Promoting an Unlaunched Website

Over at Intelligent Retail (my day job) I have been working on Scribbler, a supplier of brilliant and hilarious greetings cards with 15 stores UK wide. Having developed their new e-commerce website using the equally brilliant Intelligent Retail Connect multichannel EPOS system, they are now ready to go-live and are already thinking about seo.

Obviously, because the new site is not launched yet this puts some severe roadblocks in the way of traditional seo techniques!

After all you can't optimise a site that is not even there yet and you can't promote pages that don't exist!

What you can do however is a little bit of forward planning. Here are some tips...

Setting up social media accounts

Most 'switched on' clients will be aware of social media and it's impact on search engine results and web traffic. Setting up accounts for the use of your client whilst you are waiting for a website launch can save time later and give more credence to any posts that are done under these accounts. It takes time to build up friends or followers and reputation and history counts for a lot.

Utilising current resources

As proven in this post, a bit of cross-promotion never hurts. Utilise accounts from other clients (if appropriate), personal blogs, Facebook pages, Digg profiles, the long you have been in the business the more of these you will have. This is especially good if your other clients and accounts are trading in the same vertical market but if you are creative you can add value, even across subject lines.

Directory Submissions

If you're a search engine marketer, then you will already have a trusted list of directories which you can submit your client websites too. As directory submissions can take months to get approved it makes sense to get this out of the way as soon as you can.

Teaser campaigns

I think we have all used teaser campaigns at one point or another. Create some interest before launch using websites like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIN Groups, Facebook Pages. Another good idea is to look for bloggers in your vertical market, make contact with them ask if you can write a guest post. There are many services out there that allow you to do this. One that we like is called Pay Per Post.

Create content

Your client is paying you money to promote their website, so if you are in link building deadlock get your creative head on and write some top quality and focused text content for the new website. This has two effects: it means you won't have to do it later (when you are REALLY being pushed to show results) and it keeps your "eye on the ball." If you are thinking about your customers products and keywords then it makes promoting via external channels easier, especially on unfamiliar subjects.

Anyhow, that is about it for now. I hope this is useful to some of you.

Any other tips you might have on how to make a head start with seo campaigns please let us know in the comments.