Who said SEO can only be implemented once your website has launched? Now, more than ever it’s important to implement your strategy as soon as you can – and you can, in fact, do this before your site is live. By doing this, you’ll give search engines more time to index your website, and start generating leads as soon as it’s live.
So what do you have to do to get a head start? Here’s how:
Be prepared
Do you have a content calendar ready? You need to plan out a handful of blog posts that are ready to go with any accompanying images and multimedia. Your content should be well thought-out, high quality and relevant. Don’t launch a website that’s all skin and bones – fill it out with some useful content so that as soon as it is live, web crawlers can start indexing your site right away. In particular, long-form content that is SEO optimised will go a long way in helping your website rank higher.
Maintain a social presence
While your website may not yet be live, it’s a great idea to start creating some buzz around it. Start building your social media profiles and seek out peers, leaders and potential customers. You want to have some sort of social base before the launch happens.
Ensure that all these profiles are complete with contact details as well as some sort of mission statement of who you are. Be consistent with branding to encourage easy recognition.
These social profiles can also help raise awareness when it does come time to launch. You can create teasers to post on Twitter or create a launch offer on Facebook. This way, no time is wasted, and you can generate leads as soon as your website is ready.
“Coming soon…”
Create a “coming soon” page. Why? The older your page is, the more authority search engines will give you.
Even better, why not create a call-to-action on your “coming soon” page? Get users to fill out a form for offers and get those leads right away!
Don’t forget to link this page to your social media profiles so that potential clients and partners can be updated on launch dates and other offers.
