Chapter 26: Launching a New Website: 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing
Editor's Note: The process of launching a new website for the first time is often intimidating—even fearful—for many entrepreneurs, bloggers, and business owners. Getting started (or even knowing where to start) can be the hardest part. In this post (originally published over two years ago and updated for 2013), Rand Fishkin shares an 18-step plan for launching a new website. The plan not only helps new website owners figure out where to start the launch process, but ensures they cover all the basics as well—both on- and off-site.
The process of launching a new website is often an uncertain and scary prospect. This is typically due to lack of knowledge. In this chapter, I give my best recommendations for launching a new site from a marketing and analytics perspective. You'll learn not only how to improve your new website's SEO, but its accessibility and ability to generate traffic as well. You can also learn how to measure and improve just about everything regarding your site.
#1: Install Visitor Analytics
Nothing can be improved that is not tracked. Keeping these immortal words of wisdom in mind, get your pages firing analytics code before your first visitor arrives. Google Analytics (GA) (http://google.com/analytics) is the obvious choice, and customization options abound. For most sites, I'd highly recommend at least using first-touch attribution. While GA tracks last-touch attribution out of the box, you can configure your website and GA to pull first-touch attribution data for you. (See Will Critchlow's blog post for Distilled for the how-to: www.distilled.net/blog/seo/first-touch-tracking-in-google-analytics.) This way, you'll be able to track not only the interactions on your site that lead to conversions, but see how users find your site in the first place.
Tracking code for Google analytics, or any other analytics package (such as Piwik.org or Clicky.org) needs to be placed on every page of your site and verified. Google offers step-by-step instructions on how to do this at https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/asyncTracking).
#2: Set Up Google and Bing Webmaster Tools Accounts
Both Google (http://google.com/webmasters) and Bing (http://bing.com/webmasters) have webmaster tools programs that monitor and report on data about your site. This is the heartbeat of your site, from the search engines' perspective. For that reason alone, it's wise to stay on top of the data they share with you.
Editor's Note: This screenshot of Bing Webmaster Tools was taken in November of 2010, when this post was originally penned for The Moz Blog.
And while many webmasters did indeed sign up for GWT for that reason, and that reason alone, as the data was often flawed and features limited, GWT made some drastic improvements in 2012, and Bing is right there with them. GWT now provides data and insights you can't get anywhere else. Here are just a few things you can do with both GWT and Bing:
• Download your latest links.
• Preview how your rich snippets/structured data will appear in search results.
• Disavow inbound links not trusted by your site.
• Receive messages about issues with your site (such as malware detected or crawl errors).
It is also worth noting that you can view GWT data within your GA account. To learn how to do this (and why you might want to), see Chapter 23.
Author's Note: For more information on what you can do with GWT, read “An Updated Guide to Google Webmaster Tools” on The Moz Blog at www.moz.org/blog/an-updated-guide-to-google-webmaster-tools.
#3: Run a Crawl Simulation of Your Site
No matter how perfectly you plan your launch, there will be problems when you roll out your site such as broken links, improper redirects, missing titles, pages lacking rel=canonical tags, and files blocked by robots.txt.
Author's Note: To learn why we recommend implementing the rel=canonical tag, and the danger of implementing it improperly, see www.moz.com/blog/catastrophic-canonicalization.
By running a crawl test with a free tool like Xenu (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html), or leveraging a paid tool like Screaming Frog (www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider) or Moz Analytics (www.moz.com/products), you can check your site's accessibility and ensure that visitors and search engines can reach pages successfully in the ways you want. If you launch first, you'll often find that critical errors are left to rot because the priority list fills up so quickly with other demands on development time. Crawl tests are also a great way to verify contractor or outsourced development work.
#4: Test Your Design with Browser Emulators
In addition to testing for search engine and visitor accessibility, you'll want to make sure the gorgeous graphics and layout you've carefully prepared checks out in a variety of browsers. My rule is to test anything that has higher than a 2 percent market share, which currently means Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari for desktop, according to ZDNet (http://mz.cm/15KUh2Z). There's a great list of cross-browser testing options compiled by DesignModo at http://designmodo.com/bcross-browser-compatibility, so I'll just add that in-person testing, on your own devices, is also a highly recommended use of an hour.
