Running a Race with your shoes tied together: Why launching a website before implementing SEO is a bad idea.
We get it, you’ve got a super-cool new business idea and are really excited to launch your new site coming into the New Year and change the world with your revolutionary product. You’ve just hired an SEO team for some final checks before launch and you’re starting to gather interest through social media and advertising. It feels like a slap in the face when the SEO team suddenly turn around and say, “wait wait wait, we can’t launch, everything is broken and you’re not going to get any traffic!”.
Suddenly all the momentum (not to mention the marketing buzz) you’ve built around your product launch is either going to be wasted with a delayed launch or spent on a website that can’t quite reach the paradigm-shifting potential you dreamt of. You’re frustrated and disappointed as your exciting new business launch becomes a major stress as everyone scrambles to fix as much as they can in the time frame.
As SEO Experts, we share your frustration as we always want what’s best for your website. Far too often we’re only brought in after something has gone wrong and we have to focus on fixes and recovery, rather than innovating and improving. Brands assume as long as their website is live, they don’t need to do anything from an organic perspective.
In an ideal world, every launch would go smoothly, and we’d see your website emerge as a strong new competitor in the market, capable of taking on more established brands for those important generic keywords. Any launch delaying errors or issues would have been caught and fixed. This smooth and successful launch comes with a cost though; SEO must be a consideration for your new site from day one. Don’t worry though, as you will see plenty of benefits from this:
1. SEO can guide your launch strategy
SEO can really help guide your launch strategy to exploit any content gaps or technical weaknesses your more established partners may have. While older, more established brands may have larger developer teams or marketing budgets, they also often have conflicting priorities, outdated technical systems or slow developer processes. This allows newer, more agile brands that follow SEO best practices from launch to eat away at these larger brands’ organic market share.
2. SEO can save money in the long run
As a site at launch is typically smaller and easier to change, it is a lot easier to correct any issues that could develop. When an older site requires a structural or technical change in order to improve organic performance it can require much larger amount of developer resources and time to correct that issue. Not only this, but the traffic and revenue loss from such an issue can be much more significant.
3. SEO is a 24/7 free source of traffic
Compared to other marketing channels SEO is often seen as a less “exciting” channel as it generally sees less of an instantaneous change or a sudden massive increase in traffic. That being said, it’s worth bearing in mind that, compared to campaign-based advertising, SEO is free traffic that works all day, every day. If a brand can control a particular high-value keyword, it can expect the majority of users looking for that keyword to land on its own pages.
4. SEO lets you gain momentum in Search Results from Day One
Generally, when a new website launches, there’s a period where it won’t appear for almost any queries. This is typical as Google essentially evaluates the new website and decides whether it should be trusted and appear in search results. If a website already follows SEO best practice when Google first “discovers” it, it’s likely to get through this evaluation period much quicker and will be in a better position to get indexed and displayed quickly.
5. If the site is already optimised, you can focus on innovating
As mentioned previously, brands often hire SEO experts after something has gone wrong or organic traffic has declined. This means a lot of SEO resource is spent fixing these issues and bringing the site up to scratch. On the other hand, if a site has already been following SEO best practices, then the SEO team can focus on implementing new strategies and responding to algorithm changes or announcements ensuring you stay ahead of the competition.
With these points in mind, we hope you can see the benefits of implementing SEO before you launch your new site. It’ll save you money as well as effort and give your business a great start so that it can build momentum and become the world-changing idea you always knew it could be.
If you have just launched a website, and are experiencing problems with your SEO, make sure to get in touch here.
OR, if you have that great idea and are ready to take that step to create your dream website, get in touch with Kitty, our website development agency here.
