traffic to it, and if you don’t put yourself in front of the people who are searching for what you are offering, you cannot expect to get traffic, right? Well, SEO allows you to do just that, it puts you right where you should be, if of course done right!

If you don’t know, SEO is an acronym to Search Engine Optimization, and it means you need to optimise your website in a way that it gets recognised by the search engines like Google or Bing and get ranked in the search results of the exact niche (industry) you want it to be. Simply put, when someone searches for something that you are offering on Google, how would Google know that it should show your website in the search result? You will optimise your website in a way that will tell Google what you offer and that’s how it will show you in the search results.

For Example: If you are a tow truck company in Chesterfield, you would want to appear in the search results when someone inputs keywords in Google like ‘cheap tow truck in Chesterfield.” And that is only possible if you have optimised your website for that keyword so Google can understand that your business should appear in search results when someone types that keyword.

You can, of course, target as many keywords as you want to appear in multiple searches and get more visitors to your website. So to SEO optimise your website, you need to focus on the following three things:

1. Keyword Research:

According to SEO Tribunal; 46% of all Google searches are local which means if you are targeting the keywords searched by people in your vicinity, you have better chances of appearing in front of them. So the first thing that you are going to do is the research for keywords relevant to your niche or business. You don’t know what people are searching regarding your business so for that; you need to use some tools and collect keywords that are related to your industry. However, before we move towards finding keywords, you need to consider these two things:

• Page Type: You will use different keywords in different pages and blog posts of your website so Google can understand what each page of your website is about. That’s how it will send highly relevant traffic to that particular page. So if your page is related to ‘towing sports cars’ you will use keywords that are different than the keywords you would use for ‘towing busses.’ So first determine what your page type is.
• The intent of Your Page: Now you need to see what your page is about. Whether you are just educating people about ‘things to consider when getting your sports car towed’ or are selling your services to them telling them about ‘why they should get your services for sports car towing’. If you know what the intent of your page is, you will be able to get more precise keywords that will result in getting a highly relevant audience to your website.

Now that you know what type of keywords to look for based on the type of page you are going to use it for, you need to know about the tools that you will be using to find the keywords. Now you can go for the paid tools like SEMrush, but we will tell you about the free ways to find keywords.

• Google Keyword Finder: You can just go to keywords finder by Google and then search for the page type you are writing about. If you are writing about ‘Towing Sports Cars’ then search that and you will be provided with a list of keywords. Get the keywords that are most relevant to your page type and its intent.
• Google Search: You can get excellent keywords by searching your topic ‘Towing Sports Cars’ on Google and then scrolling to the end where it suggests similar searches. Not only these keywords are easy to find, but Google itself is telling you about these keywords because they are the most searched keywords by people. You can then put these keywords in Google Keyword Finder and see their stats.

Now when it comes to deciding which keyword to use, you need to see their stats that include demand and search volume. The keyword should have low demand and at least a thousand monthly searches.

2. Crafting the Content – Blogging:

Having high-quality content is the key to interacting with your audience, showing them that you are an authority in your field and getting ranked in search engines because quality content is always preferred by search engines more than anything. You can post tons of different content types, including:

• Web Pages (pages like about page, service page, contact page, and more)
• Blog Posts
• E-books
• Guides
• Reports
• White Papers
• Videos
• Infographics and more

There are many other types of content that you can post but for SEO, we will focus on blog posts as these are what your potential customers will be looking for the most and what Google and other search engines prefer. So when you are writing your blog posts, make sure to consider these things:

