SEO - Content Writing Advice - Web Design

There is a simple process for launching the web site, assuming you have all of the aspects in place:

1. Obtain a domain name
2. Find a web host
3. Find a shopping cart
4. Find Merchant Account Service Providers
5. Develop the site
6. Launch the site
7. Market Your Site

Step 1: obtaining the domain name

Buying a domain name is a fairly simple process. But, choosing a domain name and one that will be saleable for your product is simply mind-boggling! How are you going to make sure that your domain name is short enough to put on business cards, stationery, and all types of published material that you have? How are you going to make sure you don’t choose a bogus domain name that’s difficult for everyone to type, thereby limiting your prospective clients? By following these rules:

Create a domain name that’s short, catchy, easy to type, and easy to remember.

It’s easier said than done for most industries! For example, in real estate, there are some domain names that simply should not have been registered in the first place. While the following are bad examples, they illustrate my first point:

The-best-real-estate-agents-in-all-the-land-that-sell-the-greatest-possible-houses-in-northwestern-weedpatch.com

That is a long domain name! There are several logistics problems with this kind of domain name. You’ll have a heck of a time getting it on business cards, stationery, and other forms of print collateral. In addition, it will be hard for potential clients to type. This means that clients that aren’t great typers will need to hunt and peck for each dash and letter, and make sure they get it right at the same time! It will be disastrous for your business.

A better example would be:

Google.com

Everyone knows what Google.com is: the number one search engine out there. Their domain name has everything that would be great in a domain name: easy to type, easy to remember, and easy to put on any and every type of stationery imaginable! This way, everyone (even those with limited typing abilities) can access the site without many problems at all.

1. Limit dashes to three or less.

Why is this? For potential clients visiting your web site, it’s a good thing to keep in mind. Say you had the domain name Austin-RealEstate-Agents.com. It’s pretty simple, catchy, but may not be completely memorable. This is because austinrealestateagents.com and austin-realestate-agents.com are completely different web sites, and therefore, completely different domain names. This will cause a few issues. One, say someone saw your web address and couldn’t remember if there were three dashes or two? If you hadn’t snagged the appropriate domain name variations, then some other competitor can obtain that domain name variation and steal all of that traffic by using the misspelling your domain name! In addition, it will confuse potential clients with who you really are. Are you austin-realestate-agents.com or are you austinrealestateagents.com?

For these reasons, it’s simply best to eliminate dashes from a domain name completely, and go with a dash-less domain name. It will make your life simpler and easier than dealing with a perpetual living headache when you attempt to put your long domain name on your business cards!

2. If you have a business site, make sure your domain name relates to your company in some way, or even better, use your company name as the domain name.

This is how people are going to identify you on the internet, so it’s imperative that you include some kind of word correlation that specifies your company name, product name, or a combination of both. If your company name is fairly short and easy to remember, especially if it’s even shorter when abbreviated, definitely use it as your domain name if it’s not already being used! Some great examples of short, easy to identify company names include:

Yahoo.com
Google.com
GeneralElectric.com
Mitsubishi.com
Toshiba.com

That’s it for domain name advice. Keep it simple enough that it’s easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to find for the general public, and you will do well.

Step 2: Find a web host

Finding a web host for your business can be one of the most costly mistakes you will ever make if you don’t know what you’re doing. Quite simply, a web host is a service that provides online real estate for web sites. A web host owns servers on which hard drives reside. These hard drives are used to store and allocate data to various customers that purchase such allocations. Then, these clients upload data to the hard drive, which then provides the data for all to see via a domain name. When the account is created, it’s linked to the domain name automatically, so you don’t have to worry about this part. In addition, a specific host will have a bunch of various widgets and additional technologies installed depending on the application the individual is purchasing the web site for.

For example, if someone is purchasing a web site for a shopping cart or other technically advanced implementation, one might want to have a web host that supports PHP version 4 and MySQL version 1.2 and above. Or, someone might want to have a windows server that supports ASP.NET applications. It all depends on what you want the web site to do eventually. Considering this discussion is related to e-commerce, I’m going to focus on Linux-based web hosts that allow for open source installations of shopping carts.

