Website Launch and/or Relaunch Google Issues

There are several questions we get when a website first launches and most questions are related to the search engines or why no one can find your website after launch. Let's go over a quick list of common issues.

1. Cache

Computer/iPad/iPhone/Android Browser - You may be seeing your old website still because your browser is caching your old website. The reason for this is “caching,” which is something the browser on your computer, tablet, or mobile phone does when you visit a website. In order to speed up load times for a website, your browser caches or stores certain information (snapshots) of pages you visit so the next time you come back to the website much of the same data is already stored on your computer in your browser. Style sheets and images are stored so when you hit a different page your device doesn’t need to download all the same data from the server, it simply grabs it from your “cache.” The problem with this is if you’ve visited your site recently before updating, the browser is still pulling the same cache data even after you update your website design, which results in the Picasso because a new style sheet or image isn’t getting downloaded from the server. How do we solve this? Simply clear your browser cache and all the new data will be pulled down. Read more here.

Local ISP DNS Cache - Every website takes 24-48 hours for DNS propagation and can take up to 72 hours. Your local Internet Service Provider (ISP) caches at a local level to speed up the broadband internet for everyone in the area or your community. Every ISP caches. To read more about ISP DNS caching, read here.

2. Google Results After Launch

New Website Launch - If you Google your business name and it says "website coming soon", give Google and other search engines take time to work. Check back in Google in a few days to a few weeks and your website will more than likely have propagated through the search engines and Google will be showing the proper meta results. If you want to do more reading about the Google Recrawl process,  you can read more at Google's help area.

Existing Website Relaunch - If you see your Google results are still showing old data from the old website, give Google and other search engines take time to work. You will need to let them work. Check back in google in 1-2 weeks and your website will more than likely have propagated through the search engines and Google will be showing when you search your name. Let's take a look at a example at the Google "Search Engine Result Pages" (Google SERPS). If you look at the example below, you can Google the business name in question:

Click the down arrow next to the website and hit the "Cached" button.

You will see in this example, that the old website is still showing up (however without the design style sheet, so it looks a bit different). If it's the new website, you will see the new version if you hit the cache button and it's showing up. That would mean your new website is starting to get picked up by Google. If not, the website will still need more time.

The other way you can see, is if you type in - "site:yourcompanyurl.com" in Google and see if the new pages are starting to get indexed. If you have a large website, this will take more time. If you purchased marketing package from 3plains, we provide a step-by-step process in launching your new website so you won't lose any traffic when cutting over to the newly built website from 3plains. We apply what is known as 301 redirects to your old website pages, submit a XML site map and launch with Google Search Console.

Our step-by-step process for launching your new website included:

• Map URLs and redirects (view below grid)
• Submit XML Site Map to Google (site-map.xml)
• Fix crawl errors in Google Search Console (formerly called Google Webmaster Tools)
• Monitor web traffic in Google Analytics

Example 301 redirects 3plains completes upon launch:

Bing.com pages from the old website with 301 redirects applied. In due time, these will disappear from the Bing.com results. They may take days, weeks or months. Typically, figure 1-3 months to be safe.

3. Keyword Phrase Issues

If your website is brand new and not a re-launch of a existing website, Google and other search engines will take some time for your website to show up in the search engine result pages (or SERPS). This is perfectly normal. I explain it to customers like this. Launching a brand new website, is no different than launching a brand new business in the middle of desert and putting up a sign open for business. No one knows you exist, nor will any traffic drive by and see your sign that you are open.

Now, if you want to show up on the first few pages for key search terms (ie "South Dakota Pheasant Hunting", "Alabama Deer Hunting", "Kentucky Whitetail Hunting", "Colorado Elk Hunting Outfitter", etc.), this process is called organic Search Engine Optimization or "Organic SEO". Organic SEO is one of the most misunderstood services in the industry today. You can't just launch a website and be #1 in Google for a key search term. If it was that easy, everyone would be #1.

Building a website alone won't solve that either. A professional company like 3plains will build out a website design and perform the service of "on page SEO" process. On Page SEO" differs from "Off Page SEO". On page SEO is performing SEO services on your website and Off page SEO is performing SEO services off your website. The SEO process is not as simple as it sounds. You can read more about that here. If that's not good enough or you want to speed up the process, we highly recommend PPC services to start generating leads right away in Google.

4. Meta Information

View the below example (Figure 1). You will see a Meta Title and a Meta Description. These can be changed on your 3plains Online Portal if you don't like them. If you read the first question above, you will know Google does takes some time to work, index your website (ie find it) and update the information. So if you see data you don't like, it's just old and Google will visit your website in the coming days or even weeks and will update it. If you have urgency on this, please let us know and there are steps we can take to help.

Figure 1: Google SERP Example when you google our company "3plains"

5. I want to be on the first page in Google

Your website is not showing up on the 1st page because your site is either brand new, needs additional content, a variety of other algorithmic factors, or needs to be placed on a marketing service plan of some kind. Please call us if you need additional help showing up higher in the Google results or read more on SEO here.

Google takes a lot of what your website provides in the terms of rankings.  Back in the day, simply placing a website up and adding a few links you could dominate and manipulate the rankings. Google realized this and people capitalized until Google made the changes.  Now think of Wikipedia.  Why does that website come up so often when you search many terms?  Because the content and information on the website makes it relevant to the term that was placed in the search.

For example, Colorado Mule Deer Hunting Guide - We see this for the top rankings.  Some things that come into play is, the content on the website - talking about mule deer hunting in Colorado - talk about areas around that they hunt, talk about a typical hunting experience, talk about the tools used to hunt.  All of this Google starts to like.  As well some of these rankings can be attributed to domain age. Meaning a few of these clients look to register their website back in the early 2000's or late 1990's.  Since there was not much out there at that time, if you registered a domain in say 1999, Google found that if you are around that long, you must be doing something right.

You can also read a few articles we have written about website content, the importance of it and a few other SEO articles:

• https://www.3plains.com/blog/importance-of-website-content/
• https://www.3plains.com/blog/quality-traffic-plus-leads-equals-bookings/

6. Driving Traffic

How can I start driving traffic to my website right away since the organic results take several months to start driving traffic?

Pay Per Click (PPC) or better known as Google AdWords or Bing AdWords. You can read more about that here.

I can't find us in Bing, Google, AppleMaps, Yelp, TripAdvisor, BBB, Yellow Pages, Facebook, or other online sources?

Someone needs to manually submit your business to those sources. If you would rather pay us to do it, we would be happy to help with our Local Listing Marketing Package.

Last Updated: 2024-03-24