| | | Your Website from the Ground Up in 10 Steps
So, you have finally decided to build yourself a website, but really have no idea where to start. The following 10 steps will give you some insight into what you need to address when creating a search friendly website from the ground up.
While this article is not an exhaustive list of everything you need to know, it does touch base on many of the important aspects of creating a new website.
 Step 1 - Keyword Research
Step 2 - Domain Selection
If you already have an established brick and mortar business and the website will be an extension of that business, using your company name as the domain name is in most cases the best idea. If your company name is either irrelevant, or simply unavailable, you may want to consider a domain that has your target phrase listed as part of the domain.
A great example of this is if your site is focused geographically. Using the location as part of the domain when possible will give you a little extra juice with the search engines and help draw people to your site as they instantly can see the relevance in the domain.
Let's say that you are building a website focused on your home town, "Somewhere USA". A domain you may consider could be "Somewhere.com"; however, this would probably be already taken. Other options such as "SomewhereInfo.com" or "SomewhereGuide.com" may be good alternatives. The same goes for retail stores. "SomewhereCameras".com or "SomewhereBakery".com would also be good choices.
Avoid excessive use of hyphens; sometimes it is appropriate to use one, but if you can help it, avoid more than that as it can appear messy and even spammy in some cases.
Step 3 - System Back End
If you plan on having a large scale website that will grow and change constantly then you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) such as Joomla. If you decide to go this route you want to ensure that whichever CMS you choose is search engine friendly and offers items such as unique title tags, custom URL's, and full control over content, heading tags, image alt tags, etc.
Starting a website using a non-friendly CMS is like buying a car without an engine. Sure it may look great, but it won't get you anywhere.
Step 4 - Site Structure & Navigation
This is really one of the most fundamental aspects of your site creation. If the structure of your site does not work well, then your site may be doomed from the very beginning.
Take a look back at your keyword research and brainstorm all the areas of your site that you may want to develop content for. In some cases you may find valuable keywords that would fit perfectly into a few pages of content for your site. If the phrase and the content would be a good match for the theme of your site, go ahead and note them as pages to create. Get a list, or flowchart, of all the content you plan on adding and sort those pages into relevant categories.
Be sure your site files are saved in a way that makes sense - this includes both the file name, and the complete path to the file. Save files including similar content in a relevant subdirectory, with simply file names representing each. Let's take an example of an informational site dedicated to a specific geographic location. If you have a series of pages dedicated to recreation you may save them as:
/recreation/parks.html
/recreation/trails.html
/recreation/beaches.html
Keeping your URL structure clean and tidy can not only help with search engine rankings, but it will give a good visual impression to the site visitor as well. Often, using each of these categories as main points for your primary site navigation may make the most sense.
Also be sure to keep your site relatively flat, with as few layers as possible. Don't make the search engines follow a dozen links to get to the deepest levels of your site. Unless the site is literally tens of thousands of pages, there is no need to click more than 2 or 3 links to get to any deep content. The shorter the path to an internal page, the more credit by the search engines.
Step 5 - Navigation
When developing the end site, you also want to make sure that your site navigation is search engine friendly - this is critical if you ever want free organic listings.
If possible use a text based form of navigation. You can use CSS to style the text links to fit into your graphical design. Text links are the best method, however, image based navigation and even some forms of drop down menus are search engine friendly.
If you choose to use image based navigation be sure to include image alt text relevant to the link to give something for Google to associate with the linked page. If you absolutely must use Flash, or any form of navigation not friendly for search engine spiders, be sure to supplement this with text based links on another location of the page.
Step 6 - Analytics
It's never too early to start thinking about your stats. Before your site goes live you must have some form of accurate analytics in place so you can measure your site's traffic and progress.
There is an endless supply of analytics options out there to choose from. You can simply use the stats software that comes free with your web hosting, however, more often than not, they tend to be very basic with no flexibility. Advanced choices such as ClickTracks can give you rather in-depth statistics, but for a very small mom and pop operation it may be too expensive. Google Analytics, is a free option that can give you most, if not all the data you will need and does not require access to your raw log files.
If you do opt for an option such as ClickTracks, check with your host to ensure that you will have the raw log files you require. StepForth can also help you with your statistical analysis and offers a number of inexpensive ClickTracks service packages.