• Topic: Every blog post should focus on a new topic that is also unique so that your readers can get something new whenever they visit your blog. You can find topics by going on your competitor’s pages and getting inspiration from their blogs or by joining forums and Facebook groups related to your niche and finding topics that are discussed the most.
• Title: Try to come up with very attractive and catchy titles and if you are doing a listing post, try to use odd numbers in your title like ‘7 Tips To Get an Excellent Website Design’.
• Keywords: Try to add more relevant keywords to your blog post and not some random and generic ones that may land an unrelated audience to your website or give search engines a wrong of idea on where to rank that particular blog post. Also, make sure to not stuff keywords in your articles, only add them where they make sense.
• Quality: This is the most important factor that is even more preferred by search engines than having good keywords. You need to make sure that your content is solving a problem or providing something useful that people might not know. Providing value to your audience should be your top priority.
• Freshness: Try to add near content as much as you can and make sure that you are not writing on old topics that people have already addresses decades ago like how to use android mobiles. Make sure your content is new, and frequent. Share at least 10+ blog posts per week.
• Age: Most of your content should be evergreen so that even if someone finds your blog posts after 10 years, they still find some value from it.
• Length: According to Medium; the ideal length for blog posts is 1,600 words. Though the length depends on the topic you are covering but you should not go for anything less than 1600 words.

Make sure to gather hundreds of topics before you start posting content and either write on those topics by yourself or hire a writer to pump out articles on a daily basis and then post them frequently.

3. Guest Posting/Link Building:

Now that you are working on posting content on your own blog, you are doing what is usually known as ‘On-Page SEO’ which means you are working on doing SEO of the content on your website. But that is not going to be all you need to do! You need to do the SEO outside of your website as well. This type of SEO is called Off-Page SEO, where we post content on a website that is in our niche and gets a link from that website back to our website (backlinking/link building).

Note: You can know more about SEO and its types by reading our comprehensive guide to SEO in 2019.

You need to do Off-Page SEO so that Google can have a clear idea what your website is about (as you will be taking links from relevant websites) and how credible your website is (if other established websites are giving links back to you then it means you are credible). So this process of getting links back to your website is called link building or backlinking, and it is typically done by posting content on another website that is within your niche which is why it is also called guest posting.

A survey conducted by Google Search Quality Strategist has shown that the two most important signals for ranking websites during searches are link building and quality content (Source: Earned Links). So now that you are already working on coming up with high-quality content, you need high-quality backlinks to climb up rankings in Google’s search results and get an edge over your competitors, and to do that, you need do a few things given below:

• Make a List: Firstly, start finding websites that are related to your niche are have a good ranking on Google, which is usually on the first page. Make a list of all websites and write their contact details in front of them in your email.
• Send Email: Now create a carefully structured email with correct grammar and vocabulary appreciating their website and asking them to allow you to make a guest post on their website with a purpose of getting a link back to your website.
• Offer Incentive: You can also offer an incentive like some money to get their attention and convince them into collaborating with you.
• Find Unique Topic: Once they give you permission, find a topic that is not already posted on their website and is highly relevant to your website.
• Craft Quality Content: Create a highly valuable and excellent quality blog post around that topic with stats, studies, images and everything that you can find useful to make it ready-to-post.
• Link Your Website: Add one link to your website in that article where it suits the most so that it seems natural.
• Post it: Now just ask the website owner to post the content and that’s how you will get a backlink.

Make sure to do this with as many websites as you can and this way, not only you will get a backlink which is a preferred factor for ranking by Google but you will also get the traffic of that blog invited to visit your blog. So that means you will start to grow your audience as well.

Just follow these three things at the start when you have just launched your website and then move to advanced strategies that you can learn from digital marketing gurus like Neil Patel or Brian Dean.

2. Promote On Social Media

When it comes to promoting your content on the social media, you should not take it lightly because as mentioned by Avocado Social; There are around 45 million social media users from the U.K which equates to 67% of its entire population. This means as a U.K based business, promoting your website on social media is the second most important thing to do after SEO. So with that said, there are eight things that you can do to promote your website on social media and see explosive results.

