BEFORE YOU START DESIGNING YOUR WEBSITE

Most people who start an online business will spend far too much time just getting things set up and won’t have enough time or money to spend on the things that will actually make him or her money. If I were starting an internet business now, these are the things You will need to accomplish.

     The name of the business

2        Domain name

3    Website server

4    Form an LLC or inc

5        Trademark registration

6          Misc. things, like business cards

THE NAME OF THE BUSINESS          

In most situations I recommend the name of the business be the same as the domain name. It makes things much easier in general, as you know. There are two schools of thought here: go with a keywords generated name or go with a name you make up. My preference is to go with a keyword-generated name because it’s easier to target the search engines and it’s more recognizable in marketing campaign that has the URL listed in it. Examples of keyword-generated names are BusySellWebsite.com or BabyCribs.com and examples of made up names are Yahoo.com or Digg.com.

pAs another example when I choose Frankiezerpeacock as the name of the business, I registered the domain name frankiezerpeacock.com, then formed an LLC in his name (frankiezerpeacock, LLC) and filled the federal trademark “frankiezerpeacock”. I also opened a bank account in its name and set up a PayPal account in its name also serves as my email account info@frankiezerpeacock.com.

I think this is important because when people come to my site they like to see that the domain name is the same as the LLC name and when they make a payment they like seeing that the payment is going to the same business name as everything else.

CREATING CREDIBILITY WITH YOUR WEBSITE IS CERTAINLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WHEN CONVINCING PEOPLE TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU.

The little things do matters. And it is definitely worth it to expend the effort to set your business up this way.

 

DOMAIN NAME

In general, you should try for a two or three word domain name that contains the keywords of your industry. An excellent way to discover the best keywords for you industry is by using the keyword service by WordTracker.com they do a great job of showing which keywords are the most searched for and least competitive, giving you the best chance of success.

More often than not, the most searched keywords in your industry will already have the domain name registered. However, as an example, if you really wanted BabyCribs.com, you could register myBabyCribs.com or BabyCribsHome.com (Before you select a name, read the Trademark)

Having and excellent domain name will definitely make things easier when it come to search engine optimization and creating credibility when people visit your site.

You can find lots of premium domains for sale at SEDO.com or Great Domains.com. if you are just starting out, however, I recommend going to GoDaddy.com and registering a domain name as close as you can get to your keywords. That way you only end up paying nine dollars for your domain name, instead of possibly thousands of dollars for your domain name, instead of possibly thousands of dollars for a premium domain name.

Its difficult to make a recommendation of what exactly to do without seeing your situation. But a name is very important and carefully choosing the best name for your business is important. As a general rule-of-thumb, don’t spend more than 10% of your budget on it. You will probably need every dollar you’ve got to make sure you get through the start up process. You can rethink the name when you are profitable. That might sound crazy, but businesses do it all the time.

THE BASICS: KEYWORD SELECTION PROCESS

Selecting the proper keywords sometimes is more difficult than it might appear. The way you go about it depends on if you are starting your website from starch or if you are optimizing an existing website. It also depends on how competitive the keywords are you trying to reach.

What I am about to describe is a very effective and easy way to come up with a keyword list to target that gets results very quickly. I define “getting results” by obtaining first page rankings on the major search engines for a particular keyword.

Let me sum up the process first and then go into specifics. Many times, when you are starting out, you don’t have a handle on how you would like to represent your website, its products and the angle from which you want to sell, which is okay. As you move through the start up process, it becomes clear and you can change your target keywords accordingly. But its good to get some keywords going right from the start and put them on the first few pages of your site to let the search engines start recognizing your site, what your site is about and establish your websites existence since the longer your site is up, the better it will rank.

     

       I really like the free keywords tool by WordTracker.com (http://freekeywords:wordtracker.com) because their tool shows an estimated number of searches performed for that keyword compiled from MetaCrawler.com and DogPile.com, which are search engines. That sounds weird, I know, but try it for a search once and you will see its pretty good!

These two search engines are unique in that they actually release their raw search data, meaning it shows you how many times a particular keyword was searched for the day before. Google, Yahoo, MSN and all other major search engines are very secretive about their search data and don’t release it to anyone.

Some people might say it can be inaccurate to use limited search data. However there is no 100% accurate tool available anywhere. Plus, when you use it in conjunction with Google Suggest ,  it is great because you are essentially querying their database of search terms, so you are getting the data right from the source! And it also acts as a backup to the results provided by Word Tracker.