How do your marketing campaigns align with the new website? What’s an SEO strategy and how do you identify if your website needs one? What are some best practices to follow after launch? These are questions we often get after clients launch their websites.
The success of your website should align with your core company goals and what it is you are trying to achieve. Success can be achieved by creating SMART goals that align with what your company is currently utilizing your website for.
SMART goals are Strategic, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.
For example, if you are trying to increase your brand awareness, then success might be an increase in page views and user sessions. If you want to increase leads on your website, then success might be to increase form submission or action taken on the site that drives users to get in touch with your company.
Utilizing SMART goals will help your team determine the overall success they are looking for from your website! Google analytics would be the first place to start gaining knowledge of what success should and would look like.
Google Analytics is a great tool to utilize to help determine the overall success of your website or mobile app. This is because it takes into account not only the actions users take on your site but the entire user journey, from how they ended up on your site to what page of your site they last saw before leaving and everything in between.
Understanding this data can help you create better goals for your online efforts.
Have you ever wanted to track a specific action utilizing marketing tracking code but did not know how to deploy it on your site without a developer’s help? Well, say hello to Google Tags Manager, an all-in-one tagging system that allows you to create, deploy, and track new marketing code on your website quickly and easily.
Using this method will also leave you with cleaner code and enable you to see a holistic view of your website from one comprehensive dashboard! Clean code equals a happy and healthy site.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of improving the information and functionality of your site for users to increase visibility and traction organically. You win at SEO by creating amazing content that connects with the users’ search intent and by continuously delivering content that showcases your industry knowledge and perspective. Winning at SEO is all about playing the long game.
SEO is broken into three main categories:
Learn more about how you can start implementing some SEO best practices now to start winning at SEO.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free platform that helps website owners maintain, monitor, and troubleshoot issues that arise revolving around their website. Search Console helps website teams identify key technical issues on your site and those found when crawling it.
It is important to note that Google Search Console is not meant to take the place of Google Analytics. While Analytics is user-oriented, Google Search Console is search engine-focused. Both are helpful, but they have different jobs.
Local SEO is focused on improving your online presence for local searches, such as “restaurants near me.” This is important for brick-and-mortar businesses that are trying to reach a specific geographic area, such as a local hair salon, a restaurant, or even maid service.
Google has started to take whether or not businesses have a “Google My Business” profile into consideration when directing users to what they are searching for.
Start now and make sure your Google My Business listing is up to date and has the following information on it:
When we’re talking about content, we’re referring to the text, images, and videos that you have on your site. Content is what your site is built upon and is the ground on which we create your customers’ experiences. Your site’s content is also Google decides whether your website can answer the question or provide the resources a user is searching for.
So just because your website is launched doesn’t mean you’re finished creating content for it. You should always be creating relevant, helpful content that serves your customer in some way. One of the most practical ways to do this is through a blog.
Creating a blog with high-quality content is a great way your company can showcase your authority on a specific topic, expose potential customers to your brand, and tell search engines that you have what users are looking for.
Think about the primary products or services you provide. Next, consider 3-4 questions that a person might have about each of those products or services and write them down. These are great prompts to use for creating blog posts.
If content is king, then distribution is queen.
After all, how will users know you have great content if they never visit your site? Just because you have a great new website and some killer content doesn’t mean that your target audience knows what you offer or where to find you.
Sure, SEO can help direct some visitors your way through search engines. But you can’t rely completely on Google to bring you traffic. You need a plan to distribute the content you create in ways and in places that your target audience will see it, click, and convert.
Take stock of your current distribution channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or an email list. How will you go about distributing new blog posts and other content for the world to see?
Not all platforms are created equal. Depending on your target audience, you may perform best on LinkedIn while another company may be able to crush it on Tik Tok. An email list is valuable for just about any industry, so be sure to incentivize email signups by providing a valuable resource, a discount, or exclusive offers.
While it is important to regularly add new content to your website, it is also important to keep things neat and tidy.
A cluttered website makes it difficult to work with on the backend and your site speed will slow down if you have too many large images or unnecessary plugins cluttering things up.
When we train our clients on maintaining their new sites we put a lot of focus on images, as this is where most sites seem to go wrong after a while. Here are some things to remember regarding image sizing:
When it comes to plugins, a good rule of thumb is “if you don’t absolutely need it, delete it.” Less is more when it comes to plugins, as the more you have installed and activated the more likely it is that you will slow down your site or have unexpected problems between two different plugins.
The best practice is to eliminate any that you are not using and consolidate where you can.
After all of the hard work and focus on your website project it can be tempting to move on to new things and leave your site in the rearview mirror. Don’t do it!
While you may not have a need to be on your website every day, this is typically the first exposure to your business that future customers have.
Be sure that you are checking in on your website regularly to make sure that everything is looking and performing as expected. You should:
Hopefully, these tips were helpful, and you now have a better understanding of what to do after your website is launched. Please visit Onsharp if you have any questions or would like to learn more about our services.