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Successfully launching your new blog is simply the starting point to running a profitable online business. There are a whole of things you need to take care of if you truly want to make money from your site.
These things will make your site stand out from all other sites in the same niche with you. Not just that, one terrible thing I need you to know here is that if you ignore them, you’ve automatically set yourself up for failure.
What I’m about to show you must be implemented immediately after setting up your blog. But if it happens that you met this content after you’ve set up your site, I recommend that you draft them in now.
Here they are…
5 Basic Things to Do After Launching Your Site
Below here are the top 5 unavoidable tasks you must take care of after launching your site, among other things:
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Take Care of SEO
Every blog-related platform talks about SEO. It has become so popular in today’s world of blogging that if you don’t know and implement them successfully, you will never lead a profitable online venture.
It does not matter whether you are freelance writer, an internet marketing expert, a financial advisor or what have you, you need to know and master SEO if your desire is to publish contents that convert readers to customers.
For the sake of those coming in contact with the word SEO for the first time, let me quickly give you a brief information of what it means.
SEO stands for Search Engines Optimization. It simply involves optimizing your blog content in such a way as to make them visible to the major search engine bots during web crawling.
So, to make your content relevant to the audience you are trying to reach, you must set up your permalink structure in a way it will be easy for search engines to recognize your blog.
Though many bloggers have their views on what the best permalink structure should look like, I still maintain my stand that using the default permalink structure that comes directly from WordPress is never a good idea. That Entrepreneur.com uses it on their site doesn’t mean one should copy them.
Default permalink structure like this, http://www.buildyoursite.com/?p=135 are not search engines friendly. You can change this to the custom one that looks like /%postname%/
But if you want your permalinks to be friendly to search engines, make use of any of these:
- Domain.com/Postname (/%postname%/)
- Domain.com/Category/Post-name
- Domain.com/postname/numeric-ID
When Permalinks include related words, they are easier to search than when they contain numbers.
Some other things you ought to do before you let your site go live include, changing the site’s basic information, such as, the site’s title, favicon, time zone and tagline.
Finally, you have to set up a Google Search Console for your site so that your SEO will be well optimized. It also gives you a clue as to what needs to be fixed next.
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Create a Sitemap.xml file
The importance of having a sitemap can’t be overemphasized. When you create your own sitemap, it enables Google to know exactly what your blog is all about.
Your sitemap creation is not something you can choose to do anytime you feel like it. No, it must be done as soon as you install your WordPress same day. You may not need to do this if your blog is built on blogger platform.
Beyond sitemap showing Google how a blog is organized, it is also very necessary if you ever intend earning from AdSense. Blogs without or that didn’t submit their Sitemap, ending with .xml will never get approved on any Ad Network, especially AdSense.
In order to create a sitemap.xml file fast, install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin and configure it. If your blog is built on Blogger platform, Google will do this for you automatically. Meanwhile, Google XML Sitemaps plugin is not the only sitemap out there.
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Database Backup
Blogging is a very serious business. There are plenty of information that will be gathered and stored up with your web host.
One thing I’m aware is the fact that you wouldn’t like to lose your vital files or database information in your site in future.
Losing some important information can result to the shutdown of your site. But for you to avoid this from ever taking place, you will need to backup your database.
Aside experiencing cyber-attack from hackers, you might accidentally delete or tamper with files in your site, which only having a database backup will save you.
Some of the most reliable backup plugins you can use for this purpose include, VaultPress, UpDraftPlus, BackUpBuddy, BackWPup, BackUPWordPress, etc.
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Beef Up security
Malware infection and total hijacking of blogs are becoming a common phenomenal with WordPress-built sites. It has become so apparent that if you don’t do anything about the security of your business blog, you might soon lose it to hackers.
Beyond using a hard-to-remember password which could comprise of alphabets, symbols and numbers, it is also important that you consider having some security plugins to help you combat any form of attack.
Some of the security plugins you can use include WordFence Security, Sucuri Security, BulletProof Security, Acunetix WP Security Scan, etc.
Using EngimaSoftware or MalwareBytes (for Mac), you can detect and delete malwares injected into your site. One more thing, don’t approve comments made by bots on your blog.
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Activate caching
Speed is of a great essence when it comes to how Google rank sites. In a previous announcement by Google, they said, “Page speed is now a ranking factor.”
What does it mean?
If your page loads faster than that of your competitor, you will soon rank on Google more than them for the same keyword.
