STEPS TO FOLLOW BEFORE LAUNCHING YOUR WEBSITE

You have just finished the creation of your website, with a design, content, forms... The most important part before launching the website is to perform a thorough test phase. The proper functioning of all the elements of your website is essential for your website to be functional from its launch and for your first visitors to have a good impression of your platform.
In order not to forget anything, here are all the verifications to do before launching your website: 

• Proper loading of images and videos, and ensuring that they are not too large
• The ergonomics of your website on different media: is my site responsive on mobile and tablet?
• Test the contact forms
• Test all the links in your website
• Test the proper functioning of your site on different browsers : Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer…
• Checking the favicon: the favicon is an icon that symbolizes your website and is displayed on the tab of the search engine on which you browse your site

Another essential step before launching your website is to check all the contents of your website. This step will allow you to spot possible mistakes, make sure that the textual elements are correctly highlighted and well understood when Google will scan your website.
Go through all the pages of your website and check the following elements: 

• Spelling, syntax and grammar errors
• Content structure: do I have titles, subtitles and paragraphs that structure my pages?
• The presence of tags: do all my pages have a title tag, a meta-description and Hn title tags? These elements are essential for the referencing of your website
• Do the URLs on my site accurately describe the content of my pages and the structure of my site?
• Contact page: is the contact information correct on my website?

Page loading speed is an important element for the health of your website. It will not only play on the impression that Internet users will have on the quality of your site but also be one of the important criteria to be highlighted by Google. On average, a user should not wait more than 3 seconds for the pages of the website to load.
Several tools allow you to test the speed of your website and identify possible optimizations to correct this problem. Among them, we recommend free tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or even GTMetrix.

If you notice that your pages take too long to load, consider reducing the size of the files on your pages (photos, videos...). 

The SSL Certificate allows you to encrypt your website to prevent data hacking. Websites secured with this certificate will have the mention https in the URL of their website. This procedure not only allows to reassure the visitors of the site, but is also one of the criteria taken into account by Google for the referencing on its search engine.

It is therefore essential to purchase, configure and install an SSL certificate before the website is put online. This procedure can take several days, which is why you should contact your web host as soon as possible in order to set up this certificate.

The implementation of your website must be accompanied by the setting up of tracking tools that will allow to:

• Measure the traffic on your website (number of users, number of page views, time spent on the site
• Analyze visitor behavior on the website
• Identify areas of improvement for your site and its referencing
• Quantify the actions carried out (email campaigns, google ads...)

The best known and most complete tool on the market is Google Analytics. All you need is a Google account to be able to set up Google Analytics on your website and set up a tracking beacon to retrieve data about your website's visits. 

The tool Google Search Console is also an essential tool for your website. Offered for free by Google, it will allow you to follow the good SEO health of your website; you can then follow the different pages of your website indexed by Google, or receive alerts if visibility or indexing problems are identified on your website. 

Have you followed all these steps? You are now ready to launch your website! Once your website is launched, it is not a question of leaving it abandoned. The SEO of your website will be better if you update your content regularly and if it is visible thanks to a maximum of links.

That's why it's helpful to hire a digital help agency that specializes in SEO to improve your visibility on the web. At Dubuc Marketing, we SEO specialists in Montreal, on the South Shore (Delson, Sainte-Catherine, Saint-Constant, Brossard) to save you time and increase visits and sales on your website.

Call on a SEO Web Agency today to make your website grow!