Congratulations on completing the development of your business website! It’s a significant accomplishment and a major step towards establishing your online presence. However, it’s crucial to keep in mind that your website’s launch doesn’t guarantee immediate traffic.
While it’s essential to have a professional website that reflects your business’s products and services, it’s equally important to make sure that your website is search engine friendly and optimized. When your website is optimized, it increases the chances of it appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs), leading to more traffic and potential business.
It’s essential to note that appearing in search results takes time, and you shouldn’t expect immediate results. You need a consistent and persistent approach to building your website’s online visibility.
Typically, it takes at least six months for search engines like Google and Bing to crawl and feature your website in search results, even if you search for your exact business name. Therefore, keep optimizing and updating your website, mastering SEO strategies, and producing quality content to increase your website’s chances of appearing in search results and driving traffic to your business.
Here are six steps that any small business owner should take after finishing their website. These six steps can help you track your progress, get noticed, and get a leg up on the competition.
After building your website, the first step is to double-check that everything works correctly. Ensure there are no roadblocks or distracting typos that may prevent someone from becoming a customer. After finishing your website, check for typos, appearance on mobile, tablet, and desktop, images that appear in the right location at the correct resolution, correctly functioning buttons, and links that lead to the desired page.
Imagine paying for advertising for your website only to find out that everyone left the site due to broken links. Take the time and ensure that users who enter your website have a great experience and find the information they need within just a few clicks. If your website sells products online, test the shopping and checkout process. It is best to ask a friend unfamiliar with the website to purchase a specific product. Watch them as they navigate the site and see how many clicks it takes them to find the particular product, and if the checkout process is cumbersome.
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To keep it simple, Google Search Console can alert you when something on your website is not working correctly, such as a broken link or robots.txt error. Google Analytics can give you in-depth insights into how people find your website, the time spent on each page, and which pages convert the most customers.
How you set them up depends on how you built your website. I’ve put together this list to help you set up accounts Search Console, and Google Analytics accounts on the following platforms:
| Website Name | Search Console Guide | Google Analytics Guide |
| GoDaddy | -no guide found- | Link to guide here |
| Weebly | Link to guide here | Link to guide here |
| Wix | Link to guide here | Link to guide here |
| WordPress.com | Link to guide here | Link to guide here |
| WordPress.org | Link to guide here | Link to guide here |
Search Console and Analytics can offer you an overwhelming amount of information. You can enroll in classes if you want to harness the power of these tools. For this list, you only need to:
More often than ever, people use social media platforms and review websites (i.e., Yelp) as search engines in their own right. You want your business listed and ensure all information is correct anywhere you are featured. Be especially mindful that every listing should have the EXACT same business name, address, phone number, and website. To ensure consistent information, Google compares your business’s listings on social media platforms, databases, and your website.
Social signals tell Google how links to your website perform on social media platforms. For example, you share a link to the services pages of your website, and the post does pretty well – 116 friends like your post, and twelve friends comment. Google can determine how well this URL did when posted on social media. Your goal should be to share links to every page on your website engagingly and funnily.
Remember, your social media followers might not like you if you only share links to your website. How often you should share a page depends on your frequency. If you only post once a week, consider sharing a link every four to five weeks. If you post twice a day, you can share a link twice a week. It all depends on what you and your followers find appropriate.
Listings on review websites also work toward the NAP accuracy we discussed above.
Here is a list of review website where you should create listings.
The internet is vast, and believe it or not, not everyone uses Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, or Yelp. Some people on the internet will search a database or smaller niche website to find a business to help them fulfill their needs.
People create thousands of websites and social media accounts daily. Search engine algorithms still have difficulty determining if you are a real business or a SPAM/ fake business. Adding your business’s information to these free databases can help search engines like Google increase your website’s trust and authority on the internet.
Google likes to show people results for businesses closest to them in search results. For example, when you search “mechanics in Plattsburgh, NY,” Google will rank the results by distance. They do this by knowing the searcher’s location and researching which business is closest. One of the ways they research what business is closest is through these database entries.
*note- local listings are also ranked by reviews and hours of operation. Being the closest does not guarantee you come up as #1 in local results.*
You can expect to create a listing on each website to take somewhere between 15 minutes and a half-hour. Filling out a listing or two might be a nice thing to do as you unwind at the end of the day. If you don’t want to create these listings yourself, you can hire a Bright Local company to do it for you.
Here is a list of websites where you should create a free listing:
Regular website maintenance can often fall by the wayside while managing all aspects of business. It is essential to schedule time every quarter to review each page on your website.
You would be surprised to see how much information needs to be changed in just three months. Regular maintenance prevents customers from seeing silly typos or incorrect hours and shows the search engine that the website is active.
As mentioned earlier, thousands of websites are created daily. Consider how many of those websites still exist, despite the business going bankrupt. Google handles dead sites to reduce their rank if they are not regularly updated. Search engines consider websites inactive if they are not updated regularly, which could lead to missed potential clients.
Find ways to update and add information for your ideal clients so that they turn to you as the go-to source.
These seven steps can help to improve the performance of your website. By following these steps, you can get baseline measurements, build trust and authority online, and increase your online visibility. After completing these steps, you can decide whether to add a blog, frequently asked questions, or new service pages. It might take a few months to see regular traffic, but these seven tips can help you start on the right foot.
