{"id":2835,"date":"2010-11-08T23:59:09","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T06:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bspcn.com\/?p=2835"},"modified":"2010-11-09T00:00:52","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T07:00:52","slug":"8-things-you-should-do-immediately-after-launching-a-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/08\/8-things-you-should-do-immediately-after-launching-a-website\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Things You Should Do Immediately After Launching a Website"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Karol K<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So you\u2019ve just launched your website<\/a>. The only thing left now is to start creating content and arranging for some promotion, right? Well, not so fast. You first have to do several things to ensure that your site is set up properly and ready for the public.<\/p>\n

Here are a few things you should do right after launching a website (and if you can, do them prior to launching your website publicly).<\/p>\n

1. Create a Sitemap.xml File and a Robots.txt File<\/h3>\n

What are these files? These files are essential for search engines and other web services. They are two out of the five web files that will improve your site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Sitemap.xml<\/a> file is a standard protocol for listing all the URLs that are contained within your website. It gives web spiders like Googlebot<\/a> a better understanding of your website\u2019s structure.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re using WordPress, you\u2019re in luck: The only thing you need to do is to install a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps<\/a>, and it will do all the work for you. This is a valuable WordPress plugin, and is one of six plugins that Six Revisions<\/a> uses on the site.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not using WordPress, you can have a look at XML-Sitemaps.com<\/a>, a simple tool for generating a Sitemap.xml file just by providing your website\u2019s URL.<\/p>\n

\"XML-Sitemaps.com\"<\/p>\n

Robots.txt<\/a> is yet another file that search engines love. It\u2019s a simple text file containing information about which parts of your website search engines should<\/em> and shouldn\u2019t<\/em> visit.<\/p>\n

To create such a file, you can just use a template and modify it to you own needs.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my template (designed for WordPress sites):<\/p>\n

User-agent: *\r\nDisallow: \/cgi-bin\/\r\nDisallow: \/wp-admin\/\r\nDisallow: \/wp-includes\/\r\nDisallow: \/wp-content\/plugins\/\r\nDisallow: \/wp-content\/cache\/\r\nDisallow: \/wp-content\/themes\/\r\nDisallow: \/trackback\/\r\nDisallow: \/feed\/\r\nDisallow: \/author\/\r\nDisallow: \/archives\/\r\nDisallow: \/2009\/\r\nDisallow: \/2010\/\r\nDisallow: \/2011\/\r\nDisallow: \/print\/\r\nDisallow: \/index.php\r\nDisallow: \/*?\r\nDisallow: \/*.php$\r\nDisallow: \/*.js$\r\nDisallow: \/*.inc$\r\nDisallow: \/*.css$\r\nDisallow: *\/feed\/\r\nDisallow: *\/trackback\/\r\nDisallow: *\/print\/\r\nAllow: \/wp-content\/uploads\/<\/pre>\n
You should remember two things regarding robots.txt:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. You don\u2019t want search engines to encounter any duplicate content on your website<\/li>\n
  2. You don\u2019t want search engines to index your private pages and scripts (e.g. the wp-admin files in WordPress)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    If you use WordPress, check out this guide called Optimizing WordPress for Search Engines<\/a> to learn more about Sitemap.xml and robots.xml in the context of SEO and WordPress.<\/p>\n
    2. Set Up Web Analytics<\/h3>\n
    Having stats about the traffic to your website is simply priceless. Without traffic statistics, you won\u2019t know how many people are visiting your site and you will have a hard time figuring out how to improve your site to draw in more traffic.<\/p>\n
    If you want a top-notch and free application that will report data about your website users, then look no further than Google Analytics<\/a>.<\/p>\n
    \"Set<\/p>\n
    Of course, there are alternative web analytics<\/a> software out there, but Google Analytics is the undisputed leader, and not simply because it was created by Google, but because the tool is extremely powerful and easy to use.<\/p>\n
    Here are a few guides and tutorials to read for getting up to speed with Google Analytics:<\/p>\n