There are advanced solutions for those that wish to tinker around with the specific installations of technical implementations and working with their own “Server”. These are called Virtual Servers, and are significantly more expensive than regular Linux web hosts that provide space. Virtual Servers are full servers that allow root access, which means that the owner of the Virtual Server has full technical control over installing Linux Server distributions, CPANEL implementations, PHP Installs, MySQL installs, and other complex installations that will make a difference in how the web site operates. Virtual Servers are not for the technically intimidated, so if you don’t know what you are doing yet, I highly advise against pursuing a virtual server. Get your feet wet with a normal host, and if you decide that you want to enter the hosting industry after you get comfortable with the technical nuances, then upgrade to a Virtual Server.

Dedicated Servers

Dedicated servers are for those sites that consume a ton of bandwidth and need the storage for a myriad of data that no other competing web host can provide. The advantage of a dedicated server is that you don’t have to rely on the stability (or instability) of shared hosting, and you won’t be bogged down by another idiot on the same server hogging all the resources. Plus, you won’t be involved with the specific politics that most shared web hosts have. Let me explain.

Surely you’ve read the specific agreements when you signed up for a shared hosting account, right? Most agreements will have something to the effect of “We reserve the right to terminate your account or service for any reason.” This means that if you end up getting close to using 80% of your resources, the host may say “This guy’s using too much, he’s out.” There’s a downside to shared hosting if you are planning on operating a high traffic e-commerce site. The downside is that other sites will be on your server, and if another site goes down, then yours could go down if they decide to shut off the server due to significant resource hogs from the other web site. Just be certain of your needs and what you will need to cover your bandwidth, security measures, and budget.

3. Find a shopping cart

Shopping carts are the bane of the maintenance of the existence of a huge e-commerce site. They can be tedious to maintain, disastrous if handled inappropriately, but can be the greatest thing since sliced bread if used properly. The shopping cart can mean the difference between a sale and a sale decline. Once again, just like on the web site, usability comes into play. If your shopping cart makes it more difficult for someone to actually purchase something, you have a problem. And, if you use an open-source shopping cart, you absolutely MUST make sure that specific security measures are in place to be certain that no one can hack into your shopping cart for privileged credit card information.

The best thing about open-source shopping carts is that they’re free, they’re simple to install, and easy to maintain. Plus, if you have a reasonably competent web developer, they will be able to customize the appearance of your shopping cart for you, in addition to interfacing with your merchant account provider to ensure compatibility between authorization processing services.

4. Find Merchant Account Service Providers

These are places like Authorize.net that provide real-time, online processing services for your transactions. Typically, they will provide the link between your shopping cart, bank account, and will deposit funds appropriately. Watch out, however! There are those merchant accounts that are complete scams. They include over-the-top fees, sometimes up to 30% of the transaction price to provide the processing service. So, you NEED to read the contract first to make sure that you’re comfortable with paying the fees so that you don’t run into a rock and a hard place when trying to pay bills at the end of the month. If this isn’t something that you’re worried about, great! Otherwise, keep careful watch on the contract and research your potential merchant account service provider.

5. Develop the site

Now that you have the domain name, your meta structure, your host, your shopping cart setup, and your merchant account service provider setup (including the appropriate software), you want to proceed with the development of the site. Why is it you have to proceed at this stage instead of step number 1? Well, you did plan everything first before you started out as I discussed before, right? If you did, this is now the stage where you finally put everything together by working with your designer.

This is where you obtain your photos for your products, the snapshots that will show up on your web site. This is where you’ll have your designer/copywriter write the descriptions of the images that will show up on your site. This is where everything we’ve been working for will finally come into place.

6. Launch the site

Once the site is developed, tested for quality assurance, and proven to work on as many platforms as possible, it’s time to upload it to a sub-level test directory on your web host so the site can be tested and you can see how it works in real-time. As you verify that you’re happy with how the site works and you’re satisfied with your designer’s work, it’s time to sign off on the project. As the project is signed off, this is when your designer will launch the site and get it ready for public viewing and use.

This is where you can finally start marketing your web site to the search engines, optimizing your content, and move forward with keeping content on the site updated. Remember how I discussed making sure you have great content on your site? This is where it becomes the most important part of your site. The content will tell your visitors what your site is about, what you hope to accomplish with the site, and how to solve their problem. You did have your content writer come up with this already, correct?

7. Marketing Your Site

Once the site is launched, it is certainly not finished by a long shot! Now is the time to drive customers to your site so they can purchase your great products. At this point, you can develop a keyword strategy to target those keywords that clients are actively searching for. Then, you will need to develop a link strategy (for outbound and inbound links). In the meantime, you will want to continue to write fresh, relevant content for your site that will make visitors want to link to you!