Launching a New Website...

Virtually everyone who runs a small business has a website.

This means that virtually every small business owner has gone through the process of launching a new website, and the various stages that involves.

Invariably, there are lots of hurdles along the way. Defining the look and feel of the site, the structure, the content and so on - these are all very important tasks that can be time consuming and difficult, particularly when there are several differing opinions to reconcile.

Having just launched a new website, Driving Theory Test Questions, we're currently going through the process right now.

One of the things that web designers often say to clients when they breathe a sigh of relief at their site finally going live is this:

"Now the real hard work begins".

This is often greeted with looks of horror or the equivalent. But the fact is that in the web driven world we now live in, there are countless new sites being launched each day. There's no point putting a tangible figure on it, because it is both too large to comprehend, and even if a figure were quoted it would be out of date almost straight away.

With so many different web sites out there, you can no longer build a website and just assume that people will come. So a range of promotional strategies are needed - these could be paid for links, such as the use of the Google Adwords scheme, or perhaps getting links from high quality websites in related areas or a selection of good quality directory websites.

One of the buzz topics of the last couple of years is the use of social media and social networking: create a Twitter page, a Facebook presence, and generally trying to engage an audience through the use of such mediums.

What strategies did you use when launching your website, or indeed use on an ongoing basis to drive traffic? Have you tried using social media, and if so how are you finding it?

Please do post and share your thoughts and experiences on this important topic for any small business!
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Web Design

Re : Launching a New Website

To kickstart any site these days it helps to use AdWords just at the start to get site traffic flowing, that is what I would recommend.

Also with the new google emphasis on new content and social media I think it might be time to actually start seriously pushing the social networking side of a business when it launches to see if that can get some pagerank visibility at speed.

Re : Launching a New Website

We're trying facebook ads - will be interesting to see how effective they are in terms of whether clicks lead to sales or not.

Re : Launching a New Website

Good luck with the new website

How do you get around the fact that most people learning to drive will be 17 and therefore won't have access to a credit card?

Re : Launching a New Website

Search Marketing Tips..

Adwords:
You need to take sometime before using Adwords to read the 'Adwords learning center' or you will fall into the trap many businesses do, who end up paying for wasted clicks'. Your chosen keyword for example could be 'cat food' and your business (a website selling cat food) but you could end up paying for 10 clicks on the keyword 'cat food books' (which you don't sell). Therefore wasting your advertising budget. (You would need to use negative keywords to avoid this!)

-Highly targeted adgroups are required for higher quality scores.
-You need a call to action and keyword relevant to your landing page included within your adtext. This adtext keyword should be a keyword your campaign is targeting to as it will increase conversions.
-You will want to pause really low CTR (click through rate) ads and keywords to increase ROI.

(Tips like these and many more are developed with continual Adwords use)

Link Building For Google Page Rank:
-Create a blog on your website with regularly updated, relevant and interesting content. Allow guest articles to be posted on your blog, these should be from bloggers who discuss related content, and in return they may allow you to post one of your articles on their blog (Gaining a valuable inbound link)

-Use Google search trends to see what popular topics related to your industry are causing a buzz or being discussed. Write creative articles on the subject with links to your site included. Then email it to editors of popular publications within your industry e.g Tech Crunch (for technology companies)

-Your best of only adding your URL to the top 3/4 directories such as the 'Yahoo directory' and also loads of specialist directories in which only companies within your specific industry can add their details


Social Networking:
-If you are going to use Twitter and Facebook remember it's about quality not quantity. What I mean is you should not add, follow and message as many businesses and people as possible. You should keep it specific to related industry contacts, your target audience and media contacts you may want to reach out to for Pr purposes.
-You should avoid sending general messages to your contacts but use their name, visit their site and make your message personal. This way building up a friendly relationship over time so that in the close future you can ask them to maybe sign-up, trial, visit, or for advice. It's not a good idea to try sell them or ask for favors straight away.

For more tips or to contact me visit: http://www.contextured.com/


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Contextured Limited 99 Farringdon Road London EC1R 3BN t : 020 7503 5792 f : 020 7833 1103 c: 079 7179 5544 http://www.contextured.com http://www.getcontextured.com

Re : Launching a New Website

Very interesting post there Contextured, thanks for the input
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Web Design

Re : Launching a New Website

So what's the consensus on the old Google sandbox idea here then... specifically the idea that any new website isn't allowed to achieve it's "full" ranking for a year after it has been launched.

Is there still any truth in this, and if so how much?

Re : Launching a New Website

I used to read quite a lot about the 'sandbox' thing a few years ago Tim, but I haven't heard it mentioned much of late... perhaps that no longer exists?

Re : Launching a New Website

I tend to agree Stephen, I see less mention of it these days, but who knows... there does still seem to be some penalty for new sites.