What to do AFTER you launch a website

So you built a website and launched. But now it’s been a few weeks and the world has not started beating down your door yet. You thought all you had to do was build it and kick-back and wait for the sales to roll-in. Those days are long gone my friend, in fact, there are over 108,810,358 distinct websites online today.

The good news is that for most websites all that is needed is a little push. Here are a few quick-hit things that you can do to get your website noticed and moving up the Google rankings.

1. Get yourself listed on Google Places, formally known as the Google Local Business center. This will help your business get listed on the maps section that appears at the top of a page when something is searched in Google. There is a process to getting listed. Once you create your listing, Google will mail you a postcard to confirm your physical address. You will need that card to confirm the listing. It usually arrives within a week so be sure to keep your eyes open for it in the mail and don’t forget. You can learn more here: Google Places
2. Get Yourself listed on the Bing search engine. Same process as defined above for Google Places. You will need to create a Windows Live ID account which is kind of annoying but hey, the listing is worth it. You can learn more about the Bing local business listing service by following this link
3. Sign-up for Yelp. Yelp is a mashup of YellowPages, Bloggers and social media users. If you’ve heard of FourSquare then you can liken Yelp to that. Yelp listings help by adding another link back to your website AND by creating a listing on an actual Yelp page for you; Yelp pages usually rank pretty high in Google so having this step completed can only help you bring in more leads. To sign up for Yelp click here.
4. Check out Andrew Shotlands blog over at www.LocalSEOGuide.com everyso often. He publishes really helpful and practical advice on how small business owners can get better search engine rankings. Most of this stuff you can do yourself but Andrew can also be hired and he’s worth it. He put together a really helpful list of directories that should check out. It’s called the IYP (Internet Yellow Pages SEO Rankings Report. Go down that list and create a listing on each one for your business.
5. Get out and comment on other blogs and websites. Start by commenting on the blogs you read already. When you get the process down start looking for blogs in your industry. It’s not hard and does not take very much time. But a lot people ‘t understand why this so crucial. I personally got my site ranked on page 1 of Google for “Social Media Consultant” using this technique. But before you do this watch this video which summarizes how to do this right way.