Gone are the days when people pulled out the Yellow Pages to look up a phone number or local restaurant. In today’s world, having a website for your small business is a necessity. The internet is not a fad and its not going away soon.
There are a few things you need to consider after you decide that you need a website.
PURCHASE AND REGISTER YOUR DOMAIN
The first thing you need is a “domain name.” What is that you ask? Its simply the www.mywebsite.com address for your website. You can purchase and register domain names on GoDaddy.com
You must also check that your chosen domain name is available.
WEB HOSTING
A NOTE ABOUT FREE WEB HOSTING
The next thing you need to research is web site hosting services. There are a variety of services that offer free website hosting, but be aware that your website will feature advertisements and affiliate ads. You won’t earn any revenue from these ads–but your host will.
GOOD WEB HOSTING SERVICES
There are a few really great and affordable web hosting plans out there. I personally recommend IXWebhosting. They offer a wide variety of features and the customer support is excellent. Features include CGI, Ruby, Perl, PHP, My SQL, FTP, Shopping Carts and more.
WEBSITE DESIGN
Next is the actual design of the website. Depending on which host you choose, you may have access to some kind of ’site builder.’ These tools allow you to arrange the images and graphic on your website and create a layout ‘almost’ from scratch using templates. Some site builders include options for photo galleries and blog add-ons. If you are familiar with HTML you can use your own software, like Dreamweaver or CoffeeCup then upload the files to your web server.
PUBLISH YOUR SITE
Okay, so now you have your website complete. Once you publish it online, don’t panic if it doesn’t come up when you search for it using a search engine. You have to submit your website to the major search engines. Then it will be ’spidered.’ You’ll also have to make sure your content is ’search-able’ and SEO optimization is a must!
WHAT IS SEO OPTIMIZATION?
“SEO” is Search Engine Optimization. After all that hard work getting your dream website together, you wonder why you are not getting any traffic. Think of your website as a needle in the haystack. There maybe a ton of other similar sites out there and yours comes up on the 100th page of google? This is where SEO comes in. SEO is a series of techniques using keywords and phrases that enable your site to rank higher in search engines. Once you implement SEO tactics into your site, you’ll see the increase in traffic.
Don’t know what keywords to use in your marketing campaigns? Download the keywords your competitors use.
HOW DO I KNOW IF MY SITE IS GETTING TRAFFIC
Some hosting services offer tools that allow your to track your websites traffic. Google offers “Google Analytics” for free.
Recent Comments