In Yesterday's Nugget, I gave you 5 important things to do on the day you launch your website and today I want to follow that up with what needs to be done shortly after your website is launched. Today's Daily Golden Nugget assumes that you have read and set up everything mentioned yesterday.Make Sure Google Analytics is Tracking
One of the troubles I frequently run into is regards to Google Analytics, is that the tracking code doesn't work even after you believe the code is installed. Google gives you directions for setting up the JavaScript tracking code on your website and they are supposed to be able to detect the code once it's installed.
Sometimes, no matter how closely I follow Google's directions for setting up the tracking script, Analytics can't detect it. When this happens, you have to simply wait 24 hours and log back into your account to see if visits are being recorded.
If visits are not being recorded, you will have to ask your web programmer for help to figure out why.
Each content management system has their own method of setting up the JavaScript. I've personally found the tracking setup for WordPress, Magento, and Joomla to be quite frustrating and problematic depending on which version of those systems are being used.
Review Google Webmaster Tools in 7 Days
Although Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) isn't using a script to track your website it will still take a few days for all the date to become available in your account.
I suggest that you forget about GWT for the first 7 days but then log in and look at the reports. The first report to review is the Site Appearance > HTML Improvements.
On this report, you need to look at all of the suggestions. The most important things to fix first are the "Duplicate meta descriptions" and the "Duplicate title tags." Talk to your webmaster or SEO professional and set up a quick time table to fix these issues.
Wait to fix any of the "Long," "Short," or "Missing" errors until after the duplicates are fixed.
Review Google Webmaster Tools in 30 Days
Although I'm specifically telling you to review GWT in 30 days, the truth is that you should start to review it on a regular basis, but the first 30 days are needed to give Google time to read your website, index it, categorize it, and include it in search queries.
The Search Traffic > Search Queries report will show you the keywords that your website ranks for. This report is the easiest way to find how your website ranks for keywords ever since Google started withholding that information from Google Analytics and grouping it into the "(not provided)" category.
You can use the tabs at the top of the Search Queries report to show "Top queries" or "Top pages" or your website.
The Top pages report shows which pages are appearing most in the SERPs and how many times people are clicking on them. Want people to click on those pages more? Then take a look at the page title and meta description to make them more enticing.
As I said in yesterday's Nugget, you need to reevaluate your goals. As you look over the Top pages report you need to ask yourself if the pages appearing on that report are aligned with your goals. If not, then you need to add content to your website that will better target your goals.
Targeting your goals might be as simple as adding a few blog posts on that topic, or it might require some deep thought on your part to figure out what other types of content you can add to your website that can be used in link building or social sharing which in turn increases SEO value and attract visitors.
As I said yesterday, your website is never going to be complete. No matter how hard you try to get it set up and working "correctly" there will always be changes with the way search engines work that force you to go back and reevaluate everything.
