8 ms·

Things You Should Do Immediately After Launching a Website

221 points by abraham 16y ago

thingie 16y ago
There is only one thing on the list that is not completely obvious -- dmoz still matters. Is it possible? Sure, it's a valuable list of sites touched by a lot of care and bureaucracy, but does anybody who wasn't online 10 years ago know about it?
- dmitri1981 16y ago
  I can't imagine Google pays much attention to this anymore. Many of the categories have near absent editors and it can take over 6 months to be added.
  - carbocation 16y ago
    6 months? I've been waiting for 4 years in my category.
    - richbradshaw 16y ago
      I've been waiting over 5 now! It's a joke! I even applied to be an editor for the category 3 years ago to try and speed it up...
      - RtodaAV 16y ago
        I tried that also.
      - zach 16y ago
        At least you could submit. They had some sort of catastrophe four years ago when I tried to submit -- there was just some sort of "come back in a few months... yeah" blurb. I forgot all about it until I saw this, so I guess I'll check back sometime in 2013.
- terrellm 16y ago
  DMOZ does matter, as do many of the old directories that are hand curated (Yahoo Dir, Business.com, Best of the Web, and hundreds of small directories). These directories are valued by the search engines because all listings are not automatically approved, so there is a certain quality aspect to the listings. While the directories don't send very much traffic, they do pass trust to the sites they are linking to. It can be tough to get a DMOZ listing, particularly if the category you are applying to doesn't currently have an editor. However, it's worth it if you can get accepted.
joshrule 16y ago
As someone just starting up their first website (http://wayofthescholar.com http://wayofthescholar.com), there's a lot of helpful material here, and a lot I still need to work through. Although each item may be obvious and discussed in greater depth a thousand other places, a list is sometimes really helpful.
yread 16y ago
+1 for not saying "8 Things You Should do..."
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  Yeah, God forbid you should number your main points. Seriously, what is the problem with a list post? Yes, it's a hook. Why is that a problem?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - AgentConundrum 16y ago
    Personally, I don't really think there's anything wrong with a "x tips for y" title, but it does go against the submission guidelines for HN: If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." I think the point of the guideline is to keep things fact-oriented here, and to keep the amount of sensationalism, hyperbole, and "link-baiting" on HN to a minimum.
    - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
      I think the point of the guideline is to keep things fact-oriented here, and to keep the amount of sensationalism, hyperbole, and "link-baiting" on HN to a minimum. I agree that we should respect the HN submission guidelines, but the OP seemed to be expressing approval that the original post wasn't titled as such. Additionally, I hardly think that numbering your main points counts as sensationalism or hyperbole. Maybe it's link-baiting in some cases, but I think that's a stretch.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
iworkforthem 16y ago
I would also redirect my feeds/rss to FeedBurner, just to have an idea the number of subscribers I might have, and which are the more popular items people read about me.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Not to mention that you can move feeds later and keep all of your subscribers. I've done this, it's super useful.
  - riledhel 16y ago
    And you save bandwidth and gather stats...
gabrielroth 16y ago
OK, to everyone who read this list and said, 'That stuff is all obvious': What would you add to the list?
- alexro 16y ago
  1) Write a blog post about your launch 2) Let others know 3) Monitor Twitter for the chance of mentioning your product 4) Contact influential bloggers ADD: most importantly, understand why "they" don't come :)
- melissamiranda 16y ago
  How about some good old promotion? Contact bloggers and try to get some PR. Here's a few good articles that have been mentioned in HN: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product//2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from-balsamiq-studios/ http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product//2008/08/05/startup-market... http://blog.zferral.com/post/972974853/startup-marketing-getting-your-startup-noticed-and http://blog.zferral.com/post/972974853/startup-marketing-get... http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-i-pitched-techcrunch-and-13-ways-to-get-press-when-you-launch-your-startup/ http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-i-pitched-te... http://blog.traindom.com/places-where-to-submit-your-startup-for-coverage/ http://blog.traindom.com/places-where-to-submit-your-startup...
ary 16y ago
After launching? Not to nit pick, but I'm pretty sure nearly all of these should be done before you launch.
- seiji 16y ago
  Depends on what you are launching. A weekend project? Just get your work in front of people. Something you spent six months in stealth mode working on? Sure, get it all set up before launch during the development process.
  - ary 16y ago
    Can't say I agree with you. Even with weekend projects I'll throw some analytics and other quantification tools in from the beginning as I want to see what kind of traction it gets. How else would I even begin to know if there's interest in what I've created?
bill-nordwall 16y ago
Be careful with these robots.txt suggestions. Disallowing your css/js files in your robots.txt is probably not a good idea - Matt Cutts said as much himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU If you're running Wordpress, disallowing your /uploads/ directory will nuke your Google Image Search prospects, as Googlebot won't be able to crawl any of your images to begin with. Also, submitting to a paid directory such as Best of the Web or the Yahoo! Directory would be a much better use of your time. DMOZ is still a valuable directory (for a lot of reasons), but the likelihood is small that they will review, let alone add your site to the directory in a timely manner (if ever). A few other things worth doing: - Create a Twitter account for your site. - Create a Facebook page for your site.
- gojomo 16y ago
  Indeed. Blocking JS and CSS from all robots will also cause your site to render poorly in most web archives, like the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
seociety 16y ago
XML Sitemap along with Google notifications goes a long way! Many sites do not notify google when their XML sitemap is updated yet it is a very efficient way to achieve instant indexing for new content! While large sites with high PR are crawled frequently, crawling rates for small/medium sites will never result in instant indexing unless they use this method. Use it and gain some search engine results momentum!
Towle_ 16y ago
Wow! Sifting through sixrevisions.com ... they have some fantastic shit. Good writing, sure, but GREAT topics-- and that's such a rarity. A big* high-five to abraham for the submission. *The kind that makes your hand sting. Because I love you, that's why.
bryanh 16y ago
The same thing I said in their comments (dunno if they'll approve my blatant self-promotion): If anyone is interested in automating their fetish for checking their organic SEO rankings, I’d be happy to give you a free spin in my app http://rankiac.com/ http://rankiac.com/. Basically, you enter your keywords and domains, and we email you daily with changes in ranking. Hit me up at contact@rankiac.com if you want your account sprinkled with some free “Pro” subscription magic dust! Regardless, this is a good list and contains a few things I ALWAYS forget to do (site-map & Google Webmaster tools).
- akronim 16y ago
  Do rankings change often enough to need daily emails?
  - bryanh 16y ago
    Some people like it as it keeps their mind on SEO and their keywords. We also offer a weekly option which might be more appropriate for some.
RtodaAV 16y ago
Dmoz? Good Luck getting in.
citizenkeys 16y ago
Good organic seo is almost always the best way to advertise your site. Spending money on fleshing out your site with lots of pages with lots of relevant specific copy and keywords is much more cost-effective than simply spending money to advertise the site. A couple important things the article leaves out: 1) Create a cron script or otherwise automate sitemap creation. Otherwise, its easy to forget to manually add new pages. 2) Put a useful succinct meta description in the header of all your pages. Otherwise you leave the little blurb of text that shows up on google search results to chance and miss potential clicks on search results.
olalonde 16y ago
For a more comprehensive list: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-devel...
itiztv 16y ago
.
BweezySearch 16y ago
Wouldn't using an "uptime" tool affect your analytics? Not a problem for an established site, but for a website just launching, you would probably want to have very exact numbers day by day...
coffee 16y ago
"Submit Your Website to Dmoz" Are you kidding me? Please, please don't waste your time...
terra_t 16y ago
uhhhh... i can't believe so much blogspam is getting in here

