[Build Backlinks Online] Starting Over, Part 2: Launch

Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Starting Over, Part 2: Launch'

Posted by Dr-Pete
This post is a part of the "Starting Over" series, the story of starting a blog
(MinimalTalent.com) from scratch. See the end of the post for links to the rest
of the series.

Launching a new site is exciting, and it should be, but we sometimes let
excitement get the best of us. After months of building and planning, it's
understandable to want to finally pull the trigger, but launch is important and
rushing it can delay real success. This is the story of how I got Minimal Talent
off the ground.Goods news and bad news
Online marketing has evolved a lot in the past decade, and changes to search
and social have brought good news and bad news for webmasters. First, the good
news it's relatively easy to get a new site indexed in 2014, and even ranking
for long-tail terms. You don't have to wait for Google to discover you or pay a
search submission service (remember those?). Unfortunately, the bad news is that
ranking on real, competitive terms has gotten harder, and it takes longer. Why
am I telling you this up front? You need to have realistic expectations, or
launch will be an unpleasant and ultimately unproductive experience.Alerting the
bots
You can't win if you don't play if you want to eventually rank in search, you
need to get indexed. Inpart 1, we set up Google Webmaster Tools and created an
XML sitemap, which can be great for discovery. Next up is to submit your site.
Yes, submissions services may be [mostly] [hopefully] dead, but Google does
allow direct submission of new pages. Go to Webmaster Tools, select the "Crawl"
menu and click on "Fetch as Google" you'll see something like this:

To submit your home-page, just leave the field blank and click [FETCH]. Your
URL should show up at the bottom, and your "Fetch Status" should soon return
"Success". Once it does, just click [Submit to index]. There is a limit to how
many pages you can fetch, but typically I only use this to launch a site or
refresh a page that is outdated or isn't getting re-cached.
Within minutes, I was showing up for a "site:" search (site:minimaltalent.com),
with seven pages indexed (which was about right):

I promised this series would be transparent, so I have to admit that I messed
up a little here. Apparently, Google had managed to crawl the site prior to my
official launch, and had actually cached it a few days earlier (checked with
cache:minimaltalent.com).
For me, this was no big deal, but it bears warning that, if you don't want your
site to be out in the world prematurely, you may have to take steps to keep
Google from crawling. Google has a way of finding new sites, which can be good
and bad, depending on your plans.
Later on launch day, I was also ranking for my tagline ("Misadventures in
Minimalism"), on page 1 in the #2 position:

I'd highly encourage you to track a few non-competitive, long-tail phrases
(and, if you're a Mozcustomer, set them up in Moz Analytics). They may not seem
sexy, but you'll see progress much sooner than with competitive phrases. It's
important to know that your site at least has the ability to rank, in order to
detect any issues early.Link chickens & Search eggs
Which came first, the link chicken or the search egg? Ok, let me try again. If
you want to rank, you're going to need links, but you can't get natural links if
no one can find you to begin with. This is the fundamental problem of modern
search marketing.
Yes, you can manually build links (and there's a place for that, done well and
in moderation). Sometimes, though, we get so hung up on the mechanics of SEO
that we forget that there are plenty of other channels to get the word
out.Alerting the humans
In other words, it's time to tell people you launched. I'm not one to broadcast
every post I write to my friends, family, and tax guy, but launch is different
if you've created something you're excited about, then tell people. Who did I
email?Friends (IRL) Industry peers Co-workers Private mailing lists
In most cases, the email was customized to the list and even the individual.
These things are worth the effort. As a marketer, emailing my peers isn't just
about a few pageviews it's a way to seed social sharing and potentially even
drive links.
The other way around the chicken-and-egg problem is taking full advantage of
social. We tend to obsess about whether or not social signals (Tweets, Likes,
+1s) have a direct impact on ranking, and when we do that we miss two important
points. First, sharing equals visibility, regardless of what happens on Google.
Second, sharing can drive links, and better yet, those links are editorial, or
as we call them, "natural".
I shared the initial site and blog post on my main Twitter, Google+, and
Facebook accounts. Since this project naturally has a visual aspect (the parody
logos), it was well suited to Google+ and Facebook sharing, which tend to
benefit from strong visuals.
I've wanted to put some time into Pinterest, so I set up a new folder just for
the blog in my existing account, re-organized that account a bit, and then
pinned some of the logos from the first post. Again, this project is visual, so
Pinterest was a good fit.My social screw-up
Ironically, I did on Pinterest what I tell everyone not to do on social media.
I went to an account I rarely use and just started posting my own content. Since
I'm not active, and I'm not sharing anyone else's content most days, guess what
happened? That's right absolutely nothing. A social media account is not a
dumping ground for your crap. I failed to participate, and it's going to take
time to make up that lost ground. Luckily, I'm more active on other networks,
but give-and-take matters quite a bit.
You may be thinking that, because I have a strong existing network, success
with a new project on social is guaranteed. I wish it were that easy. A year or
so ago, I launched a personal project that soundly flopped. Part of that was in
my execution and commitment, but part of it was that the topic was a bit far
afield for my existing audience. One of my goals with Minimal Talent was to find
a topic that could tie minimalist design into something my existing audience was
already interested in in this case, branding. Be aware how your audiences
overlap (or don't).Monitoring results
It can be hard to wait for results to come in, and patience is not one of my
virtues. Luckily, Google gave us real-time analytics. While watching your
numbers in real-time is an exercise in vanity most days, it can be very useful
on launch day and during other big events. Are your social shares resonating?
Which networks (if you stagger them in time) were most effective? Is it worth
re-sharing on any particular network? Your real-time numbers can help make these
calls.
I'm happy to say that I could actually see the needle move on launch day:

Fourteen active visitors isn't going to make me rich, but it was definitely a
start. At least I could tell that my social shares were leading to actual
visits.
As the days went by, traffic from my launch and first post showed a pretty
normal pattern:

Opening day was solid, with 383 visits, there was a tiny bump a couple of days
later, and then little or nothing (the bigger bump on the right is the second
post and sharing). This is the reality of most launches sustainable traffic
comes later. For now, you're fighting for traffic post by post. If you expect
launch day to be a benchmark of your day-to-day activity, you'll be in for a
very rude awakening.
I especially liked Moz Analytics overview of my first week's traffic:

That's right: PLUS INFINITY AND BEYOND!
Finally, I set up
Fresh Web Explorer (available to Moz Pro subscribers) FWE lets you track fresh
mentions of your site and keywords. Unfortunately, my brand "Minimal Talent"
contains common words, and can trigger false alarms, but FWE also lets you track
things like root domains. Here's how I set that up:

You can use the "rd:" operator to find new links to a root domain. On the main
FWE screen, just click "Show search operators" to see a full list of options.
It felt good to be finally off the ground, and now I had the tools to start
measuring my progress. Next time how I handled initial SEO problems I
discovered and finally started ranking for more interesting terms.
Read the full series
Use the links below to explore the entire "Starting Over" series:Part 1
Pre-launch Part 2 LaunchSign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer
updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links
uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you
don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

You may view the latest post at
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/V5AQ5tlch2Y/starting-over-part-2-launch

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Build Backlinks Online
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com