Step 7 - Content Creation
Now is the time to get that new, fresh content posted to your site with the SEO in mind. Make sure that the content you write reflects your industry and target keywords. You don't need to flood the content with your target keywords, but make sure they are in there a few times. When it makes sense to do so, also include some acronyms to help Google establish the overall relevance.
If you perform a search in Google for "~keyword", any words that Google bolds in the search results will be acronyms that Google deems relevant. Include some of these where possible.
Step 8 - Basic SEO
Ensure that ALL pages of your site include unique <title> and Meta Description tags. This is one of the core fundamental aspects of an optimized size and it does play a significant role in your search rankings. Make sure that these tags are not only unique but are accurate representations of each page. Also be sure to place your target phrase in heading as well as image alt tags where applicable.
Step 9 - Initial Promotion / Launch
Now that you have your new site all up and ready to go, you want to give it that kick start to help drive some traffic. It will be a while before the search engines fully index your site and even longer before you start to see organic rankings for your target search phrases. It is important to start off right away to get the ball rolling.
Start off by issuing a press release to announce the launch of your new business website. Press releases are a great way to get some traffic and a rather valuable first link into your site. Submitting your press release using a company such as PRWeb will get your link in the engine's path and should help your site to be initially indexed by Google right away.
Next submit your site to some relevant directories starting with DMOZ. It can take months, even years, to have your site listed in DMOZ, so it is important to get it submitted right away. Consider submitting to other industry relevant directories. For some information on how to select the right directories take a look at Building Links with Directory Submissions.
Work on getting as many links from relevant industry websites as possible. The more links you can get from reputable sources, the better the overall performance of your site.
Step 10 - Ongoing Promotion
Once you have completed the site, the content looks great, and all appears finished, you've still got work to do. For long term success, especially for a brand new site, you need to continually promote your site. You should always be looking at ways to increase your inbound links, and increase your relevant content.
Consider creating accounts with various social media platforms to help promote your site. These can not only give you a link back to your site, but they can help you drive traffic and raise awareness about your business and product.
A site that is always growing, and always getting new links, has the best chance of getting a stable top 10 listing in Google.
by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO | | Happy 10th Birthday Google or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the...
With light speed growth from 2 to 20,000 employees and an initial investment of $100,000 soaring to an estimated $150 billion dollar market value all within a 10 year period Google, Inc quietly and without fanfare, celebrated its 10th birthday. September 7, 1998 marks a date in the history books that changed all our preconceptions of media, marketing and technology. Simply put, the world has never been the same since.
 Michael Liedtke takes us on an incredible journey in his article, "Google reigns as world's most powerful 10-year-old". Quite possibly the best authored article I have read in months, brilliantly done, taking us through Google humble beginnings to the present and its future aspirations and targets. It's got drama, intrigue, other-worldly concepts, and lobbyists, not to mention monopoly concerns, astronomical wealth, a plethora of lawsuits and world government leaders' concerns. Here is an excerpt:
The notion that Microsoft - the richest technology company - would spend so much time worrying about Google seemed inconceivable in September 1998, when Page and Brin decided to convert their research project in Stanford University's computer science graduate program into a formal company.
Page, a University of Michigan graduate, and Brin, a University of Maryland alum, began working on a search engine - originally called BackRub - in 1996 because they believed a lot of important content wasn't being found on the Web. At the time, the companies behind the Internet's major search engines - Yahoo, AltaVista and Excite - were increasingly focused on building multifaceted Web sites.
Internet search was considered such a low priority at the time that Page and Brin couldn't even find anyone willing to pay a couple of million dollars to buy their technology. Instead, they got a $100,000 investment from one of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim, and filed incorporation papers so they could cash a check made out to Google Inc. In a nod to their geeky roots as children of computer science and math professors, Page and Brin had derived the name from the mathematical term "googol" - a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
He further adds: Eventually, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt wants the entire company to generate $100 billion in annual revenue, which would make it roughly as big as the two largest information-technology companies - Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. - each are now. This year, Google will surpass the $20 billion threshold for the first time.