• Getting a Social Media Presence: If you already have a social media presence then half of your work is done. But if not then select the platform that suits your business type best like if you want to approach youth, go for Instagram, if you want to target mix population, go for Facebook, if you want to target professionals, go for LinkedIn and so on. Once you have a profile, start posting content, build an audience, hold a contest and when you have a following, share your blog posts or other website pages on your social media profile.
• Join Groups on Facebook and LinkedIn: Join groups on both LinkedIn and Facebook that are related to your industry or niche and then share your blog posts there. Make sure to not spam but naturally share blog posts, so people don’t get annoyed by you.
• Produce Video Content: If you are good in front of the camera then you can start making videos around the topics you write articles on, summarise those articles into videos, and upload them onto your YouTube channel. Make sure to add a call to action in your videos inviting your viewers to read a detailed article on the topic at your website. Big digital marketing experts like Neil Patel or Brian Dean do that as well.
• Leverage Trending Hashtags: Twitter always has some trending hashtags that you can use to reach millions of people. For instance, people use #TBT (throwback Thursday) where they post something from their past with this hashtag. You can use that hashtag to share a story related to your brand like how it was created or how it got its name and share it with this hashtag to reach millions of people who may go to your website by reading about you.
• Promote a Contest on Social Media: People love to get into contests and win free stuff and you can use that to your advantage. As a business, you can give away vouchers or coupons to the lucky winners. You can create a landing page on your website dedicated to that contest. Create a post about the contest on social media with the link to the contest page, now either advertise that post or create several posts on your social profile regarding the contest if you have a good following. You can get people to sign up for the contest using their email addresses which you can use later for email marketing as well.
• Share Customer Content: This is an amazing approach that even big brands are taking because it sends a very personalised vibe to the customers. What you can do is ask your customers to share their video testimonials about your business and then you can share those testimonials on your website. Then you can share one out of several testimonials to your social media profile and on YouTube and tell people to see more testimonials on your website. People will definitely come to your website to learn what your customers have to say about you.
• Get Help From influencers: According to Starngage; 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media reference. This means by asking top influencers in your niche to promote your website, you will not only be getting tons of people to your website but you may also end up making some sales. So find influencers in your niche on social media channels where your audience hangs out the most and ask them to promote your website.
• Use Social Interaction: You can find a good audience by searching for phrases or words on platforms related to your industry like Twitter or LinkedIn for professionals or Instagram for youth. For instance, if you are a website design company, you can search for words like ‘new website’ and see who is sharing content relevant to your business. Comment on those posts. People relevant to your niche will see those comments, check out your profile, and if they like your content, they will start following you and obviously visit your website.

So these are a few tips to get you on top of social media promotion game. Just make sure to target an only relevant audience and go for platforms where your potential customers hang out the most.

3. Get Your ‘Google My Business’ Profile

If you have just launched your website, then there is a good chance that you don’t have a Google My Business profile. And if you don’t know what that is, then it is the small box that appears at the right side when you search for a specific business.

The box contains the contact details, address, Google map location and website address of the business. So as a business with a brick and mortar institute, it is imperative that you have a Google My Business profile if you want to boost your website’s traffic. So here’s how to do it:

Account Creation

• Log into your Google Account or create one that is dedicated to your business only
• Now visit google.com/business and click ‘Start Now’ at the top right-hand corner
• Enter your business’s name and click next
• Enter the address of your business place location and if you area delivery service then check the ‘I deliver Goods and Services to my Customer.’
• Also, if you are operating from home or don’t want your address to be public, check the box ‘Hide My Address’ and then select your delivery area according to miles you can travel
• Now you need to select the category of your business. Make sure to be as precise as possible because this is what tells Google which type of customers should see your business profile
• Add your business’s website and/or mobile number
• Now choose the verification option to verify your business

Verification:

There are different ways to verify your business on Google My Business and we will discuss all of them below:

Postcard Verification:

• Choose ‘Postcard by Mail’ as your verification method and make sure to add a correct address
• You can also add a contact name if you want the postcard to be referred to someone
• Now click on ‘Mail’ and wait for a few days for the postcard to reach you
• Once you receive the postcard, log into your Google My Business account and then click on verify now
• You will be given a field to submit a five-digit code, see the code on your postcard, enter it as is in that field and click submit

