My website is finish - now what ?

A lot of people think once their website is done, then they're done. They don't need to think about anything else. And that is wrong. You need to get found. Unless you're the 1% of a business who could care less about getting found on a search engine then don't listen to this. But if you're the rest of us, the 99% of us who want to bring business in from the Internet,
which is why we're doing a website, then this is important. Every business needs a business Google account. That is simply an account that you set up with Google. Google has a lot of tools that will help you with your site. They have Google Analytics. They have Google Webmaster tools, which I believe they've renamed, like, 20 times, and I think now it's called Search Console. Those two things together will give you will answer questions for you as your website gets used. It'll be things like what kind of a platform
are most of your users coming in on? Is it a cell phone? Is it a desktop?
Is it a laptop? If it's a cell phone, is it an iPhone? Is it an Android? It'll actually give you all of the specs on all of that stuff. It'll tell you how you're being found. What search words are people actually using to find you. All of these types of things, which as your website matures and you're wanting to grow, you're going to want to know this information. Well, we want to hook that up through your Google account, not mine, not some agency out there, but yours. The reason for that is you want to control. You want to be able to go in and look at this information and analyze it anytime you want. If you choose to hire a search engine optimization company
or a marketing company or something like that in the future. You can give them access to your account, and this is the important thing, if you're a Gmail user anyway, don't use that account. Set up a separate one specifically for your business. Because when you do give that information, the login information away, to some company, a marketing company, whatever in the future, you don't want to have them have access to all of your emails. Your emails need to be kept private. Another thing that Google offers, is a huge one, a Google My Business account within your Google account. What that is, is access to maps. If you don't have this,
you're never going to show up in Google Maps. which is a huge source of traffic for most websites. If you think about the last time that you did a search for whatever, business yourself, you would have seen on the landing, the page that shows up, probably a couple of ads at the top. Then a map with two or three dots on it. In that little box, two or three businesses are listed underneath, then possibly another ad, and then your organic results. People have to scroll these days to even see the organic results. You need to be on maps. You need to be in the top three in your industry, in your area, on maps. The only way to do that is through your Google My Business account. It's free to set up. It's filling out a form, so anybody can set it up for you, or you can set it up yourself. It's not this huge technical wall or anything like that. Just set it up. Use everything in there. Put your business description. If you sell products, you can put your products in there. If you have services, you can put your services in there.
You can put your pricing in there. Literally, anything about your business can go in this. A lot of people these days are using their phones to find things. They'll go to your Google listing, and they should be able to get all the information they need about your business without ever visiting your website. And that is key. Technically, this is more important than your website will ever be. That's how important it is. So get all of that in there.
Upload images, and upload videos, if you're a video person, which I encourage you to be if you're not now. Use all of the tools within your Google My Business account to highlight your business. And the biggest thing is reviews. Get reviews in your Google account. Way more important than any reviews that are put on your website is to be in your Google account. Other, like, outside things that you might need are other review sites. Specifically for the type of business that you are doing. Make sure that you register for whatever that company is. Here's one that I hate, but well, every business owner hates. And if you don't, you will. And that's Yelp.
You might think my industry doesn't really use Yelp. It started out with just restaurants. You would be right if your industry does or doesn't use Yelp.
But the reality is it doesn't matter. Anybody that wants to leave you a review on Yelp can create your business account for you. Yes. You heard that right. It should be very illegal, but whatever. Yelp will allow anybody to create an account. They don't even have to have the right information. They can put the wrong phone number in there.