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A website ready to go live on a screen of a laptop.
October 27, 2021

Your final checklist before launching your website

The time has come, and your site is ready. All that is left to do is the final push to lift things off the ground. But be sure not to rush with it. It’s always a good idea to go over the whole thing once again. And that’s where our final checklist before launching your website comes in. It’s there to bring your attention to all the small details and issues that could turn into more significant problems later on.

We’ll break everything down as much as possible, so it’s easy to follow step by step. So, let’s see what are the aspects that you’ll want to keep your eye on before you make your site live.

The functionality

Your site is only as good as it is functional, so this is the first thing you should check. At the end of the day, you can’t increase your customer base if people can’t find whatever they’re looking for on your site. Here are a few elements that you want to see on your pages.

  • Navigation menus
  • Dropdown menus
  • Lazy loaded images
  • Pop-ups and sign up forms
  • Content that loads dynamically

Of course, you don’t have to have all of these for your site to be perfectly usable. However, be sure to check all the things that you have to make sure they all work as they should. Run your site on a couple of different browsers and devices, and see if you can spot any issues. If you notice anything you don’t like, give feedback to your designer right away.

It’s not unusual for a feature to work in Google Chrome, for example, but that it just doesn’t respond in Safari or some other browser. These problems are easy to solve, but they can ruin your customer experience. So, be sure to do regular check-ups to keep everything in good order.

Two women in the office talking about your final checklist before launching your website.

The first step in your final checklist before launching your website is to check for functionality issues.

The design

The second most important thing about your site, right after functionality, is the design. Your website must look nice to attract visitors and to keep them around for long enough so that they go through your offers.

Here again, you want to go through all your pages on different browsers and devices to see what supports what. Although these are all advanced now, they still don’t work quite the same. So, it might happen for your website to look very different across different devices. Of course, these are the things you want to avoid. You want everything to look uniform. Keep as close to your style guide as you can, and don’t mix and match your color scheme, fonts, and sizes of elements.

Designing a website isn’t a small task, and if you don’t have experience in doing it, be sure not to do it by yourself. Companies like WP Full Care can do everything for you or help you and guide you through the process. If you’re not sure which way is the right one for you, it’s always better to consult with experts than to decide on your own.

The content

Content is the number one reason anyone will come to your site, so make sure it’s all there. You can’t blame your visitors if they feel disappointed that your images don’t load, videos don’t play, or downloads don’t exist. So, the third part of your final checklist before launching your website is checking your content one last time.

Writing and optimizing your content is one of the biggest tasks when getting your site ready. You’ll probably have more than one type of page on your site, and you’ll have to create content for each of them. If you write it in a way that it’s ready to launch right away, you’ll save yourself plenty of time as you won’t have to deal with it later. So, we suggest you do just that.

Double-check everything before you proceed. The last things you need on a launch day are the typos and missing files.

A person writing on a piece of paper.

Work on your content to make your site a better place for both users and search engines.

SEO and Analytics

You’re doing your best to optimize your site’s functionality, design, and content for users, but also for search engines. You want them to like your site, so they put you higher in the SERPs. We wrote already about both off-page and on-page SEO, so we won’t get too much into the details here. However, we’ll still give you some advice that will help you rank higher.

Always fill out your meta title and meta description fields. These are the first things crawlers explore, and that’s why they’re important. Also, try embedding Rich Snippets whenever you can, and it makes sense. You’ll make your site stand out in the search results, and that can’t be a bad thing.

Besides SEO, you’ll also want to set up your analytics tool. Google Analytics and Google Tag should give you enough data to better understand your audience. You’ll see what pages of yours are the most popular and how you can use their popularity to boost your whole site. Be sure to set these tools up before you launch your site. This way, when the day comes, you’ll hit the ground running, and that’s what it’s all about.

DNS, SSL, and hosting

And the last thing to pay attention to is your hosting solution. And here, you have two choices. You can go for hosting your site on a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform or make your server. They’re both good options, but if you’re not a tech-savvy person yourself, we’d suggest going for the first one.

When it comes to registering your domain, that’s as easy as it gets. You just have to search for it on Google Domains, and if it isn’t there, you’re free to take it.

Finally, you want to add an SSL certificate to your site. That additional ”s” in your HTTPS is what makes all the difference to Google. It’s the insurance that you won’t have to deal with Google ranking drops if you keep playing by the book. Your site will be more secure, and thanks to that, it will appear higher in SERPs.

WordPress plugins listed on the screen.

The last step is to take care of the hosting and install all the plugins on your site.

And that concludes your final checklist before launching your website. Keep working on it, improve the functionality, add more content, and enjoy all the benefits your new site brings to you.

 

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April 11, 2021

Types of Google ranking drops and how to handle them

Types of Google ranking drops and how to handle them

Google rankings are not set in stone. Through dedication and effort, you can drastically improve them. But once you reach the top of the page, it becomes tricky to stay there. Just like your ranking can improve, it can also deteriorate. A variety of different factors can cause Google ranking drops. How you deal with them will depend on the type of drop you’re experiencing. So, let’s take a closer look at some of the most common types of Google ranking drops and how to handle them.

When should you be worried about Google ranking drops?

