7 Proactive Ways To Jump-Start Your SEO Before A Site Launch by John Lincoln #315

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. I am Charles Lewis, your client results advocate. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 315. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is make sure your visual appeals to your target audience. Look, if your people are women and they like soft colors, then use soft colors and rounded tones. If you're using men, then you want earth tones and hard colors. Whatever it is, your visual should attract them. SEO tip. All right. Please remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood Top Position Snatchers, and we're filming live from Houston. Yeah, and our mantra is, do not be a douche. Do not be a douche. Hey, we've got a good article that we're discussing today. Yeah, man, punch in the face to John. John E. Lincoln, good folks over at Search Engine Marketing. I'm sorry, Search Marketing Land. They posted this article, Seven Proactive Ways to Jumpstart Your SEO Before a Site Launch. Before a site launch. Yeah, seven proactive ways to jumpstart your SEO before a site launch. And so we'll dig into that a little bit later. Hey, if you've got some sort of electronic device, and you can, and we're pretty sure you do, and you can tweet, here's what you should tweet. Now, not only that, before I tell you what to tweet, whenever you're listening or watching, do it right then, right? That's how we can kind of judge what's really going on. But tweet us in it, at eWebResults, at BestSEO Podcast. Use hashtag SEO Podcast. This is number 315. That way we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. Hey, if this is the first time you've listened to our podcast, howdy, welcome. Glad you could join us. If you've listened to our podcast before, then you understand a couple of things. Why do I have two-tier tattoos on my right ear? Yeah. In

a rough two weeks, apparently. Right under my right eye. And we're about to talk about reviews. So we are running a little kind of game or whatever. If we get Shikos, which is a share, like, or follow in any one of our platforms, and we get 10 of them, and we get a review, then we will actually skip this next section. This time, we got neither. We don't have a review, and we don't have 10 Shikos. Yeah, we only got, like, four, I counted, on Twitter. So let me just preface this, because we probably got a lot of new listeners since we first initiated that contest. Several reviews ago, probably we were in the podcast 250-something or another, and a couple of them came in and said that we were doing too much self-promotion, that we already know how to be reviewed, and you guys should skip the section where you tell people how to review you. And so we were like, okay, we'll do that if we can get 10 Shikes or Likes or Follows. And so that's what we've been doing. And today and last week, we didn't get that review or 10 engagements socially, 10 Shikos, and so we're bringing you this segment. Here is the segment. All right, so we do ask that you leave us a review. There's a number of places that you can leave us a review. One of them has three steps. Go on to iTunes, create an account, and write a review. Hopefully, you'll make that review fast. And when you write that review, go ahead and send us an email, podcast at ewebresults.com. And we will likely read it on air. Pretty checking guarantee, we will. Next, you can actually go to our Facebook page, facebook.com slash ewebresults. And if you've been on Facebook on any business page, there is a review tab. You will be able to find that review tab and then leave us a five-star review. Next, we've made it really easy to get to our Google My Business review page. It

used to be G+. Used to be G+. Now, it's currently Google My Business. It used to be Google Locals, Google Places. So, the easy way to get there is to go to ewebresults.com slash Google+. And slash Google+. And slash G+. And slash G+. All of those will take you to, really, it's a search engine result page. And then up will pop up our list of reviews and go ahead and add a review. There. And then finally, we've got our Stitcher page. The best way to get to our Stitcher page is to go to ewebresults.com and look for our Stitcher link. Click the Stitcher logo. And then as soon as you get to Stitchers, at the upper right corner, click write a review. Make that five stars. We really appreciate it. And hey, if you've got a blog or something, make sure you kind of reference us and send a link. Give us some link juice back to our website. Hey, speaking of shikos, which we spoke about, we do want ten of those and a review. So, we can skip at least the review section. And there are lots of ways you can connect with us. I don't know. Facebook.com slash. Ewebresults. YouTube.com slash. Ewebresults. Twitter.com slash. Ewebresults. And Instagram.com slash. Ewebresults. And then finally, LinkedIn.com slash. Company slash. Ewebresults. All of those are ways, will take you to a page where you can shiko us. Yes. Please do that. Hey, if you're a PHP genius or a WordPress guru, we're probably looking for you. Give us a call, 713-510-7846. When you get to that phone number, you will be asked to leave an audio resume, which is kind of a nifty thing. So, check it out. Now, if you would like a free, comprehensive website analysis, again, go to ewebresults.com. You will find the link, and you can leave it. I'll actually give you a call. We'll talk about what you're trying to accomplish, and then we'll run that website, comprehensive website analysis for you. And now, it's time for the favorite segment of