Editor's Note: Don't forget to test how your site renders on mobile devices! BrowserStack (www.browserstack.com) offers live, online testing for a variety of browsers and devices (desktops, too), while MobileMoxie's toolset is dedicated to cross-browser testing for mobile (http://www.mobilemoxie.com/s/register). To find out what the hottest browsers, OS, and devices are for mobile are in various markets, create a custom report at NetMarketShare (www.netmarketshare.com).
#5: Set Up RSS Feed Analytics
Virtually every site will have some form of structured data being pushed out through an RSS feed. And, just like visitor analytics, if you want to improve the reach and quality of the feed, you'll need to leverage data.
Feedburner (feedburner.google.com) is the de facto software of choice, and it's very solid. Getting your feed and the analytics to track and measure it is typically a very easy process because there's nothing to verify—you can create and promote any feed you want with just a few button clicks. It is also almost that easy to track Feedburner activity in Google Analytics, as well. That said, Google has shut down its API for Feedburner and stopped showing ads, so it would be wise to back up your subscriber list, or consider using an alternative service such as Feedblitz (feedblitz.com).
One important recommendation: don't initially use the counter “chicklet.”
It has a bad psychological impact to see that no one has subscribed to your new RSS feed. Instead, just provide a standard link or graphic. After you've amassed a few hundred (or thousands of) readers, use the chicklet counter to provide additional social proof for your site.
#6: Tag the Actions That Matter
No matter what your site is, there are actions you're hoping visitors will take, from tweeting a link to your post and leaving a comment, to buying a product and subscribing to an email list. Whatever those actions might be, you need to record the visits that make them through your analytics tool. The documentation for GA provides step-by-step directions on how to set up event tracking (see http://mz.cm/15MDvAE).
Once action tracking is in place, you can segment traffic sources and visitor paths by actions taken. This will give you insight into what your most valuable traffic sources are. If you're pouring hours each day into Twitter, but seeing no desired actions taken on your site (i.e., conversions), you might try investing more of your time and efforts in a different channel (even if the traffic volume from Twitter is high).
#7: Conduct an Online Usability/Branding Test
Before a formal launch, it can be extremely helpful to get a sense of what users see, experience, and remember when they browse to your site or start to take an action. There's some fantastic software to help with this, including Clue App (clueapp.com), shown in this screenshot from 2011.
I set up a Clue App test for Moz's homepage in 30 seconds and tweeted a link to the test. The tweet garnered 158 kind responses with words and concepts people remembered from visiting the home page. This type of raw testing isn't perfect, but it can give you some insight into the minds of your visitors. If they are not taking away the messages you intended, it may be critical for you to tweak your site.
In addition to Clue, dozens of other easy usability and user-testing apps are on the market, including Crazy Egg (crazyegg.com) and Click Tale (clicktale.com).
#8: Establish a KPI Dashboard
No matter what your website does, you live and die by your key metrics. If you're starting out as a blogger, your RSS subscribers, unique visits, page views and key social stats (tweets, links, Facebook shares, etc.) are your lifeblood. If you're in ecommerce, it's all of the above plus the number of customers, sales, sales volume, returning versus. new buyers, etc.
Whatever your particular key metrics might be, you need a single place—often just a basic spreadsheet—where these important numbers are tracked on a daily or weekly basis. Setting this up before you launch will save you a ton of pain later on, and give you consistent statistics that you can use as a baseline and as a resource for identifying trends in the future.
#9: Build an Email List of Friends and Business Contacts for Launch
It's shocking how a friendly email blast to just a few dozen of your close contacts can help set the stage for a much more successful website launch. Start by building a list of the people who owe you favors, who have helped out in the past, and who you know you can always rely on. If you're feeling a bit more aggressive, you can go one circle beyond that to include casual business partners and acquaintances.
Once you have the list, you'll need to craft an email. I highly recommend being transparent, requesting feedback and offering to return the favor. You should also use BCC and make yourself the recipient. No one wants to be on a huge, visible email list to folks they may not know (and get the resulting reply-all messages).
