Once I’ve created and launched a new website I look to promote it online using various SEO techniques. These techniques generally stay the same no matter what type of website I launch – be it a blog, business site or brochure site. Today I’d like to share with you my top ten tips to follow after launching a new site; hopefully these will help new developers and act as a nice reminder for those more experienced.

Backlinks are an essential building block to help your site and some of the methods below will help you gain those valuable backlinks, other methods will help spread the word about your site, help you inform search engines your site exists and help you track backlinks, errors and search queries.

Basic SEO for a New Website:

Be it BlogSpot, WordPress, Static Website or any other platform, when you are launching a new Website, there are few basic SEO techniques, which goes for every type. These SEO tips, should be followed by everyone, and if you have question regarding any of these tips, feel free to ask me via comments.

Before, we move ahead here are few articles worth reading:

• A guide for beginners to learn Keyword research
• 10 Keyword placement techniques for higher ranking
• How to rank#1 in Google Search

Create and submit sitemap

Sitemaps help search engines discover all the content on your site, essential for new and old websites alike. You should ensure your sitemap conforms to the sitemap protocol and there are many free and paid for website and software companies that can automatically create a Sitemap for you. If you are using WordPress, you can use Google XML sitemap plugin to create sitemap for you new WordPress site.

• How to submit Sitemap to Google Search
• How to submit sitemap to Bing search engine

Webmaster’s tools

Google, Bing and Yahoo all have webmaster sections for you to log in and tell them about your site. Once you have confirmed you’re the site owner you can submit your sitemap you made above, view details of sites linking in to you, top keywords and any errors they find when crawling your site.

• Search engine optimization of blog using Google Webmaster tool
• How to get started with Bing Webmaster tool

Blog Commenting

Make your comments useful, not spammy as this will only waste your time when the editor deletes it. Comment on blogs relevant to your website and hopefully they’ll allow you a backlink. If not at least you are spreading word about your site to the relevant readers and you never know, they might have websites and add a link to you.

• A definite SEO guide for Blog commentators
• Why commenting is important for your blog

Social Bookmarking

Another useful way to spread word about your site and hopefully gain valuable links back is to take advantage of social bookmarking. Add pages (not just your homepage) from your site to some of the top bookmarking sites such as; Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon. It also useful if each page or blog post from your site offers readers the chance to share your site to their bookmarking account. Consider adding share buttons or a toolbar such as those offered by addthis.com to your pages.

Twitter

Build up a good following of relevant businesses, clients and those in related industries and the benefits can be huge. Post useful tweets and occasionally throw in articles, news, or blog posts from your site with a link back to them. Don’t just jump right in for sell, sell, sell or you’re liable to put off followers. Add a tweetmeme.com button or similar to your pages too.

• How to use Twitter as marketing tool effectively
• How to build backlinks using Twitter

Facebook

This site has over 500 million members so adding a page on here is a must. Add Facebook like buttons to your website too so that visitors can share your pages with their friends. We have a good number of articles, related to Facebook marketing for a new website. Here are few links, which will help you to get started:

• How to create a Facebook fan page for your brand

Exchange links

Most webmasters are happy to link to good quality, relevant websites so try contacting a few direct. When gaining links always link to sub-pages or folders, don’t just concentrate on your homepage. Looking for a good tip at finding sites that will link to you? Google “Add Link” followed by your website niche for a list of relevant sites that you can submit links to. Though 2 way link-exchange is a big no. Also after Penguin update, I highly recommend you to get backlinks from relevant niche. Here are few more resources, to help you build links for your new Website:

• How to get free Dofollow backlink from Pinterest

Submit a press release

Announce to the world you’ve launched, what you offer and why you do it best. Ensure it’s a good, well written press release and if necessary hire someone to write it for you. Then you need to get your release out there. The web has some good auto-submit press release sites that can often gain you links back but also consider local press, trade magazines or any publications concentrating on your niche. Do remember, Matt Cutts (Google Sposkesperson), recently added that Press release doesn’t give SEO advantage, but reports from SEO world shows that Press release still helps in search engine ranking.

Internet Directories

Submit your site to good quality internet directories such as DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, Business.com, Yellow Pages and Best of the Web. Some of these are paid and none offer guaranteed inclusion so ensure you meet all terms and conditions before submitting your site. Some directories are deemed to offer good quality backlinks so it could be well worth the initial investment.

Don’t stop your SEO Effort!

This one’s simple, don’t steam ahead, and do all this in one weekend and then forget about it! You need to constantly work hard, publish fresh new content, talk to your twitter followers, post updates to Facebook, build a good reputation on forums and blogs, get to know press contacts and keep them up-to-date with how you’re doing and eventually the web will build trust in your site.

Do remember, SEO is an ongoing effort, and you should keep monitoring your site for progress. You can try tools like SEOMOZ, which will crawl your new Website like a search engine bot, and will give you recommendation to improve your site. So there you have it, the top ten basic SEO things I do to launch a site. I hope some of you found this useful, feel free to share what you do too!