Website Pre-Planning and Organization Tips

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1 Website Pre-Planning and Organization Tips Pre-planing is probably the most important part of building a successful website. Even a small site needs preliminary thought, and can save you a lot of time in the long run. Things to consider in web site preparation include: website overview site structure design navigation content implementation Website Overview Goals help you focus and target your website to your intended audience. What do you hope to accomplish by having a website? Who do you wish to attract as the primary (and secondary) visitors to your site? All web sites are built in response to human needs. People visit web sites because they want something. When visiting a site, they re looking for one of three things: information, entertainment or services. The most successful websites are consciously planned to deliver win-win solutions that deliver both the users goals and achieve the site s goals. Your long term goal is having a site full of many pages of useful and valuable products & information exactly what your visitors and the search engines want to see. If your site is a disorganized mess, more than likely it will be a failure. But website planning is only the first step, so start small to avoid frustration. Don t get so caught up in the planning process that you never get a site up to begin with. Websites are never totally finished, there will always be fine tuning and updating to be done to get the best search engine listings. Look at as many websites as you can, especially those that are related to yours in some way. See what your competition is doing, and to get an overall perspective of web sites in general. It will also help you brainstorm for your own site. Make notes of your observations regarding: Websites that you like - and why Web sites that you don t like - and why not Keep an eye out for desirable elements: overall layout, color schemes, navigation methods, content and it s presentation. You many have numerous goals, each with varying degrees of importance. Prioritizing these goals in order of importance is part of the site purpose & goals stage, as it will ultimately effect the entire layout of your site. Some examples may include: Building brand identifi cation & corporate awareness To gain a favorable impression of your company Developing leads to create a list of qualifi ed prospects Encourage potential customers to contact you

2 Website Pre-Planning and Organization Tips / Page 2 of 5 Corporate Profile Place Order Services Products Selling products or services directly over the Internet Product information for prospects, customers or distributors Provide pricing to prospects, customers or distributors Website Structure & Site Map Based on the preceding goals and objectives, you need to decide the general structure of the website. Organizing your site carefully from the start can save you frustration and time later on. The first page is obviously your home page (known at the index page). Break down your site into secondary & ternary categories. Common Secondary Pages Include: About Us - almost every commercial website has it, as people like to know who they re doing business with. Your information might fi t on a single page, or link to several. Sub-pages might include: who we are, company history, company profi le & mission statement. Contact Us - include every way they might wish to contact your company: telephone & fax numbers, emergency contact details, , physical address, etc. Location Map Products and Services - Include every way they might wish to contact your company: telephone & fax numbers, emergency contact details, , physical address, etc. Ternary (Subcategory) Pages: If some of your pages contain a lot of information, you may need to subcategorize them further to keep things organized. Both people and the search engines like things clean and easy to understand. Take a logical approach to the organization of your site: group related material, and always offer general information first, followed by optional, more detailed information later for your users who want to know more. Page Design, Layout & Navigation Creating the Desired Look & Feel of Your Site Website Design You can save a lot of time later if you plan your design, layout and navigation carefully. Create a mock-up drawing of the general site layout on paper or the computer.

3 Website Pre-Planning and Organization Tips / Page 3 of 5 Make sure your site provides a consistent look for your visitors. The user should be able to click through the pages in your website without getting confused. If all the pages have a different look, or the navigation is placed inconsistently, the user might become frustrated and leave. Navigation Layout Bad navigational systems can kill a website. Many small business websites actually do more harm than good. If a visitor sees an unprofessional & difficult to navigate site, it will reflect poorly on your business. Causes of Bad Navigation Inconsistent or unusual placement or styling of links Overly complicated or gimmicky navigation menus The visitor not being able to fi nd the navigation links at all Inconsistent page design or layout (looks unprofessional) Graphics-only links Misleading or unclear text and / or links So what is good navigation? Intuitive navigation and consistency. Take a look at any large commercial website and you ll find very similar elements in very similar places that s what users expect. Site Navigation Guidelines Place major links horizontally, near the top of the page. Keep these major categories to a maximum of about eight. Use contextual links in your body text. Wherever appropriate, use contextual links to lead your users to related information. Don t be afraid to link to outside content: contextual links to outside sources add value to your own information, and well chosen links lend validity to your authority on a given subject. If your site is large, provide a search box and a site map for your visitors to navigate your site. SEO Search Engine Optimization The goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is to maximize your website s page-rank on Google and other major search engines. Website optimization primarily involves editing website content to increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. In spite of what many unscrupulous SEO s say, there really are no secrets to Search Engine Optimization. Ethical SEO (known as white hat SEO) is simply studying and making full use of the methods by which Google and other search engines use to determine page rank. It takes real work and some time, but it WILL enhance page ranking results over time, sometimes very dramatically. It is the process of helping the search engines define and index the full extent what products and services your company offers, and compares its relevance of that index to the web search keywords being searched for. Unethical ( black hat ) SEO tries to misrepresent web page relevance & cheat to fool the search engines. Employing such techniques can bring disastrous results to your page rank. Search engines are constantly exposing sites which are spamdexing, and are not ignorant of the cutting edge technique that some seedy SEO representative offers to sell you on. Those found guilty are rewarded with lower page rank even removing suspect pages or websites from their indexes entirely.

