SEO To Do List – After a website launch

Every website owner knows that there are certain things to be done after a website launch, but what are they? Here is the list of 10- free things you can do to optimize a website for search engines. 1. Sitemap.xml and robots.txt file In simple, Sitemap.xml is a file that helps a website to get indexed by search engines. Creating a sitemap file is pretty simple and for this there are many websites available online. Once you are done creating this file you can directly upload it using Google Webmaster tools, Bing Webmaster Central, and Yahoo Site Explorer or you can choose to link to sitemap directly from the website. On the other hand you may need to create the robots.txt file too because this helps you to restrict search engines not to index some of the unwanted pages from your website. 2. Product feeds Setting up product feeds for your ecommerce site can be a tedious job for the first time but it’s all worth your efforts. There are many places where you can submit this feeds for free such as Google, MSN Shopping, TheFind etc. However, there are sites which are paid and operate on CPC and percentage base pricing structure. So depending upon requirement you can submit data feeds to drive traffic to your website. 3. Directory submission One of the best ways to achieve backlinks is directory submission and among this category DMOZ stands on top. For this reason every new site owner should submit their site to DMOZ. As it receives huge number of link requests it may take time for your site to get listed. So be patient, but in this mean time you can submit to other free niche directories to improve link base. 4. Google Analytics Whether it’s an ecommerce or a normal website, Google analytics can be really helpful because it’s a powerful program which offers you with sufficient data for analysis. Google Analytics being completely free you can take advantage of it. All you need is a Gmail address to create an account and after that you need to place the analytics code on to your site, that’s it. Once you are done setting up Google analytics for your website then create goals and conversion funnels. And another important thing to remember is to filter out your own IP address and other IP addresses of others who are working on your website. 5. Webmaster Tools Creating an account with Google webmaster tools really offers you with lot of useful data points enabling you to manage site more efficiently. By having this account you can track backlinks, organic search clicks / impressions / CTR, average site load time, html errors, and keywords suggestions for you site and many more. All you need to do is just sign up for Google Webmaster tools and if you wish to go for an account with Microsoft webmaster tools you can. 6. Press Release Submitting a press release is a must. In this release you can give a short introduction about your company, what you sell, how unique your products are, and how you treat your customers etc. There are many PR sites available for free and paid. Depending upon your budget you can go accordingly to reach your audience. 7. Blog Blogging is a great way to keep in touch with your audience and keep them engaged. As there are many platforms available for free such as WordPress and Blogger you can start a blog in less than an hour. However, you can also host the blog hosted on your domain too, that’s up to you. And lastly do not forget to setup an RSS feed for you blog. 8. Social Media These days every business has their social media accounts. It’s not mandate to have accounts in all social media sites but for sure you must have accounts on the top sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkeIn. Depending upon your business you can also open accounts in various sites such youtube, vimeo, flickr etc. Utilizing social media to the maximum will definitely drive traffic to your website and also will help you in brand development. 9. Social Bookmarking One of the other ways apart from directory submission is social bookmarking. These sites can prove the best ways to achieve traffic and backlinks. While, these links may not be so authoritative as other sources but they provide you with the option of getting indexed your site at a quicker rate. Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Folkd, Diggo, StumbleUpon are some of the social bookmarking sites. However, there are many others sites where you can bookmark your site but it all depends on time you have. 10. Local search It becomes always important for you to excel in local search. So, get yourself listed in Google places, yellowpages, Bing local and yahoo local because these are the first places you to need to optimize for. When compared to global search, local search is pretty different so optimizing your website for local should be the first priority as this can fetch you expected local traffic.