Congrats! Your new site is live! But what now? Follow these steps to know what to do after launching your website.

Set up your google business profile.

If you haven’t already done so – make sure you get your google business profile set up (especially if you local SEO is important for your biz). Make sure you optimize your profile by adding photos, a keyword-rich description, and of course, link it to your new website. And don’t forget to ask your clients and customer for reviews!

Set up Google Search Console & submit your site map

Ok I promise this won’t just be a long list of google-based things to do…but there will be a few of them and this one is non-negotiable. If you haven’t already done so, set up a Google Search Console account. This is an invaluable (and free!) tool for helping you monitor and boost your standings on google search results. It is also where you can go to report your site index map and submit it to jumpstart the process of the Google bots “crawling” and indexing the content on your site (a necessary step if you want to show up in Google search results). Want to learn more about SEO? Check out these blog posts.

Set up Google Analytics

OK last Google one, I promise. This one is more optional than the previous two – set up your Google analytics account. Have no clue what a Google Analytics account is or does? I didn’t either. Fortunately Semrush has broken it all done for you, right here.

Check your website after you launch on ALL the devices.

This is something that should be done prior to taking your website live. (This is one of the final audit steps my team and I complete prior to launching a site for a web design client). You’ll want to check out how your website is looking on a variety of devices (desktop, laptop, ipad, different mobiles). Bonus: It’s also helpful to look at how your website looks on different browsers. But – every now and then, this is helpful to do after launching your website as well. You can utilize a site like dead link checker to audit for any broken links.

Check for broken links & redirects

If you’re moving your website from one platform to another or you’ve changed the names of some pages etc, you’ll ideally want to take this step before launching. But this is also something you should audit on the regular and need to do after you launch your website. If you’re using the showit web design platform, it’s a pretty quick and straightforward process to setup custom URL redirects. Here’s a helpful step-by-step for doing so.

Keep your website updated!

One of the biggest myths out there is that a good website doesn’t need to be updated. WRONG! Google loves to know that your website is regularly updated. I recommend trying to update your website about once a month – but I know that life as a small biz owner and entrepreneur often means that isn’t doable. At the bare minimum, set up quarterly website audits. Put them on your calendar and make sure you don’t let this slide from you after launching to-do list.

Some easy ways to have fresh, consistent content on your website include:

• Go back and update old blog posts
• Add in new photos
• Update your meta descriptions and page titles (especially if you aren’t ranking where you’d like to be on Google)
• Skim one page of your website, once a month. Do the headers catch your attention? Are the calls action click-worthy? Could you revamp your website copy anywhere?