the show, the Algorithm Cataclysm. All right. That was good. All right. Yeah, so this Algorithm Cat is pretty important. It's definitely not, you know, nine points on the Richter scale, but it's definitely more than the two or three we've been having. So, remember Mobile Geddon, right? When that happened last year, and everybody was in a panic, and it really wasn't as big as what we thought it was going to be. Right. But what Google did come out to say the other day, and they said these changes will be rolling out in May, is that they are, and I quote, strengthening the mobile-friendly ranking signal. The goal is to help our users find even more pages that are more relevant and more friendly. What does that mean? That means if you haven't necessarily moved over to a responsive design, or maybe you're not using any AMP's, those accelerated mobile pages, or any of that stuff like that, then you probably should. And you should hurry up and get it done. Mobile is the way to go. Mobile is gradually taking over all search. And Google is understanding that, and so they're placing a higher focus on returning results that are more mobile-friendly. Make your site mobile-friendly. Make it mobile-friendly. All right. So, I've got a little bit of news here. Yeah, I've got some news also. All right. So, Google just is kind of giving reports about the current status of people using encryption, SSL. 75% of requests to Google are encrypted. That's pretty interesting. Only 10% of Android phones are encrypted. And what I thought was interesting about that. Only 10% of, really? Yeah. And what I thought was interesting about that is they just prefaced that with the fact that that will change quickly. Because cell phone devices last about 48 months. And so, by the time they get the new ones, the new ones will have that incorporated. And so, that's going to change. So, who's using an Android device that doesn't have a Gmail account set up? So, I think what they're

talking about, one of the issues is Google Maps. And then, I think, in general, having, you know, this whole iPhone versus the FBI, your Android is not encrypted like the iPhone by default. I think that's what it's referring to. But, you know, there's, I mean. So, I thought they were in Christian data was coming merely from people who were logged in and they were protecting other type of data. Which they are. But you're referring to something a little bit different where you don't necessarily need to be. Like, in general. Yeah, in general. Yeah. Yeah. Got you. So, it's interesting that they're publishing that. I thought this was just interesting. Just getting ahead of it. Because Apple and FBI are already going through it. So, it makes sense for them to just, this is where we're at. Yeah. We'll throw it out there. And just so you guys know. Yeah. Exactly. I thought this was fun. This was cool. A college student, Amos Dudley. Princess Braces. That guy. Princess Braces. I saw that. How cool is that? Look. Hey, shout out to him. Give me the, tell me how to do it. And then, I thought this was interesting. The FBI warns that, yes, in fact, your cars can, could be hacked. We know that. We've reported that here. And to be mindful of it. And really, all they said is just like they say about any, like, really what we would say about your WordPress site. Make sure it's up to date. Make sure you know who has credentials. I mean, literally. Who has access to your car. Don't install plugins, updates to your car. Exactly. And they know what they're doing. Get them from the dealership. Do not get them from some random guy who can, yeah, do something. Yeah, like, yeah. And then this was funny. So, apparently, Mark Zuckerberg went jogging in Beijing. And most of the comments from people in China who have, who are using VPNs to get to Facebook to begin with, interestingly, are along the lines of, why

wasn't he wearing a mask with all the pollution there in Beijing? And somebody said, Mark goes to Beijing. Decides to go running. Mark doesn't wear a mask. Comes back to the U.S. with lung cancer. Don't be like Mark. Wear your mask. Why not turn it to an ad about how bad the environment is? That's pretty, pretty hilarious. And then I thought, you shared a story with me about one of our prospects or clients who was trying to figure out where to leave a G-plus review. Oh, yeah. I'm going to give a punch in the face, man. Punch in the face to you. Chad Touche and the good folks over at Memorial Landscaping. And so he's part of my B&I group and he caught me this past Wednesday after B&I. He's like, man, I checked out podcast, you know, 314. I was like, cool, you're up to date. That's more than most people. Yeah. And then he says, man, I was going to leave you a review and then I forgot. But then I remembered. All I had to go was to ewebresults.com slash G-plus and then I can find it. And so just to hear not only a client but really just overall cool guy who's a podcast fan remember that kind of puts our whole contest back into perspective, right? And it's the reason why we do that, to get that type of result. And so, yeah, punch in the face to Chad and the good folks over at Memorial Landscaping. Hopefully we'll be reading his review next time. Yeah. So I got some news also. So, so dig this. All my Instagram people out there, you know, tweet us if you're an Instagram user, Instagram.com slash ewebresults. Yep. So they're introducing, yeah, algorithm-based feed, right? And so they say people miss around 70% of all the posts in their feed on average. And so an algorithm-based feed would help remedy that by showing people more of the top posts they would have otherwise missed. The content will be ordered based off of how

