If you’re making big changes to your website is the New Year the best time to build or rebuild? The answer will vary by business. But in general you can’t compete with solid, trusted, content-filled existing websites particularly in competitive categories.
You Can’t Compete
The answer is no if you’re launching a new law firm website. Why? Because you’ll be competing against the people down the street practicing in your practice area who have poured many thousands of dollars, hours, videos, copy and all the rest into their big strong websites.
A solid, strongly ranked website vs. your brand new un-cached by Google content is too new to compete against existing, quality websites which have years of regular updates and Google rankings.
Those other websites have many pages that have been cached by Google, ranked by Google. Your brand new website needs months to get multiple pages ranked and cached by Google. You’ll never get to the top of Google ongoing, regularly when your website is new. Can’t happen and anyone who says that they can do it is only out for your money.
No One Can Rank You Quickly
If someone says, “sure, you just need to put a lot of money into it and you can beat anyone online.” This is not true. They’re lying or will use black hat or black ops tactics that can burn you, quickly, with Google.
As for Yahoo and Bing, you should consider the website’s performance there as well and you’ll have the same uphill battle to the top of Google, but a good part of your traffic must come through Google. You can’t avoid Google and decide to only rank on Yahoo. Close to 75% of people searching, search on Google, followed by Yahoo and then, Bing.
Competitors up their budgets for SEO/SEM and Pay-Per-Click at the New Year to stay where they are or to beat out or rise above competitors. So if you’re in a business where clients are likely to need your services at the beginning of a new year and you want your site at the top of search, start six months prior to that date to secure your place.
Websites Need Time to Rank on Google
If your website is going to be found at the top of search engines on or BY New Year’s eve, you should have launched several months prior. That’s true of any business at any time. If you need immediate business, you’re better off asking existing clients or past clients for referrals or setting up a referral network.
A new website is not going to be able to compete or hit the top of search until it is a trusted Google entity. Do you have strong, original content and a wide range of media available to your audience? Great. Now, let that website marinate so that it has time to do and perform long-term.
Now, keep adding great content, forever so that Google has a reason to keep coming back.
Getting to the top of Google isn’t a race: it’s a slow and steady performance and regular provision of new content. You can’t start playing in the NFL in a month. You have to go through all the vetting of your skill and ability to perform all the time.
Websites are not miraculous answers to your marketing needs. Why? Because if it’s a new website build, and you’re targeting New Year’s as the time by which you want to be found on Google, you’re up against websites that have been doing the right thing for many years, or many months.
New Year’s resolutions often include website rebuilds, shaking things up, changing what doesn’t work which often includes websites. The New Year is also when many businesses launch, relaunch, announcements are made.
Be sure that your marketing is year-round and that you do market research to ensure that the timing is right and the demand is there for the services that you’re considering.
