Getting Fast Results with SEO – Part 2 in our series

Previously in our series we faced a question by one of our clients:  If I have a new website launching in 3 weeks,  what can I do to continue to improve SEO in the short time frame before the new website launches?

My initial reaction to this question mainly included just get the new site launched as soon as possible.   But as many of you know,  a website launch that is supposed to happen in 3 weeks can become 6 months, so why stop taking care of your online presence and let everything to go stale waiting for the new site?

After some thought, when in this scenario,  your best strategy is to focus on off-site SEO factors.  Here are some ideas where to start:

1. Adwords campaigns – many folks don’t realize that Adwords or any kind of pay-per-click advertising does not necessarily have to be tied to your current website.  If you can create landing pages (what is a landing page?),  that your developers can leave alone during your development process,  you can still drive traffic to your site.
2. Linking Campaign – Working on link backs to your website from other websites will always benefit the search performance of your site and since the links happen on other’s websites, you web development is not a factor.  However,  you will need to be careful with what pages you are requesting links to.  If your brand new site includes changing page addresses,  (see our initial example,  in this case we had an html site moving to WordPress/php site,  all the page address changed from .htm to .php) you will want to make sure and go back to your link partners once the new site is live and make sure their links are updated.   Links that just reference your domain name should always be OK.
3. Social Media – While you are waiting for that new website, this would be a great opportunity to catch up on your social media marketing.  Posts on blogs, twitter and other social media sites can provide link backs to your site.  Keyword rich posts can also help drive traffic to your site.  And again,  since this all happens independent of your website,  you don’t have to depend on your web developers or interfere with their work.

If your team has already established a good routine with your seo campaigns and maintaining your website,  you don’t want to stop your good habits and hope you can pick them up again later.

Do you have examples of marketing heroics that took place during a website re-design?   Share you stories!