15
May
21 steps to take before you launch
We’ve all been there. You come up with a great concept for a website or blog. You quickly check domain names, then themes (because you were already set on building it with WordPress), and use your favorite setup technique to put it all together.
Before you go public, consider these steps to make sure your ducks are in a row and your website launch will be a success.
- Make your site private before you do anything else. In the WordPress Dashboard, click “Privacy” under the “Settings” menu. Click “Keep my website private”. This will keep search engines from indexing your website before it’s ready. Nobody likes to be caught with their pants down, and you don’t want people (especially people who run prominent blogs) finding your site before it’s ready for public consumption.
- Check out the competition. I’ve been there… I come up with a fantastic idea, spend tons of time developing it, then find out someone is already doing the same thing. Usually they have put in 10x the time, effort and money bringing their concept to life. If there is competition, don’t give up yet. Are they doing exactly what you want to do? Are they doing a good job? What can you learn about their version?
- Write all of your static content. Identify the basic information you want to share with visitors and write it.
- Make sure people can get in touch with you through a contact form or other method. The last thing you want is someone with information on a huge problem that can’t inform you about it.
- Cross-promote all of your static content. For example, each static content piece should offer the user a “next step” such as learning more, signing up, purchasing, following your updates, etc.
- After writing all your content, scan it all very closely for typos and errors. Once you’ve checked everything, check it again. Do something else, then check it a third time. Your descriptive/static content says a lot about your project and you.
- If you’re running a blog, make sure to have a solid collection of pre-content. Don’t fill up the site just yet, but have something for people to look at. Some of the best promotion and traffic you’ll get will be during the launch. Use services like LaunchFeed and KillerStartups to announce your new site.
- Make sure all social media and bookmarking accounts are setup and connected to your site.
- Put your best foot forward. Research says you get less than 5 seconds to convert visitors to users. If you’ve got a primary feature or content item, display it prominently where uses can see it quickly.
- Review your design for important element. Web browsers look from the top left to the bottom right of the screen. Take a 3 second look at your website. What do you see in those 3 seconds? Simulate being a first-time view, what do you take away from the website? What messages are you conveying?
- Take a close look at your logo. Is it a boring, stock logo? Or is it something that sends a message of both content and feeling? For example, people should take a message away like “professionalism+tips on WordPress”.
- Check the footer. Many designers simply forget to look there. That’s why sneaky theme designers stick some nasty code there sometimes.
- Check your metatags and titles. Consider SEO, and make sure to remove all default and standard tags and replace with your own.
- Lay the framework. Make sure users have a clear understanding of what your new website will be or do. Describe the site and what people will get from it. For example, “SuperDuperBlog is your resource for daily blogging tips.” People need to know what to expect from you, when.
- Look for obvious signs of design rush. These can be offset lines, incorrect text formatting, broken links, etc.
- Develop your promotion list. You have done this before, and built some strong relationships. Identify those whom you will reach out to when you officially launch. Remember, good blog karma means building relationships before you need something.
- Submit your website to appropriate directories.
- Build links from friends and associates. Be sure to do this close to the end of your preparatory phase because you don’t want friends punished by search engines for linking to a non-indexable website.
- When everything is ready on your site, soft-launch. Make it all live and ready, and test the heck out of it. Invite a select group of people to test each feature of the site and tell you what they think. Be open to both positive and constructive criticism.
- Make your website indexable by search engines (see tipe #1)
- Promote the heck out of it! Send your email blast to your opt-in list of contacts. Inform other site owners you know. Submit to the launch sites. Post new content and Ping update services. Don’t ignore the social media and bookmarking sites. Update your author bio if you belong to other blogs.
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Dusty
Dusty Anderson is an avid WordPress user and the editor of Pingable.org.
Read more about me here.
Comments (11)
nice guide,
here’s a few of my own,
As well as prof reading myself, i get my daughter to go over it too. a second pair of eyes often reveals things I seem to want to ignore.
check site in all browsers, I use firefox but I sometimes get odd formatting and layout issues that firebox is able to deal with but others cant…
Tommy
These are great tips, and it’s important to go through all of these before launching a blog. I wish I would have known all of this when I launched my first blog, but I learned with time.
It’s all too easy to rush into the blogging world full of excitement, while forgetting half the things you should have done.
Thanks for the post!
Tommy,
Thanks for the tip. I can’t believe I forgot checking compatibility across browsers. Thanks again!
To go along with number 5. If you’re already set on using WordPress a great plugin is SEO Smart Links. It interlinks keywords and phrases on your site automatically. This provides a great SEO benefit.
Maybe you could add: 22. Stay positive and keep a journal of the high and lows. Write down everything you do and learn from your mistakes.
The first place I look @ when using a free theme is the footer. The designers now encode their links into the footer in such a way that it’s hard to decode (@ least for the non tech-savvy). I usually removes those links and add them to my recommended sites widget instead
Thanks Paul, that’s a great tip. How many times have I thought of a great idea during development of a new site and forgot it 20 minutes later? Ha!
Udegbunam, I have also noticed the increasingly tricky footer linking going on and it threw me for a loop the first time I tried to remove a link. Then again, a footer link is a small price to pay for a quality, free theme as long as the link is to the theme developer only, not advertisements.
Thanks everyone for your comments!
May I add one :
use Keyword Luv and Comment Luv
Both Keyword Luv and Comment Luv are best way to attract visitors and commuters, increase discusses. You are right to choose the tools
“Caught with your pants down.”
Haha, very good one. I made the mistake a year ago of putting my site on private and forgetting. So I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t getting indexed until someone suggested that.
The one’s I think worth emphasizing are: Proofread and proofread again, have at least 10 well written articles published when you go live, make it easy for people to promote your articles on social media.
My personal biggest mistake is typos and spelling errors. I proofread multiple times and have friends and family proofread again.
I liked the suggestion above from Tommy on cross browser checking. That one has bitten me a few times in the past as well.
Excellent article. I’ve been learning more about do-follow plugins lately. CommentLuv is amazing. I use it on all of my blogs and it really does increase the amount of REAL comments from readers, as there is an incentive for them to post. I like how you can post your name for a link. Thanks for keeping your blog do-follow.