Guidelines to follow to ensure a successful launch of your website
Launching your new website is an exciting and proud moment in your businesses’ life. It marks the successful completion of perhaps months of planning, collating data, relaying information, building, designing, and communication. But your work is far from finished. In fact, for your website to be successful, it is never finished. There are always improvements that can be made to help it perform the best it possibly can. Below we outline some guidelines to follow post launch of your website, best industry practices and where to go now that your website is live.
Quality assurance checks
In any workplace project, quality assurance ensures that the result of the project meets the minimum industry standards for quality and care. Websites are no exception. They must go through comprehensive quality assurance checks to ensure that the set up of the site is technically sound and in line with current practices online and with Google. Quality assurance checks on your website should include a comprehensive check of both front and back of the website including:
- Checking for placement text throughout, also known as lorem ipsum text
- Checking for proper use of heading tags on each page
- Ensuring that there are no blank, draft, or duplicate pages
- Checking interactive hyperlinks on phone numbers and email addresses
- Running spell check programs (silk tide or similar) through the site to check for spelling and grammatical errors
- Check form settings and mailing server details
- Check copyright on the website footer
- Check website time zone settings to ensure it is correct to the website’s home location
- Check browser compatibility across multiple browser applications
- Check responsiveness of the design across multiple devices
- Add alternative text on images uploaded to the website
- Save the website to online website archives for data basing
- Check permalinks to ensure that there are no 404 invalid errors
Quality assurance is a very important component of your website post launch checklist. If you have had your website build through a reputable website designer, quality assurance checks should be a standard part of your website build cost. Make sure you always check with your designer if you have any questions regarding quality assurance on your new website.
Invest in long term SEO
If you’re not familiar with the term SEO, it means search engine optimisation. In simple terms, implementing strategies to optimise your website to bring it higher on the search engine results including on Google and Bing. There are many ways to complete SEO and different strategies depending on what you want for your business.
Keywords are king
Keywords are one of the most important SEO investments you can make. They can be a combination of single words or key phrases designed to drive organic traffic to your website. When your website is crawled for valuable content by relevant search engines, you receive a ranking for specific words and phrases. When users search for these relevant key words or phrases, your website is more likely to be show if Google identifies you as a reliable source of information on the specific search query.
Keywords can be developed in many ways post launch of your website. This could include creating additional content for your website including writing blogs and articles. Blogs of at least 1000 words bring valuable content to your website on relatable topics to your business and services. Remember to keep your blogs interesting and engaging, with easily identifiable keywords for Google to crawl.
Location pages also are a great way to add additional content to your website. In the search engine world, most users typically search for the service that they are looking for and a corresponding location. That’s why adding location pages to your website gives you the upper hand for organic keyword searching. If a particular search query featuring a location is identical or similar in keywords to a page on your website, you are more likely to get organic results from it, provided that your location pages are genuine and provide insightful information about a specific location in relation to your services.
With a targeted keyword strategy for SEO, be mindful of ‘keyword stuffing’. Gone are the days of Google simply looking for matches in keywords. Your content must bring valuable insight to your website rather than just being a bunch of random words on a page.
The biggest thing to remember with SEO, especially organic SEO, is that it takes time. Google’s algorithm needs to crawl and determine the value of your content vs user search queries vs comparable websites online. It is a process that takes months. But with an ongoing strategy, long-term SEO, especially in a particularly niche market, can be highly beneficial for your business.
Supplementary services
Once your website has been launched, you also need to consider the supplementary services that may assist your business to help get up on its feet. This could include setting up business emails for each of your staff members or relevant departments of your business or setting up social media platforms to connect with customers including Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, TikTok or Twitter.
The influence of social media on your business
The importance of connecting with customers via social media platforms cannot be understated, especially in a world where most businesses and individuals interact in this function. There is no sign of social media slowing down either, so not joining the wave can put your business at a significant disadvantage. Interacting on social media for your business brings many benefits. With social media, you can interact with various types of customers who may or may not have accessed your website or business otherwise. You can create targeted campaigns specifically for social media to draw in a new targeted market for your business and leverage social media marketing tools to do so. Social media presence also boosts your businesses branding and identity, giving your potential customers a sense of relief and trust in your business image. Social media platforms also assist with your search engine optimisation. Google’s algorithm takes into account ‘social signals’ when crawling your website for valuable content. If it can see a connection between your website and various social media platforms, it can rank your website as potentially more reliable and trustworthy and thus, giving you more opportunities to be shown for relevant search queries. Social media platforms themselves also rank on Google and show in search results, which again, can link potential customers to your business.
Engage in business networking opportunities
Having recently launched your website, the opportunity to now market and advertise your business using your website as a tool is upon you. There are multiple ways to get your business name out there, beyond sharing your website link around your social circles, and it starts with business networking opportunities. Take the opportunity to join a business networking chapter. There are hundreds of groups across Australia that meet weekly to discuss business goals and provide referral opportunities. These can be great for you and your business. It helps you gain potential referrals for others as well as other members referring business to you.
Beyond the weekly chapter meetings, engage in all opportunities for social networking for your business. Attend charity galas and provide sponsorships, if possible; enter business awards, attend conferences and events to get to know other people in your industry and beyond. Word of mouth, especially for small businesses, is a great tool and it goes hand in hand with your online presence.
Engage a marketing expert
Your website is the first of many sections of advertising and marketing your business. Once you have the online presence down, you can focus on delivering supplementary marketing strategies that will work together with your website to deliver your business leads. Engaging the assistance of an experienced marketing company who can help you through the process, gives you best opportunity for success in the future. Talk to your marketing expert about digital media strategies, advertising, and marketing materials and how they can help build your presence and grow your business.
Website designers who know all the facts about post launch optimisations
The team at Jezweb are experts in website design and development. As a locally owned and operated business, we take the time to get to know your business values and design your website in a way that best suits your business branding and image. We take you through the whole process from start to finish and beyond, providing you with a comprehensive service even after your website has launched. If you need a new website or have recently launched your website and don’t know what to do next, get in touch with the experts at Jezweb today. You can call us on 1300 024 766 or reach out to our team online.