You’ve planned, designed, and, after some trials and tribulations, launched a new or redesigned website. Congratulations! Go out and celebrate, but don’t go on vacation just yet. Once your site goes live, you will have issues to check and enhancements to make to catch errors and improve that all-important SEO. Here are a few important tasks to put on your post-launch SEO checklist.
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Incorporate internal linking.
You probably already checked that all links from one page to another work properly. If not, get back to work! If your site includes a blog, articles, or similar resources, internal linking can give you an SEO edge.
What are internal editorial links? Internal editorial links are found within articles to connect readers to other useful content on your site. If your blog contains an article about the latest It Bar in New York City, you can include a link within the text to a related post about a bar owned by the same company.
Why incorporate internal linking? Because Google will give that article higher priority. It also gives your audience more content to engage with, which keeps them on your site longer. For an SEO boost, make sure some of your content includes links to one or two other related, relevant articles.
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Add to Google Business.
Get your business hours, phone number, and directions on Google Search and Maps with Google My Business. You can add and edit location, hours, and photos, and also respond to reviews. If you want people to find your business, this is a must-do.
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Create a site map.
If you didn’t do this pre-launch, do it now. Create an XML site map and submit it to search engines such as Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. Create separate site maps for pages, posts, images, and post categories to make sure search engines are privy to all information on your site.
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Check for 302 redirects.
If your redesigned site contains any 302 redirects, which is a temporary redirect, get rid of them. Search engines will not pass authority through a 302 redirect. A 301 redirect is permanent. Search engines know to forward ranking authority from old page to new. Check to make sure those are in place and working.
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Check against 404 errors.
Once you’ve finished with 301s and 302s, check 404 pages for 404 errors. The almighty Google says that redirecting 404 errors can be problematic for a few reasons:
“Because of the time Googlebot spends on non-existent pages, your unique URLs may not be discovered as quickly or visited as frequently and your site’s crawl coverage may be impacted (also, you probably don’t want your site to rank well for the search query [File not found]).”
WordPress offers a number of plug-ins to help take care of this SEO-killer. 404 errors happen. Plan for them now for fewer headaches later.
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Check page speed.
As we mentioned in a previous post, page speed affects indexation, traffic, rankings, conversions, engagement, and, ultimately, nearly every facet of online marketing. Analyze your page speed with a tool such as Google’s Page Speed Insights. It gives you loads of suggestions to make your site faster.
With a thorough post-launch assessment, you can reduce the number of glitches in your website development plan. You may even get a weekend away from the office.
Interested in a free SEO Audit of your site? Contact us, either before or after you implement these 6 tasks.