Quickstart guide to setting up a successful website

I get asked all the time how to set up websites that will get traffic and ultimately be successful so I thought I would document the process here in the form of a quickstart best practise style guide. It’s by no means definitive but will get you started in the right direction.

Keyword research

This step is crucial as it will dictate almost every aspect of your site from the structure of your website to your domain name and the titles and headlines of your pages. There are many reasons for conducting thorough keyword research as you will want to establish what niches will work best or if you already have a niche in mind it will allow you a valuable insight into whether its likely to sink or swim.

Whilst you can conduct keyword research manually via sources like overture, Google or Wordtracker your going to save a lot of time and effort by investing in a good quality keyword tool. I’d recommend Wordtracker’s full service or Keyword Elite. Once you have conducted your keyword research and come up with quality list of keywords you can then develop a comprehensive site map and also register a domain name.

Domains and hosting

Once you have an idea for a domain name you can see if its available. If possible try and get a domain name that focuses on your broadest keyword phrase as once you have this you can create directories on your site with related keyword phrases and build your site that way. This is something I will discuss in greater length in another article. As a general rule I try to keep the domain short and where possible use hyphens. This will help in your search engine rankings as the major search engines will be able to separate the word in your keyword phrase. I’ve managed to get several number one positions by using hyphenated domain names and would highly recommend it. If you want a good value hosting company then I’d recommend Streamline.net as they are reliable, good value and have an excellent range of products. Whoever you choose make sure they support PHP and mysql databases as you’ll need these for the next step.

Website design

This is the bit that confuses most people and good web design can be expensive. However there are ways to get around this if you know what your doing. Wordpress is an easy to use state of the art publishing system that is so well supported that you’ll never want to use anything else again. Just make sure you host supports php, mysql and the mod_rewrite Apache module. Most good quality hosts will support these without any problems and if they have something called cPanel then you’ll be able to automate the installation of Wordpress. If your just interested in setting up a blog then you could also try blogger.com which is free of charge and allows you to install it onto the domain of your choice or use their own (blogspot.com).

Both Blogger and Wordpress have many free templates (or themes as they are called in Wordpress) which are both easy to install and edit. Try the excellent Prosense or failing that your sure to find something special in this list of Wordpress themes.

Search Engine Optimisation

Once you have your domain and hosting sorted out then you’ll want to focus on producing good quality content. Concentrate on producing 10 - 15 unique articles (don’t be tempted to use free article at this stage) to launch your website and then write one new article per week. Search engines will want to see continued steady growth in your site and will reward you with better rankings. Don’t get sidetracked by all the hype out there about the latest and greatest SEO techniques. Solid link exchanges with good quality relevant websites and publishing unique content will still get you good results. If you have a blog then try an automated submission service like Pingomatic or Pingoat every time you post.

I’ve only touched on these areas briefly and each one deserves far more detail however this guide should get you started in the right direction. Remember to stay focused and take regular action to guarantee results.