likely you'll be interested in it, the relationship you have with the person posting it, or the timeliness of the post. So from that perspective, I can kind of get it, similar to the way Facebook works, but at the same time, I feel like it's going to present the same challenge. Twitter just introduced this too. Well, Twitter introduced it, but then made it optional. Oh, okay. You can go see your regular live stream, or you can see this kind of algorithm-based stream. With Facebook, you had that option. Yeah. And unfortunately, you end up seeing, you know, I see, I see out of the 100% of the posts I look at, 70% of them are from the same people. Three people, five people. You're 10 tops, right? You may be more diverse because you're actually engaging with more people through your Facebook account. Yeah. And so I'm like, man, this is not what I want to happen on Instagram. On Instagram, I look forward to seeing all kind of random posts. That's why I'm following all these random people. And so to you for Instagram to say, you know what, Charles, these are the ones we think you really want to see, that's kind of douchey. And I appreciate it if you give me the option, kind of like Twitter did. Some more news. So Bing, remember, so Google made some changes to the SERP, right? Remember we talked about this on 313, where you could go and search for animal noises and see them in the carousel. Bing took it a step further. By the way, I got to throw this one out there. That is a, I don't know, elephant? Elephant. Okay. Like not many people can do an elephant. Yeah. My kids love it. They'd like me to do it in public places. Do the elephant. Do the elephant. Like right now? No. We're in court. Come on, we're eating. So Bing improves its math skills with interactive times tables, geometry calculator, and more. The new interactive answers are attached to searches for multiplication

table or times table. You do a geometry related search, and then you actually get a function graph and a number converter and all kinds of stuff that'll show up in kind of a knowledge graph type situation where you can use it right then. Cool. Where was this stuff at when I was in school? Yeah. Like how awesome would it have been to just go to my watch and say, you know, X minus polynomial graph of centipede. Exactly. And then click show on my device and had an answer pop up on my screen. That would have been cool. So, you know, that's what's up. And that's my news. Excellent. Well, that is the potatoes of our podcast. It is time to get into the meat. So, like we said, punch in the face to John E. Lincoln, good guys over at Search Marketing Land, posted Search Engine Marketing Land, posted this article, seven proactive ways to jumpstart your site, jumpstart your SEO before a site launch, right? Let's talk about this for a minute. He's talking about these are tips to do prior to launching your site, right? So, usually when you're going down a site launch process, you're designing, you're doing this, you're doing that, and you're really focused on the design and getting this great site up. And what John is suggesting, that here's some tips you can do for your SEO to help your SEO prior to your site going live. Let's dig right in. He starts off by saying, way too often when website owners fail to do pre-launch SEO. This results in a poor index of their site. So, instead of jumping up in the rankings, their site is ignored by Google and other search engines and buried deep in the results. They then are stuck with a long climb, even in many cases for their branded terms. He's absolutely right. At the end of the day, you need to do something prior to your site going live. So, that way Google is kind of aware that you're even here. So,

you can at least reduce the steepness of the uphill climb. At the end of the day, it's a brand new site. And so, there is going to be an uphill climb, especially in a competitive industry. It just is what it is. So, number one. One. He says, create a coming soon page and optimize the basics. Great point. He says, creating a strong, optimized, coming soon page could be one of the very first things you should do as you contemplate your new website. And then he gave us some reasons. And first, I'll say, you're correct. Right? You want to get out of the end sandbox. So, if you had that domain name, ain't no need in letting it sit at GoDaddy's hosted splash page. Go ahead and put you up a site. Put you up a coming soon page. And definitely have that page published and active. I totally agree with that. Internet marketing website coming soon. Exactly. If you want to get a keyword in there, he's going to go into some of that stuff on there. So, his first one in regards to creating a coming soon page, he says, search engines give older sites more authority. He's right. I think this is true, especially in cases where there's not much quality content. Because I've seen cases where you can come with a new site and if just the existing results kind of suck and aren't relevant, then your brand new site can outrank them pretty quickly. But he also says, number two, your coming soon page should be a source of leads. It could be. Right? At the end of the day, it's a brand new site. So, there's not much traffic. Yeah. I'd love it to. I'd love to just throw up a random e-commerce website and have lots of people go there and buy. Exactly. It's not going to happen. I don't care what you have in place. Yeah. It's just not going to happen. You have to build it and work on it and tweak it and prune it and