221 points by abraham 16y ago

There is only one thing on the list that is not completely obvious -- dmoz still matters. Is it possible? Sure, it's a valuable list of sites touched by a lot of care and bureaucracy, but does anybody who wasn't online 10 years ago know about it?

dmitri1981 16y ago
I can't imagine Google pays much attention to this anymore. Many of the categories have near absent editors and it can take over 6 months to be added.
- carbocation 16y ago
  6 months? I've been waiting for 4 years in my category.
  - richbradshaw 16y ago
    I've been waiting over 5 now! It's a joke! I even applied to be an editor for the category 3 years ago to try and speed it up...
    - RtodaAV 16y ago
      I tried that also.
    - zach 16y ago
      At least you could submit. They had some sort of catastrophe four years ago when I tried to submit -- there was just some sort of "come back in a few months... yeah" blurb. I forgot all about it until I saw this, so I guess I'll check back sometime in 2013.
terrellm 16y ago
DMOZ does matter, as do many of the old directories that are hand curated (Yahoo Dir, Business.com, Best of the Web, and hundreds of small directories). These directories are valued by the search engines because all listings are not automatically approved, so there is a certain quality aspect to the listings. While the directories don't send very much traffic, they do pass trust to the sites they are linking to. It can be tough to get a DMOZ listing, particularly if the category you are applying to doesn't currently have an editor. However, it's worth it if you can get accepted.

joshrule 16y ago

As someone just starting up their first website (http://wayofthescholar.com http://wayofthescholar.com), there's a lot of helpful material here, and a lot I still need to work through. Although each item may be obvious and discussed in greater depth a thousand other places, a list is sometimes really helpful.

yread 16y ago

+1 for not saying "8 Things You Should do..."

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
Yeah, God forbid you should number your main points. Seriously, what is the problem with a list post? Yes, it's a hook. Why is that a problem?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- AgentConundrum 16y ago
  Personally, I don't really think there's anything wrong with a "x tips for y" title, but it does go against the submission guidelines for HN: If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids." I think the point of the guideline is to keep things fact-oriented here, and to keep the amount of sensationalism, hyperbole, and "link-baiting" on HN to a minimum.
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    I think the point of the guideline is to keep things fact-oriented here, and to keep the amount of sensationalism, hyperbole, and "link-baiting" on HN to a minimum. I agree that we should respect the HN submission guidelines, but the OP seemed to be expressing approval that the original post wasn't titled as such. Additionally, I hardly think that numbering your main points counts as sensationalism or hyperbole. Maybe it's link-baiting in some cases, but I think that's a stretch.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

iworkforthem 16y ago

I would also redirect my feeds/rss to FeedBurner, just to have an idea the number of subscribers I might have, and which are the more popular items people read about me.

