When is the best time to launch a website?
There’s an old Chinese saying that I like to paraphrase, the best time to plant an apple tree is ten years ago, the second best time is today. To me, that saying holds true not only for the apple trees I grew up with but also with the websites I help people’s businesses grow with.
On a purely technical note, the longer your website is online and the longer that search engine companies know about your site, the more trust they have in your website. That’s a huge piece of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) game accomplished right off the bat, so taking the time to launch your website sooner rather than later will help build your sites ranks and ensure you place higher in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s).
From a marketing standpoint, there’s simply no reason to not have a website these days. In a post last fall, I talk about how to build a website for less than $100. The purpose of the article was to demonstrate that it’s possible for any business or community organization, regardless of size to launch a quality website for less than $100. In truth, if you take out the cost of hosting the website (which I would gladly donate to any registered charity organization) the actual cost to start a great website is only about $10 a year, which reflects the cost of registering a domain name.
Some of you may remember over the Christmas holidays I offered to donate my time to local charities in return for links to my website, well the campaign was a great success and the local chapter of the Fredericton Meals on Wheels is benefiting from all your kindness with over 40 hours of consulting and a full website redesign. I build the original website over five years ago and it’s interesting to look back at both the design (simplistic) and the content management tool I implemented at the time to see how much things have changed. The important lesson to learn from the Meals on Wheels website? Even though the site wasn’t my best work, the site served a strong purpose for the past few years and will help add to a positive SEO plan as we move forward.
So, to answer my earlier question … the best time to launch a website? Today.
