Launching or Updating Your Website
Contents
When you launch your site, you should create a .xml sitemap and submit it in Google Search Console. Google and other search engines will follow links to crawl and index your pages. Search engines will accept almost any site or page that it finds and will display them in search results based on ranking algorithms. Ranking algorithms are automated, are always changing and are sophisticated.
If you are doing a site update, URLs on the updated site should be the same as on the old site. For example, if on the old site your about-us page is domain-name/about/, then after the site update you want the new about-us page to be at the same address. Do not change it to domain-name/about-us/, domain-name/team/about or any other address. If some file names have changed because pages are reorganized, deleted, combined etc., we recommend matching file names of new pages to the file names of popular pages on the old site before going live. Unless there is a good argument to improve the folder structure, pages should be in the same folder structure so that the URL’s do not change.
An alternative to matching URLs is to create permanent (301) redirects from all the old URLs to the corresponding new pages. The redirect option tells the search engine that the page has moved. This is especially important for pages that bring in organic traffic so that when a user clicks on your search result they are not brought to a page that no longer exists.
Monitoring
Monitor your rankings and continuously try to optimize your pages so that they rank as high as possible. Search engine rankings don’t stay consistent, so don’t panic if your positions fluctuate. Just stick to your authority building strategy and updates. There are several tools to monitor your website rankings over time based on chosen keywords. Choose a ranking monitor based on your needs and budget.
Also check Google Search Console to stay up to date on how your site is indexed by Google.
Use Google Analytics to stay informed on the behaviour of site visitors and adjust accordingly.
Conclusion
Create quality content that will delight your users, include the most relevant keywords that have good search volume and get incoming links from high-authority websites.
Create the best possible site so that search engines make it a top choice to best serve its users.