One way you can be a beneficiary of this Google’s favour is to improve the speed of your site. You can achieve this when you use quality premium themes that have caching features. You can also use caching plugins like W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Cache Enabler, WP Super Cache, etc. But if any of these cannot help, you have to subscribe to a CDN service.
Conclusion
Launching a site is not just enough; you need to put the basic things in place from the beginning to give your site an edge over its competitors. Follow the tips I have outlined here and you will have a site built on a solid foundation, ready to match strength with the “Big Sites”. You may need to read 5 Simple Tasks Top Bloggers Do Daily to Grow their Blog.
Hi Theodore Nwangene,
Thank you for this informative Article. Well i have missed the point number three and thats why i’m having trouble with my Blog. Would that You have posted it earlier. BTW really thank you for this post. Heartily appreciated. Keep it up
Hi Akash,
Sorry about that. It’s a horrible experience no one should wish a blogger. It can be very painful. However, I’m glad you saw this now. May be you can still back your data up to avoid similar happening again.
Emenike Emmanuel
Thank you Akash,
I’m glad you found the post helpful. Everyone of us made one mistake or the other when we started, the point is to learn from it and do it better next time.
Hey Theodore/Emenike,
I wish I could have read this blog, like a few years. Until then, I’ve had three sites that have been hacked at least 3-4 times each over the past several years. I was so new to all this techy thing then that I’d never bring myself to make sure I could keep my sites secures (at least as much as I can).
Today, things are different and we all learn. But then, it’s so hard just to keep your online properties secure. When you do though, it’s a good feeling.
That goes out to SEO, site speed, optimization, and pretty much everything else.
Ash
Hello Ash,
So sorry to hear that. It’s not easy when you put in a lot of work into something and it got destroyed eventually. I can very well relate to that feeling as I’ve had a similar experience.
Thanks for the kind words, glad you like the article.
Great post there, Theodore.
I could just relate to that thing. It hurts when you build up something and it just crashes, right there in front of you.
Been there, done that. Just don’t want to be there again.
Ash
Hello Ash,
Thanks for stopping by. We all must learn from our mistakes and move on.
Hey Emenike,
It’s a pleasure, sir. Absolutely, there was no time to cry over “spilt code”. Moved on. Moving on. Will always move on.
Ash
This 5 task shouldn’t be avoided after launching the site.
Couldn’t have agreed more Pal,
Avoiding these tasks will result to disaster.
Thanks for stopping by.
Hi Theodore ,
Thank you for this informative Article.Keep it up
Hello Parmar,
Thank you for stopping by. I’m excited to have you here.
Really amazing article …. very nice … Thanks for sharing this!! 🙂 🙂
Hello,
Thank you so much for stopping by.
Hi Emenike,
Thanks for writing on important tasks of a newly created blog . Really, it’s very useful to new bloggers like me.
Regards
Sadhan
You are most welcome. Keep it up and soon you will soon start hitting big dollars.
Thanks before reading this topic i don’t have any experience of some things mentioned in this article thanks
Hello Malik,
Serious? Wow! That means this post will be very helpful to you.
This is really an interesting post for all of us. i wish i could have read post like this at that time. Any way this post is perfect for all newbies out there. hope it helps all of them.
Hello Dhaval,
Sure it does. It is a great resource material for newbie.
Very nice article. After reading through the comments there have been quite a few people that have needed this article. I manage a full stack web development firm and I have quite a few clients that have come to me because of hacked websites and they did not have a website backup system in place.
You never know how important website security and backing up your website is until it goes down. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! I enjoy blogging for our website and enjoy reading yours!
Take care and let me know if there is anything I can do to help you and your business in the future!
[…] Related: Top 5 Unavoidable Tasks to Take Care of After Launching Your Site (Ignore Them At Your Own Risk) […]
Thanks for this info!
I’ve been working on my blog and loking for essential aspects that I should not miss before launching it. Though I’m not new to blogging but I am new to wordpress and shared hosting and useful posts like this help us a lot.
[…] Going through these processes, I discovered how blog commenting stood out in connecting me to internet influencers like Ryan Biddulph, Zac Johnson, Tiffany Simpson, Roger James Hamilton, John Rampton, Sue Anne, Harsh Agrawal, Adeshokan Shamsudeen, Theodore Nwangene and so many others to the extent that I was able to create contents that got shared on social media by them. Theodore Nwangene personally wrote a guest post for us that went on to blow the roof. Read it here. […]
Hello Theodore / Emenike
These are some basic tasks that every blogger has to make sure he/she has addressed, without which there is no future for their blogs.
Thanks for listing out the obvious.