Finally, all the work has paid off and your new website is live.
NOW what? you ask.
As part of our standard offering, there is a two-week ‘grace’ period after your site goes live where you can make changes to the site. These are not structural changes (that should have happened at the beginning of the project), but perhaps you found a better image you’d like to use, tweak text, or make some other minor changes. If changes go beyond that, it will incur an additional charge.
Most users are given a login with editorial access which will allow them to change text on the pages or create blog posts. As blogging is an incredibly important SEO tool for you, you should try to blog at least once a week. Here are some guidelines for blogging/page management:
- Be sure any page or post you create actually has some text on it. Too often, people write one or two lines – that’s just not enough “meat” for the search engines to grab on to.
- Never create a page that has a link to a PDF on it. That is not just annoying, and useless. Take the time to put the actual copy onto the page.
- Be sure that copy contains the words that people might use to search for you on search engines. Some industries are easier to word then others, but take, as an example, the doctors office. In addition to writing the formal name of a procedure, write it in lay mans terms. “procedure to relieve back pain” versus “lumbar percutaneous discectomy” – you will double your chances of getting found for sure.
- Be sure to include a “featured image” on your blog post and make sure that you resize images so that the total file size is under 100k. Large file sizes take longer to load which can annoy the user and make them leave the page before the image is finished loading. Also, it takes more bandwidth on the mobile user’s data plan.
- Be sure to select a category on your blog post so that the site displays the post in the correct places. An uncategorized post will go nowhere.
- I always install an SEO tool called Yoast SEO on your website. It will analyze the page and give you a list of things you can do to make it better.
I would not make any structural changes to the website without first discussing it with me. We have an after-care maintenance plan that not only handles the “care and feeding” of your new website but also allows some time for changes.
The Maintenance Plan is a big differentiator for us. Most web developers are happy to sell you a website, but it stops there. We have seen first-hand what happens when the “Set-it-and-forget-it” method has been deployed – in a short amount of time, something breaks and nobody knows how to fix it. It can turn into an expensive mess. We want to help protect your investment and also be a resource for you after your site goes live. With the maintenance plan, we go in every month and make sure everything is working tickety-boo. A wordpress site is similar to your phone. You know how you have to update the operating system, then all those apps? and then something doesn’t work right afterwards? same with your website. There are many moving parts and they need to be updated to address security issues or increased functionality, but it has to be done in an organized manner so nothing breaks. We also work in some time for any changes you may have, or support calls. You can consider us your ‘IT Department”.
We offer month-to-month plans or a prepaid annual plan which works out to be much cheaper.
Let us know how we can help you manage your new website!
