Raise your glasses to a milestone nearly half a century in the making - Meredith's website has finally launched! But what happens when the last streamer falls? That's where the real work begins. In this episode, we'll share the crucial steps you need to take after a website goes live, ensuring you're not just throwing a great party but also maintaining the buzz. We'll explore ground-level SEO tactics, the power of the Google 'site:' command, and why hitting pause on your analytics dashboard for a few weeks could lead to more accurate insights. Plus, we'll reveal how to measure the impact of your marketing with precision, ensuring you know exactly which parts of your site are hitting the mark and which might need a bit more polish.
Ever feel like some services just don't gel with your brand? We've been there, and this time, we're pulling the plug on a provider that wasn't meshing with our vision, emphasizing the importance of aligning partnerships with your business's core objectives. In this candid conversation, we'll discuss the delicate balance between innovative strategies and staying true to what works, the significance of being upfront with our audience, and the indispensable role of tools like Google Analytics in sculpting a successful digital identity. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just dipping your toes into the digital waters, this episode is packed with insights to help you navigate the complex currents of website and SEO strategy.
Raise your glasses to a milestone nearly half a century in the making - Meredith's website has finally launched! But what happens when the last streamer falls? That's where the real work begins. In this episode, we'll share the crucial steps you need to take after a website goes live, ensuring you're not just throwing a great party but also maintaining the buzz. We'll explore ground-level SEO tactics, the power of the Google 'site:' command, and why hitting pause on your analytics dashboard for a few weeks could lead to more accurate insights. Plus, we'll reveal how to measure the impact of your marketing with precision, ensuring you know exactly which parts of your site are hitting the mark and which might need a bit more polish.
Ever feel like some services just don't gel with your brand? We've been there, and this time, we're pulling the plug on a provider that wasn't meshing with our vision, emphasizing the importance of aligning partnerships with your business's core objectives. In this candid conversation, we'll discuss the delicate balance between innovative strategies and staying true to what works, the significance of being upfront with our audience, and the indispensable role of tools like Google Analytics in sculpting a successful digital identity. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just dipping your toes into the digital waters, this episode is packed with insights to help you navigate the complex currents of website and SEO strategy.
My website did loan. I was very proud of it. Finally, only took 47 years, so not so bad.
Meredith's husband:
So you mentioned that you had some questions.
Meredith:
I do.
Meredith's husband:
I also had talked about the upcoming launch and something I was going to do with that and I would like to revisit that.
Meredith:
Oh yeah, I'd like to answer your questions. Yes.
Meredith's husband:
And then I do want to talk about there's a couple things that anytime if by chance, you are relaunching your own site or you're thinking about relaunching there's a couple things that I always have to say whenever I'm talking about this topic, that you have to be sure because I've seen this many times and people don't do it and it's a big mess up.
Meredith:
So that's what we're going to talk about. This is very pertinent. This is very pertinent.
Meredith's husband:
So I will start with that. I'll say the first thing that you want to do after a relaunch is you go to Google and you use the site command, s-i-t-e colon, and then your domain, just the domain. You don't need to include the HTTPS and the www, so it's just. S-i-t-e colon Meredith hyphen Zinner. Hyphen photography dot com.
Meredith:
Should I do this? No, I've already done this. Oh, thank you, baby.
Meredith's husband:
And then you go through and you click on all the links. Hopefully your site you don't have thousands and thousands of pages, but try to click on at least the first couple pages of links. Make sure all the pages work.
Meredith:
Right, because you know you think that when you're going through your website and you're clicking on them, you think that you're doing that. But I guess yeah, there's no way.
Meredith's husband:
You cannot manually check all the links in a website, but this is a little bit even different.
Meredith:
I mean you can, it's just you're going to miss them.
Meredith's husband:
It takes forever and you're going to miss.
Meredith:
There's just not realistically possible.
