You Have a Professionally Built Website. What Do You Do Now?

Having an online presence and, more so, a website is something you cannot ignore. Most businesses do not have a professionally built website due to fear of the costs of building one. They also feel that websites may be irrelevant to their operations.

Regardless of the industry, having a website can significantly impact the success of your business. An online presence will not only extend your reach but also build your credibility as a trusted brand. 

While building a website is vital, it is not enough. After successfully launching the site, you need to drive traffic for your business to get the most out of the investment. 

Things to Do After You Launch Your Professionally Built Website 

Here are the steps that should follow after you launch your professionally built website. 

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A good SEO strategy will help you drive quality traffic to your website. This way, you can increase your brand visibility, generate more leads, and make more conversions. Good SEO practices will make your website stand out from the competition and establish authority in your industry. 

Several things make SEO important. Visibility and good search ranking, for instance, will connect you better and faster to potential customers. Note that users are more likely to click on the first five sites they see on search engine results pages. 

Visibility and a high rank are also critical to the growth of your brand.

How can you improve your SEO? A good strategy features several activities, including publishing authoritative content relevant to the intended user. Updating your content regularly and proper keyword use and placement will keep your professionally built website fresh. 

Using alt tags to describe media and metadata will make your content and website appealing. You can also leverage the support of SEO experts to learn more about optimization for search engines and the implementation of SEO strategies.

2. Email Marketing

Email marketing offers significant benefits, and many businesses are doing it. You can tailor it to the needs of your target audience. It is also easy to measure, cost-effective, and boosts retention. Email marketing campaigns are designed to target your customers and prospects with offers, information, and relevant news. 

How do you run a successful email marketing campaign? The open rate, click-through rates, conversion rate, and revenue are some of the metrics to measure to determine your campaign’s success. A high open rate and click-through rate are an indication of your campaign’s relevance to the audience.

Your timing and content should be suitable to motivate audience engagement. Automation to create value in the customer journey is a component of successful email marketing. Personalization of your emails will also increase the open and click-through rates. 

Creating a compelling call to action will drive your target audience to act. 

More than half of the users use mobile, and your campaign is more likely to succeed if the emails are mobile responsive. That is by keeping the subject line less than 30 characters, using pre-header text, and going easy on the images, to mention a few. 

3. Keyword Research

Through keyword research, you can identify what your target audience is looking for instead of assuming what they want. Keywords connect people to the content on your website. Using the right keywords will drive quality traffic to your professionally built website and get you the best ranking on search engines.

Your online content is only as good as the keywords you use. Here are some keyword research tips that will boost your site’s search rank.

a) Look at the keywords your competitors are using

Competitor analysis for keywords will give you insight into how many businesses are competing for the exact keywords. It will also help you find popular keywords not being used by other websites in your industry. Competitor keyword analysis will help you point out the keywords to use, tweak, and the ones to avoid.

b) Have a scope for your research before you get started

To avoid getting carried away and deviating from the goal of your keyword research, do some scoping beforehand. Highlight the intent of the activity to get the most from the process. It could be identifying existing gaps, who you are competing with, and the keywords authority sites are ranking for. 

c) Leverage customer questions to generate keywords

Your keywords should be centered around what your customers want. That is why customer questions provide great leads. Your sales team can help you access this information and support you in developing phrases that resonate with the questions. 

Remember, an effective content strategy solves customers’ problems. Use questions to develop keywords that will lead your audience to solutions. If you don’t have an exclusive sales team, you can leverage Google Suggest to find out what your target audience wants. 

4. Set up Google Analytics

Success is not a one-time job, even if you have a professionally built website. That is why it is vital to remain consistent and make constant improvements. Performance tracking and monitoring are what will keep you on your toes. Google Analytics will give you insights into how your site is doing in terms of traffic and engagement.

With this tool, you can track how many people visit your site within a particular duration and how long they stay on your pages. Click rates and bounce rates are vital to monitor as they affect your ranking. You need to know how many people visit and how long they stay. If they leave your site too soon, it might be a sign that your content is not helpful to them, or your site loading speed is slow. 

Such metrics will give you a clear guide on areas that need improvement. 

The tool can also help you measure traffic from your social media pages and calculate the return investment of your digital marketing campaigns. Tracking the different metrics will keep you updated on the performance of your site and help you understand your audience better. 

5. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing will create brand awareness and help your professionally built website get noticed. Ensure your business is on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, to mention a few. On these platforms, provide links to your web pages for your audience and followers to access.

An effective social media marketing strategy starts with setting goals and mapping the target audience. You should know the platforms your audience prefers engaging on. Is it Pinterest or Facebook? Also, understand their problems to provide the best solutions and the time they are most active on social media. This will inform your content-sharing calendar. Invest in creating quality social media content for your audience to grab their attention.

Humanizing your brand will go a long way in drawing the interest of the target audience and enhancing engagement. Introduce your employees, share team photos on your page, and let the audience feel the people behind the brand.

Social media is a cost-effective way to improve brand awareness, engage with your customers, build brand loyalty, get marketplace awareness, and enhance customer satisfaction. 

toy rocket on a keyboard representing a website launch

6. Optimize Your Site’s Speed

Your site’s speed optimization should be a priority once you launch your website. It has a direct impact on the user experience, SEO, and bounce rate. Note that today’s users are always on the go with tons of tasks to handle. They are therefore not willing to wait for more than four seconds for your pages to load. 

If your speed is unsatisfactory, the conversion rate will also not be good. How can you optimize your site’s speed?

i) Optimize the images

Optimizing the image format and size can improve the loading time of your site. Through image optimization tools, you can reduce the size or compress the images. It would help if you also used standard image formats like PNG, JPG, and GIF. This will take up less bandwidth and improve the page loading time.

ii) Avoid redirects

Redirects affect SEO and page speed. While there are good reasons to consider redirects, like the reservation of domains, some may be unnecessary. For instance, redirects to an external site should be removed to enhance your site’s speed. 

iii) Leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN can keep various content types which can go a long way in enhancing your page speed. CDN can retrieve and avail information to users more quickly, saving on the loading time. 

It also uses less bandwidth, hence optimizing the overall speed. Note that traffic spikes also negatively impact site loading speed. CDN can handle even the unusual spikes thanks to its scalable nature.

Takeaway

Investing in a professionally built website for your business is a great move and the beginning of a fruitful marketing journey. However, to reap the benefits, you have to put in some work. You have to make your website known to your target audience, boost your traffic, and make it user-friendly to increase conversions. Creating a good SEO strategy, starting an email and social media marketing campaign, and doing keyword research are some of the things you must keep in mind. 

Optimizing your site’s loading speed will make your website stand out. Contact us for more details.