11 Tips what to do after your site goes live
You have worked hard with your web designer and your site has gone live. You now need to ensure your wonderful new website is found!
Here are a eleven top tips to get your site working for you:
1. Local Business Links
Look for other websites which will provide links to your site. As well as looking nationally, it helps to request links from local businesses which are complementary to yours in the areas where your business operates. For example if you offer transcription services, you could approach a website selling transcription equipment.
2. Free Listings
You can create a free listing for your local business on Google Maps and Yahoo Local . Your business will then show up on a map when people search locally in your area.
3. You Tube
If you have a video, you can promote this, images and audio content via You Tube. Google's "universal search" displays not only web page content, but also relevant listings for images, videos, local businesses and audio clips. For example, if you were to create an informative video explaining what your business offers and upload it to YouTube www.youtube.com you could see a lot of additional traffic coming your way.
4. Incoming Links
As Google (and other major search engines) rate the number of quality incoming links to your website as an important indicator of relevance, additional links will help you rank higher in the search engines. It is important however to ensure you include only links from those sites which are both popular and can be trusted.
5. Online Directories
Submit your site to online directories. A directory is a website listing which is sorted according to specific category and subcategory. You can list your site in the free Open Directory Project www.dmoz.com and in the Yahoo Directory
6. Industry Specific Directories
If you belong to various trade associations which have member directories, ask them for a link too. You may have to pay for this option but the more links you have, the higher your page rank will be!
7. Complementary Links
It’s a good idea to send a personal e-mail to the contact listed on the site where you would like your link featured. However, do remember to link from complementary sites as Google determines what your site is about, who you link to and who links to you. Not just any link will do, it’s quality links you’re after. Persistence will pay off in the end so don’t be tempted to give up!
8. Articles
Write articles for others to use in their newsletters. You can increase your online visibility if you write articles about subjects within your area of expertise and send them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or websites. Don't forget to ask them to provide a link to your website and a short description of what you are selling or the services you offer. There is an abundance of information on how to do this available from one of the many article marketing sites.
9. Press Releases
To broadcast newsworthy events, you can send press releases to various journalists who work within your specific industry. The links to your site contained within online news articles should improve the amount of traffic to your website.
10. Start Writing a Blog
If you offer regular informative content and comments on other forums and blogs, people are likely to link to your website via your blog, thereby increasing your website's page rank.
11. Social Media Marketing
By setting up Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In accounts (to name just three) and regularly posting credible content via your online profiles, you can develop and build a following of people who are interested in the tips and expertise you can offer in your specific field. By attracting interest in this way you are encouraging people to visit your website where they can gain more valuable information.
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When should you have a CMS?
A CMS - Content Management System - is very useful when you are planning a website with a lot of dynamic content such as news, case studies, a blog or an online shop. It gives you the freedom to update your content, images, products, prices etc., when necessary and in your own time, without having to rely on your web designer.
In times of free open source CMS programmes such as Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal & Co., more and more websites are built with a CMS. However and especially for smaller static websites where contents is not being updated on a regular basis a CMS is very often unnecessary and can sometimes even be a bad choice.
But how do you know what is suitable for you and your business and whether your website needs a CMS or not?
When you start planning your website try to determine as soon as possible whether or not you will include areas like news, a shop or a blog on your website which need regular updating. If you only plan to update your website once or twice a year, you can consider your website to be a static brochure website and a content management system will not be necessary.
Not only are the costs for the development of a website including a CMS higher and the development takes more time, but also using those open source systems can bring disadvantages as you might have template and layout restrictions. Data security can be an issue and web pages in a CMS are not as search engine friendly as individually hand coded web pages.
Smaller changes can easily be made by your web designer as and when needed or you can use very basic and minimalistic CMS like Cushy CMS. Your web designer will only need to add a line of code to the web pages and areas you would like to update, and you will be able to make some basic content changes yourself.
This will give you the freedom you need without having the extra costs of a complex CMS back-end, and once your business and website grows and becomes more dynamic, you can still think about adding a custom developed CMS to your beautiful custom made website.
What is the difference between Web Design and Website Development?
Design and development skills are both required in order to produce a fully functioning and successful website. Even though the intricacies of their workings may be totally different, their aims are similar – and one is as crucial as the other if you really want to see results.
However, it really is important to know the difference between the two, as when you are designing a new website, or asking your designer to put your new site together, you need a basic understanding of what you need to ask them for, i.e., what your visitors see when they look at a web page is the actual design of the page. What makes that website worth the time required for them to navigate it, is the development (which lies behind the scenes).
DESIGN
Good web design means creating great looking websites whilst ensuring they are still as user-friendly as they can possibly be. Experienced designers will have a wealth of knowledge and practice utilising not only HTML, but also CSS, Javascript and other graphics packages such as Photoshop, Fireworks and Flash to name just a few. By using these tools they create the foundations of the website and, together with you, decide right from the outset, just how your website should look when it's completely finished. The actual design result does not contain any coding and is just a graphical representation.
DEVELOPMENT
Web development is the programming in the back end which converts the beautiful design into a good working and professional website. The web development can be very basic for a small static brochure website or more complex for a website which requires to be dynamic, needs a content management system, payment facility, shopping carts or a register and login area with user name and password. Also online forums such as Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum are a good example of web development. To ensure that your website is performing well and remains competitive and the back end is flexible it is very important to engage experts when planning your website and to really think about what your website needs to do when you start and what functionalities you want to add to the site in the future.
The back end programming is also a vital element required in order to increase the visitor’s online experience - it is important to remember that the development goes hand in hand with the design which holds the visitor’s attention at the very beginning of the whole process.
If you want to produce a really user-friendly and professional-looking website, which is eye-catching, visually attractive and does the job you want it to do, both the design and the development need to be given your full attention in the planning process.
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