The first thing you need to do is search for a domain name that best matches the service or product your business is going to provide. Domain names can be up to 67 characters in length. The name needs to be easy for a customer to remember and distinctive enough to separate your site from your competitors. The domain name also needs to be free of any trademarks. It is much easier to name your business after you select your domain name. Doing this ensures that you do not have to try to retro-fit your business name if the domain name you want is taken. If your business is already established, then do your very best to get a domain name that incorporates your business name.
Why Do I Need a Domain Name?
Quite simply, you cannot have a web site without a domain name. The domain name is your sites address on the internet. You need to have a domain name in order to add your site to search engines.
What If My Domain Is Taken?
If the domain name you want is taken, you can try variations of the name, such as mydomain.com instead of domain.com, or try adding hyphens to the name, i.e. my-domain.com. You can also try different extensions, such as .net, .org, .biz. Depending on your location and if your business is localized to one region, you could use a country specific extension, such as .us, .fr, .jp, etc. This is a good option if for example you are located in France and only offer your service or product in France. Using the .fr extension readily identifies your site as France specific.
Once I Have My Domain, Then What?
Once you have registered the domain name that you want, you need to start researching web hosting service providers to determine which provider best suits your hosting needs.
How Do I Design My Website?
You can use any number of web design software programs such as DreamWeaver, CoffeeCup or WebStudio. These are just a few of the programs available for purchase. If you already know HTML, you can build your site without the use of software. You also have the option of using the site builder that is provided by your web hosting service provider.
Will I Need a Shopping Cart?
If you want to sell a product on the internet, and you want to sell it in a secure fashion (which is very important to your potential customers), then yes, you need a shopping cart. You need to look for a shopping cart that offers multiple payment options for your customers, auto responders, which allow you to automatically retain a customer/potential customers email address and secure ordering. You also need to make sure the program does not restrict how many product offerings you can have.
How Do I Get My Site Into Search Engines?
You can submit your site for free to the major search engines, or you can purchase search engine submission. The trick to getting high rankings in a search engine is ensuring the keywords appear numerous times on your pages and making the content of your site high quality. Your goal is to get other sites to link to your site. If you web site is of poor quality, it is unlikely that other websites will link to you. You need to make a list of keywords you feel pertain to your site, then research how many times those words were searched in the major search engines in the last 30 to 60 days. Once you have determined which words were searched the most, you then make sure that those words are prominent in your page and are in your title. In addition, if your service or product is limited to a city or a region, it is wise to include the city or region name in your keywords.