4 Website Pre-Planning and Organization Tips / Page 4 of 5 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips Research Your Keyword Phrases - what do people type into the search engines when looking for services or products in your industry? Never assume you know which keywords to target unless you do the research to prove it. Finding a keyword or phrase you didn t realize was being searched for can earn new visitors to your website. There are tools you can use, such as Keyword Discovery or WordTracker to fi nd out what keywords and phrases are best to target in your particular industry. Write Unique Page Titles - your Page Title is the text that appears at the very top of the browser window (often inside of a tab). It is critical that every web page on your site have a different and unique title. Every page title should clearly communicate the contents of the page. Your Home Page should also have the name of your organization in the Page Title. Yahoo! will index up to 120 characters in a Page Title, but Google will ignore anything beyond 66 characters (including spaces), so make sure the most important key words are in the beginning of your Page Titles. Avoid stop words, which are words that most search engines ignore. Words such as the, an,and, so us we. They just take up the limited character space, and are ignored anyway. You can replace and with & etc. to conserve character space. Use Title Case - in your Page Titles and the headings on your website. Write Focused Content - Each web page should relate to one ONE main topic, theme or subject. The search engines like focused content to index the substance of the web page. Insert Keywords - Make sure your page content if full of the same keywords you carefully listed in your Page Title. Write for humans, but keep the search engines in mind. Use your keywords & keyword phrases, especially in your titles, headers and the fi rst and last sentence or two of each page. Build Keyword-Rich Links - Strategic link building is vital for high ranking success of your website. Links from other websites essentially count as votes. If everyone is voting for a particular website, then the website is deemed important by the search engines. Quality links from sites with authority (popular and trusted sites) carry the most weight. One link from an important site can be worth a hundred from low-quality sites. Choosing the right text to link to your site is also very important. Request any links pointing to your website contain your keywords & phrases somewhere in the links NOT just your web address or company name. Avoid Links-Backs and Link Schemes - there are numerous linking schemes which promise higher ranking by sending hundreds of links to your site. The search engines will LOWER your rank substantially if you try to enact this technique. Also avoid link trading: where you link to some site in a trade to link back to your site. This used to work, but the search engines now will downgrade your site for this technique. Implementation / Getting on the Web Begin collecting physical and/or digital copies of things that you will need for the creation of the website, including: company logo corporate colors site goals & structure site design & colors photos for site text for content Some of the steps to actually launch your website include: Domain Name - what will be the address of your website? The one you want may very well be already taken! You can visit GoDaddy.com to see if it is available. ISP - who will host the website? You will need to choose an Internet Service Provider. Website Registration - with several major search engines. Website Directory - submission to the online directories (like Yellow Pages on the web).

5 Website Pre-Planning and Organization Tips / Page 5 of 5 Web Site Structural & Planning Worksheet Corporate Profile Services Place Order Products Fill out one of these sheets for each page that will eventually be on your website. Even if the first launch of your site will only have a few pages, planning the eventual structure of your site can save you a lot of time (and money) in the long run. 1) Domain Name: www. Already Registered Desired Other Possible Domain addresses (if desired is already taken): 2) Site Goals: 3) Primary Target Audience: 4) Secondary Target Audience: 5) Name of Page: 6) Structural Location: Home (index) Page Secondary Page Ternary (subcategory) Page Links from: Links to: 7) Purpose of Page: 8) Keywords & Keyword Phrases: (for THIS page) Page Title page title for ALL search engines - Google only indexes first 66 characters (including blank spaces) page title for Yahoo - indexes 120 characters (including blank spaces) Design Notes for This Page