#10: Create Your Google Alerts
The Google Alerts service certainly isn't perfect—but it's free, ubiquitous, and can give you a heads up when your brand is mentioned or your site is linked to (see www.google.com/alerts).
Editor's Note: Google Reader retired in April 2013. When this screenshot was taken (in March of 2013), users had the choice of having Google Alerts sent to their Google Reader as an RSS Feed, or to their inbox as emails .
Unfortunately, the service sends through a lot of false positives—spam, scraper sites and low quality junk. It also tends to miss a lot of good, relevant mentions and links, which is why the next recommendation's on the list.
#11: Bookmark Brand Tracking Queries
In order to keep track of your progress and identify the sites and pages that mention or link to your new site, you'll want to set up a series of queries that you can run on a regular basis. These include a number of searches at Google and Twitter.
The queries should use your brand name in combination with specific searches, like the example below (using “seomoz” and “seomoz.com”):
• Google Blog Search mentions (http://mz.cm/16s8rXY)
• Google Blog Search links (http://mz.cm/16s8mn9)
• Google Web mentions, past 24 hours (http://mz.cm/15MIUHP)
• Google News mentions (http://mz.cm/16s84gh)
• Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=seomoz)
You can add more to this list if you find them valuable/worthwhile, but these basics should take you most of the way on knowing where your site has been mentioned or referenced on the web.
Editor's Note: Right before this book was published, Moz released a new beta product, Fresh Web Explorer (FWE). This tool makes it easy to keep track of all your new links, social mentions, and web citations in one place. In addition to monitoring your brand, you can also use FWE for competitive analysis, content strategy, and link building.
To learn more about FWE, check out this blog post by Matthew Brown, Head of Special Projects at Moz: www.moz.com/blog/announcing-fresh-web-explorer; or try FWE yourself at http://freshwebexplorer.moz.com.
#12: Make Email Signup/Subscription Available
Capturing the email addresses of your potential customers/audience can be a huge win for the influence you're able to wield later to promote new content, products or offerings. Before you launch, you'll want to carefully consider how and where you can offer something in exchange for permission to build an email list.
One of the most common ways to build good lists is to offer a whitepaper, eBook, video, or other exclusive content piece for download in exchange for an email address. You can also collect emails from comment registrations (which tend to be of lower overall quality), through email newsletter sign-ups (which tend to be of very high quality), or via RSS subscription. Services like MailChimp (mailchimp.com), Constant Contact (constantcontact.com), and iContact (icontact.com) are all good, affordable options for managing your email marketing campaigns.
Author's Note: If you collect emails from RSS subscribers, you'll need to self-manage your feed in order to have full access to those emails.
#13: Create Your Site/Brand's Social Accounts
Social media has become popular and powerful enough that any new site should be taking advantage of it. At a minimum, I'd recommend creating accounts on the following networks:
• Twitter (twitter.com)
• Facebook for Business (www.facebook.com/business)
• LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
• Google+ for Business (www.google.com/+/business)
• YouTube (youtube.com)
And if you have more time or energy to devote, I'd also invest in these:
• Pinterest for Business (business.pinterest.com)—visuals
• Instagram for Business (http://help.instagram.com/454502981253053)—photos & other images
• Flickr (flicker.com)—photos
• Quora (quora.com)—Q&A
• SlideShare (slideshare.net)—presentations
• Scribd (scribd.com)—digital documents
• StumbleUpon (stumbleupon.com)
• Reddit (reddit.com)
• Any industry specific social portals (e.g., in software, this might include places like StackOverflow, Github, and Hacker News—news.ycombinator.com).
Setting up these accounts properly is important. Don't just reuse the same short bio or descriptive snippet over and over. Spend the time fleshing out profiles and networking to help build up your authority on the site. The effort is worth the reward. Empty, unloved social accounts do virtually nothing, but active ones can drive traffic, citations, awareness, and value.
Depending on the size and structure of your site, you may also want to consider creating profiles on company-tracking sites like CrunchBase and Businessweek, and Google+ Local.
