FIRST STEPS IN WEBSITE SET UP
- Meet to understand goals of the website. Sales, brand marketing or both?
- Keyword research BEFORE a business plan, before domain name buying, before trademark registration, is best but I understand that that’s not always possible. My modus operandi has been for new sites: 40 minutes of brainstorming/keyword research with a client in person or by phone. Then buying IP BEFORE handing them over to their web developer. Pages are built by the developer based on keyword research. A few months later when the design is signed off the clients usually come back to me for the digital marketing. Web designers send clients to me for these first steps in website set up. Then it’s over to you. I also send clients to web designers after first steps in website setup.
- RELIABLE WEB HOSTING SERVICE PROVIDER
- Get reliable, secure fast hosting and if targeting internationaly, use a CDN. The cost of good hosting is cheap so price should not be an important selection criteria. (Same with SEO. Results not price)
- Good is a web hosting service provders which offer free SSL certificates
- So too is http/2 support.
- A dedicated server is good but expensive.
SITE STRUCTURE
Develop a good site structure. Sketch it out on a big sheet of paper with stakeholders.
- If using a CMS, for good SEO outcomes it is so important to use lightweight themes. Have a look at https://athemes.com/
collections/best-free- lightweight-wordpress-themes. I use Zakra which uses the Elementor page builder. - Develop a site structure that’s logical:
- without dirty URLs.
- avoid basing pages on categories or products etc Eg https://www.tleng.com.au/pr
oduct/water-tanks/ Eg2 https://frpengineering.net/ products/cablesafe-hooks/and avoid broken links. Few people search for products.
- I know the clean Google look, looks good but try to keep at least 200 words, many keywords, above the fold. With Google it’s a case of do as I say, not do as I do.
- Avoid too much javascript (js). If you can, avoid sliders (slide shows, usually at the top of web pages. You won’t see them on good digital marketing agency websites but they love to add them to their clients’ sites because they look good.) Sliders are javascript driven. Most good SEO websites don’t use sliders. If you insist on using a slider, use a lightweight slider.
- Don’t let themes auto create a web page from each image.
- Please use a minimal number of plugins only essential ones.
- Except for common content such as headers and footers, avoid duplicate content.
- Use keywords in hypertext including buttons. Eg Not “READ MORE” but rather “MORE HANDRAIL INFORMATION”.
WHY USE WORDPRESS OR OTHER CMS?
You don’t need to use a content management system. In 2021 it might be winding back the clock as a shock to you but you don’t need to use a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress. Search engines such as Google look at the resulting html. They don’t care what you used to create it. Originally html was producted with plain text editors. Then WYSIWYG html editors like MS FrontPage/Expression Web came along. Google has a downloadable html editor. I still use it on some of my old sites (latter two examples below) because I don’t have time to convert to a CMS and the html is simple. If I want, and I try to avoid scripts, then I can get scripts free on line from sites like React or Dynamic Drive.
THE MAIN DISADVANTAGES OF WORDPRESS CMS?
Constant updates of:
- WordPress
- Themes
- WordPress databases
- Plugins
… are the main disadvantages of WordPress.
WordPress updates are necessary for improvement in:
- Functionality/performance
- Security
- SEO
Updates can be set to automatic but then you run the risk of an update crashing your site and unless you’ve got uptime monitoring alerts, your site could be offline for days without you knowing about it.
Manual updates are better one at a time so that if your site crashes, you can identify which update crashed your site and deal with it. However, another disadvantage of WordPress CMS is that manual updating is frequently time-consuming. Some plugins get updated every week! If you manage multiple sites, that represents a lot of time which equals money if you’ve got someone like the worthwhile services of Web Support in Perth specialising in WordPress update services.