Many clients have asked - 'how do I go about getting a new website?' They have an idea for a product to sell on the 'net or a service to offer or just want to put up a website to support their existing business. Seeing there is so much interest, I will detail the process that I went through to put up this website and hopefully that will give you all the information you need to get a website.
Project:
Get a supporting website for my new book
'All the f words for Babyboomers'.
I have had a website to support my trout fishing books for many years. That website, www.trout-fishing-new-zealand.com, is very successful, attracting over 6000 visitors every month. But it would not be appropriate to use that website for a non-fishing book so I needed a new website to support and promote my new book.
This is how I went about getting this website.
Domain Name
You have to have a name for your website. You need to go to the Domainz website, www.domainz.co.nz and enter in your desired website name to see if it is available. I tried www.babyboomers.co.nz but that had already gone. So I tried www.babyboomersguide.co.nz as the working title of my book was:
'The Baby Boomers Guide'.
That domain name was available so I purchased it for 2 years. You just go through the buying process on the Domainz website and a few minutes later, you are the proud owner of a domain name. I also bought www.thebabyboomers.co.nz to use for a backup website as I thought my Zeald.com website would not be ready in time.
I then went to the Go Daddy website and bought a cheap website package. These will produce a very basic website but - be warned - they are very hard to use. And so slow that you get frustrated waiting for the software to process your content additions. They do enable you to load your own content but it takes forever. You are also very restricted on what you can load. Any lengthy article is loaded behind the website and must be downloaded by the visitor - many people don't like doing that because of the risk of downloading computer viruses.
After a long saga, I had my www.thebabyboomers.co.nz website up and running. (After 12 months I was heartily sick of the laborious content loading process so I canned the website and pointed the domain name to my zeald site).
Then my publishers decided to have 'All the f words' printed in China and I ended up with plenty of time to have my Zeald.com website ready.
The first thing to do with any website is to plan the structure. I did that and set out the intended layout as a Site Map - if you want a sample one, just contact me and I'll email you one.
Then I bought a Zeald.com website as I wanted a professional-looking website. One of the biggest mistakes to make is to have a website that looks amateurish. You are trying to establish trust and creditability and that sort of website will not convince people that you can be trusted.
I then enlisted the help of the CEO of Zeald.com, David Kelly. He is an expert on wireframing. 'Wire what' I suspect you are saying.
Wireframing
This is the process of setting out the content of each web page and writing the copy.
Each page must have a purpose and the content of the page must aim to achieve whatever goals you have for the page e.g. a Contact Us page makes it as easy as possible for the visitor to contact the people that have the website.
So David and I drew up the elements for the key pages of my website. This is a two hour process so too long to go into details here but the end result is a fully-designed website. When you buy a Zeald.com website, that is what you get - the copy and layout of the main pages like:
Home page
Product page
About Us page
Contact Us page
Of course you still have to do your own content but at least the key landing pages are done for you by an expert.
Design
The next step was to talk to Hamish Braddick, the Design Director of Zeald.com. We sat down and went through what I wanted the site to look like, both in colours and layout. Hamish made two very important suggestions:
1. Make the font size one size bigger than normal i.e. 11 instead of 10 to make it easier for Baby boomers to read the content.
2. List all the articles on the Home Page as that would help our Search Engine rankings.
So then it was over to the Zeald.com team. They take 2 weeks to design the website and then Hamish called me to show me the draft design. We held a 'Virtual Design Review' and made some changes to the colours and position of the images. It was fascinating to look at my computer and watch as Hamish made the instantaneous changes on his computer. Once this was completed, I signed off on the design and it was onto the next phase.
Build
This is the 'Build' phase. It takes 3 weeks to build the site using the Zeald.com software they have developed over the past 7 years.
It is important to make sure you get your website from a decent-sized company. The dangers of dealing with a one or two man band are considerable. There is a good chance they will either go broke or clear off overseas leaving you with no support or even - no website. I know because that has happened to me with two previous websites.
Be warned - cheap is not good when it come to websites. You have to be prepared to pay to get good website software and good support from a Help Desk.
Loading
When my website was ready, I went into Zeald to have my training on how to load content on my website. I was a bit worried about this as my keyboard skills are pretty ordinary. But it was a breeze - even for someone as challenged as me when it comes to word processing.
I ended up loading my entire website - about 50 pages - in 3 nights!
Most of my stuff was already written of course and it was just a matter of cutting and pasting from the material I already had on my PC.
I also approached other people like Dr. Gareth Morgan and was amazed how readily they agreed to let me publish their articles on my website - with due credit, naturally. That stuff was just cut from their websites and pasted onto mine.The images took a bit longer to load as they had to be reduced in size so that the website did not load too slowly.
This is a really important point. In October 2006, there was only 11% of houses that had broadband or fast Internet connections. The rest were still on dialup at 56K speed.
The rule is that your website must load in under 8 seconds on a 56 k modem.
Any longer time risks seeing your visitor heading off somewhere else as they can't be bothered waiting.
Submitting
Now my website was live, it was necessary to submit the Site Map to Google and Yahoo as those important Search Engines insist on automated Site Maps. These show the structure of your website with the position of every page and enable search engine robots to find each page on your website.
That had been a problem with www.thebabyboomers.co.nz as my cheap website did not come with an automated site map. That had meant it was not Search Engine friendly and it had taken 2 months for the website to be indexed. If it is not indexed, that means you cannot find it unless you type in the exact website address - and no one knew the address as I had not publicised that address.
