Starting a website used to be a multi-thousand-dollar operation, even for a simple company profile type site without a contact form. Shopping cart software alone cost tens of thousands … and the internet was a much lonelier place! Today starting a website is cheap and easy - all you need is a great base idea to make sure that your site starts earning you cash once it is up. Here we check out 5 ways that you can save when starting up a website, from domain name registration, to free email and affordable website content management systems.
Build your own site
There is such a wealth of free templates available on the web nowadays that you would almost be crazy to have your own personalized design made! The reason there are so many different designs available is that the creator gets a small amount of search engine optimization benefit every time somebody uses it … so everybody benefits.
Get your hosting for free
There are several great quality domain name registration and hosting companies that run competitions for free hosting. There's no better way to save than by getting something for free!
Get your email for free
Even in this day and age, there are still plenty of email providers that are happy to charge you extra for every email address you add to your domain. You can get personalized email for free with good domain name registration companies now.
Write your own web copy
Copywriting can be pretty expensive - if you put in some time and effort yourself, and are willing to pass your work around and take suggestions, it is possible to get a well-written site without the expense.
Do your own SEO
Search engine optimization is a must for every website that plans to actually get any visitors … and especially for those that plan to make any money! There are plenty of basic SEO tasks that you can do yourself. Alternatively, look for a provider that might be willing to work with you to cheapen your plan, by letting you do your own copywriting or your own uploads to the site through your website content management system.
Best SEO Practices in Domain Name Registration
Your business domain name is one of the single biggest factors in determining your Google ranking, and also an important method of making a first impression for your customers. Many companies simply register 'www.thenameofyourbusinessallinlowercase.com' - but if you want to make the biggest impact on your SEO rankings, you'll need to put a bit more thought in than that! Today we check out the best SEO practices for businesses about to undergo domain name registration.
Use your business name and your keyword
The ideal choice for a business starting up a new website is to create a domain name with a combination of their business name, and their keyword. For example, a company named 'Sparkle' that sells kids' stationery could use the domain www.sparklefunstationery.com. However, there will probably be some cases when this isn't appropriate, for example:
Choice of domain extensions
Domain registrations are fairly cheap, and domain redirections are a simple affair for most SEO companies. That's why companies are invariably recommended to purchase most conceivable alternate extensions for their main domain name registration. In addition to the dot-com extension, you'll want to get:
Registering additional domains
Most online marketing blog guides to choosing business domain names will tell you that you should also register misspellings of your domain name. This isn't a bad idea - however, there's no need to go crazy with registering additional domains. It will be a cold day in hell before a spammer or trickster takes the time to actually replicate your entire business website convincingly. If people mistype your domain, most will simply hit the back button and try again.
Hyphenation
The market is undecided on hyphenation. There is little additional SEO benefit (if any). Some people believe it looks neater, some people think they're clunky to type. Given that the default is for people not to use hyphens, it is probably better to ignore them ... unless you were planning on using a domain like http://www.expertsexchange.com/ or http://www.powergenitalia.com/ (an Italian power generator company!)
Use your business name and your keyword
The ideal choice for a business starting up a new website is to create a domain name with a combination of their business name, and their keyword. For example, a company named 'Sparkle' that sells kids' stationery could use the domain www.sparklefunstationery.com. However, there will probably be some cases when this isn't appropriate, for example:
- The name of your business combined with your shortest possible keyword is more than 40 or 50 characters, and
- You can't (or don't want to) shorten your business name to an acronym
- Your business name already contains your keyword (for example, www.awesomeinternetmarketing.com.sg)
Choice of domain extensions
Domain registrations are fairly cheap, and domain redirections are a simple affair for most SEO companies. That's why companies are invariably recommended to purchase most conceivable alternate extensions for their main domain name registration. In addition to the dot-com extension, you'll want to get:
- .org
- .net
- .com plus your local extension - for example, .uk, .au or .sg
Registering additional domains
Most online marketing blog guides to choosing business domain names will tell you that you should also register misspellings of your domain name. This isn't a bad idea - however, there's no need to go crazy with registering additional domains. It will be a cold day in hell before a spammer or trickster takes the time to actually replicate your entire business website convincingly. If people mistype your domain, most will simply hit the back button and try again.
Hyphenation
The market is undecided on hyphenation. There is little additional SEO benefit (if any). Some people believe it looks neater, some people think they're clunky to type. Given that the default is for people not to use hyphens, it is probably better to ignore them ... unless you were planning on using a domain like http://www.expertsexchange.com/ or http://www.powergenitalia.com/ (an Italian power generator company!)
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