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7 proactive ways to jump-start your SEO before a site launch

About to launch a new website? You may think you can't do SEO until the site is live, but columnist John Lincoln reminds us that there are many steps you can take beforehand to ensure a smooth site launch.

John Lincoln on March 16, 2016 at 1:15 pm

You’re about to launch your new website. You have a fantastic idea/product and a great team. You understand the basics of SEO. But you think you cannot do SEO without a live site. It is impossible, right?

Actually… no!

It is more than possible. In fact, it is critical.

Way too often, website owners fail to do pre-launch SEO. This results in a poor index of their site. So instead of jumping up in the rankings, their site is ignored by Google and the other search engines and buried deep in the results. They then are stuck with a long climb, even, in many cases, for their branded terms.

Following are seven smart ways to jump-start your SEO before your site launch, and I’m going to show you exactly how to implement each one.

1. Create a “coming soon” page and optimize the basics

Creating a strong, optimized “coming soon” page should be one of the very first things you do as you contemplate your new site. There are lots of reasons why this is important:

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

John Lincoln

John Lincoln is CEO of Ignite Visibility, a digital marketing teacher at the University of California San Diego and author of the book Digital Influencer, A Guide to Achieving Influencer Status Online. Throughout his career, Lincoln has worked with hundreds of websites, ranging from start-ups to household names, and has won awards in SEO, CRO, analytics and Social Media. In the media, Lincoln has been featured on sites such as Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc. Magazine, CIO magazine and more.