Once my site goes live what's the first thing to do?

step 1... dont submit to search engines
step 2... make sure on page SEO is completed
step 3... backlink the website till it gets #1 position

1) Grab a glass of Johnny Walker black label
2) Backlink
3) Grab another Johnny Walker black label
4) Backlink
5) one more Johnny Walker black label
6) Backlink
7) laugh as you grab another Johnny Walker black label
8) Backlink
9) joke with yourself that your tolerance use to be so much higher... as you get another Johnny Walker black label
10) Backlink
11) fall asleep while backlinking

Wow I could throw you a list a mile long but I will detail the top most important things!

What To Do
-----------
Keep Adding Unique Content Monthly or More Often
Comment on Blogs for Back-Links
Participate in High PR Forums Like This with Site in Signature
Make Videos & Put Links In Those Back To Your Site
Create Articles & Distribute to the Higher PR Directories (Ezine, GoArticles, Etc..)
*There are guides on that for free around here, also you can typically re-use your web content for that without issue so it does double duty if its informative and not sales-ish. Articles aren't as useful as they once were but still make good back-links.
Start Building A Contact List
* I HIGHLY suggest including (Optional) Mobile Number in addition to the email field.

What NOT to Do
---------------
Buy 20,000 bookmarks to be delivered in 1 day
Spam your web address on thousands of sites
Submit your site 20X to every search engine
Ping Your Blog More than twice a day (Every 12 hours is Ok)

1. Fill your site with good content (I assume you're doing this right now)
2. Start building your list from day 1 (be in touch with your subscribers on a regular basis, build a relationships with them)
3. Start building backlinks to your homepage as well as inner sites
4. Add more content
5. Build more links

Thats what I would do.

Cheers

I usually start with social bookmarking or blog commenting and wait for my sites to get indexed through those links. I also make it a point to create a video relating to the content of my sites posted to you tube with home page or inner page url as the only thing in the description. The same video is also featured on whatever page I'm linking back to. Articles on my sites are submitted to the top directories after they've been indexed along with a sig that points back to my site.

Melissa if you back-link to relevant blogs with helpful info then absolutely it can boost your rankings. It helped my site index lightening fast.

You really need to give more information about your site and your business intentions to get a better answer.

A site is very vague.

I would say work on your marketing efforts and link building after your site is live. Make sure your on page seo is up to par and then concentrate on building links on high authority related websites to your product or service.

Make sure your opt-in form is up before you do anything else!

There is one very important thing that you need to do right before you launch your website, and it is planning.

Things like:
1) What is the goal of my website (get #1 in Google, rank for X number of keywords, get x number of visitors per day, get x number of opt-ins). Whatever it is - right it down.

2) What is my budget for this website (how much I can do myself and what I need to outsource in Fiverr or anywhere else)?

3) Set a time for your goal - for example, I want to have 50 visitors per day within 30 days.

Believe me, these questions will save you tons of time and frustration. If you will just do backlinking without any strategy at all - forget about long lasting results - you will just get to the point where you will have too many things to do and you will lose direction completely.

Define what is a success for you with this website and only then start implementation.

I hope this helps.
Peter

Go and sign up for a daily back link service like Drippable or Drip Feed Blasts. If you can't afford it, go work a temp job till you can. lol

Drippable is cheaper, but I'm not sure about their results.

Make sure everything is in places and work correctly. The page doesn't take long to download and also build high quality content on your site. Then start with your SEO

Once you go live its time for promotion.

To quickly index your site submit it to Digg.com and your RSS feed to Feedage. You should be indexed within 24 hours. That two step process HAS never failed me. I always get indexed that way.

Next is to start looking for niche related forums. Once you find 3 to 5 active forums (daily posts) sign up and start providing value to the community. Advertise your link (if allowed) in your signature and you will start seeing very targeted traffic quickly. They will also count as a backlink, but not really a powerful one because you shouldn't be using anchor text--you should be using text that will get you the best CTR's.

As for normal link building (with anchors) hit up the Warrior For Hire forum. Great services, great prices, and great results depending on your keyword competition.

Make sure you get a Facebook Fanpage rocking and a Twitter account fired up. Make a video about your site and toss it up on Youtube. Sign up for an account on Youtube with your keyword as your username.

Depending on your niche you may find Press Releases to be beneficial, not only from an SEO standpoint but also from a traffic one. You can find affordable release submission for around $20 and they are well worth it.

Ensure that your ON-PAGE SEO is ready to rock. This means proper keyword density, keywords in title tags, descriptions tags and h1 tags. Also ensure that you have correctly assessed your keyword competition. Do you know what its going to take to rank, or are you just going to wing it and see what happens?

Finally, PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE. Any place that is related and you can drop a link for FREE do it. Any time you can mention your site, go for it. Guest blog posting on related sites is a good way to drum up some buzz.

Get some articles out on the various article directories to get an easy peasy backlink. Work your Facebook fanpage hard. Get new fans, offer promotions or free gifts to get likes, advertise through Facebook itself (really cheap when advertising fanpages).

I think that's it for now. I could go on and on and on, but I don't want to bore you.

Make sure about SEO
& backlink it until & unless its on top!

Melissa,
There are lot of things that have to be done repeatedly. I have recently written a book THE 24 HOUR SEO WORKOUT [What You Should Accomplish DailyTo Rank In SERP]
I am willing to share a copy with you if you like. my email is owais52[at]gmail.com

I agree with seoguru1 you must make sure your site has been seo optimized first and then backlink it.

Do build your backlinking and keep the content of your site updated. Do write some quality articles for your site to be updated always and the content is constantly new. And also, do some SEO for the optimization of your site.

Very useful information. I've just recently made a minisite in health niche (my first 1, yeheyyy), keywords got low competition. I have done article submission to article directories. And I think I will only do unique article submission for my mini site's backlinks.
My question: in making backlinks, is article submission more better/powerful/stronger than the other methods in making backlinks like profile backlinks, blog comments, etc? (lol keywords are on my signature)