So, after the website is live, we can just hang back, kick our feet up and wait for all that traffic and recognition? Dream on!

Internet promotion and online marketing require ongoing care and attention. The great news is that this part of the “web-dev” process can be probably the most fun and bring probably the most joy – both emotionally and financially. Checking your website stats and seeing that you have ten times the traffic increase when compared to last month, and having to hire additional help to respond to all of the contact form submissions can be quite exciting times for any online business. (Yay! #success) Where do I start then?

A properly built website has already began this process. During the website development phase fantastic care and attention was taken to lay the ground work for a sound SEO (search engine optimization) foundation. Properly formatted page titles, meta descriptions, keyword dense copy-writing and web page interlinking should have all been implemented. Having these items in place will greatly help in increasing your relevance in the eyes of major search engines. Web directories and Search engine submission

One of the first steps after launching the website should be submitting your site to the top web directories and search engines. Getting listed can sometimes cost a nominal fee and at times can be a long process, so it’s critical to obtain the ball rolling.

Getting your site known and listed on directories can help in numerous ways:

People who use these directories can find your site

Lets the search engines know that your website exists

Provides links back to your site from some top page ranked sources

Link building

Link building is another crucial step in promoting your website. Having in-bound links listed on highly reputable and relevant websites is probably in the top of Google’s long list of criteria for determining your pages rank. Make sure that your approach with link constructing is ethical. (Not-so-good practices such as using link farming services can quickly make your site disappear in the eyes of the major search engines.) The Best practices of getting your links listed on websites that are relevant to yours can direct visitors to you as well as making search engines say: “Hey if that top ranking website thinks that your site has reputable and relevant information then it ought to be so.”

Best practices for link creating include (but are not limited to) the following:

Writing articles for websites or blogs and including a link back to your site in your authors bio

Writing articles and submitting them to article publication services

Adding a link on your site to a website you hope to get your name on, contacting them and asking for a reciprocal link in return

Having content on your website that is actually inbound link worthy.

Keeping your content fresh.

A extremely large mistake many individuals make after launching their website is in no way adding new content or updating existing pages. This hurts your visibility in numerous ways. If content is not fresh then readers have no need to come back. The same is true for search engine spiders – they need to eat up and index all of your new content.

Top experts also feel that search engines give more importance to sites with frequently updated content as the info must be time relevant. Spiders keep track of how often new content is added to your site and determine the frequency of their trips back to you based on this data. The more content you produce, the more visits you will have from all your friendly neighbors on the net. Harnessing social media.

Using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter can help keep you in touch with your fans, tribe and client base. Social Media is a great avenue for constructing upon old relations and creating new ones as well. The viral nature of social media marketing also provides huge potential for exposing your website to an exponential number of folks, friends of theirs and their friends’ friends, and so on ad infinitum.

There are many ways to market place your website and get your name out there so that your men and women find you.

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