Much blood, sweat, and tears likely went into building a professional website. As a result, you may have felt a great sense of achievement and excitement during its launch. However, you might question the next best steps to ensure its online success. For a site to rank well in the search engines, generate considerable web traffic, and encourage engagement with your products, services, or content, there are many essential steps you shouldn’t overlook.
Read the following advice on what to do after building your website.
Set Up Google Analytics
If you have yet to do so, you must set your site up on Google Analytics to monitor its performance.
It will provide an in-depth insight into your bounce rate, visitor count, their locations, the landing pages they visit, and the keywords or phrases they used to find your site.
The free source will provide access to valuable data that may shape your SEO, digital marketing, and sales strategies.
Don’t overlook Google Analytics and connect your site before or immediately after you’ve launched your site.
Optimize Your Site for the Search Engines
Are you wondering why your website is struggling to generate traffic now, it is live? If so, your SEO strategy – or lack of it – is likely failing to attract visitors in their droves.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for success in the search engines. Incorporating various SEO elements into your website will increase traffic, brand awareness, and a higher conversion rate.
The SEO process can feel complex if you’re a beginner, but a little research or expert help could organically improve your ranking in Google.
For instance, you’ll need to increase your site speed, produce high-quality, optimized content, and write title tags and meta descriptions.
Perform in-depth keyword research to improve your site’s presence in Google. To do so, you’ll need to develop a deep understanding of your target audience and the keywords and phrases they commonly use to find your goods and services online.
Many free keyword research tools are available, or you can turn to the experts to pinpoint powerful keywords and effective tactics to boost your ranking in the SERPs.
Create an Effective Link Building Strategy
A white-hat link-building strategy is essential for any effective SEO campaign. Your goal should be to secure high-quality backlinks on high-authority websites to improve your site’s domain authority on Google.
Reach out to an experienced link-building agency like Click Intelligence, as their experts have taken the time to build strong, long-lasting relationships with many reputable publishers related to your niche.
As a result, you can quickly secure a link-building article on relevant sites, helping to sustainably improve your Google ranking and increase your site’s brand awareness and referral traffic.
Improve Maintenance with Google Search Console
In addition to setting up your site on Google Analytics, you must attach it to Google Search Console.
The free, handy tool will allow you to monitor and manage your website’s presence in Google’s search results.
For instance, you can use it to identify if Google is crawling your new website, pinpoint indexing issues, review backlinks, analyze traffic data, and fix one or more mobile usability problems, to name a few uses.
Once your new website is up and running, it’s a must-use, as you can identify if it is functioning and discover possible issues once they arise.
Develop a Social Media Presence
Start promoting your website across social media as soon as it is live. However, don’t sign up for every channel right away.
It’s best to build a strong presence on the platforms your target audience commonly uses, and that complements your brand.
For instance, if you’re running a B2B business, LinkedIn might be a natural option for promoting your site, products, or services. However, if you’re selling items to 18 to 34-year-olds, you’ll likely need to develop a following on Instagram or TikTok.
The most popular social media platforms are free to use and have billions of followers, helping to boost your brand engagement, online visibility, and website traffic on a small budget.
Also, you can invest in paid social media marketing to increase your social media reach, web visitors, and sales.
Continually Review the User Experience
The user experience was likely at the forefront of your mind when building your website, but you must continually review it to keep visitors on your website.
For instance, you’ll need to ensure the web design renders across devices and browsers as expected.
Check your social media share icons, internal and external links, and RSS feeds are working, too.
Also, confirm the company logo provides a backlink to the homepage, introduce 404 redirect pages, and check all CSS or HTML is validated.
Routinely test the conversion path’s functionality, too. For instance, you must ensure lead generation forms submit data successfully, add a thank you message after a visitor submits a form, and ensure auto-responder messages are in place.
Backup Your Website
Prevention is better than cure when running a website, which is why you need to back it up.
Various threats can risk the smooth running of your site, customers’ sensitive data, and business sales.
Stop the worst from happening by backing up your site to protect it against malware attacks, server failure, and accidental file deletion.
An efficient copy of your site will help you quickly get your website back up and running following data loss, a cyberattack, or human error.
When building your website, always ensure you create and store backup copies regularly to help your site easily bounce back.
Strengthen Its Security
A lack of cybersecurity will increase your site’s risk of a malware attack, impact your Google ranking, and prevent your target audience from visiting your landing pages.
Prove to potential visitors that your site is secure by investing in an SSL security certificate.
It will verify website ownership, safeguard data, and stop cybercriminals from creating a fake version of your site, which will boost user trust and confidence in your products or services.
Also, when building your website, you must keep all plugins up to date to prevent vulnerabilities, install 24-hour monitoring scripts, enforce a strong password policy, and use secure, dependable web hosting.