The
best ways to plan and build
a small business website.
There
are, of course, many ways to build a website but here is an outline
of the steps that are essential for the creation of a basic small
business site.
Choose
a website topic.
A
website should be based around a theme for best results with the
search engines. This means nearly all the pages should
be focused on a keyword
(phrase) that is related to the website theme.
Before
you spend any money or time, you must do some research to see how
popular your potential theme is on the web.
It
is best to start with several possible theme ideas. Then you can
see which theme is most popular on the web
by finding
out
how many people
are searching for information on that topic.
Use
the free Wordtracker
tool to test the demand for your potential topics.
Click
the above link and enter each of the potential themes in the Keyword
box to see the daily search volume for
each theme
and
also all
the related terms that contain the theme. You will
probably find that one of your
ideas has much greater search demand than the others.
It is also interesting to see what people are searching
for
on the
web.
Choose
the type of web site – blog or build.
One
of the most important decisions is to decide if your site will be
a traditional site with a
3-tier navigation
(home page,
topics & sub-topics)
or a blog. A blog is an online diary and may
not be suitable for organizing information the
way a content site can group pages into topics
and sub-topics.
Should
You Blog Or Build A Web Site?
Blogging is a great way to build a simple content site. But
does it really build a sustainable, long-term, money-making business?
This Blog
or Build article by Ken Evoy will help you make the choice.
You
could have the best of both worlds and integrate a content website
with a blog. However this is more work
because it is essentially
two websites
linked together; but it is the most effective
because it combines the advantages of both
kinds of websites.
Blogs
are indexed by the search engines more quickly and new blog content
will bring traffic
to your site
sooner than new content on a conventional
website. The search engines also “forget” about
blog content much more quickly than a content
site which has a lot more “staying
power”.
Choose
a website hosting service.
Once
you have chosen your topic (or narrowed it down to two or three)
and decided if
you will blog
or
build (or
both),
you can
choose how you
will host your website.
You
can choose free hosting, generic paid hosting, or you can choose
hosting
that
is specifically
designed for running
a
small business.
Free
website hosting – Sites like MySpace.com, Facebook.com and
Squidoo.com (my
personal favorite) are free and can
be used as promotion for a business,
or also to
send traffic to another web site. In my opinion,
Squidoo is the best because the pages
have the best look, are the easiest to create, and it is very easy
to add online store sections with products from eBay
and CafePress ... and you can actually
get paid by Squidoo!
Free
blog hosting is available from a number of places including Wordpress.com and Blogger.com.
Free blogs
are the easiest
to set up – just pick
a blog theme (page style) and start
typing!
Generic
Paid Hosting – There are literally hundreds of website hosting
companies that will host your
site, even build your site and help you bring traffic to it. The
cost can vary from five dollars per month for
the most basic plan to a thousand
dollars and more for deluxe hosting and a complex website with an
online store.
My
favorite conventional hosting company is Bluehost. If you
are planning
to host a
blog that you can
fully customize they are
the way
to go.
In
my opinion, this basic website hosting, with all the programmable
tools, is
really just for
students
studying
computer science
and for hobby sites. If you
plan to run a business website
you
should use a hosting
company that is designed
from
the ground
up for small business hosting
and has a track record
of success.
Site
Build It Website Hosting - I use and recommend Site
Build It (SBI)
hosting
service
for all
of my websites and the
websites I build for my
clients. SBI is much more
than just a web hosting
service. They provide
all
the knowledge
and
tools to research,
design, build
and run a small
business website:
- A
complete library of books and articles on every facet of building
and running a small business website.
- Web
hosting service including all the tools and services you need at
one fixed price including mailing list, RSS syndication, contact
forms,
SiteBuilder tool, traffic
statistics, search engine statistics and much more.
- A
community of online forums where you can get answers to any question
from other SBI owners.This
is the most effective and powerful
method
for hosting a
small business
web site. I
have not found
anything
else like it!
- The
best reason to use Site
Build It is that websites built with SBI
will draw more traffic than any other web design system!
Choose
the tools you will use
to
design it.
Free
Websites – The
free
web services like Squidoo and
Wordpress do not
need any design tools,
they
are built into the site
itself.
You can customize the
look
of your page or blog
just
by picking from a list
of
options. You can also use
some
basic HTML to control the
look
of your text on the
page.
Generic
paid hosting – Most
hosting
companies
also offer
some type
of basic
website
creation
tool as
well as
basic
web page
templates
that
you can
use to
get started.
If you
want
to
go with
conventional
web hosting
for your
business
website,
you should
use
a
web design
tool that
is specifically
made for
business
websites.
The best
tool for
a non-technical
website
builder
to use
with conventional
hosting
is XSitePro.
Site
Build It – SBI
has an integrated
SiteBuilder tool and
also allows you to
use any of the
standard website
design software
packages like Dreamweaver
or Microsoft
Expression Web
.
Important
Lesson: Perhaps
the most
important lesson
I have
learned from
SBI and
from working
so hard
on the
look of
my websites,
is that
a fancy
design may
be impressive,
but it
does nothing
for the
effectiveness of
a website.
You
would be
much better
off focusing
on the
information and
content of
your website.
It is
much better
to have
50 pages
of great
information than
20 pages
that look
really slick.
That is
why I
have chosen
such a
simple, clean
design for
this site – it’s
all about the content.
Pick
your set
of research
tools & resources.
You
can, of
course, use
Google and
other general
& specialty
search engines
to do
your research.
SBI has
a great
free tool
called Search
It that
is a
set of
pre-configured web
searches that
save a
lot of
time doing
site research.
Search
It can
help you
easily scope
out your
competition, check
domain name
legalities, do
topic research
and keyword
evaluation, check
links to
your site,
find out
which website
pages have
been indexed
by Google
and much
more.
Find
related products
to promote.
In
addition to
promoting your
own products
or services
on your
website, you
can make
money promoting
related products
by others
for a
commission.
This
is called
affiliate
marketing and it
is one
of the
best ways
to make
money with
a website
because you
do not
have to
stock or
ship any
products, don’t have to deal with customers, and don’t
even need to process
any payments
yourself. You
just recommend products
on your site and
send the traffic
to an online
store run by
someone else.
The
catch to
affiliate marketing
is that
you need
a website
with traffic,
lots of
traffic – at least 500 visitors per day – to
be able
to make
affiliate
marketing
worthwhile.
You will
need to
build up,
at the
very
least,
30 web
pages to
get that
much traffic,
and
probably
more, depending
on
the search
demand
for
your website
topic.
Search
It can
also help
you find
related
affiliate
programs to
promote
on
your site.
Of
the hosting
options
above
I have
found that
SBI will
give you
the best
advantage
for
drawing
the
amount
of
website
traffic
needed
for
affiliate
marketing.
Free
Download!
For
more In-depth information about the most effective ways
to build long-term traffic to your website download Make
Your Links Work by Dr. Ken Evoy
Right-click & Save
As to download -->
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Summary:
Free
website
best
choices:
Squidoo.com and
Wordpress.com.
Conventional
website
best
choices: Bluehost.com for
hosting, XSitePro for
design and AWeber.com for mailing list service.
Specific
small
business
hosting
& design best choice: Site
Build
It.
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