You will need to do quite a bit of planning before your website can become a reality.

This is true even if you just want to create a simple blog page to post your thoughts for the rest of the world to read.

It is true that creating your own website is much easier now than it used to be in the early days of the Internet.

However, people who rush the process will end up with a site that has a lot of problems that they are not happy with.

Here are some helpful hints you can use when you are trying to get your site off the ground.

 

1. Who Will Handle The Design Chores?

You will need to hire a web designer if you are not skilled enough to do all of the designing yourself.

It is at this early stage that many people make a rather large mistake. They falsely believe that all web designers possess the same skills and are basically the same. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

Web designers come in all skill levels and price ranges. You tend to get what you pay for where web designers are concerned. This is why you should not simply hire the first web designer you find online without completely checking out their background and experience ahead of time.

It is essential that you know what type of web design prowess you will be getting for the money you will be paying this person. Talk to many web designers to get a feel for the talent that is available in your area.

You should always ask to see examples of their previous work. This will allow you to determine if that particular person is up to the challenge of designing your site.

You might want to consider hiring a college student to be your web designer. Some of these young people are very talented and charge far less than professional web designers.

 

2. Find a Web Hosting Company

You will also need to look into what company you will be doing business with in terms of hosting your site. This is yet another decision that should not be made in haste. Some web hosting companies are much better than others.

Obviously, you need to find a company that is not going to have any interruptions in service that will cause your site to go offline. This will be a disaster if you plan on running an online business.

You will not be able to make money if your site is offline. Fortunately, there are many web hosting and design packages for you to choose from. Compare prices to get the best deal.

 

3. Set a Budget For Yourself

There will be various expenses that you will need to deal with during the crucial early days of your site.

Make a list and figure out what your overhead will be.

Make sure you have some extra cash set aside for any emergencies that might arise.

 

4. The Importance Of The Domain Name

For many that’s a random choice, but it’s a wrong practice.

Search engines still give huge importance to the domain name to rank websites.

Sometimes, it just takes an appropriate name to be placed the top of Google without much effort.

 

5. Choose Appropriate Titles For Search Engines and Visitors

The names of the pages, as well as slugs, H1 titles and subtitles (and content, of course) are very important for achieving a good ranking, and so they are for your visitors.

Therefore, you must choose wisely.

For example, if you want to rank a page for certain keywords (let’s say “affiliate marketing“), be sure to place them in the H1 title, slug, subtitles and within the content:

 

6. The Importance Of The Content

Content is still the most important thing when building a website.

Many (especially the graphics experts, web designers, advertising agencies) tend to underestimate the importance of writing. They focus on images, on the “special effects” of a web page, and they write a short text. That’s a bad approach. The search engines are hungry for good content…just take a look at your competitors!

 

7. Loading Speed Of The Site

We have just a few seconds to convince the users to stay on our sites (see article).

If you offer pages that are loading slowly, then you risk to losing many visitors (also search engines do not love to wait much to scan your site).

There are several ways to speed up your pages, be sure to check this post for more details.

 

8. Work To Retain Users On Your Site

Google recently published “Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines” (click here to download the PDF).

Basically, they are instructing the users on what they should consider to evaluating the websites.

Have you read it already?

I did it.

My take, is that user experience is extremely important, and it’s becoming the most significant factor to rank.

Your mission should be to give users exactly what they are looking for when they land on your site.

How to achieve it?

Writing articles with added value and significant deepening of the topic treated.

Easier said, than done!

Here’s a quote taken from this post at MOZ of a few days ago:

“Content is king.”

But…

“The user is queen, and she rules the universe.”

Google only cares about your content inasmuch as it answers the user’s search query. Search results are not a collection of “good” content; they are a ranked list of content that best satisfies what the user is looking for.

 

 

What do you think?

Are you working already on the points mentioned in this post?

Please share your views in the comments below, thanks!