How to launch a new website and get traffic fast

If you are a new business getting started or if your idea has just grown up enough to become a website, you need traffic fast. Here’s the process I take with my web design business for most of my clients. There is going to be some variation, of course, because every business is different.

But here’s your starting point to get traffic to your newly launched website.

1. Build it out and go live without telling anybody. Even if it’s a single home page with no nav menu yet
2. Make sure it’s getting indexed on Google Search Console (no checkmark on hide this site)
3. Build out the pages of your site in this order. Title, Subtitles, words, pictures. Even if you have titles and then your subtitles say (more content coming soon) you’ve made some great progress.
4. Share links to your site on social and email. Tell people about your site and see if you can get some feedback, then adjust accordingly. Let it run like this for about a month.
5. Check your Google Search Console and your Google Analytics to see if your site is getting the traffic you want. Adjust your titles, subtitles, and other content accordingly.
6. Then run Google ads for a month. You might not ever run Google ads on your site ever again, but this isn’t for the purpose of web traffic in that month. This is market research. This is buzz building. Paying for Google ads isn’t a ranking factor according to Google, but they will give you a lot more data about your website and your web traffic if you pay for Google ads.

The rest is maintenance and growth. Your best bet is to build an audience by continuing to add content that is helpful and relevant to your clients. Post new articles regularly, either monthly or weekly, and then share links to all of those articles on social. Share them again in a quarterly or monthly newsletter.

Doing this, in your own style and rythm, will build up the traffic to your website in just a few months. Yep, I said a few months. Depending on your competitors and your niche, it might take years. Depending on how silly and viral you try to be, it might take a week. (But as Jon Acuff’s wife once told him, go viral for the right reasons)

"We're going to create a viral video." What people say in meetings right before they create the least viral video ever made.

— Jon Acuff (@JonAcuff) February 7, 2015

And while I was looking for that quote, I found this other gem:

Dear businesses, never give money to an individual or organization that promises to create things for you that "go viral."

— Jon Acuff (@JonAcuff) August 5, 2015