Build Your Own Business Website That Benefits Your Brand

Building your own business website is easier than you might think, but unfortunately a lot of the information available is outdated, overly complicated or just plain wrong. The truth is that there are 5 main steps you can follow to create a professional looking website that does what you want it to, whether that be increasing brand recognition or converting more visitors into customers.

Step 1: Planning

Sadly this is a step that is often overlooked, but it can be one of the most important things you'll do. For example think about what sort of site you're building:

Brochure site - includes all the relevant info about your business with no unnecessary bells and whistles
eCommerce site - includes (or just is) an online store
Blog - you can run a standalone blog, or write it as a company blog or news section inside your main website

Once you're clear on what exactly you want, it's time to figure out how you're going to achieve it. 99.9% of you will probably be best off using self-hosted WordPress for your business website, since it's easy to set up, very user-friendly, flexible enough to run a blog section and static pages, and of course completely free.

Step 2: Setup

You'll need to source a domain name and some hosting. The domain name is basically the address people will type in to reach your site, and the hosting is the server space where your website files are saved, just like you'd save personal documents in the space on your computer. Shared hosting packages are great for small business sites, avoid free hosting at all costs.

Depending on your host you may be able to install WordPress automatically through your cPanel, if in doubt just ask them. If not, you can find various tutorials on manual installation a quick Google away.

Step 3: Design

Take care when choosing a color scheme. Use tools like Kuler to find colors that work well together, and avoid any combinations that make text hard to read. As a rule, use 2 or 3 main website colors maximum that tie in with your company logo.

Speaking of your logo, this is one area where it'll pay to bring in a professional. If your budget is low, try searching for "crowdsourcing" sites where you can run a competition and choose from multiple entries. A low quality logo is a huge turnoff for potential customers, and makes a terrible first impression especially if placed on an otherwise well-designed site.

I am not about to suggest that you design a website with no prior experience. Instead, consider picking up a professionally designed theme and just changing colors/your logo. This is a very inexpensive option and will usually turn out much better than hiring an equivalently priced designer.

Bear in mind your goals for the site when choosing a theme, for example if your goal is to showcase one particular product a theme with a minimalistic design, large product image and attractive call-to-action button should be top of your list.

By all means if you have the budget, get a custom design, but otherwise place your focus on professional and effective rather than unique and join the growing number of people using ready-made CMS themes.

Step 4: SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the art of getting your website to rank well in Google et al. There is a lot of information about this online but sometimes the basics can be overshadowed by the lastest fashionable cheat so I'll go over them here.

Page titles: the page titles of every single page on your website should be different, and explain what that page is about. These titles are one of the primary things that can get you ranked in Google, and are worth paying lots of attention to. Bear in mind that the homepage title is of particular importance.

Example:

I'm trying to rank my site for the search phrase "web developer newcastle" so my homepage title might be "Web developer Newcastle | Michelle Dancer". You'll see the description comes first, because that's more important, and only then do I include the site name. I tend to separate them with a pipe because I it's pretty...that bit's up to you!

Follow the same pattern on your internal pages, so a services page might be titled "Web development services Newcastle | Michelle Dancer". The site name is still there, but the more important words are first, and of course I'm fortunate enough to be able to include my desired search phrase too.

Remember the title should always accurately affect the page content, or you'll do yourself more harm than good. If using WordPress, check out the All in One SEO plugin to make setting page titles/descriptions easy.

Content: Sounds obvious, but always remember that using your keywords throughout the copy on your site will help your rankings too. However, don't ever do this at the expense of writing natural, well-formed sentences. The crawler bots are clever, and they will punish you.

Backlinking: Gaining backlinks is a huge subject unto itself but just remember if you do link to your site, don't link the name if at all possible. Link the keywords. So instead of placing my link on the words "Michelle Dancer", I'd place it on "web developer Newcastle" instead.

Step 5: Marketing

If you really want to maximise the traffic to your new site, you'll probably need to put on your marketing hat at some point. Here are some quick tips to help you get started, it's not as scary as it sounds.

Social media: Join Twitter, create a Facebook page, get yourself on LinkedIn and link to your website as much as possible without annoying anyone. This is not the magic traffic-generator that some "gurus" insist it is, but every little bit helps and it's just possible you could create a big following.

Blogging: If you're not already, consider starting a company blog. Customers will find you easier to relate to, you can keep them updated about new products or offers, and if you blog about your industry you'll come to be seen as an expert.

Start a newsletter: There are services like MailChimp that let you start offering a regular newsletter to your customers completely free. This is a great way to keep your brand right in front of them, so you're the first to pop into their mind when they're in need of your services.

Run a competition: This is a great way to launch a site. Publicize your contest on the social sites you just joined, and have people link to you or tweet about you to enter. You can offer a product, a consultation, anything you can think of really!