Before you start panicking at the sight of your suddenly low ranking, consider this: fluctuation is normal. Between the work that you put in and the things

others in your niche do, you cannot expect your position on the results page to never change. It’ll go up and down occasionally, even frequently. This is not necessarily a cause for concern. It is so common it even has a name – the Google dance. So, take a moment to assess the situation. Is the drop a long-lasting one? Is it significant (meaning more than just a couple of positions)? Have your rankings dropped across multiple keywords? Is there a particular competitor that is overtaking your positions? These could be signs of a severe ranking drop that must be handled before it becomes a problem.

Google analytics for a website over time.

Make sure that the Google ranking drops you’re seeing are not just a part of the standard Google dance.

Google ranking drops caused by your practices

SEO is known to improve Google rankings well. Most on-page and off-page SEO tactics specifically aim to do so. But sometimes, they can backfire and cause you to make a mistake that costs you a good position in the search results.

You’ve made changes to your website

As a part of regular maintenance, you will sometimes make significant changes to your website. Perhaps you’ve changed your domain name or switched from HTTP to HTTPS. Maybe you’ve just done some reorganizing. Either way, this can cause increased downtime, poor link structure, lack of mobile optimization, and general errors. In the case of updates, these are often just temporary problems you resolve as you settle into your new website. But when left unaddressed, they can negatively affect your ranking.

  • What can you do about it? First, find out what the problem is by analyzing your website using Google Search Console. If the problem is something you can fix, like error pages, do so. If downtime is caused by maintenance, your ranking should go back up on its own. Finally, if the issue is so severe that you cannot fix it, restore an older version of the website.

You’ve incurred a penalty due to suspicious practices

There is no one right way to practice SEO. But there are certainly many wrong ways to do it. If you do things like link spamming, keyword stuffing, article spinning, or try to trick search engine bots, you can get penalized. While these so-called grey and black hat SEO practices can have short-term benefits, the penalties they incur can set you back dozens of positions and even get you blacklisted.

  • What can you do about it?Stick to white hat SEO, and you’ll avoid penalties. If you’ve already received a fine, stay away from grey or black hat SEO in the future.
Magnifying glass used on a laptop.

Being investigated for bad SEO practices can severely hurt your rankings and reputation.

Google ranking drops caused by outside factors

It’s possible that you’re doing everything right and still experiencing a significant drop in rankings. This could be due to the behavior of your competitors, users, or business partners.

A competitor outranks you

One of the reasons why your position might suffer on the results page is because someone else has risen to your place. Your competitor may have managed to drastically improve their local SEO, go viral on social media, or successfully market a new product launch. This is why you can never rest on your laurels in SEO – staying on top requires constant work.

  • What can you do about it? The first thing you’ll want to do is identify the competitor or competitors who now outrank you. Then, analyze what they’ve been doing recently that’s made them so successful. Finally, apply what you’ve learned from them to your website and further improve on it.

User behavior changes

Google’s goal is to serve up results its users will like. So, when what the users are looking for changes, so do the Google results. If you were, for example, relying on traffic from long-tail keywords and your users suddenly start searching for short-tail keywords, you’re likely to see a drop in rankings.

  • What can you do about it? Unfortunately, user behavior is unpredictable and entirely out of your control. The only thing you can do is to perform in-depth market research regularly and adjust your practices accordingly.

You’ve lost backlinks

Backlinks from other websites can significantly improve your ranking by contributing to your authority and directing traffic to your pages. But what happens if you are suddenly left without them? If the websites that host your backlinks remove them or simply go down, this can cause a severe drop in rankings for you.

  • What can you do about it? Find out why you’ve lost backlinks. If the host website is still up, contact the administrator and ask them to reinstate your links. If not, look for ways to gain new backlinks. A quick and easy way to promote your brand and improve your rankings can be to hire a professional like AZ Citation Services and get listed in business directories.

Google ranking drops caused by the search engine

Finally, you cannot forget arguably the most significant factor in your rankings – the search engine itself. Google is constantly working on improving its search results, and some of the changes implemented can affect your ranking.

The algorithms have changed

Google is constantly fine-tuning its algorithms to become even better at locating what its users are after. Although these changes are usually minor, they can affect your rankings if they happen in an area that is particularly important for your SEO.

  • What can you do about it? Not much – Google will change its algorithms as it sees fit. Your best bet to maintain or recover rankings after these changes is to follow the latest news from technology and SEO, learn how the new algorithms work, and adjust your practices.
Computer code.

Changes in algorithms are often minor, but they can have major consequences for your ranking.

The search results page has changed

Although this doesn’t happen very often, drastic changes to Google’s search results page can affect rankings. This happened when Google introduced rich snippets or started favoring multimedia content. If you don’t have the element Google starts featuring, you’re likely to drop lower on the results page.

  • What can you do about it? Once again, follow the updates and adjust your practices to the new results page.

You can’t entirely avoid ranking drops, so learn how to handle them!

There is no way to avoid Google ranking drops entirely – not only are they often dependent on factors that are out of your control, but they’re also perfectly normal and expected. So, what you need to do instead is prepare for them. It’s a good idea to regularly track your ranking so you can spot changes in time. Learn to recognize severe drops that need to be addressed. Finally, make sure to identify the causes for the drops you’re experiencing and then develop a strategy to deal with them.