Top Ten Things To Consider Before Building Your Website:
- Register your own domain name. There are free services out there like Geocities, Myspace, Homestead and others. These are ok if you are creating a site for a personal humor. If you want to promote a business, be professional and register a domain name. What I mean by this is - Example: www.BusinessName.com. Its cheaper than you think. I personally prefer Webhero.
- Next determine what you want from your website. Some businesses want a site to sell products online. Others are just looking to setup an online business card.
- Know your keywords. If you are selling products from your site, what would someone type in Google or Yahoo search to find your website? If you are a real estate agent in Portland Oregon, what keywords would you want someone to use to find your website? If someone from Philadelphia PA typed in "real estate" in Google and found your site, do you think they would be a good customer? Probably not. What if your site got a lot of visitors for the keyword - "real estate in Portland Oregon". Those visitors would probably be much better customers.
- Put some thought into what you want your domain name to be. The internet has been around for many years and many domain names have already been registered. Webhero provides a tool where you can type in the domain name that you want and it will tell you if it is available and if it is not it will give you a list of alternatives.
- Know your competitor. Just as you would in everyday life, this is just as important online. Run searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the keywords that you want new customers to find you with. Review the sites that are currently on the first and second pages of results.
- Create an SEO plan. This could be as simple as meeting with several local SEO firms and hiring one to promote your site. You may decide to handle this yourself. Depending on how popular the keywords are that you want to get a strong ranking with will determine how much time you will need to put into promoting your site. Keep in mind that you should meet with an SEO firm before you start building your site so that you can get information on optimizing the site.
- Make a list of places that you want to see your web address once your site is created. This might include: your business cards, letterhead, marketing materials, the back of your car, t-shirts...
- Create a list of other websites that you feel your site should be listed on. This might include online business directories for your town or state. If your business is located in Studio City California, try doing a search for "Studio City California business directory" on Yahoo and Google.
- Create a simple layout for your website. The navigation should be located in the same spot on each page. Be careful using java scripts and Flash. This can make it hard for the search engines to read your page and could cause you to rank poorly.
- Plan to include a sitemap. This is a single page to lists every page on your site. This could be an html file or a Google sitemap. If you use an html file be sure to link to it from the main page of your site. This helps the search spiders index more of your site.
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