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager | | The Midas Touch
Leaving no stone untouched, Google is well on its way to accomplishing another stranglehold in its quest of getting everyone's advertising spend. Just last June Google said it was setting its sights on the cell phone market. Since then, InformationWeek notes:
Google remains the dominant search provider in the mobile space, with about a 60% share in all countries measured. The search giant previously said mobile searches could ultimately yield the highest advertising rates, and it has made multiple moves to target cell phones.
According to new data from comScore, the research firm reports that 20.8 million U.S. wireless customers and 4.5 million European subscribers searched from their mobile handset in June 2008. This is an increase of 68% and 38% from the year before, comScore said.
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | Google Buys More Screen Real Estate
Thank you Google for extending your agreement with Mozilla until November 2011. As my browser of choice it is comforting to know that the best available browser will continue to be around even in the advent of Google's new browser Chrome. I am certainly appreciative. Posted by Mozila: We've just renewed our agreement with Google for an additional three years. This agreement now ends in November of 2011 rather than November of 2008, so we have stability in income. We're also learning more all the time about how to use Mozilla's financial resources to help contributors through infrastructure, new programs, and new types of support from employees. ZDNet comments: "Stability in income" is putting it mildly. That little search box in Firefox basically bankrolls Mozilla. In 2006, Mozilla had $66.8 million in revenue, up from $52.9 million in 2005. The 2007 figures should land some time in the fall. The revenue from Google has enabled Mozilla to build a portfolio to fund itself on an ongoing basis. by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | Microsoft's New Patent!
Approaching the 10,000 mark, Microsoft has a new patent. Granted on August 19th , US patent number 7,415,666 describes "a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed".
Readers will recognize this as the common "Page Up" and "Page Down" keystrokes.
Although these features have been used widely for at least 25 years, according to an article by ZDNet: Microsoft has a long history of applying for, and being granted patents for, inventions that many argue--and can sometimes demonstrate--were based on earlier work carried out by others, or based on a common, self-evident idea. One example is the company's patent on a mouse wheel that can scroll up and down; another is its patent on double-clicking buttons.
by Bill Stroll, Sales Manager
| | The Net Reality
Once again, we have a busy news week in Internetville.
Social Media networks, like Facebook and MySpace, continue to grow and expand into new areas. Already, mobile phone users are showing signs that they will be some of the biggest contributors, in the various networks, for years to come.
With both Canada and the US heading into the final stretches for their political elections, it seems that technology continus to play an ever more important role at the grass roots level. Private Citizens, of all party affiliations, are using the social media network, Twitter, to reach out to one another.
Text messaging may be useful application in this day and age, yet seems to also be the undoing of those who do not know when it's a bad time to use the service. Such seems to be the case with the engineer who was piloting one of the two trains that crashed earlier this week.
Mac users (and PCs within the year) are being treated to new photo recognition software that can identify faces in images and then distribute the pics to the owners of the faces. Cool!
Get ready for the next evolutionary phase of the internet, as content sharing has become the prime focus for today's software developers. Recent technologies like Digital Pictureframes will soon allow users to send their images from anywhere in the world, with nothing more than a cell phone.
Planning to take a trip this year? Well, the next feature updates for the travel program, TravelMouse, will allow you plan a trip easier and more thoroughly than ever before.
Anyone who wishes to weed out the news they feel is too bias can now do so with this new tool from SpinSpotter. The tool is called Spinoculars, and it aims to edit out what the opinions are from the facts. (Sounds like something Detective Joe Friday would have benefited from, if the internet was around in the 50s/60s.)
Say what you want about the decline of the local community that looks out for one another, but it seems to be alive and well in the world of blogs. When a popular blogger and her husband were severely injured during a recent plane crashed, a community of readers began raising funds to help the couple family.
Google, with one eye to the future and the other to the stars, is financing the development of new satellites that will deliver high-speed internet service to emerging markets in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
Closer to home (for StepForth, anyway), tickets for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Whistler BC will be going on sale this October. (I wonder if there will still be a lineup.)
Meanwhile, the city of San Francisco is still accessing damage in the aftermath of a rogue network administrator's hijacking. So far, the tally is at $1 million. (I guess crime doesn't like to pay internet access fees either.)
Journalists recently awarded the innovation of Wired.com's Threat Level blog: which allows readers to track the worst cases of Wikipedia's whitewashing of corporations and governments.
By Brayden Reger, Sales Associate
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