Your website is ready. You have toiled hard and have taken immense efforts to make it the way it is. You spent hours with your web design company to develop a website that will look the best for your visitors. It doesn’t matter what your website is going to do, what now matters is how to get people to visit it. For this, you have zeroed in on a web development company that will maintain and get people to the website. Though your website is live, there are so many things left to be done. Here are the things you have to check off your list to make your website visitor-ready.

Take a backup

Once the website is ready, you have to protect it from being stolen. For this, you should install a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus that will store your digital assets in a secure place. In the event your website is hacked, this is where your backup files will help you retrieve precious data that would otherwise be lost.

Protect it against hackers

Your website has to be designed to protect it against hackers. To start with, all your passwords should be strong and not easily guessable. If you are using a WordPress website, you should install relevant plugins that protect it against hackers. This includes plugins like WP Engine and Flywheel.

Create sitemap and robots.txt file

If you want every opportunity to get your website ranking as high as possible in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), you have to get the sitemap.xml and robots.xml file in place. These two files are required on each website for search engines and other website services to be found.

The sitemap helps search engines index the website better while the robots.txt file tells Google which pages it should and should not visit.

Set up Google Analytics

You can never know how well your website is doing if you do not install Google Analytics. This free website analytics portal helps you check the traffic flow, conversions, and page visits of each page of your website. This is crucial to know how much you can earn from your website and social media presence.

Get it reviewed

Though your website is live, do not officially announce its launch. Instead, ask a few friends and customers to review it before you make it public. This ‘beta’ launch will help you detect bugs and other potential issues with the website. Rectifying it in time will ensure a better customer experience (UI/UX) for your website.

Set up its social media accounts

This is the easiest way to promote your website. Having dedicated social media accounts for it brings it legitimacy and is an important source of website traffic. People trust websites that have their own social media pages. This also gives you a direct line of communication between you and your target audience.

Make your website SEO-friendly

Without SEO, your website literally does not exist. For the uninitiated, SEO or Search Engine Optimization practices help your website to rank better in the SERPs. This is a long-term investment where you cannot get results overnight- you will have to invest consistently for it. When you hire an SEO expert for your website, you can start seeing results after about 3-6 months.

Write attractive content

Your website needs to have attractive content. This is primarily what attracts people to the website. The content needs to be keyword-rich, concise, and plagiarism-free. It should explain everything that you do in an interesting and informative way. Content here does not mean only text, visual cues also play a big role in helping people understand the website. Most people are just going to scroll through the website; they should understand everything about it. The people interested will click through the Call to Action (CTA) options. If needed, hire a content writer/copywriter for making your website content super-awesome.

Send out a press release

When you launch a website, you will have to do everything to give it some publicity. The best way to do so is by submitting a press release statement explaining who you are and what your website is about. This is the starting point for you to get your business the leads it requires.

Change each of your pages’ permalink structure

Permalinks or permanent links help people (and Google) recognize individual pages in your website. By default, WordPress and other website designing platforms do not have very SEO-friendly permalinks. For example, if you have a blog on making a chocolate cake, the permalink should be www.xyz.com/how-to-make-a-chocolate-cake.  

Check your website’s loading speed

Website visitors have a short attention span. If the website does not load as quickly as others, they will lose interest and move on. That’s why it is important to get the website speed at an optimal level with the help of your website developer.

Wrap Up

If you want to compete with other websites in your niche, you will have to make sustainable and consistent investments in this regard. Getting your website made is the first step, what matters is how well your website performs and gets organic traffic in the long run.