Important Website Set Up and Design Tips

So, you want to start building your business online and create a solid, expert web presence?

Before you start building your site you need to do keyword research. This is an important and often overlooked part to building a new page. Get started by looking in Google for other sites on the same topic your blog will be and have a look to see what keywords they may be targeting. Start making a list of the words that someone would be typing in when trying to find your site. Then go to Wordtracker and start looking for more keywords.

Hosting

Using good web hosting is a critical decision in the website building process. You want a host that is reliable, has good customer service and someone who's stable enough you can be pretty sure they won't go out of business anytime soon.

Website Design

There are so many choices and details for website design I'm just going to stay with the basics here. You can get yourself a static website or a content management system. I almost always choose WordPress for my content management system because it is easy to setup, easy to customize, easy to use and very search engine friendly.

There are many different systems you can use to create a website. One popular but complicated program is Dreamweaver. You can also get site builders that come with hosting (I don't normally recommend this one because it is restrictive) . You can use WordPress as a website or use another type of content management system like the program Joomla (also free).

If you've got some experience with website design, you might want to do it yourself. Or, if you don't think you can build a good looking website then hire a professional to do it right.

Remember, though, that your website doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, there is a train of thought to say if your site looks more 'homemade' that it may be good for business.

Setup

Plan your pages: Know how many pages you want to start with and how much information you will be providing on each page.

Here are some of the typical pages you will find on a website:

Index - this is of course the main page
About - People look for this and you should have it. Have your picture, your name and details about the business and about you.
Contact - Another one that people look for, make it easy to find
Services - if you offer services

Keyword research

Do your research on all the keywords you might possibly want to target. Where I go for my keyword research: Wordtracker & Google Analytics Keyword Tool

You'll want to use the keywords in any meta tags you use. An important meta tag to use is the meta description because the wording you use will often show up in the search engines. The title is also important too, and can contain keywords. You can also use keywords to name the page and the domain URL. for example http://www.site.com/keywords-go-here.html - use dashes to separate the words.

Make sure your use of keywords anywhere seems natural and not 'stuffed'.

Setup a Sitemap

It's a good idea to get your site set up with a sitemap. When Google finds your site it will 'crawl' through all the different pages you have set up. If you have a sitemap it directs those crawls to all the pages you want to be found and indexed by the search engine, ensuring your important pages get found.

You can use a Sitemap creator tool to get yourself a sitemap in both .xml and .html forms. Once you have sitemap go to Googles Webmaster Tools to let them know you've added it.

Get Incoming Links

There are many ways to start getting links incoming to your site. Here are a few things to set-up:

Website Directories - There are hundreds of website directories all over the internet that allow you to post your website for free. You don't have to submit to them all (and you likely don't have time to) but it's a good idea to find a few with a good Google Pagerank and submit your site to them. Yahoo has a paid, quality directory that you may want to consider adding your listing to.

Article Directories - Posting an article to directories is a great way to get links back to your website. Write quality articles that get noticed and your sure to get some traffic from those directories as well. EzineArticles.com is one of the most respected article directories.

Comments - There are many blogs that now disable the no-follow tag that is installed so comment on their blogs will give you an incoming link.

Set up 404 Error pages

Some web hosts have a spot in the control panel where you can just enter in the URL of the page you'd like to redirect to. With other hosts you may have to just set up a redirect and forward the standard (read: ugly, plain and non-functional) 404 redirect to a page you've created.

You can use your domain name if you like but you can also get creative with this and offer people a little surprise just for finding the 404 Redirect page.

Here are some ideas of what to put on an error page:

- Newsletter or mailing list sign up - If you are building a list then this is a prime opportunity to tell a bit about it and ask the person to sign up.
- Give a gift - Offer a free report or audio as a 'surprise' gift to make up for them not finding the page they were looking for.
- Point to your articles - If someone is looking for a page on your site then are interested in what you have to say. Point them to some great articles you have written and help them dive deeper into your website.

Set up your redirect when you set up the website or you're likely to forget about it and loose people who find nothing when they come to the wrong page on your site.

These are just a few things to consider when building your website, the options are really endless and your website will be a constant work in progress. But why not keep it simple to start? You can always get more complicated as your site grows and you know it's needs more clearly.

For now just get the site up. It's better to take action then to try and be absolutely perfect.

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