Bulk Verification:

• If you have more than 10 different locations for the same business and you are also not a service business or an agency that is managing the locations for multiple businesses then you will be eligible for this bulk verification process.
• So what you need to do is to log into your Google My Business Account, select a business location, and click ‘Get Verified’ appearing next to its name
• Now you need to click on ‘Chain”
• Fill out the form using your business name as well as the parent company if it is applicable, select the country(s) where your business locations are, all the contact names of people who will be using Google My Business account, phone numbers, emails of business managers (person who can verify you represent that particular business location) and your Google Account Manager’s email address
• Now just submit the verification form and wait because it may take up to a week for Google to review your claim and process it.

Now you need to upload high-resolution pictures of your business place on your listing, and you are good to go. Once people search for something related to your business, your business profile should appear in their search and people will obviously visit your website to know more about you.

4. Ask Friends/Family and Customers to Visit and Share:

Now that you have a social media presence and your Google My Business listing is in place as well, ask your friends and family to visit your website, and also share it in their circles. According to Invespcro; 64% of marketing executives indicated that they believe word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing.

This simply means that if your friends/family and existing customers spread your website in their circle, you have greater chances of building visitors for your website and getting some sales as well. Furthermore, you can ask your friends/family and existing customers to leave reviews on your social media profile (If it’s the Facebook page) and your Google Business Profile and tell people why they should buy from you.

Once your credibility starts to increase, you will start to get in the eyes of new potential customers, and they will definitely visit your website to learn more about you.

5. Leverage Emails to Invite People:

Email has always been and will always be an incredible way to get close to potential customers and you can get an idea of the importance of email marketing by the fact that 76% of businesses in the U.K describe email marketing as very important (Constant Contact). So if you want to use the power of email marketing when you launch your website then you have made the right choice.

The first thing that you need to do is to gather emails of people interested in your niche and you can do that by offering them incentives. You can use an influencer to send people to your landing page offering them a free ebook, voucher, coupon, gift card or anything that can make them sign up for the offer. Once they sign up, they will give their email to you and that’s how, you can build a big email list.

Once you have a list, you can send an email inviting people to visit your website or read a new blog post that you have shared. You can then also add an opt-in form on your website asking people to sign up for your newsletter. This way, your email list will grow further and you can always send an email to the people in your list inviting them to check out your new blog posts.

6. List Your Website in Online Business Directories:

According to Bright Local; 68% of consumers would stop using a local business if they found incorrect information in online directories. This means it is imperative that you appear in local online business directories because people search for a businesses online and more importantly, all the information about your business should be correct in the directory.

If you list your business in the directory, you need to make sure that the directories are relevant to your business’s geographical location. So if your business is in the U.K, list the business in U.K’s online directories. Since there are tons of business directories online, we cannot name any one, but we can provide you with the typical steps to listing your website in a directory:

• First of all, you need to go to Google and search for free online business directories in your area
• You will get hundreds, if not thousands of directory websites, select the ones that have good domain authority (credibility)
• You can find domain authority using free sources like Small SEO Tools. The higher domain authority out of 100 the better.
• Once you have found the websites, the rest is easy, go to each website and list your website in their directories
• Do this to all of the websites and you are done!

The benefit of listing your website in directories is that you will get more exposure among people who are in your area which means they will visit your website to know more about your business. Furthermore, by submitting your website to directories, you will get backlinks from high domain authority websites which means your ranking in Google will increase as well and that will bring more traffic to your website.

7. Advertise Your Website:

There are many types of advertising options that you can go for and the best part is that there is a good trend of advertising in the country as the U.K is the fourth largest ad market in the whole world with 25.74 billion dollars spent in 2018. (Statista) So this means you can get explosive results with advertising if you do it right.

So what you should do is decide the network type you are going to be advertising on. There can be multiple networks like Google Ads and a social media network. You can simply set up Google ads by creating an ad account on Google Adwords and target keywords that you want to appear on as an ad.

