Business Website Tips: 13 Things to Check Before Launching your New Website

6. Internal Linking

Does your website content contain links to other pages within your site? If not, it should. Internal linking is an SEO best practice — essentially an ‘on-page’ ranking factor that helps your pages rank higher in search engines. Having a sufficient number of internal links also makes it easier for visitors to find more relevant information on other pages within your site.

7. Google Places for Businesses

Ninety-seven (97%) percent of consumers search for local businesses online. Listing your business on Google Places  — a free local platform — can ensure that you’re there when they’re looking for you. This is vital if you have a local business as it allows people to find you on Google Maps and for local search queries.

8. Social Media Sharing Tools

Social media isn’t going away any time soon. So, let your website visitors help spread the word about your company. Choose at least three social media platforms that have a strong presence of people in your market and create profiles on each of them ( i.e. Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google Plus are all great starting points).  Create a consistent brand profile across your social media networks, include a link to your website and update each profile with links to your new content. Also ensure social media sharing tools are embedded on your website to make your marketing dollars work a bit harder.

9. Business Goals

Setting predefined business goals is a must for every website. You can track your progress and set up targets using Google Analytics. Whether it’s improving email newsletter conversions, selling a product or getting users to complete a survey, you can then easily see exact percentages of how many people take a desired action — allowing you to refine and improve your goals over time.

10. Webmaster Tools

Make sure your company website is registered with Google Webmaster Tools. This free platform provides detailed reports about your pages’ visibility on Google. You can also detect any missing pages or broken links on your site.

11. 301 Redirects

If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, Google recommends that you use a server-side 301 redirect. If you are creating a website on a new domain, but still want all the juicy traffic that you worked so hard to get from the old site, then 301 redirects are for you. Correct usage of 301 redirects will make people that land on your old site, appear on your new one automatically.

12. Custom 404 Page

When users click on a broken link by accident, it’s better to have them land on something that has your branding and some useful links instead of a boring 404 page with no easy way out. Here are some cool and creative error 404 pages for inspiration.

13. Robots.txt

Without this little file Google cannot find or index your site in their search engine and that means no traffic. So ensure your team adds and edits this file allowing the search engines to do their thing.

So there you have it! Once these website tweaks are in place you are more likely to receive all the traffic, praise and sales your business deserves.

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Photo Credit: Mango

Sameer Panjwani is the CEO of Maximizer e-Services, an internet marketing company for small businesses. His company offers link building services using tactics like submitting sites to quality directories, guest blogging, social bookmarking etc. which are popular among entrepreneurs and startups worldwide.