tweak it and prune it and rinse it and water it. Yeah. And then they will eventually come. And then they will eventually come. And so, I'll say this. It could be a source of leads depending on your brand. Right? So, maybe you're a service provider. Right? And you had these trucks going around with your URL on there. All right. Even though your site's not there. Yeah. Then maybe you put up a site. You put a small form on this site. Yeah. And yeah, it probably could generate some local leads. He says that you can begin to connect with users even without a full site. What he's saying is add some social commentary to your site. Yeah. So, again, we're talking about a coming soon page. Name. Like Chris said. Target phrase and what you do. Short form. And yeah. Facebook, Twitter, Facebook links, YouTube links, things like that. So, people can connect with you socially. Absolutely. I totally agree with point number one though. Creating a coming soon page is definitely better than waiting or not doing nothing at all. Number two. He says build out all your social media profiles. He says it's absolutely critical to start building your social media community before your site launches. He says you may want to make sure that you already have a loyal following who is invested in your business. When the launch happens. Hmm. About all that. Yeah. Yeah. Loyal following is a stretch. Yeah. We're talking about social media here. I think it is key to get some likes though. Get some social engagement. You're just not going to have a loyal following with a brand new company, a brand new site. Yeah. Just don't work that way. But getting that social on there is important. Building those profiles and getting all your information of bios and web addresses and things like that is extremely important. And more important than all of that, actually being social on those. So when people do click, then you're engaging and you kind of increase those chances of getting

loyal followers out of that. Number three. He says, I don't know about this one. He says get at least 10 blog posts ready. And he's talking about prior to launch. He wants to launch with 10 blog posts. As a matter of fact, he says web callers will be visiting your site to index it right away. And you want them to have plenty of information rich content to index from day one. Interesting perspective. Is that a blog only site? Well, so he's going to talk about regular page content at point four, which made me disagree with point three some. I understand about having blog posts ready. It makes sense to have content ready. Maybe one or two. But one of the things we've noticed, especially from a blogging perspective, it's going to be more value to just launch your site. And then periodically, every week, every two weeks, first and 15th, whatever publishing schedule you're comfortable with, posting those blogs. Now, I will say they need to be fully optimized and have the right character length and have the right supporting media and video and everything else. But I wouldn't say it's entirely necessary to have them ready at the time of site. Maybe have the schedule ready. I mean, that's, yeah, I could go with that. Have a schedule ready. Have a schedule ready. Know what you're going to post and stick to it. Yeah. Stick to it. But we've seen value in dripping out posts over the course of 90 days versus posting them all at once. Yep. There's also value in going back and revisiting, you know, Charles was talking about cutting and trimming and watering and feeding and trimming. So going back to existing pages and or posts and augmenting that information, there's value there. Number four. Four. He says create all your pages and make sure they're optimized. He says you need multiple pages within your site and each must be optimized. Include long form, high authority content that your target visitors will use on each page. Don't reinvent the wheel

from page to page. Instead, make sure each page is focused and useful. I agree. Yeah. All right. If you're going to launch and you have some time, go ahead and optimize your static content. Your about us, your services, your products, those kind of main target pages, your AC repair page, your water heater replacement page, whatever core pages you have. Yeah. Optimize those. But I will say this, and kind of along my same logic with the blog post, there's value in constant updates. Yeah. There really is. What we've seen is usually with the new site launch, for example, if your coding is great, like you've chosen a well-designed WordPress theme or whatever you're using. Maybe it's one of ours we've custom coded for you. Right. So it's mobile friendly. It loads fast. The content renders correctly. Then that alone, that alone is going to earn the respect of the search engines and move you higher. Yeah. Then you have great content on there that is going to help. Then over the course of the next, I don't know, three to six months, you begin optimizing these pages, going back in, adding links, changing images, dripping those blog posts we're talking about. You'll see your site get indexed faster, and it'll move up higher in the rankings. Yeah. And we've just got data to support that. Number five. Five. He says, guest blog to build links to your domain name. So one more about this one either. Mainly because I get guest blogging. Yeah. I think there's value in guest blogging, but when we're talking about a new site, who wants to let a new site own a guest blog? I'm not. And so I'm just not sure that as a new site, this is pre-launch, you even have the breadth or the expertise to clout, thank you, to be guest blogging somewhere. And so I would say if you provide a local service, here's a better way to build links for your new site, right, rather than chasing after some guest blog that you probably won't