For instance, if you are targeting a keyword like ‘Best website design firm in Chesterfield’ in your ad campaign on Google, then whenever someone types this keyword on Google, your ad will appear at the top in ads section which will obviously provide you with a boost of traffic.

Secondly, you can go for a social media ad campaign to further increase your traffic and also increase the following of your social media profile. For this, you should go for the social media network that you choose to market your website which we have already covered in this guide and the reasons for that are:

• You selected that social media network because that’s where your audience hangs out
• You already have some following on that social media
• You know how that platform works so launching ad campaigns will not be much of a problem for you.

So if let’s say you have selected Facebook (which is usually the case with most businesses) then the benefit is that you will be able to reach potentially half of the population of the U.K as Facebook gets used more than once a day by around 44 percent of the UK online population. (Statista)

Secondly, you can target people based on their interests, gender, behaviour, location, age, income and more. This means you can precisely target people who might be your potential customers and not only get a boost of traffic but also get a boost in sales.

8. Engage in Online Branding Tactics:

Another factor that is often ignored by businesses with a newly established website is that they do not brand their website. Businesses usually limit themselves to doing SEO, social media sharing and paid advertising of their website. While these three things are more powerful than anything else, you need to do branding of your website as well. If you don’t get your website in front of people, how would they know that your website even exists? According to 3dDigital; 62 percent of millennials agree that online content builds brand loyalty which means the modern generation is more interested in online branding rather than offline branding. So for that, there are a few things that you should focus on:

• Add it to Your Signage: Your business board, the banners in your business place and the digital signage that you will use to market your business should include your website address in a way that is clearly visible to the people passing by. This way, whenever someone wants to use your services or know more about you, they can just type in your website address and visit your website.
• Create Social Media Banners: If you already have a social media profile, update your banner with your website address written in big fonts so your followers can see that you have now established a website as well.
• Add in Your Email Signatures: When sending emails to your clients, add your website in its signature so that the receiver can know you have a website as well. They can just get information about your services or product there.
• Update Your Business Cards: Business cards are key to making a connection with prospects, and nowadays, everyone has access to the internet as 90% of adults in the U.K use the internet according to Office for National. This means if you put your website address or a QR code that takes to your website on your business cards, then everyone who has your business card will be visiting your website whenever they need your service.
• Reference Your Content in Forums: Go to the forums that are related to your niches, find out posts where someone has asked a question that you have addressed in your blog posts, Quora is an excellent place for that as well. Answer their questions honestly and then provide a link to your blog post telling people to find detailed information on that topic. It can boost up your traffic.
• Ask Journalists to Cover Your Story: This another great way to brand your website and get in front of people. Ask journalists in your area to cover your story and tell people about your business and your newly launched website. This can not only earn you some backlinks from the news websites but also massive traffic of people who will read that story.

So these are some ways through which you can increase your newly launched website’s traffic to multiple folds and get it in front of people to build your online brand.

Conclusion:

Well, that concludes our guide to considering eight factors when you launch your business website. Keep in mind that there are around 5.7 million private businesses operating in the U.K (Parliament U.K) which means creating a website is not the solution to developing a brand online. It is merely a start and you need to do TONS of different things to compete with other businesses like you in the digital space.

You can do the eight things that we have mentioned above by yourself but make sure to do them right, especially the SEO and paid advertising parts. Because if you make even a small mistake like getting wrong backlinks while doing SEO or setting the wrong target audience while doing ad campaigns, you can lose your ranking in Google and thousands of pounds in advertising.

So if you want an expert to do these things for you, we at Breeze Development will be more than happy to help you. Our team of industry-leading website design and digital marketing experts will meticulously market your website to get you an explosive success and boost your ROI as well.

Why Choose Breeze Development?

We do Digital. We’re your web design company, web development agency and digital marketing team all rolled into one very special integrated digital service. We help you to grow your brand, business and profile online. We do this by creating a tailor made website, designed to represent your high level of service and developed to maximise results.

Article Source: Breeze Development