Launching a new website can help you kickstart your business, whether you sell products or services or you just have an information website that sells advertising. With the right website, you can generate a lot of income, either as a sole pursuit or as a side venture.
Before you launch, you must make sure that everything you need for success is in place. Here’s your checklist for creating a successful website:
Get a Great Host
Your website host makes a big difference to the performance of your site. The right host will ensure that your site is always running fast, is always available, and is always secure. If you don’t have a good host, your visitors may open your site and find that it doesn’t work or that it is running very slowly, and they will leave. They may not come back, which means that you have lost a sale and your page rank has been hurt. If your host is not secure, visitors may pick up viruses when they visit your site, and they won’t come back. Again, you will have lost a sale and hurt your page rank.
Explore the options for the best web hosts so you get an idea of the packages that are available and how they compare in terms of both features and price. Don’t just shop for the cheapest host out there. Shop for the best value – a combination of great pricing and the best features.
Create a Compelling, Responsive Design
Your web design is one of the most important factors contributing to your success or failure. Not only must your design by engaging and stylish, but it must also be responsive, meaning that it will appear appropriately no matter what device is used. Your audience should see a great design whether they pull your site up on their desktop computer, their smart phone, or their tablet.
Fortunately, you don’t have to know how to code or be a whiz at design to get a great-looking, responsive website. There are plenty of tools out there that make it easy for you to do it, even if you have no experience. WordPress is one of the most user-friendly platforms, and it is free to use. You can buy a WordPress theme that has all the elements already laid out, and you can just customize colors and other elements to make it look like your own. All the information is included to make it easy to do what you need.
Of course, if you have it in the budget, you can also just hire a designer to do the work for you.
Choose the Right Keywords
Proper keyword research and implementation will ensure that you get your site to the top of search results when people look for information on Google, Bing, or other search engines. You can figure out what keywords to target by using a tool like those offered by Google or Moz. Just brainstorm a list of keywords related to your niche and then plug them into the tool to find out how many people are searching those terms each month and how much competition there is for them. You’ll also get suggestions for related keywords.
Ideally, you’ll have a list of keywords to target that have a healthy search volume each month but not too much competition. Then you use those keywords throughout your website and copy, including in headlines, meta descriptions, photo tags, content, and more.
Make Sure Security is Tight
Security should be included in the web host and theme you choose, but you should also go over your site yourself to make sure that all your bases are covered and it is as secure as possible. Not only will good security help you earn the trust of your visitors, but it will also help you appear higher in search results. Your audience – and the search engines – want authority sites they can trust in both terms of content and in security. Again, if you’re not sure what to do, hire an expert for help.
Launching a website is a big venture, but you can ensure your success by checking off these essential components. The rest is up to you and how you maintain and promote the site.