Step 1: What’s Your Business Name?
This may sound Trival, but it can be a major point in the sucess of your business. You need to carefully consider your business’s name in light of the possible URL’s you can purchase. If you already have an established name it may be the time to consider updating your name in light of the avaiable URL’s for your bussiness.
Step 2 : You need a Logo
The sourcing of a Logo can be a difficult issue for some people. Here are a few sugestins to make the process easier.
1. You need to know what you like to be able to give an example to the graphics artist. While some artist are very creative you may end up going through renditions of the design and not end up with what you want. Allowing the Graphics Artist to know your taste will alow them the opertunity to give you suggested designs inline with what you want and your Brands Theme. Go to google and search google images, follow the link for an example search. Goggle Images Search Eco Logos.
2. Your Brands Theme – Your brand will need to have an identity. The styling of the logo and the colors can have a big impact on the message you are sending. Give specific guidence to your artist on the syle of logos you like and the color palate you will want to use in the theme of your website (layout / text colors) theses may seem like small details but they have a prefound effect on the quaulity of your brands image to the public.
For an example of what a full Brand Identity Package would look like check out Linkedin’s Brand Identity Guidelines. Also note you will need the original art for your logo, which normally has a vector file. A small scam some artist run is to keep the originals and only give you a PDF. Then latter when you need a better quailtiy they make you pay more for the original or you have to get the logo redone again. Also make sure their gig states that the original works belong to you the client and you retain the ownership rights to the work.
3. Where to find a graphics artist? Today’s modern internet connected world has made it amazingly easy to contract services for your business. You can now put out request for services on service provider websites such as Upwork and Fivver. Both are used by Rak Tamachat to precure certain serivices.
Step 3: Purchase a URL
Their are literally hundereds of websites selling URL’s (he address of a World Wide Web page), just try goggling Domain Register. One thing that you may want to consider is that with the purchase of some Hosting Services (Step 3 below) you can get a URL included in the hosing services. Rak Tamachat purchased it’s URL from 101 Domain. You will need to think about the ending of your domain name. The .COM at the end of some Web addresses (such as your-company.com) is called a TLD, or top-level domain. The .COM ending remains the world’s most common generic top-level domain. The .COM TLD means commercial, which just intends to convey the type of content that’s being published. Rak Tamachat uses the .org domain ending as we are engaged in Non Profit services.
Step 4: Secure a Hosting Service
Rak Tamachat uses Site Ground’s Go Geek Package currently and find them to be the best for the money as we work with Word Press for our CMS (Step 4). The Go Geek package does not include the URL.
Some key features to consider in choosing a service. (Rak’s Perspective)
Website Hosted: Rak Tamachat’s other websites such as the Sustainable Agriculture Institute where we provide online Permaculture Design Courses as well as other Natural Buildng and Sustainbility courses. Thiers also a Free Online Introduction to Permaculture Course, check it out!
SSL Certificate: It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This proves the owenership and trusworthness of the website which is needed when completing online money transactions. Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The ‘S’ at the end ofHTTPS stands for ‘Secure’.
WordPress Special Cache: It acceletates your site by caching results from database queries and/or caching dynamic data.
One click WordPress Staging: Allows for changes to the site ie: plugin updates to be tested before being updated.
Site Ground – Git for WordPress Repo Creation: SG-Git allows you to create a git repository for your WordPress Installation. You can deploy updates to your site with ease.
Super Cacher: Accelerates your site through three levels of caching. Allows you to optimize to get good page speed results. Test your sites speed for free and get suggestions to speed it up at Google Page Speed Insights.
Step 5: Decide on a CMS (Content Managment System) Platform
Rak Tamachat is run on the WordPress Open Source Code. You can download WordPress to be installed on your host from WordPress.org.
Step 6: Decide on you being the WebMaster or hiring an WebMaster Service Provider.
It could be arguded that this may be step one. If you have no internet / computer skills you may need some help to get everything going. Rak Tamachat works with a great WebMaster named Maxim Nardit who can be found on Upwork. Once you contract him through Upwork and gain confindence you can keep working in Upwork or can contact and pay him directly through Paypal as we do at Rak Tamachat (this saves you the Upwork fee). He can do and handle all issues concerning your site for you. His English Communication is not world class, but his codding leaves nothing to worry about. Remember you git what you pay for and your handing the keys to your kingdom to your WebMaster, treat him with respect, he is like your partner. The guy you call when things go wrong!
Step 7: Decide on a Theme to Run on your Site.
Again thier are Hundreds of choices to choose from with Themes for WordPress. At Rak Tamachat we choose to use Divi Themes which can be purchased from Elegent Themes. The theme has a drag and drop builder, modern styling elements and is build to be cell phone responsive.
Add bonus is that when you sign up with Divi you also get the following plugins which are very well done included in the Theme Cost.
Step 8: Set-up SEO Analytics Services
Free Services
- Google Page Speed Insights
- Google Aanalytics
- Google Webmaster Tools
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Bing Webmaster Tools
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Google Keyword Planner
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Open Site Explorer
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Google.com in an Incognito Window
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Google Trends
- Google Data Studio
Keywordtool.io
Paid Services
Step 9: Word Press Add On’s / Plugin’s
This can be a tricky one and get costly if your not carefull. The basic idea is to get a sight to do what you want, look how you want, market your product, etc…. In order to do this in wordpress you can choose from a large selection of Plugins and Widgets. These allow you to install what is basically small bits of code to do certain activies of look a certain why (super simple explination).
You need to be carefull with your plugin selection as bad plugins can slow down your site which will effect your sites rankings with google. In some cases a plugin conflict can shutdown your site. This is why it is so important to have the Staging and Git to make sure your site does not shut down and can be recovered if their ever are issues with things like wordpress updates, etc… Best to have a guy like Maxim how handles all this montly for a small retainer.
The List of Rak’s Plugins is two long to be practical to manage on this page. You can follow this Link to the “Rak’s Plugins List“.
Step 10: Content Creation
If you follow the Rak Tamachat Site Set up Guidelines above and engage a Profffesional Website Service Provider such as Maxim then you should have the fundamentals of a world class website.
The Content that you create is what will bring traffic to your site. The content should be engaging and about the subject of your page. The term used in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the “Key Word”. Search engine optimization is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural”, “organic”, or “earned” results.
The Key Word that you use for your tilte and inside of your page will affect the results of your rankings on google and other search engines. You can get assistance with SEO Keywords, from SEO plugins. Google Tag Manager which is a tag management system created by Google to manage JavaScript and HTML tags used for tracking and analytics on websites.
Remember without good content your site is not attractive to people nore the search engines and you will get reduced site traffic and reduced sales, etc…….
Make the best Content you can and then constently work to improve the content. Google’s Algorithems which track website rankings are trending towards pages which are considered “authoratative” which means have lots of consise content on a particular subject. Think of Wikipedia and how they rank pages so high. Well written, well organized, authoratative content.