I love working with startups. I’ve been a part of several (some successful, some not) and have been lucky to work with a bunch of startup or early-stage clients with Brand5. There’s always so much energy and optimism working with brand new companies. It’s a blast to help them out and watch them try to make it. In each situation, I learn incredibly valuable lessons that can be applied to future projects.
I want to touch on a common mistake that I see a lot of startups make when it comes to planning the launch of their website. Companies that have it in their marketing plan to rely on traffic from organic search (regardless of the expected percentage) fail to take into account search engine lead-time. As a result, there’s a gap between the launch of the site and the beginning signs of organic traffic.
Here’s usually what happens: Company X plans to launch their website on a certain date. For the sake of this example, let’s say July 1. As they work on getting their website built and ready for launch, there’s nothing (maybe at most a landing page saying “Coming Soon”) live on their domain.
July 1 rolls around and Company X launches their website. By the end of their first few days, Company X looks at their analytic and sees no one coming to their website via organic traffic. They wonder, “Where’s the love from Google?”.
Here’s the problem – Company X didn’t do anything to let Google know they existed before July 1. They never opened a Webmaster Tools account or submitted a sitemap. And the big problem is that Company X is now on Google’s clock. They have to wait around for Google to acknowledge the website exists and slowly start to creep into results. There’s no telling how long Company X will have to wait. It may take months for traffic to start seeping in, especially if Company X is in a highly-competitive industry for keywords.
Here’s how to avoid this common mistake:
As soon as you finalize your domain, launch something. At the very least, launch a landing page that has optimized title and description tags. A bonus would be to put some text on the page using your most valued keywords. In other words, give Google some indication of how they should index the website. While you’re at it, add analytics code to the site. There probably won’t be any traffic, but if there is, you want to know where it came from.
2-3 months from your hard launch, do a soft launch. I realize every company is different. Some want to be super-quiet and don’t want anyone to know about them. I understand that (sort of). But for the rest of you, upgrade that single landing page to at least a few pages – enough for a sitemap of more than one page. Consider adding more keyword-rich content and make sure every new page has optimized title and description tags. Most of all, submit a sitemap to Google through Webmaster Tools.
Make sure early traffic knows how to find you. If you are worried about getting potential leads too early, give people a reason to find out more about the company. Tell them your website will email them when it launches. Ask them to call or email you if they want more information now.Don;t just have something that says “Coming Soon”. No one will ever remember to come back again.
Bottom line: regardless of how little you think your new website is going to rely on organic search for traffic (trust me it will be way more than you plan for, it always is), don’t wait until launch to set the wheels in motion with search engines. Get your sitemaps submitted as far in advance as you can so pages can start getting indexed. Anything you can do to minimize the gap between launch and letting search engines your website exists will pay off.