1. Encourage friends, family, work colleagues and associates to visit your new website. Ask them for feedback and encourage them to share it with their friends and family. You might consider offering a local ‘friends & family’ or ‘first-time customer’ discount to drive early engagement and conversion. 

2. Set up / claim and optimise your Google Business Profile (GBP). Keep your content fresh e.g. update your opening hours and services, answer FAQs, upload new images & videos. Add your website address to GBP along with compelling reasons to visit your site. Aim to post at least once a week.

3. Request & respond to online customer reviews on Google, Yell.com and other reviews platforms relevant for your trade/industry. Responding appropriately and within good time sends signals to search engines that you deliver a good end-to-end customer experience. It’s a good idea to showcase new customer reviews/ratings on your website to instil trust and drive conversion.

4. Set up social media accounts like Facebook and post unique, shareable content regularly Add a link to your website. Announce the launch of your new website on your social platforms. Aim to post relevant content on your specialist subject, authored by you. Add a website link back to the relevant page of your site on posts and promote compelling reasons to visit. Add hashtags to posts to increase relevance, targeting specific keywords and locations. Why not run a competition? First 10 replies to the post get X% off or Free X. Acknowledge and respond to customer’s engagement / posts in good time to deliver the best customer experience.

5. Drive trusted, relevant, authoritative links to your website. Ask partners/ suppliers/ clients you work with to add backlinks from their site to yours eg: citing you as a trusted partner or preferred supplier. Post to other relevant trade/industry/local forums and blogs and include links back to your website when it’s relevant to encourage more traffic – but don’t spam, that gives a poor user experience, and can be a negative ranking factor in search results.

6. Promote your website address offline & online to drive more traffic, for example on the end of your email signature / company van / shopfront / posters/ leaflets / business-cards / office stationery.

7. Keep your website pages updated and aim to add new fresh, relevant content regularly to attract new visitors and provide reasons to repeat visit. Regular updates send signals to search engines that you’re an active and your pages are relevant to return to answer users' queries. Updates need to be a substantial – changing a few words here and there will not qualify as an update – aim to add value: new, rich, engaging content that’s helpful, relevant and compelling. 

8. List and promote your business Name, Address & Phone (known as NAP) consistently online. This is important information for your visitors and helps build basic 'trust' ranking signals, helping search engines authenticate you are a UK-based business. It also helps search engines affiliate your overall online presence and reputation, which informs your website pages ranking power. Promote your trading NAP consistently on every page of your website and on all online platforms for the best chance of being found, trusted and chosen for all your products / services.