WEBSITE BUILDING
Many people think, when they want a new website, that a website designer is the logical place to start. Designers are experts in making websites look pretty. Which is great. If design is your priority.
I do love a pretty website. But I’d rather have one that makes money and helps build my business.
You only get one chance to build a website for the first time. Getting it right sets you up for quick results and long-lasting search engine rankings. Getting it right means that your visitors find what they came for quickly, that they don’t hesitate to buy from you.
Getting it right is primarily about SEO, and sales copywriting.
There are a lot of secondary things you need to take care of to get your site where you want it to be.
But if you want to get off to the best possible start, making SEO and copywriting your priority is the best way to do it.
The tabs below have some handy info for you before you dive into building your first site. If you’d like more details or have other questions, it’ll cost you nothing to send me a quick message here.
Choose your domain name.
Make sure it’s available, and that it has the suffix you want, e.g. .com.au, .net etc. Your domain name determines how users will find you online. It’s a critical choice for your SEO.
Choose your platform.
This is where you decide to use a content management system (CMS) or a website builder. For more details to help you choose, read the next tab: CMS OR WEBSITE BUILDER?
Choose your host.
If you choose a website builder, they will be your host (e.g. Wix, or Weebly, or Squarespace etc.). If you choose a CMS, you can choose a host that provides the level of support appropriate for your website (think Bluehost, Hostgator, Siteground etc.).
Install your theme.
Themes are the framework upon which your content and design sit. Website builders use proprietary themes. With CMS, you can choose from thousands of free or premium themes, depending on your business needs.
Install your plugins.
In CMS, plugins are used to add functionality to your theme. Primary plugins support things like site security and SEO. But there are plugins for pretty much anything a website needs or wants.
Plan your site navigation.
It’s a good idea to make your site simple for users to navigate. They expect to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly, and may click out to your competitors if they don’t. Careful planning of your menus and links will streamline navigation and keep visitors where you want them.
Create your content.
There are two things to consider with content: Can you demonstrate how you solve your viewer’s problems so they buy from you, and do the search engines recognize your site as valuable to searchers? If you can do both, your online success is guaranteed.
WEBSITE BUILDERS
With a website builder you get a relatively simple way to put together a good-looking website. They offer people with little experience, who want to do it themselves, a user-friendly drag and drop type design interface.
You can choose hosting plans that include maintenance, web-security, backups, and support. This can be very handy if you don’t want, or are unable to monitor and manage your site.
If you want to sell online, there are E-commerce options as well.
DISADVANTAGES
They’re best for small websites. For tradesmen, restaurants, or businesses that really only need an online shop window, they’re fine. If you offer a lot of products or services and need a lot of pages and content, then a CMS is a better alternative.
From an SEO perspective, these platforms are limited in how you can make them perform for the search engines. They require quality content copywriting and close attention to the html elements within images and headings.
Most hosts make it costly and difficult, if not impossible, to move to a different platform if you need to. This lack of flexibility can be a problem if your business outgrows the capabilities of your site.
You may or may not own your domain. Check with your host before you commit.
CMS (Content Management System)
With a CMS you have control over every element of your site. If you’re not happy with your host for any reason, changing is a relatively cheap straightforward exercise. If you choose one of the big hosts (I use Bluehost) it’s unlikely you’ll ever need to.
You have so many choices of themes. There are drag-and-drop builders, much like website builders offer. There are pre-made themes to suit almost any type of business, ready to simply add content to. There are also several intuitive third-party builders, which can be added separately to your theme. Of course if you also have coding skills, a CMS offers you endless design possibilities.
This site uses the WordPress CMS, and the Divi theme and builder.
A CMS offers big advantages with SEO. Because all your editing happens within the html format, search engines are able to crawl every element of your site. Because you can use powerful SEO plugins you’re also able to edit content knowing that they’ll reward your work with higher rankings. This can give you a big competitive advantage.
DISADVANTAGES
There’s a lot more involved in the set-up, and it can take some time to learn both the CMS landscape and builder settings. Which is why so many small business owners hire people like me to do it for them.
You need to do your own maintenance, analytics, backups, and security. There are plugins that can do many of these jobs for you, but there is a need for more involvement than with website builders.
IN SUMMARY
If you only need a small site with a handful of pages, and prefer a set-and-forget model, a website builder can be a good choice for you.
If you want flexibility to grow, powerful and versatile tools, and accept that all the bells and whistles come at a premium, then a CMS is definitely the way to go.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
When building a new website there’s an opportunity to get your SEO right from the foundation up.
Search engines, like Google and Bing, try to help searchers find the most relevant websites for the words people type into their search bars.
If, for example, a potential client of yours typed in “shoe retailers in Mandurah”, they’d expect to find a list of websites most closely fitting that description. They’d also expect to see a map with all the shoe retailers closest to their location in Mandurah. From there they’d choose one, or a couple of sites from the first page, and go shoe shopping.
If you were a shoe retailer in Mandurah, you’d hope firstly that your site was on the first page, and secondly that yours was one of those chosen, to give you the best chance of making a sale. After all, that’s the main reason for having a business website.
So how do you give yourself the best chance of being chosen?
CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME
Let’s say your business was called Smith & Jones Shoes. A well established, well-known local shoe shop with history in the community. A brand, if you like.
Should you call your domain www.smithandjonesshoes.com.au?
There are SEO tactics that will help get that domain on the front page for that particular search (we call a search phrase “keywords”). More on that below.
If people typed in “Smith and Jones shoes” you’d be laughing. You’d be on page 1 for sure. But if you’d done no other SEO work on your site, and all your competitors had, it’s unlikely your site would show up early at all.
The question is, when people are searching for shoe shops in Mandurah, what would they be most likely to type into their search engine?
Your existing clients already know who and where you are. You don’t need to do SEO for them to find you. SEO is for finding new clients.
If research told me that the number one keyword for “shoe retail in Mandurah” was actually “Mandurah shoe shops”, the first thing I would do is buy the domain name www.mandurahshoeshop.com.au and put it online. Then I’d build www.smithandjonesshoes.com.au, and direct all searchers from the first domain to the second.
That’s one way to SEO a domain name. It’s just one of the tricks to help your site get maximum traffic, giving you the best chance of making sales.
CONTENT SEO
Website content serves two purposes. Firstly you need to connect with your readers, prove that you can solve all their problems, and persuade them to contact you, or buy from you online directly. Secondly you need to ensure that search engines recognize it as valuable content, so that they reward you with good rankings. They’re both equally important, but if people don’t find you in the first place, it doesn’t matter what you’ve written.
Which is why content SEO is so important. So how do you do it?
Just as each page on your website should be dedicated to a particular service or product type, your SEO should also be page-specific.
The same research that lays the foundation for your domain name should guide the SEO of every page of your site.
Find the most powerful keywords for each service or product you offer, and write content that makes yours the most valuable and informative page the search engines can offer.
Follow this up with the support of SEO plugins like Yoast Premium, and your SEO plan will be well on the way to securing front page rankings.
With a few skills and persistence, this is all well within your capabilities. All the information you need to do it is freely available online.
If you want help to get it done, that’s what we’re here for.