get. If you provide a local service, let's say you are a plumber or AC guy, electrician, or something like that in your local area, then host an event. Yeah. Host an event. Invite some local media. Make it a big deal. Give away something free. That's how you get some free press, and they'll likely link to you from a pretty prominent name in your area. That's relevant. Best way to build links for a local business at startup. Yeah. That's a pro tip. Number six. Six. He says put your site in key niche directories, right? He says by getting your website listed in the right ones before launch, you'll have built authority to your coming soon page that will be transferred to the rest of your pages when they go live. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, once the domain name's active, there is an actual place people can go visit. Yeah. Go submit to the directories. He mentioned key directories. I'll say this. Use an agency, right, or use something like Moz Local or Yext or Bright Local. Right. Or something like that. And then just submit to all the directories with the same name, address, and phone information. That way, all that's consistent. All that's done. All that's the same exact way. And you don't have any problems. No doubts. Definitely. Number seven. Seven. And this is his last one. He says sign up for core sites. So number six was submit to some directories. Number seven was sign up for core sites. And the core sites he mentioned was G+, Yelp, Best of the Web, and Bing Places. Then he also says that those are not limited to just those. But what I really think he's saying, or what I'd rather say, is not necessarily sign up for core sites because, frankly, all of those would have been included in the directories you submitted in the previous step. They should have been before the previous step, really. Yeah. But what I would say is go back and spend time and optimize those key directories,

right? So while you've sent all of them the correct name, address, and phone, you need to go back to G+, you need to go back to Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, even Facebook, and really optimize those pages. Make sure the categories are there. Add those images. Add that description. Add that bio. Go and add those supporting links. Build those profiles out as much as you can because those are the core ones. And another pro tip, if you are a local business like the ones we were giving earlier, complete that Foursquare profile also because Foursquare is all about local search and it makes deals. Last pro tip for you guys. If you're a restaurant or entertainment venue or something like that, I don't know if I want to give y'all this free. Add TripAdvisor to your link. Huge PR link. They'll come back to you. More importantly, as people begin to visit your local area and they're looking for something to do, guess who's going to show? TripAdvisor. Your company. Yep. Pro tip. So at the end of the day, great article. I dig it. Seven proactive tips to jumpstart your SEO before a site launch. And again, what he was trying to say is there are things you can do, right, at the end of the day before you launch your new site. Don't just wait until it's done. Then point your domain name in while you launch this great site with all this great content and it's not being ranked. There are some things you can do ahead of time like building a few links, like getting your directory submitted, like getting some of your social engagement already going on this existing domain name. One more pro tip for you guys. If you're going to do this coming soon page and have all of that stuff on there, go ahead and get your remarketing script at it. And so that way, when people hit that page, they can at least get on your audience list. And when you do launch and maybe you put some paid

campaign behind it, now you got a whole new list of people who've already visited your site and who will be glad to come see the new site, frankly. They probably click the ad more because they'll remember last time they was there was a splash page. Yep. Seven proactive ways to jumpstart your SEO before a site launch. Punch you in the face to you, John E. Lincoln. A decent article. Cool. And just so you know, our standard is we actually always include Facebook and Google for a remarketing script. Include both of them. Yeah, with all site launches. Even if you're not on a paid campaign with us. And you have no intention. Yeah, we're going to add the remarketing list just because you might. Yep. Later. Well, I could eventually convince you that you should and then we'll have the numbers there to do it. Get started. Do we have any what news? Do I have any what news? I do not have any what news. We do not have any what news. All right. Well, so that wraps up the meat of our podcast. If you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. The internet. Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, somebody who's interested in some aspect of internet marketing, that's from just the website design, social media, search engine optimization, pay-per-click, newsletter management, whatever it may be. You send them to us, they pay their bill, we pay you. That's our referral program. Please remember, this was filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. The transcript and the video and the audio of this podcast are available on our website. And that is, again, eWebResults.com. Hey, you guys have made us the most popular internet marketing podcast ever in the known universe, et cetera. Thank you guys very much for tuning in. Thank you guys for interacting with us, writing us reviews, linking to our website. All of that helps

us. Thank you for all those who caught up. Yeah. Right. To talk to a fan and they're like, bro, I'm on 314. Like, that's awesome. Yeah. That's just really a good feeling. All right. So, thank you guys very much. Y'all come back now, you're here. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burris. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Check. Balance check. 315. SEO podcast, 315. A little cough and my runny nose sniffling. But that's okay, because it's time to talk SEO. It's Chris and Chuck, and we're back, man. Here we go. Here we go. 315. Yeah.