What to Expect After Launching a New Website

Launching a new website is exciting and nerve-racking all at once, we get it. You’re exposing your new baby to the world. You’ve spent weeks, possibly months fretting over colours, pictures, wording, do I justify the text to the left or the right?

With so much time and creative energy invested in the creation of your website, once it comes to life and is live on the web – then what?

We are often asked by clients ‘what’s next?’ after a website has launched and in an effort to answer the question, listed below are a few tips on the next steps:

Be Patient

It takes time for the major search engines to find your website, crawl it and then index all your valuable information. We completely understand that yesterday you were hoping to be the very first listing after the paid ads – but you need to remember that search engines are crawling through countless pages of content all over the web. With people all over the world putting out new content everyday – the engines – as brilliant as they are, still need time to process all the information.

• It can take anywhere between 20-40 days to get indexed on search engines
• It can take 6-9 months before competitive rankings can be achieved (longer if you don’t get a bunch of reliable inbound links, shorter if you can get a ton of great links)

To understand how a search engine works, have a look at this video by Google:

Promote It

Spread the word about your new website. Let people know – customers, friends, family. Commence your marketing blitz.

• Use your social media channels to expose people to the awesomeness that is your new website
• Email your contacts
• Update your business cards, letterheads and promotional materials (if your URL has changed)

The more traffic coming to your website and the more links your site receives in the first few weeks – the more likely Google will notice. More importantly, you want potential customers to see your products and services and you want loyal customers to know you’ve designed a website to serve them better.

Keep Your Content Current

Your content should always be relevant and up to date. You don’t want to advertise a sale that happened a month ago or have a page about a service that you no longer provide. If your site includes a blog, keep rolling out the content to keep your audience engaged (and this will also improve your SEO).

And finally, celebrate! Your site is live and running. Now run with it and let the world know. Also, consider chatting with a digital marketing expert to keep your ongoing SEO up to par.