#14: Connect Your Social Accounts
If you've just set up your social account, you've likely added your new site as a reference point already; but if not, you should take the time to visit your various social profiles and make sure they link back to the site you're launching.
This is what Rand's own Twitter profile looked like a couple of months before launching Moz.com. He has since updated it to promote the new website.
Not all of these links will provide direct SEO value (as many of them are “nofollowed”), but the brand value and relationships you build on these social sites may prove to be invaluable. It's also a great way to leverage your existing branding and engagement, increase referral traffic to your new site, and send social signals to the search engines, which may increase your rankings in the SERPs.
#15: Make a List of Outreach Contacts
Depending on your niche, you may have traditional media outlets, bloggers, industry luminaries, academics, Twitter personalities, powerful offline sources, or others that could provide your new site with visibility and value. Don't just hope that these folks find you, though; create a targeted list of the sites, accounts, and individuals you want to connect with, and form a strategy to reach the low-hanging fruit first.
The list should include as much contact information as you can gather about each target, including Twitter account name, email, and physical mailing address. You can leverage all of these to reach out to these folks at launch (or have your PR company do it if you have one). If you tell the right story and have a compelling site, chances are good that you'll get at least a few of your targets to help you promote your site.
#16: Build a List of Keywords to Target in Search Engines
This is SEO basics 101, but every new site should keep in mind that search engines get lots of queries for virtually everything under the sun. If there are keywords and phrases you know you want to rank for, these should be in a list that you can measure progress against. Chances are that you won't even be targeting many of these searches with specific pages when you launch your site; but if you build the list now, you'll have the goal to create these pages and work on ranking for those terms already established.
As you're doing this, don't just choose the highest traffic keywords possible. Go for those that are balanced; moderate to high in volume, highly relevant in terms of what the searcher wants versus what your page/site offers, and relatively low in difficulty (www.moz.com/keyword-difficulty).
#17: Set Targets for the Next 12 Months
Without goals and targets, there's no way to know whether you're meeting, beating, or failing your expectations. Nearly every endeavor, from running a marathon to cooking a meal, will fail if there aren't clear expectations set at the start. If you're relatively small and just starting out, I'd set goals for the following metrics:
• Average weekly visits (via analytics)
• Average page views (via analytics)
• Number of new posts/pages/content pieces produced per month
• Number of target contacts (from item #15) that you've reached
• Social media metrics (depending on your heaviest use platform, e.g., # of Twitter followers if you're a heavy Tweeter)
• Any of the key items from #8 on this list (your KPI dashboard)
And each of these metrics should have 3-, 6-, and 12-month targets. Don't be too aggressive, as this may leave you discouraged or, worse, not taking your own targets seriously. Likewise, don't cut yourself short by setting goals that you can easily achieve—stretch a little.
Every three to six months, you should reevaluate these and create new goals, possibly adding new metrics if you've taken new paths (RSS subscribers, video views, emails collected, etc.).
#18: Plug into Moz Analytics
I know this one's a bit self-serving, but I'd like to think I'd add Moz Analytics here even if it wasn't made by my company. (I recently set up my own personal blog—see http://moz.com/rand—and found the crawling, rank tracking, and GA integration features pretty awesome for monitoring the growth of the new site.)
Moz Analytics (www.moz.com/products), shown here in a screenshot from 2010, has a number of cool tracking and monitoring features, as well as recommendations for optimizing pages targeting keywords, that make it valuable for new sites that are launching. The crawl system can serve to help with #3 on this list at the outset, but ongoing, it continues to crawl pages and show you your site's growth and any errors or missed opportunities. Tracking rankings can let you follow progress against item #16, even if that progress is moving from ranking in the 40s to the 20s (where very little search traffic will be coming in, even if you're making progress). And the GA integration features show the quantity of pages, keywords, and visits from search engines to track progress from an SEO standpoint.
Moz Analytics has recently been updated, and now offers even more features that can help you ensure the success of your new website.
Using this list, you should be able to set up a new site for launch and feel confident that your marketing and metrics priorities are in place.