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You've Set Up Your Site — Now What?

When a business is in the process of building its website, it takes precedence over almost everything else, except, of course, the day-to-day operations of the business. It makes sense. A business’ website is a big deal, and it’s the hub of its online presence and reputation.

There’s a lot on the line when you’re building your business’ website. If the website is too cluttered or busy, if it doesn’t get your message across quickly and clearly, or if it takes a million years to load, people will immediately click away without giving you much of a chance.

Now that you’ve built your business’ website with the Websites 360® website builder and it’s everything you’ve ever imagined it would be, it’s easy to believe that your job is done. But, the reality is that building your website is just the first step to building the kind of online presence that will get your business noticed.

What to do After Building Your Website

Step #1. Set up tracking.

Your business’ website is like any other aspect of your digital marketing strategy. It’s an investment, and as such, you’ll want to know exactly how much you’re currently getting out of it, as well as what you can do to get a bigger return on your investment. In order to find these answers, you’ll want to set up the right monitoring tools.

Google Analytics is the first tool most people think of when it comes to website monitoring, and luckily, it’s free and relatively user-friendly. With Google Analytics, you can learn all kinds of things about how your site is performing, including:

  • How many people have visited
  • How many pages they visited
  • How long they visited
  • Where your traffic is coming from
  • If a bottleneck exists, and if so, where
  • Your current return on investment

With Websites 360’s DIY website builder, adding Google Analytics, and other analytics providers, like Marketing 360®, StarCounter, Clicky, GoSaured, and more, is quick and easy.

Step #2. Optimize the site for search engines.

Having a website is a must for every local business, but a website won’t do your business much good if no one sees it. By optimizing your website for search engines, you’ll have a better chance of it ranking higher in the SERP (search engine results pages), which means that more people will actually see it.

Optimizing your website for search engines starts with finding the right keywords to optimize it with. Start by putting yourself in a consumer’s shoes and thinking of what words you would search while looking for your services or products. From there, you can use Google’s keyword planner tool to find related keywords, as well as the competitiveness and search volumes of those keywords.

Once you’ve identified the keywords you want to target, you’ll want to use them as often as you naturally can throughout your website, including title tags, meta descriptions, page titles, headings, and page content.

Step #3. Add content to your site regularly.

Like I said, with search engine optimization (SEO), your site will have a much better chance of being visible in the organic search results. However, optimizing your site for search engines isn’t a one-time thing. You can’t just add keywords to your website and expect all to be hunky-dory.

SEO is a long game that will pay off immensely over time, but in order to get the results that you want, you’re going to need to start adding content to your website on a regular basis. There’s a reason why, in the SEO world, content is king, and it’s more important than ever to start publishing it consistently on your site.

For many business owners, the idea of publishing fresh content all the time can be overwhelming. Make it easy on yourself by writing about what you know. Google is looking for content that’s original, authoritative, and represents industry expertise. What Google isn’t looking for is Hemingway, so don’t get too lost in the weeds trying to be overly prolific or creative.

Step #4. Set up/link your social media accounts.

There are so many businesses under the misconception that, because they have a website, they don’t need any other real estate for their business online. But, that’s just not the case. Sure, your website will be your business’ main hub online, but it’s a mistake if it’s the only one.

Social media is an absolute necessity for any business these days. Not only does being on social media give business’ a great place to connect with their existing customers, but it also gives them a great way to get their name out in front of prospective customers as well.

If your business isn’t already set up on at least the most popular social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it’s time to get on board. Once you do, you’ll want to ensure that your website and your social platforms are linked and connected, and you’ll also want to start promoting your website on social media.

Step #5. Build an ad campaign.

As I mentioned before, having a website is all well and good, but there’s not much point if no one ever sees it. SEO is a great way to ensure that your website ranks in the organic search results, but even if you optimize everything perfectly and write new blogs every day, your website isn’t going to rank right away. SEO is the long game when it comes to visibility, but in the meantime, you can boost that visibility with ads.

You probably won’t want to rely on ads for all of your business’ visibility needs in the future, as SEO is a much more cost-effective approach, but in the beginning, ads will help to ensure that your website gets noticed.

Building your own website is a great first step toward establishing your business’ presence online, but there are many steps you’ll need to take to make that presence what you want it to be. Learn how Marketing 360® can help today.