Your Website is Live, Now What? 5 Steps to Get Traffic and Engage Your Clients

Many people treat the launch of a new website as a "finish line". Of course, it is good practice to stop and celebrate all your hard work coming together and the launch of your new site, but you should think of a site launch as just that - a launching point, not a finish line, as your marketing journey is only just beginning. In order to effectively market yourself online, you will need to continually update your website and maintain your online presence. Here are 6 Steps to get you started*:

1.SIGN UP FOR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS

One of the first things you can do to improve your search results and display is to sign up for Google My Business. This will help you build validity with Google and control what results appear when someone searches directly for your business.

2. INDEX YOUR SITE ON GOOGLE

Index your site on google to start appearing in search results. Note that it can take a couple weeks for Google to properly index your site. Especially if you have launched a website at a brand new domain name, it will take longer for your site to show up in search results.

For specific searches for your company name (ex: John Smith Financial Planning), having your site listed in the results can take a few weeks to a month. For your site to be listed in the results for more general searches that don’t include your company name (ex: financial advisor in Cleveland) – it can take much more time, and is dependent on many different SEO factors such as well maintained and updated content (read on for more info on SEO below). 

3. PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE

1. SOCIAL MEDIA– Announce your newly launched site on social media and share a photo/link for people to check it out.
2. EMAIL – add your new website to your email signature
3. NEWSLETTER – make an announcement about your new site in our client newsletter (perhaps with a note about a cool new feature)
4. BLOG – consider writing a blog post about your new site design and give some behind-the-scenes insight into why you made the change, what factors you took into account, and highlight new features.

If you need help developing your social media strategy, check out our social media services 

4. GET STARTED WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS

a. Sign Up for a Google Analytics Account 

b. Learn the Most Important Metrics for Financial Advisors to monitor on Google Analytics 

5. EDUCATE YOURSELF ABOUT SEO

There are many, many factors that determine how your site ranks for various search terms. No single SEO factor will guarantee search engine rankings. Having a great HTML title won’t help if a page has low quality content. Having many links won’t help if they are all low in quality. Having several positive factors can increase the odds of success while the presence of negative factors can worsen those odds.

For more in-depth information, check out this easy-to-use SEO Guide or our article on How to Improve Your Site’s Local Search Engine Optimization

 Basic SEO factors Every Financial Advisor Should Consider:

• CONTENT: sharing fresh, updated content regularly is one of the best ways to improve your site’s SEO. Google Says: “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors.” Have you ever shared an article you found interesting on social media? Having your content shared by your website visitors helps your website build credibility both with users and with search engines. The best way to do this is to Blog. (All Twenty Over Ten websites come with a built-in blogging feature).
• SOCIAL MEDIA: If you haven’t already, create accounts with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and other social media platforms. This will allow you to share your blog posts and other relevant content that you think your target audience will find compelling. If others share your content, it will create links back to your site, which also contributes to improved SEO. The more your blog posts are liked, shared, and interacted with on social media, the more exposure you will have.
• META DESCRIPTIONS:  Meta descriptions are the short summary that appears under each search result that tells the searcher what the page is about. While they do not directly affect SEO, they can change whether or not someone chooses to click on your page, which in the long run WILL affect your SEO.  At Twenty Over Ten, we give you direct access to manipulate both your site-wide and individual page meta descriptions (these descriptions are snippets of text that are displayed under search results which summarize for a user what the webpage is about). 

More Steps You Can Take to Improve Search Engine Optimization:

• 3 Best SEO Practices for Small Businesses
• Make Your Website Search-Engine Friendly (Link to Recorded Webinar)
• Developing Evergreen Content on Your Blog 
• 6 Strategies to Build Local Links for Your Financial Planning Business

ABOUT SAMANTHA RUSSELL

With a background in Public Relations, Digital Marketing, and Client Relations, I help financial advisors understand the value of their online presence and connect them with the marketing tools and digital solutions they need to effectively promote and manage their brand. 

*A version of this blog post first appeared on the Twenty Over Ten blog.  Twenty Over Ten creates advisor websites. Join a live demo or educational webinar to learn more.