Your Website’s Finished – Yeehaa! But What’s Next?

Your shiny new website is live. Cue virtual confetti! But before you dust off your boots and call it a day, let’s talk about what comes after the “Yeehaa!” moment. 

Building and launching a website is a massive achievement. It’s taken ideas and designs and coding magic to bring your brand into pixels-on-the-web reality.  

But in truth, your website going live is only the start. Your new site won’t be successful just because it’s live. Sorry

Your Website’s Finished – Yeehaa! But What’s Next?

A few notes before we get started: 

• We’ll refer to Google throughout as it’s the most popular search engine. Others matter and for the most part most of this blog relates to all search engines. 
• We’ll try not to use jargon. 
• We’ve shared tips for new websites and ones that haven’t seen much love. 
• We’re sharing all this from experience, and we’re happy to hear your experiences too. 

First things first, you need website traffic 

People often assume that once a website goes live, it’ll magically appear on Google and customers will start rolling in. Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. We all wish it did!  

To get found on search engines, you have to help them understand who you are and what you do. That’s where SEO comes in – there’s more on this further down!  

Search engines like Google use things like page titles, descriptions, keywords, and links to decide how relevant your website is to someone’s search. So yes, it helps to be deliberate. 

If you want to show up when someone searches for “wedding photographer Warwickshire” or “accountant in Leamington Spa”, then you need to make sure your site mentions those things, as well as other key words, clearly and in the right places. 

Make sure you’ve got the basics in place

Google Analytics

This is a free tool from Google that allows you to see all the visitor actions on your website. You’ll be able to see where they come from and which pages they visit the most, and it gives you the ability to track your marketing success by checking where your visitors are coming from (direct, referral, social media etc). We’ve shared the top Google Analytics reports most people need to see here. You can set up Google Analytics here. 

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is the less famous partner to Google Analytics, but it’s just as important. Google Search Console helps you to index your website with Google, check your traffic and what they actually searched in Google, and also see if you have any major issues with your website in SEO terms. One really important job to do first is submit your site index to Google. You can get Google Search Console for free, here. 

Google My Business 

Google My Business is your free Google business listing. It helps you appear on Google Maps and drives a tonne of business (traffic) to you if you’re a local business who serves customers at your location. Even if you’re not a restaurant or bar it’s still a good SEO tick, so get a business listing set up ASAP. Set up a Google My Business Listing. 

Set up business listings 

And once you’ve added your Google My Business listing, make sure you add some of the big, recognised local listings, too. This is really great for local SEO (and something we offer as a service if you need help finding all your current listings, updating them, and creating more). Set up a listing with your local Chamber of Commerce, network profiles, and the obvious ones you know of and then head to Cylex, FourSquare, Yelp, and many of the other recognised local listings. You can find a great list of them here. 

Keyword research 

This could be a job you outsource, but getting to grips with what and how people search in Google for the thing you do or sell will really help you when it comes to content creation. We found out that people search for marketing agency, not marketing services for example (our ideal clients, anyway!). Getting to grips with words and phrases people put into Google to find you – and then applying them to your website copy in pages and blogs – works. It works very well indeed! 

Check your page titles and descriptions  

When you’ve done the keyword research, make sure you’ve checked your meta titles and descriptions to see if you’ve used the terms and phrases your ideal clients use. This should match so they see in you in the Google results and then click on you as you speak their language! 

Blogging is your new best friend 

Adding new, relevant content to your site regularly is one of the best ways to keep Google interested and keep your audience engaged. And blogging doesn’t have to be complicated either. Just write about what you know. For example, you could answer common customer questions, share industry tips, talk about trends, or even give behind-the-scenes insights. 

And no, you don’t need to blog every week if that feels like a stretch. Consistency matters much more than frequency, so one blog a month is better than nothing at all. It also gives you something to share on social media and in emails (more on that in a minute). 

Here’s some further reading for you new website parents: 

• How A Blog Benefits Your Small Business 
• How to Create a Blog That Improves Your SEO: A Step-by-step Guide 
• A Really Simple Way to Improve Your Website’s SEO with Blogging 

Update your details everywhere 

Once your new website is live, make sure everything else you’ve got out there matches. 

• Update your social media profiles with the new link 
• Check that your email signature, business cards, flyers, and listings all point to the right place 
• Get your branding consistent; tone, colours, messaging, the lot. Consistency makes your business look more professional. It also helps build trust.

Build an email list (if you haven’t already) 

Your new website is a great place to start building an email list. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. A simple box that says “Get updates from us” or “Subscribe for tips” is a solid start. Give people a reason to sign up, maybe a free resource, a discount, or just the promise of useful content.  

Once they’re on your list, don’t just ghost them, it’s important to keep in touch. Send occasional updates or share new blog posts. Try to focus on being helpful or entertaining, not too salesy. 

Spread the word about your new website 

Your new website won’t share itself; you need talk about it.

Share it on social media, mention it when you’re networking, link to your latest blog post in a Facebook group or email it to your contacts. If you’ve built something you’re proud of, let people know. 

You can even have a bit of fun with it. We once hid a community member in our testimonial section and challenged our audience to find him. It created a buzz and got people clicking through multiple pages, so think creatively. The more people who visit your site, the more chances you’ve got to turn those visitors into customers. 

Final thoughts 

Getting your website live is a huge accomplishment and you should absolutely be proud of that!  

Just don’t consider getting it live as your website done and dusted forever. Instead, you need to treat it like it’s a living thing and regularly feed it with new content. 

Do these well, and your site won’t just look great, it’ll work hard for your brand, building awareness, trust, leads, and sales. Every update, every blog post, every share keeps that momentum going. 

Need more help? We do all of the above and more for our clients. If you’d like help getting your website found online and would love to benefit from our wealth of experience, then give us a holler now. 

Do You Struggle to Create Content to Generate Sales?

We’ve Created a FREE Online Marketing Plan…

Use our simple ideas generator to help you make better content, over and over again…

Learn More

Tags associated with this article