steveklabnik 16y ago
Not to mention that you can move feeds later and keep all of your subscribers. I've done this, it's super useful.
- riledhel 16y ago
  And you save bandwidth and gather stats...

gabrielroth 16y ago

OK, to everyone who read this list and said, 'That stuff is all obvious': What would you add to the list?

alexro 16y ago
1) Write a blog post about your launch 2) Let others know 3) Monitor Twitter for the chance of mentioning your product 4) Contact influential bloggers ADD: most importantly, understand why "they" don't come :)
melissamiranda 16y ago
How about some good old promotion? Contact bloggers and try to get some PR. Here's a few good articles that have been mentioned in HN: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product//2008/08/05/startup-marketing-advice-from-balsamiq-studios/ http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product//2008/08/05/startup-market... http://blog.zferral.com/post/972974853/startup-marketing-getting-your-startup-noticed-and http://blog.zferral.com/post/972974853/startup-marketing-get... http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-i-pitched-techcrunch-and-13-ways-to-get-press-when-you-launch-your-startup/ http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/how-i-pitched-te... http://blog.traindom.com/places-where-to-submit-your-startup-for-coverage/ http://blog.traindom.com/places-where-to-submit-your-startup...

ary 16y ago

After launching? Not to nit pick, but I'm pretty sure nearly all of these should be done before you launch.

seiji 16y ago
Depends on what you are launching. A weekend project? Just get your work in front of people. Something you spent six months in stealth mode working on? Sure, get it all set up before launch during the development process.
- ary 16y ago
  Can't say I agree with you. Even with weekend projects I'll throw some analytics and other quantification tools in from the beginning as I want to see what kind of traction it gets. How else would I even begin to know if there's interest in what I've created?

bill-nordwall 16y ago

Be careful with these robots.txt suggestions. Disallowing your css/js files in your robots.txt is probably not a good idea - Matt Cutts said as much himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNEipHjsEPU If you're running Wordpress, disallowing your /uploads/ directory will nuke your Google Image Search prospects, as Googlebot won't be able to crawl any of your images to begin with. Also, submitting to a paid directory such as Best of the Web or the Yahoo! Directory would be a much better use of your time. DMOZ is still a valuable directory (for a lot of reasons), but the likelihood is small that they will review, let alone add your site to the directory in a timely manner (if ever). A few other things worth doing: - Create a Twitter account for your site. - Create a Facebook page for your site.

gojomo 16y ago
Indeed. Blocking JS and CSS from all robots will also cause your site to render poorly in most web archives, like the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

seociety 16y ago

XML Sitemap along with Google notifications goes a long way! Many sites do not notify google when their XML sitemap is updated yet it is a very efficient way to achieve instant indexing for new content! While large sites with high PR are crawled frequently, crawling rates for small/medium sites will never result in instant indexing unless they use this method. Use it and gain some search engine results momentum!

Towle_ 16y ago

Wow! Sifting through sixrevisions.com ... they have some fantastic shit. Good writing, sure, but GREAT topics-- and that's such a rarity. A big* high-five to abraham for the submission. *The kind that makes your hand sting. Because I love you, that's why.

bryanh 16y ago

The same thing I said in their comments (dunno if they'll approve my blatant self-promotion): If anyone is interested in automating their fetish for checking their organic SEO rankings, I’d be happy to give you a free spin in my app http://rankiac.com/ http://rankiac.com/. Basically, you enter your keywords and domains, and we email you daily with changes in ranking. Hit me up at contact@rankiac.com if you want your account sprinkled with some free “Pro” subscription magic dust! Regardless, this is a good list and contains a few things I ALWAYS forget to do (site-map & Google Webmaster tools).

akronim 16y ago
Do rankings change often enough to need daily emails?
- bryanh 16y ago
  Some people like it as it keeps their mind on SEO and their keywords. We also offer a weekly option which might be more appropriate for some.

RtodaAV 16y ago

Dmoz? Good Luck getting in.

citizenkeys 16y ago

Good organic seo is almost always the best way to advertise your site. Spending money on fleshing out your site with lots of pages with lots of relevant specific copy and keywords is much more cost-effective than simply spending money to advertise the site. A couple important things the article leaves out: 1) Create a cron script or otherwise automate sitemap creation. Otherwise, its easy to forget to manually add new pages. 2) Put a useful succinct meta description in the header of all your pages. Otherwise you leave the little blurb of text that shows up on google search results to chance and miss potential clicks on search results.

olalonde 16y ago

For a more comprehensive list: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-developer-know-before-building-a-public-web-site http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72394/what-should-a-devel...

itiztv 16y ago

BweezySearch 16y ago

Wouldn't using an "uptime" tool affect your analytics? Not a problem for an established site, but for a website just launching, you would probably want to have very exact numbers day by day...

coffee 16y ago

"Submit Your Website to Dmoz" Are you kidding me? Please, please don't waste your time...

terra_t 16y ago

uhhhh... i can't believe so much blogspam is getting in here