Like any great idea or accomplishment, it can feel anticlimactic or overwhelming once this significant step is out of the way. You may find yourself saying, “I have a website…now what?”
Launching a new website is more than updating your business card and social media bios to reflect your new URL. Whether for a new business, a revamp for an existing business, a side hustle, or something in between, launching a website is a big milestone for a company. But without getting out there and drumming up some attention for your brand, your website could be left with minimal traffic.
To ensure you are getting the right kind of users to your website at the right time, it takes a little effort on your part. Following these six key steps after your website is tested and launched, we guarantee your site will see the traffic it deserves in just a few months!
Update Your Business Assets
Creating a new website means your business cards, flyers, directories, social media bios, and other assets must be updated to include your new information. If you’ve only redesigned your website, but the existing URL is the same, then no further changes are needed. However, creating a new website also requires new business assets.
Here are some of the most common assets you should be updating:
Social Media
Email
Business Cards
Flyers/Brochures
Partnerships
Website
Clients/Customers
For those wanting to increase their online footprint, our Get Listed service can update and place your new site URL in 40 major directories online permanently for only $19/mo.
Create an SEO Strategy
Every company needs SEO, otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. This “optimization” refers to a wide range of strategies and techniques developed to improve your website’s ranking on search engines like Google. The goal of SEO comes down to presenting your content in a way that benefits both human users and computer crawlers. The optimization process can sometimes be difficult and frustrating if you’re new to SEO, but it consistently leads to better overall results for your website and your business.
SEO is one of the most important aspects of launching a website. As Google seeks to enhance the quality of its searches and provide users with better solutions to queries, its algorithms are updated several times a year.
If you’ve never created an SEO strategy before, no worries! We have plenty of blogs to help you out. In the meantime, here are the steps you’ll need to follow to create an SEO strategy that is perfect for your website:
Understand your analytics and set your goals
Analyze the Google results for your type of company
Perform keyword research
Define your most SEO-rich pages
Align your SEO strategy with your customer funnel/journey
Create content and pages around search intent
Optimize for UX, mobile, and technical SEO
Create off-site SEO opportunities
Measure and document your results
Involve Your Community
Involving or creating a community around your brand is beneficial not only for big moments like launching a new website, but for general brand success as well. One of the best benefits of brand communities is word-of-mouth, or WOM, marketing.
This type of marketing is when consumers' interest in a company's product or service is reflected in their daily dialogues. WOM marketing is one of the best ways to grow brand awareness and recognition.
If you haven’t already, creating a Facebook Group for your brand could also help your community grow. Facebook groups are extremely valuable in general, but they can have a huge impact when used in your marketing strategy. Since Facebook prioritizes posts from groups in a user’s newsfeed, you have a high chance of showing up on your users' feeds and having them share your updates.
Besides Facebook groups, you can help involve your community by updating your audience and customers with your business changes in other ways. You can add your new website URL to receipts and invoices, tell them personally, write a blog, and send out a newsletter or email. In addition, we recommend matching your new website URL to your email address to help avoid any customer confusion.
Drive Traffic Thru Social Media
Small business owners now have to become content creators and social media managers if they want to grow online. In late 2021, TikTok beat Google's 15-year record and became the most prominent "search engine" on the internet, highlighting the importance of being visible on social media!
In order to drive the most qualified traffic after your website launching, we recommend creating a plan and growing your social media presence. To increase your chances of being seen by your target audience, creating a social media ad campaign could also help.
The more active your brand is on social media, the more qualified traffic you can drive back to your website. Real engagement and shares on social media attract more attention to your small business. More attention to your content leads to more links and mentions. These off-site SEO factors have a direct effect on your rankings.
To help with your social media content ideas, here is a blog with three months' worth of social media content any business can use! Don't forget to sprinkle in some posts and stories about launching a new website as well.
Generate Buzz Around Your Brand
Getting involved in your community pages with blogs, news updates, posts, and commenting on others will generate some buzz and get you recognized as a community member. Even if you aren't a local business, your community can mean pages and sites related to your industry or target demographic, regardless of geography.
Download our white paper below to learn six key ways to generate buzz for your business and bring more qualified traffic to your website.
Stay Up-To-Date With Small Business Marketing
Lastly, one of the final steps you need to take after launching a website is constantly staying up-to-date with marketing news and tips that will benefit your business.
Google updates its search algorithms thousands of times each year. Websites must be updated quarterly to accommodate changed keywords, undated imagery, new content, etc. Content expectations have also changed recently, with video marketing being one of the best ways to reach audiences.
With new marketing strategies becoming popular or outdated regularly, consistently educating yourself on the best tips and tricks for your business is key to keeping your website traffic flowing.
As a marketing company specializing in kicking off new sites, we offer many services to help you get started, so you can focus on running your business. Keep an eye out for new ebooks and blogs from our team that might help you. Additionally, we host quarterly webinars with industry leaders like Wix and Trustpilot to help our audiences stay on top of behind-the-scenes trends.
Key Takeaways
Your business can expect to increase website traffic over time by taking these steps. While many of these steps can provide instant results, others will take more time and patience. SEO, for example, could take months to see results, but some of the ideas in the white paper we outlined will help generate buzz and traffic almost immediately.
Once these steps have been taken, remember to analyze your results and website analytics every few months to understand the best type of tactics that work for you and your audience. Should you need help with website flow, SEO strategies, blog writing, email domains, or more, reach out to a Zoek professional today!
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