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!
This is a great post. I know I didn’t focus too much on design when I started. I learned that from one of my mentors. He was making 30k a month before he invested into design.
I’m happy where my blog is. It’s getting traffic, so I won’t complain. I’m also getting leads as well, and customers so it’s worth it. Just looking to get more growth on my blog and really scale.
You’ll never have a second chance to make a good first impression, right Justin? ๐
Keep working hard on your site and you’ll see results.
Hi Erik,
I am agree with all your points and need to share some thing about website design. Nowadays it is essential that your website design will be responsive as well, so that you will get more traffic from mobile and ipad. Earlier one of my blog is not responsive so i did not get that much traffic from mobile. Once i have done responsive website design and it increase my visitors. So I think everyone should have to take care while design their website
Good to hear you worked to get a mobile responsive site, Anant.
That’s really important!
Great points Erik. 7 is usually the most overlooked one. It’s eaasy to forget about it and just focus on everything else. Even a little bit of work will do wonders for results.
Keep up the great work! ๐
Hi Dennis,
good to see you and that you confirm that #7 is really important.
Even more today, if we think that’s a strong ranking factor.
Thanks for visiting, mate.
Have a good week. ๐
Just used your number 7 tip and it helped clean up alot of issues I didn’t know were there in my blog, thanks again!
Good to hear that, Carlton.
Glad to have you helped!
#4 is the one I get stuck on so often… I feel like the domain name needs to be “perfect” and I’ll spend literal days mulling it over trying to come up with the perfect domain name. And domainers buying up all the good domain names certainly doesn’t help things!
You’re right, David.
It’s really hard to find a GREAT domain name available (most of all, never registered).
I find myself browsing, from time to time, in the GoDaddy auctions.
You can find good deal there.
I recently bought http://reviewzntips.com/, definitely a fantastic investment!
Hey Erik,
Google give importance to user experience and off course page speed. That’s why we should focus on these elements as well, not only for SEO purpose but for ou audience as well. Thanks for sharing Erik.
Glad to hear you confirm my points, thanks Yogesh.
Hello Erik! The tips you shared are nice. After reading this blog, I came to know that how I can get a website off the ground. Iโll surely use these tips for my website. Thank you for this share and keep sharing such type of informative blogs.
Thanks for the comment, Riya.