SEO: Initial Planning part 1

I would first like to mention that well thought out initial planning is the most critical aspect of the website project. Don't just tell your web developer you want something to look like this, or that, or a little bit of this and a lot of that. The initial planning must cover purpose of the site, the audience targeted, ease of use and navigation, and search engine friendliness. I might have left a few things out but the point is to plan carefully. It's very easy to get it wrong and most people do.

So on to the initial planning...

Step One: Picking a Domain Name

Be sure to pick a domain name with keywords in mind as the Search Engines do read them. For example, if you have a business that deals with Broadway then be sure to have Broadway in the domain name such as http://mybroadwaydreams.com.

Sometimes the site you want might be taken but another trick is to add a dash between the keywords as the search engines read a dash as a work separator. Google also interprets periods and slashes as word separators. So go ahead and make a list of possibilities but avoid underscores and always get the .com version for branding purposes. People are accustom to .com and heaven forbid you have .net or .org and your audience is going to someone else's site... Free marketing for them huh..

Step 2: Picking Your Template

Now I have a bias towards joomla which is a content management system "CMS" and the reason I recommend these templates are so clients on their own can add or extract content as needed without paying us to do it. Oh, and joomla has some awesome templates with great features and plugins. Regardless of the template used or recommended, remember to ask if it will be search engine friendly and have the developer show you a few to select from. Also don't be fooled by the simplicity of the word template. People think they can just jump into joomla and create a Picasso... Wrong, Wrong, Wrong...

Quick snake oil story.... I retained a so called joomla guru and we will call him Dan Tears. After paying him upfront for a bit of work he disapeared which happens more than you could imagine. Well I did some digging and found his small business site at www.kewldevelopment.com. After looking closely I noticied the poor design layouts, misspellings, on and on.... This guy has been in the biz for years and still can't make a joomla site function properly. Although joomla is a CMS it's not as simple to create something that has ease of use/navigation, image, SEO, content flow, and marketing concepts in mind. Anyway, these mistakes happen even to the best of us. Lesson learned.

Side thought... don't get caught up in the Customized hype! I have seen people selling customized sites and bashing templates... Well understand that every template is customized and it is ridiculous to reinvent something that is out there.... There are millions of templates to work from so pick one that suits your audience (not you).

If you are in search of some nifty templates check out rocket themes and yoothemes. Both have great features and plenty of plugins.

Ok so to wrap up part 1 of the Initial Planning stage of your website be sure to get a properly suited domain name the search engines will recognize/relate to your purpose and pick a template that suits your audience.

Benjamin Kerpe