Meredith's husband:
Where are many programs can do that in just a matter of seconds? And the program that we use is site colon, site colon your domain. Check all the links. They should all work. Now, hopefully, before you relaunched your website, you put in redirects so that if any URLs were changing, people will be redirected to the new page if those pages have changed, and that's what we're checking here.
Meredith:
OK.
Meredith's husband:
If you don't do that, if you missed any, here is your chance to catch it. You have a bit of a grace period. You know Google is not going to kick pages or websites out of the index because you have a missing page for a day or two or a week, they recognize we're humans, and things do take time yeah, things, happen, things happen. But check it now and if any pages, if you see any 404 errors, obviously you missed a redirect.
Meredith:
Great, and you go into your original site and you fix them, and then do you go back to Google and do the site colon her, she, me, the me and her.
Meredith's husband:
I would do that, yes, good to know If you don't know what redirects are or you don't know how to place them, you can go to marriethushusbandcom. It's in the free. I have guides on how to do that, so go to marriethushusbandcom, join or log in. If you've already logged in, it's free redirects and I have some things that explain what they are, how to do them, et cetera.
Meredith:
That's so nice of you.
Meredith's husband:
So, assuming that's all working, all your pages are working, then you're okay.
Meredith:
Okay, yeah, all right, and did you do that for me?
Meredith's husband:
I did that for you.
Meredith:
And were there any link?
Meredith's husband:
Thank you, Of course there were not, because I did all the redirects beforehand.
Meredith:
I did some too.
Meredith's husband:
But you still want to check. Right you still need to check.
Meredith:
Yeah, but were there many Because I did. I did a lot myself.
Meredith's husband:
You did. Yeah, uh-oh, this is news to me.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Meredith's husband:
You did redirects.
Meredith:
Yeah, oh no. No, I didn't do redirects. I made sure the links worked, all the links worked.
Meredith's husband:
Good job. Okay, so you mentioned, so now you have some questions that I'm going to talk about. Remember, I discussed e-brands a while ago and how we were going to have them do some fundamental work on your new site. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll touch base on this, but first let's talk about what questions do you have?
Meredith:
Okay, I launched my site. I also paid for an ad to send it out to people in my neighborhood, so there are some people who are seeing it. I also submitted a video for a contest. I also submitted a video for a contest. So if there has ever been a time where I've actively done any sort of publicity and I even did a blog on that video and so what I want to know is because I have yet to get any inquiries and I recognize my prices are very much higher than other people However, I want to know what worked, what didn't work, like how long people spent what pages. I may need to rework all of the stuff that people want to know.
Meredith's husband:
Okay, so you want to check your. You relaunched your site. It's been a couple of weeks. You want to give it, you know, a couple of weeks and then check.
Meredith:
Yeah, which is good.
Meredith's husband:
That's the appropriate amount of time If you relaunch your site. You don't want to go check traffic the next day or two or three because you can't see any trend, any results or anything like that.
Meredith:
Because the spiders are still working connecting the links.
Meredith's husband:
Kind of yes. So I would say the first thing you probably want to do is check out and this is true for any. Again, anytime you launch a site, you want to go to Google search console and check the number of impressions to see, because then, a couple of weeks since the site has launched, if there's any problem, then that, then that will be a vent. So you want to see is my site still appearing in Google impressions? How often does my site appear in Google? Then you can check on the number of clicks, how many people are clicking through Google to get to your site. But really what you'll want to do is you'll want to then go to Google Analytics and you'll want to see how much traffic is coming to my site. How much is coming from Google, but then how much is coming from this other site where this article was published. That would be a referral visit, so you'd look at referral traffic.
Meredith:
Okay, I should be writing this down.
Meredith's husband:
You don't need to write this down because I'm the one who's going to be doing this. Okay, so, if you remember, I think a few months ago we were getting close to this website relaunch and I said I'm going to have eBrands do just the fundamental SEO.
Meredith:
Was it a different name?
Meredith's husband:
No, it was eBrands.
Meredith:
Okay, all right, it just sounds new to me.
