Eight Steps to Building Your Web Site
The key to a successful web site is good content. You must give your visitors a reason to come to your site, as well as a reason for them to return in the future. There’s no reason to spend a lot of money on a fancy design if you don’t have valuable information for your visitors to read. Let’s step through the process of building a Web Site that will generate good traffic and more income for your business.
1. Purpose - Before you get started, you need to know why you are going to spend your time, effort, and money to build a Web Site. If you operate a small business, or plan to start one:
Your Web Site Should be the Center of Your Marketing Plan.
The bottom line of any marketing effort is to generate more business for your company, and the Internet is a great tool for increasing your revenues.
There are four ways to create income using a Web Site
1. Market Your Product
2. Market Your Service
3. Market Your Information
4. Market someone else’s Product, Service, or Information
No matter what your business, you can create income from each of these sources with an effective Web Site that provides visitors some valuable content.
2. Theme - The best way to get visitors to your web site is to establish credibility by having content that is of interest to your visitors, and does well in the Search Engines. If you are already in business and have written a marketing plan, the content for your Web Site should be based on your Main Marketing Message. If you are just getting started, come up with a couple ideas that you are passionate enough about to want to write about. Either way, its time to do a little research.
3. Keywords - Using your Main Marketing Message, or that great concept you’re ready to take action on, develop a list of 10 to 12 keywords that represent the Theme of your Web Site. When building your list of keywords, never limit yourself to single words, as most people search for two or three word phrases.
When deciding on keywords it is important to know two things
What are people searching for?
How much competition is there for your keywords (and hence your business) on the Internet?
Once you have this list, you can get a feel for how often people actually search for those words by going to the Google web site where you can do some keyword research with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. This tool shows you keyword search volume and advertiser competition. It also also provides similar keywords and multi-word key phrases you might want to consider.
When you are done, go to the Google Search Page and find out how many pages are listed when you search for each of your keywords. This will give you a feel for how much competition you will have.
Those keywords with the highest ratio of Searches / Pages will provide you with the best results with the search engines.
If you are ready to get real serious about Keyword analysis, we recommend trying out WordTracker.
You can research a database of millions of actual queries of terms that people search for.
You enter some keywords, and they tell you how often people search for them, and also tell you how many competing sites use those keywords. WordTracker helps you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service - many of which you might never have considered. You'll find out how popular these keywords really are. Then for each major search engine, they will show you the chances of making the top 10. Even if you’re not ready to spend any money, take the trial to get a feel for the power of this tool. Once you see how useful this tool is, we think you will find that its well worth the small cost.
4. Register Domain Name - Now that you have some keywords for your web site, its time to pick a domain name. If you are already in business, its a good idea to register your company name as a domain name (www.mycompanyname.com). We use GoDaddy.com to inexpensively manage all of our domain names.
Whether or not you are already in business, its even more important, for marketing purposes, for you to look for a domain name that contains your top keywords. Use this domain name for your Web Site and forward your company name domain to this Web Site domain. If you are going to build your own Web Site, you can also buy your domain name from the vendor you plan to have host your Web Site.
5. Choose Your Hosting Company - There are many things to consider when choosing a web hosting company. Rather than searching for the lowest price, we recommend you look for the best value for your individual needs. We’ve listed a the two hosting services that we currently use for ourselves and our clients. Check them out on the Building Your Web Site Resources page.
6. Create Content - The most important thing you have to do is create the content for your web site, especially the home page. You must tell your visitors who you are and what’s in it for them. Click here to learn more about creating your web site content.
7. Submit to the Search Engines - Start with the free listings and then consider pay-per click advertising. Click here to learn more about Search Engines.
8. Promote Your Web Site - Now that you’ve got a Web Site, its time to tell the world about it. Click here to learn more about promoting your Web Site.
This sounds like a lot of work. Isn’t there a better way, you might ask? Yes there is, and we had to learn about it the hard way. We are just glad we found Site Build-It for our newer web sites. You will be guided step by step through the process of building a web site with quality content that attracts visitors and generates revenue for your business. Read more now, or go directly to Site Build-It now.
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