The 6 Essential Things For a Brand New Site
Your site is now live and you think your work is done. Well before you call it a day there are a few more things you will want for your website. Below are six must haves.
1. Google Analytics
Setting up analytics is essential to seeing the impact of your site. Installing it is simple and free! With analytics you can analyze and monitor the traffic coming onto your website. With the massive amount of data Google Analytics collects you can find valuable information. Some of this information includes:
- What page gets the most views
- How your visitors found your site
- The geographical location of your users
- Etc.
Google Analytics is a very powerful tool for any website.
2. Google Local Listing
A new fancy website doesn’t do you any good if nobody can find you. Adding your company and website onto Google my business is simple, and we have even created a guide in this blog post to show you how. When done correctly your company will show up on the right side of a Google search. This will show up with valuable things like a link to your website, pictures and a map pinpointing your location.
Creating this will help people find you. This step also contributes to the Local SEO of your site, as an added bonus.
3. On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO is another key way to make sure that you get your website found. On-Page is adding keywords and descriptions to the meta data, title tags and content of your website. Adding keywords to these areas helps Google know what your site is all about. When Googlebots crawl your site they will look for key indicators such as title tags, meta data and H1 heading tags to understand what your site is. This is how Google knows which sites to display on Google search for different keywords.
4. New Content
There are two different kinds of content; dynamic, which changes, and static, which stays the same. While most your site will be static content it is important to have dynamic content as well. This dynamic content usually comes from blogs. Google looks for these sources of dynamic content as an indicator that the site is still relevant. If no content changes after a while, Google will assume the business is no longer active. Starting a blog at the beginning is a good precedence to set.
5. Firewall
The most vital thing that you can have on your site is good security. The last thing you want to have happen is for your site to be hacked and all your files to be erased. Do not assume that your business is too small for this to happen to, all website are susceptible to hacking. For WordPress sites we recommend the All In One WP Security & Firewall Plugin. This plugin is easy to understand and gives options for you to add what you want. Don’t leave your site without a good firewall.
6. Backup
Sometimes, despite the best measures, sites get hacked into, as has happened to big corporations such as Sony, and Home Depot. While you hope for the best you must also prepare for the worst, which is why you create a backup of your site. This backup should include all your site files and databases. Be sure to keep this backup up to date with any changes you make on your site. Having a good backup will allow for a relatively easy and painless restore if your site comes crashing down.
The six things are must haves for any site. All of these we do ourselves and can attest to how important they are.