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, they are. As a reminder, they are an Indian company. They are the only really offshore SEO company I've ever been at all happy with.
Meredith:
Offshore meaning not what is offshore, not in the US.
Meredith's husband:
Got it Offshore meaning not what is offshore meaning Not in the US. Got it Offshore is typically going to mean in a country where the currency is much weaker than the dollar, so that it's ie very cheap.
Meredith:
Got it.
Meredith's husband:
India, philippines, pakistan, like all these places, would be considered offshore. Okay, they're also literally offshore.
Meredith:
Yeah, that's what I saw in my brain, but I just wanted to make sure that was valid, because what I see in my brain isn't always valid.
Meredith's husband:
So I did that. I set up eBrands and we've done two months. I just went ahead with whatever they recommended. I told them about the site and told them okay, this is our geographic area, here's the site. I went with what they recommended. They recommended a I think it was like the silver package or something. It was a little over $400 a month. They do all this stuff. They did it a little bit before the website relaunched. They've done some after the website relaunched and I've got to say it hasn't been great. I mean, I did not expect it to be great. Like I said in the previous episode, this is going to be foundational work. Remember that people are doing it. It's English, not even their first language, so it's going to be a little rough around the edges, but it's a good value.
Meredith:
Yeah, and their English is far better than ours.
Meredith's husband:
It's probably as good as me's.
Meredith:
Yes or mine's.
Meredith's husband:
Can't wait for the laughter to die down.
Meredith:
Yeah, well, yeah, we're going to be here a while, folks.
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, not great, really not impressed, and there's a few reasons I found it frustrating. I think most small business owners are going to find it frustrating.
Meredith:
How so For a?
Meredith's husband:
couple different reasons. Number one eBrands their focus Not for end users. So they're all set up to be like white labeled and you have like a dashboard and define white label.
Meredith's husband:
White label it like, let's say, you go and you hire an SEO firm and they're doing your SEO for you and they give you a monthly report. That monthly report is going to be really created by and sent from eBrands with your logo on it. That would be white labeling. That's pretty common at the less expensive end of SEO agencies. They're just going to ship it overseas, they're going to do your work. So e-brands and, like I said during that episode, they've become the largest SEO company in the world and they do that by servicing SEO agencies, not by servicing business owners directly.
Meredith's husband:
So the frustration when I was trying to do this for you, just for a single website, was that the process didn't really make sense, and I think it's probably going to be equally or even more frustrating for somebody who is a business owner. The feedback and the process is just going to seem confusing.
Meredith:
Okay, well, that's good to know. Do you want to maybe put that as a disclaimer after that episode?
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, I might do that.
Meredith:
You know just like, hey, we tried this, Weren't so thrilled. Here's an update. Don't waste your time doing this because it's not going to help. That would be helpful to people, yeah.
Meredith's husband:
I think I am, and that's a good idea. I think I will do that and I'm going to pause that process because I don't see the value there and also because of their typical clients, like I said, are SEO agencies and not the business owner themselves, and for that reason they do a lot of things that I just don't think are very worthwhile.
Meredith's husband:
Such as Like they're going to start creating videos for social media and they do a whole bunch of stuff that I know doesn't really matter, but it helps them. I know there is a demand for them. Agencies will promote these services and people will buy those services, but I know they really don't help so I'm really not interested in that services, but I know they really don't help, so I'm really not interested in that.
Meredith:
Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah, I would definitely, after we do this, add a little disclaimer that in the middle of the podcast saying hey.
Meredith's husband:
At the beginning or even at the beginning.
Meredith:
I would do it at the beginning. We don't want to waste people's time.
Meredith's husband:
She said after wasting everybody's time. So does that help? Do you feel like you kind of, yeah, I'm going to go to?
Meredith:
Google analytics and look it up. Yeah, no, it's good. You just you have a website. You put it out there. You want to see what's working. I do, I mean. I'm sure that's why people are listening to this here. Podcast.