Now I have made my site and ready to go live, what do I need to do?
You’ve spent a lot of time planning your site and developing your content, now you’re ready to share it with the world. So how do you go about it? This article provides a checklist to help you make sure your website is ready for launch.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the practice of improving your website’s ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing among others so that your website can rank higher.
Two important factors influence how search engines rank your website and determine if you rank higher than your competition, these are:
- On page (within the pages of your website) and
- Off page (outside the pages of your website)
An example of an on page factor would be adding keywords to your web pages, and an example of an off page technique would be exchanging links with other websites.
TIP: The search engine’s goal is to provide the best results to Internet users (real people); make this your goal too. All of your optimization techniques should keep the end user in mind while trying to rank higher.
Why is search engine optimization important?
Any website that wants to attract readers and rank higher needs search engine optimization. There are millions of web sites on the Internet, and it is the search engine’s job to find most of those web sites and index them (store them in the search engines database).
There are many factors search engines use when deciding which websites to display when Internet users perform a web keyword search. They look at factors such as the quantity and quality of links coming into your website, this is considered extremely important, and your website tags and page content. Several search engine optimization techniques can help your website get noticed and rank higher by the search engines and offer them reasons to send Internet searchers to your website.
Pre-launch website checklist
The good news is that your site is already configured to work with search engines, you just need to supply the information. Here’s a brief checklist:
Titles and Meta Tags
Title tags and meta tags such as meta descriptions are vital to ensure your site is indexed correctly by search engines, and to ensure those search engine listings appear as you want them to.
Steps 1: Login and navigate to your sections to edit each section's (page) Title and meta tags. (Admin > Sections > Edit Section).
Step 2: Click the General Tab and edit the Section Title. This is the text that usually shows up in Google's search results.
Step 3: Edit your meta tags.
Proofreading
It can be boring, you may think you’ve already done it 20 times, but proofreading is of critical importance. Take the time to carefully read all your content. If you can, get others to read your content and use spell checking tools to eliminate common typos.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is an on-going task that can require a huge amount of time to get right, focus on a small group of search terms/keywords and ensure they are regularly used within your content. It is important you write good quality content (don’t over-use keywords), Google is remarkably clever and will identify duplicate or poor quality content which it will not rank so highly. You site already includes Google Sitemap and Google Analytics integration code. You just have to sign up with Google and update your id.
To submit your sitemap and help speed up Google’s initial indexing of your site, sign up for Google's Webmaster Tools .
Site Analytics and Reporting
You’re ready, you’ve spent hours going through this article making sure your site is up to speed and the site is opening, but who’s using it? Is anyone actually looking at your site? Google Analytics is probably the best tools for general site analytics and is already integrated with your website. Once you've signed up with Google, you can use the same account to get your Analytics id. Get your Analytics ID here and then complete the appropriate boxes on your website (Admin > Search Engine).
What can you do get found faster?
Take the initiative and tell Search engines about your new website. Click on the links below to submit your website to Search engines.
http://www.google.com/addurl/ (Google)
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit (Yahoo!)
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx (Bing)
Need More?
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