8 Important Check Points to Consider While Launching a Website

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(Free-Press-Release.com) May 18, 2011 -- May18 – 2011 - The time-lag between the launch of your website and before plunging head-on into promoting it is critical. Now you may wonder, what should hold you back from promoting your site no sooner than it’s up. Search Engine Optimization—that’s where the onus lies before getting on with marketing and promotions, and here are a few things you should do right after your website is launched.

Generate a Sitemap.xml File and a Robots.txt File

These are essential files that help search engines and other web-crawlers to index your site quickly. Sitemap.xml in fact is a standard protocol for listing all the URLs contained within your website. It gives web-spiders a better insight into your website’s structure, eventually making for quick indexing of your site.
When search engine bots crawl your website, you would want some elements to be given precedence over others. In fact, there may be pages you don’t want any search engines to look at (say when you have two versions of a single page—one for browser, another for printing—you don’t want both pages indexed—may lead to content duplicity) Robots.txt is a text file on your site which makes search engines skip such pages and index specific pages on the site. In short, Robots.txt guides a search engine bot to pages you like to be indexed and keeps it off pages you want to be left alone

However, don’t assume that search engines are bound to follow the path directed by Robots.txt; as a rule of thumb they do, but there is nothing that bounds search engine crawlers as such. So, if you have nay sensitive information on the site, it is much better to have it off and place it somewhere on the server itself. Also, Robots.txt should be included in the main directory of the site itself; search engines crawl principal directories first and if the file is not there, they assume it’s missing and index all the pages on the site.

Titles, Meta Tags

Your page title is crucial for SEO; every page should have different page title that relates to the page’s content. It is the Title Tag that virtually keeps users in the know with the on-page content, and is therefore very crucial to your site’s readability.
Most search engines play down Meta description and keywords tag, but still, it is better to include rather than giving them a miss. Each page calls for different description that relates to the page’s content–this is what Google displays in its search result description.

Incorporate Web Analytics

Most of us know or at least have heard a bit of Google Analytics. It is an application that tracks oncoming traffic to your site and puts it across in statistically designed analytical reports. Effective Search engine optimization is achieved only if true and in-depth traffic analysis is available and put to use. Alongside, it’s crucial to incorporate a web analytics tool as soon as you call your website to order. There exist a number of web analytics tools but by far, Google Analytics is the most easy-to-use and comprehensive of them all.

Google Alerts—a Must-have on the site

Put simply Google Alerts is a brilliant innovation. It gives you a detailed narrative of all the sites that contain the same keywords as yours; what’s more you receive an alert every time a new webpage comes up with keywords of your interest. To say it is important to be in on the competition developing around your keywords is an understatement—it is absolutely crucial—unless you don’t care much about rankings and organic search engine traffic.With JavaScript turned off, your website shouldn’t wander off the radar Users often have JavaScript turned off, sometimes for security, and many a times out of ignorance. Your website should work with JavaScript turned off, and it is no big deal to achieve. With just a few server-side checks, you would know if your site works without JavaScript; if not, minor programming tweaks will do it for you.

RSS Link Incorporation

If your website holds a blog or newsfeed, it should have an RSS feed for users to subscribe to. Your RSS feed should be easily accessible to users; the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.
Cross-Browser Checks; platform expansion

It needs no mention that your website should work as good on Chrome as it does on Firefox or an Internet Explorer or any other major browsers. Consistency is the key; while a few small nags can be taken care of as and when they come up, user navigation, browsing or on-site transactions should not differ between browsers. Once this is achieved, you can contemplate taking your website to other browsers like Safari, iPhone, Opera and so on.

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Raj Srivastav
Softwaredevelopersindia
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