Seven Steps All New Website Owners Need To Take
by Sam Davis
If you’re setting up on your own with a brand new website, first and foremost – good work! Whether it is for a business, a local club, a charity, or just a place on the web to register your thoughts, establishing your own website is something you should be very proud of.
Perhaps you’re designing it yourself, or maybe you’ve got someone like me building for you – either way, there are a number of steps that should be taken by any new website owner in order to make sure your website has the best possible start in life.
Once you’ve created a website, unfortunately traffic will not just “come”. You should not expect it to be on the first page, the second page, or even the tenth page – within the first couple of months.
The first thing to realise is that, once you’ve created a website, unfortunately traffic will not just “come”. Unless you’re paying extortionate amounts of money to Google via their advertising platform, you’re not going to get many visitors initially. Whilst your website will be noticed almost straight away by Google and will be indexed, you should not expect it to be on the first page, the second page, or even the tenth page – within the first couple of months. The development of a website, like that of a baby, is natural and steady – and there are a number of things that should be done to give your pride and joy the best possible start.
1. Register Your Website with Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great tool for seeing how many visitors you are getting on to your website, how people are finding you, how long they are staying on your website, where they are leaving your site, what device they are using, what links they are clicking, and much more.
Signing up to Analytics is easy, and is the best way to compare traffic like for like over the future months and years of your website. All you need to do is a place a little bit of code on your website, and once Google has recognised that you have the code in place, it’ll start recording your data.
Join Google Analytics – it’s free! »
2. Register with Google Search Console
Google Webmaster Tools is now called the Search Console, and once you have verified that you are the owner of your website (can be done either by uploading a file to your website or by linking it with Analytics) – it will give you a number of useful bits of information about the “health” of your website.
If pages on your site are linking to “Page Not Founds” or “404 Errors” – this will tell you. If your website is missing some important “title tags” – the Search Console will tell you. In fact, it checks a number of elements of your website which all will ensure it is in the best possible health. For this reason, keeping the Search Console happy and error-free should be a BIG priority.
Sign Up to Google Webmaster Tools – it’s free! »
3. Submit Your Sitemap To Search Console
Search engines are pretty clever. The more you update your site, the more frequently the “robots” will come back and scan your website for changes. This makes sure that whatever you have added is indexed, and people will be able to find you based on the new content that you have put on the site. A good way to “force” Google to know when you’ve added new stuff to your website is by submitting a “sitemap” into the Search Console.
If you’re building your website with a popular CMS like WordPress – you’ll have this feature available to you via plugins such as Yoast SEO. This free add-on simply creates an XML file, which needs to be submitted into the Search Console by clicking Crawl > Sitemaps > Add Sitemap. Once this is done, each time you edit your site, it will effectively ping Google in a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” kind of way – ie: why wait for Google to spider your site when you can tell them directly that it has been updated?
Not sure how to do this? Give me a shout! »
4. Google My Business Page
I know this article possibly looks like it’s a Google sponsored advert – it’s nothing of the sort. But the fact is that with 1000% of the world’s searches being performed though the web giant (Ok, I may have been exaggerating there), it is simply a service that cannot be overlooked.
The fact is, the more you “please” Google by using their services, the more they will warm to you – and not having a Google My Business page is not only frowned upon, but it may also mean that you are passing up a LOT of business.
Have you ever typed in a company name and then a panel appears on the right-hand side of the page with more information about the business? That’s exactly what you want for your website. Have you ever typed in “Bournemouth plumbers” and seen the list of local tradesmen appearing? These are the kind of positions you will need your company to be in, as not only can you force your way to the first page of Google’s organic search index, you can also be on this section too – meaning that you have more real estate on the page, and a greater chance of people clicking on you.
Register with Google My Business – it’s free! »
5. Social Media Accounts
This goes without saying, but when you make a website, create the social media accounts straight away. Get your friends to like the pages, add a bit of content, and register your “friendly” URL’s as soon as you can. At a minimum, you’ll need to make sure you have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google Plus.
All of the portals should be echoing your website content whenever you add it to your blog/site. I say this because you’re going to be wanting to draw as many people in to your site via these mediums as possible, so make sure your content on social media is engaging, has interesting images (not just textual updates) and will entice people to click on them.
You should also encourage clients or friends who have used your services to review your website or business, therefore, if you have not activated the Reviews tab on your Facebook page – do it. These reviews will be picked up by Google, and together with the star rating that Google gets from its own review system, it will also show those from Facebook too – and these together have a significant baring on what position your site will be at within the index.
Contact Me For Social Media Help »
6. Get a Mailing List
Email marketing is still one of the most powerful tools available. There are so many global businesses who can send out a simple email and earn millions of pounds at the drop of a hat – so why not give your website the best possible start by enticing visitors to give their email addresses to you?
There are many ways that you can do this. You can have static forms embedded on your website in laser-targeted positions, you can add tick-boxes to your forms which will auto subscribe them to your list (with their permission of course) when they send in some feedback, or you can even have a pop up which appears on your page which encourages them to submit their details.
One of the most popular forms of pop-up you’ll see is the “exit pop-up” which flashes up some information just as the mouse moves towards the “close tab” button. At this point, you can offer a free download in the form of a PDF, or even a coupon code for your store where you can give them a percentage discount. Either way, once you have their details, you know that you can target them with offers and deals whenever you want – although I’d suggest you don’t make it overly frequent! One of the best tools to use for the mailing list by the way, is Mailerlite – it’s streets ahead of MailChimp (in my opinion!)
Sign up to MailerLite – it’s free! »
7. Click to Call Button
Does your business thrive on the need to take phone calls? If so, having a permanent “Click to Call” button on your site is a must! If you’re on a desktop computer right now, try shrinking this site down in your browser and look what appears.
This button will also show on a mobile, and it stays on the site at all times and gives the visitor a simple one-click method to get in touch with the website owner. No zooming in and trying to copy and paste the number into your phone book – just one click, and done.
Considering the amount of people who more browse the web on their phone as opposed to their desktop – to ignore this huge percentage of people is just criminal.
Click to Call Implementation »
If you manage to follow these seven steps within the first week, then kudos to you. Any time that I build a website for someone, I will always include these essential steps, so if you’d like to utilise my services then get in touch! There’s still a lot of work to be getting on after these steps of course – however you’ve given yourself a very good head-start in the race to attack Google!
Sam Davis
I am fanatical about providing useful web experiences, via bespoke websites which engage, inform and entertain. I have been making websites since a young age, and am a keen supporter of AFC Bournemouth.