Then I had to submit the website to Google and Yahoo. You do that by going to the Search Engine and looking for the words ' submit your site'. Follow the instructions and a couple of minutes later, you will have submitted your website for inclusion in the search results of that search engine.
Indexing
No one can say how long it will take to for your website to get indexed. For most websites, it will take several weeks for the Search Engine robots to find the website, examine it and then include it in the appropriate search engine results.
But if you have a lot of content, you will get indexed quicker.
Why? Because the search engines want to provide quality answers to the questions surfers are typing in the search box. The better the quality of information, the more likely the surfer will continue to use that particular search engine.
I knew that from the experience of a friend's website, www.goodground.com that quality content was critical. Mart commissioned me to write 15 different articles or 45,000 words for his new website. As a result of all this information, he was indexed in a week and ranking at #2 in his field after 2 weeks - amazing!
So I loaded plenty of articles on my website.
'Did it work?' I hear you ask.
My website was indexed by Google in 2 days!
My website ranked #1 in Google and Yahoo after 3 weeks!
What was the secret? Well, it was a combination of:
1. Heaps of quality content.
2. An automated Site Map
3. Manual submission promptly to Google and Yahoo
4. 5. Correct meta tags Good choice of keywords.
If you are not sure about the meta tags and keywords - just contact me and I can explain the importance of those. Or if you have an existing website and would like me to check on the correctness of your meta tags or whether you have the right keywords, just contact me and I'll be happy to do that for free.
After that initial loading period, I have continued to load an article or two most days and a lot more images. I think the website is looking pretty good -let me know what you think.
I have continued to try to improve the website by changing some headlines, checking all the internal and external hyperlinks, adding more keywords, changing the order of the pages and proof reading all the content.
Promotion
Now it is time to promote my website. I have printed up some business cards with the title of the book and the website address on them. I use a guerilla marketing approach as I can't afford to advertise the website. I leave the cards on cafe tables, in telephone pay booths, on shop counters, in the gym changing rooms (not the Ladies of course!) and wherever I can get away with placement of the cards.
I also offered all four of my fishing books on TradeMe. To get details of those books, I directed people to my new website. The books only reached a modest price but I recovered my costs and exposed the website name to a couple of hundred TradeMe punters.
Google Adwords
When I bought my cheap Go Daddy website, I got a $25 credit of Google Adwords. So I started a Google account and went through the process of getting a Google Adword campaign underway. This was quite a simple process and it only took a few minutes to complete.
I decided to allow an initial budget of $50 per month so if I don't get the right results after one month - at a net cost of $25 - I'll pull the whole campaign.
What happens is that my advert will pop up when people search for a certain phrase. Those adverts appear on the right hand side of the results of any Google search. If you click my advert, you get taken through to my website and Google deducts ten cents from my credit balance. The amount you pay depends on how many other advertisers are targeting those particular phrases.
This is called Pay Per Click or PPC. It is becoming very popular as you only pay for results - not like other advertising like Yellow Pages where you pay plenty and just hope your advert works. If it sounds a bit complicated give me a call if you want some help with Adwords.
Email marketing
I will also email my client database making them aware of the site's existence. I have loaded some unique stories about my troutfishing adventures so I will email my troutfishing database to inform them of these items.
Every email I send, I sign off with my name and the email address just below.
Websites
I have loaded details of my website onto websites of my friends like Mart at www.goodground.com and John at www.quit-the-habit.com. Naturally, I have provided links to their websites on this website.
Ongoing work
I will put the website through the same checks that I use in my free Website Audit
That includes checking:
* website loading speed
* Search Engine saturation
* number of incoming links
* meta tags
* keywords
* headlines
* calls to action
* conversion pathways
Then I will use the information on my Zeald.com dashboard to improve the keywords. The dashboard tells me what keywords and keyword phrases surfers used to find my website. So if I find words that they used that I don't have included in my keywords, then it is an easy matter to go to the bottom of each page and make those changes - see the details at the end of this article.
The dashboard also tells me at what pages vistors left my website. Those are weak pages and I need to improve them.
It also tells me those pages that had 100% clickthroughs - those are good pages as they must have a convincing 'call to action' which saw the visitor persuaded to click on another page.
So that is the story of how I got a #1 ranking website.
There were no tricks or fancy SEO - just a good website structure, plenty of quality content and an understanding of what makes a website work. If you want a website then sign up for a free Website Brief.
See the additional article on 'Why most Websites are designed backwards'
Here is the information at the bottom of each page in the Admin section of my website. This is where I prepare the information for the meta tags and list the keywords.
The title is used by search engines to gain information about the website. It is displayed in the results of the search if your page is returned.
Try to put descriptive 'keyword' phrases about the website in the title, rather than just the company name. Also try to use keywords & phrases that are used in the page content.
Page description
This is used by most search engines when ranking sites based on a specific search. It is displayed underneath the title in the search engine results.
Write 1 (max 2) sentences describing the page content. Attempt to use a lot of keywords while writing it in such a way as to entice people to click this link over other result links.
Page keywords
List all keywords/phrases relevant to your site and this product separated by a comma.
eg. 'keyword1,keyword2,phrase one,phrase two'.
Be careful not to repeat a word too many times.
Page priority
How important is this page in comparison with other pages on your site. If a search engine returns multiple results from your site, this setting will help determine which page to put at the top (relative to other pages from your site). It is important to note that this is only within your site and doesn't affect how you rank against other sites
