design company” to “digital agency” to blog on their personal sites. Those will become both anchor text and in-text co-occurrence.

Pre-Launch Reviews

Reach out to influencers both in your industry and the Web design industry and offer them a test run of your site before it goes live. FollowerWonk is your best bet to find these people. Asking them to review it on their blog brings you buzz, links and your first feedback from users with no association to your brand. That user feedback could be more valuable than any link you get from it.

Post-Launch Press

Last month, I went on a little rant about 11 things that we need to stop doing in link building. The “no-news press releases” was one of them. Your new site and brand are probably some of the biggest news; so, this is a perfect time for some old-fashioned press. We sent out a release via PR Newswire; but, we also pitched our contacts in our local markets (Atlanta, Tampa and Gainesville, FL) to garner the hometown hero press.

Social Sharing

Launching your new site will easily be one of your most shared pieces on social media.

Tell Your Clients

On the same vein as pumping up your internal team about the new launch, tell your clients, partners, friends and random people you meet in Starbucks about your new site - ask them to share it, too. We sent out personalized emails to our clients letting them know of the change and what they can expect, ending it by asking them for their feedback and to share it with their friends. People are much more inclined to share something if you ask for their opinion first.

Pre-Launch Teasers

About a month before we launched, we started teasing our new brand and parts of our new site. We had a series of blog posts leading up to it, put screenshots of the site being built on Instagram and Facebook, and tweeted about our “big news” coming. It got people excited; it got people talking; and, it got people to stay tuned for the official launch. The post announcing our launch and our new brand had more than 2x the reach and engagement that our posts typically see. Twenty-seven people shared it on their pages, further expanding our reach. Unfortunately, this is what it looked like when they were sharing.