Assomeone said, words have meaning and names have power. A short, easy-to-remember name is great for word-of-mouth as well as internet marketing and branding development. Many assume the first step to starting your own website is design, but choosing the right domain name is equally important. Pick a web site address that is easy to type and memorable (it is called the URL and it is the word(s) before the .com). You do not get points from the search engines for having the name of your product in your URL but it might make it easier for people to recall it.

2. Naming Website Folders & Files

They say the devil is in the details. When it comes to naming of folders and files those details play an important role.

1. Only use the lowercase characters [a-z], the numbers [0–9].

2. Do not use under-scores, use hyphens instead.

3. Good: http://www.domain.com/sub-folder/file-name.html.

4. Bad: http://www.domain.com/sub_folder/file_name.html

3. Why? Because the search engine robots can read hyphens and under-scores differently and you get keyword credit when using hyphens.

Ifyou run a professional website today you know that, in terms of marketing the website to the intended user, the world has changed dramatically. Tried and tested activities for getting user attention just do not work. Content is where now the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. Make sure every web site and every page you build has (quality) content. Specifically, make sure there is compelling text on every page. The battle continues on exactly how much content there should be for the best site optimization but nearly everyone agrees it should never be less than 200 words of text and 10% of those should be important keywords.

4. Stick with One Theme

Select a theme and stay with it. A website should have a unified graphic theme, as well as a tone and general feel. If a “professional feel” is what you are going for and if you’re trying to sell a professional product or service, like web design then aim for a professional look and design, and write the content with a professional tone. It’s hard to describe because the concepts are often abstract, but a good designer can come up with a look and feel for any theme.

5. Responsive Web Design

People do things over the web while on the run, all the time. They like to surf the web before they go to sleep on their tablet and if you want to serve them, you need to make sure they can access it from any device with any resolution or aspect ratio. Maybe a few numbers would provide the much needed clarification. a significant portion of your site traffic is coming from two main sources: social media and search. Lets assume Facebook is regularly cropping up as a site referral in your statistics, consider this: nearly 80% of all Facebook users are accessing it exclusively through mobile, and a quarter of all search is happening via mobile device.

6. Creative Web Layout Ideas

Follow these rules in layout and design of a web site if you want the site to market well in the search engines:
1. Make sure more text content than there is html on the home page.
2. Minimize javascript. (No matter how cute it might be, resist it!)
3. Make sure there is no doubt about what the site is about the minute it comes up on the visitor’s screen.
4. Keep all files close to the root directory. (search engines do not like to crawl deep for info)
5. Do not use frames and all caps for text.

7. Title Tags For SOE

Here we are going back to basics! And nothing is more basically important to a site than properly written title tags. You know the ones that used to appear in the little blue bars in your browsers. So what is a title tag? Why is it important to SEO? Title tags are part of the meta tags that appear at the top of your HTML inside the < head > area. Think of title tags like the title of the chapter of a book. It tells people and search engines what your page is about. Title tags are also part of what makes people decide whether to visit your site when it shows up in the search results. The title tag should contain important keywords to help the search engine determine what the page is about.

8. Use Meta Tag

Meta tags are a great way for webmasters to provide search engines with information about their sites. Meta tags can be used to provide information to all sorts of clients, and each system processes only the meta tags they understand and ignores the rest.

Meta tags are added to the < head > section of your HTML page. So use meta tags and use them right: keep the title tag to less than 60 characters (punctuation and spaces count as a character); keep the description tag to 150 characters; and keep the keyword tag down to not more than 10 keyword phrases.

9. Use keywords in alt tags

You include images in your articles to get people to read your text. Well-chosen images also strengthen your message. You should not forget to give those images good alt attributes: alt tags and title tags strengthen the message towards search engine spiders and improve the accessibility of your website. Make sure every graphic on the site has an alt tag so folks who surf the net with graphics turned off or the handicapped can still understand your site because of well formulated alt tags. In Internet Explorer Alt text also pops up when you hover over an image. Plus, Google officially confirmed it mainly focuses on alt text when trying to understand what an image is about.

10. Maintain Your Website

Owning a website comes with certain responsibilities. You can’t just build it and forget it. Well you can, but regular website maintenance is a must if you want your site to be successful.

Here’s a quick list to help you on running your own website:
1. Keep secure: monitor for malware, viruses, hackers, and errors
2. Keep a regular backup schedule.
3. Keep regular visitors happy by giving them fresh, updated information and exciting news.
4. If you’re too busy running your own show and need support, visit our maintenance and support service.

Surely you have heard the old saying, “You can not make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!” Well, it applies in building web sites. You can not market a web site that was built poorly. This means good marketing starts even before the web site is designed. So if you as a web site designer follow all 10 of these steps, the marketing work for you will become lot easier and has a much greater potential for success. There are other things you can do also and they will change over time.