Alicia Hale

vice president of digital

marketing

eMagine

@aliciahalevp

Karo Kilfeather content marketing

manager

Percussion Software

@aspiringkaro

YOUR PRESENTERS

FIRST, A QUICK POLL

Tell us about your project.

SO YOU’RE LAUNCHING A NEW WEBSITE

Now what?

WHAT WE’LL COVER TODAY

• 6 things you absolutely must do

before launching to make the

biggest splash

• 6 things to do after going live to

boost your signal and maximize

traffic

1. AUDIT YOUR CONTENT

• Website Goals

• Audit Tool (we love Screaming Frog)

• Rating System

• Audit Team

2. SEO AUDIT

• Identify pages generating organic traffic

• Review top landing pages

• Audit Existing Keyword Strategy

• Refresh Keyword Strategy

3. WEBMASTER TOOLS

- How your site appears in Search Engine Results

- Your backlinks (and the ones you might want to consider disavowing)

- Internal Site Links

- Queries Report

- HTML Improvements

- Security Issues

- Much more

4. CONTENT STRATEGY & DEVELOPMENT

1. Goals

2. Benchmarks

3. Personas

4. Buyer’s journey

5. Keywords

6. Information architecture

7. Editorial schedule

8. Division of labor

5. PREPARE REDIRECTS TO NIP 404S

• Find all indexed URLs

• Map indexed URLs to URLs from your

staging site

• Implement and test

MORE ON PREVENTING ERRORS

• Technical Audit

•Crawl simulation

•Broken links, improper redirects, missing title tags

• Tracking

•Google Analytics code

•Goals

•Block IPs

•Google Webmaster Tools

6. MAKE IT MOBILE FRIENDLY

MORE ON ENSURING MOBILE FRIENDLINESS

LET’S REVIEW – PRE-LAUNCH

1. Audit your content

2. SEO Audit

3. Learn from Webmaster Tools

4. Content Strategy & Development

5. 404s & Technical Audit

6. Mobile Friendly

1. SUBMIT YOUR SITEMAP

• What is a sitemap?

• How do you create a sitemap.xml file?

• Where does it go?

2. SET & FOLLOW PUBLISHING SCHEDULE

• Blogs, articles, press releases, landing

pages, videos, case studies, white

papers

• You don’t have to write as you go

• Build content creation into your budget

• Recruit additional authors to help with

the initial push

3. PUBLIC RELATIONS

• Press Release

• Syndicate all PR

• PrWeb, PR Newswire

4. SOCIAL PROMOTION

• Still the best way to get found by

someone who isn’t actively looking for

you

• Reach your existing audience

• Leverage that content!

• If you’ve thought about keywords, think

about hashtags the same way

5. DIGITAL ADVERTISING

• Traffic always dips

after a launch

• Paid advertising

may be the best bet

for fast ramping of

traffic

MORE ON DIGITAL ADVERTISING

Social Advertising

• Facebook

• LinkedIn

• YouTube

• Twitter

6. EMAIL MARKETING

• Announce launch

• Highlight new features

• Give recipients ability to subscribe to

RSS feed and future email blasts

LET’S REVIEW – POST-LAUNCH

1. Submit Sitemaps

2. Publishing Schedule

3. Public Relations

4. Social Promotion

5. Digital Advertising

6. Email Marketing

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR TODAY

• Launching a new website that generates

traffic takes work!

• Audit your existing site and take stock of

what’s working and what’s not. Transfer

to new site accordingly.

• Ensure new site is technically sound

• Launch your site and spread the word!

QUESTIONS?

• Put it in the chat window

• Ask us via Twitter at @percussion,

@aliciahalevp and @aspiringkaro

• Send an email to

marketing@percussion.com