Nowadays, it is very easy to start a new online business. With abundance of different tools and sources with information on SEO, SEM and web development, you can easily create your website within a day.
With the increased ease of creating a website, it became much more difficult to be the best in the industry, to create a professional website that will soon rank high on google and will start bringing you huge profits.
That is why, you need to either learn several years the basics of web development and SEO, or order professionals to create a website or an e-Commerce store for you.
Here, we will tell you, how you can start a new online business on your own.
Choose a Website Name
If you already have an idea of what kind of online business you will start, think of possible website (and company) names. When choosing a website domain name, think of the following factors:
- Keywords– it should include a word that characterizes your future business area
- Branding – some unique phrase or word that people will associate with your website
- Easy to remember – if you want people to remember your business name and type in your website right away instead of searching for it in Google, you need to choose a short name that is easy to remember.
It is great if all three are characteristic to the website name that you found, but they are not a must. For example, Google and Apple are easy to remember, and they include some branding, but they don’t include any words connected to their industries.
Mistakes to avoid:
- Don’t overoptimize your website name to SEO. People won’t remember your websitedevelopmentanddesign.com website name. webdevpros.com or webpros.com would be a much better choice.
- Don’t make it too long.
- Try to avoid hyphens in your domain name. Web-dev-pros.com doesn’t look very professional.
How to find out if the domain name is free:
Use this website to find this out: https://instantdomainsearch.com/
Get Domain and Hosting
In short, domain is your online address, and hosting is your space on a server.
You can get both in hundreds of hosting providers available in the internet. You can find different options from dedicated to shared hosting, you can use a VPN or a CDN. We’d need to write a whole book to explain all this, advantages and disadvantages of all options. For a beginner, a shared hosting will be more than enough.
Choose one of the hosting providers and get a hosting and domain from him.
Install WordPress
When you have your domain and hosting, it is time to install WordPress. WordPress is the most popular Content Management System, it is free and easy to use. You can install it in one click from your personal account on the hosting provider website.
Choose a WordPress Theme
WordPress Theme creates a general structure and look of the website of your online business. There are free and paid WordPress Themes. Paid ones usually cost below $100, mostly around $50. They are more professional, make your website load faster, and give more features. Still, to start, you can use one of the free themes that you can find in the appropriate tab of your WordPress. You can check several and choose the best one for you.
Add Plugins
Plugins are small add-ons for your website responsible for SEO, security, images or code optimization, or adding some useful features. You definitely need them, but try to keep a minimum number of them (better under 20, but best is under 10), as most of them make your website load slower, which can be penalized by Google, and you will never get to the first results page.
Change the Look
Now, let’s change the look of your website. Of course, you want it to be nice, and easy to navigate in. Add menu items, choose the colors you think are appropriate, add a picture, and some information for people to know what your online business is about.
SEO Analysis
This part can should be done by a specialist, and it is often skipped by beginners. SEO analysis and content marketing plan are very important to make your website rank high in search engines. Even if you work very efficiently, create a lot of great content and promote your online business, you will earn much less money than in case if you have set your goals; and you do everything to reach them.
Add Content to your Website
Now, it is time to add some content to your website. First things to start are the home, about and the contact pages. After filling them out, write your first blog post about your business (topic related to your industry, how your business can help people, or even what you ate for breakfast if it’s a personal blog).
In your content marketing plan, you already have a schedule with topics that you will write about and frequency of new content. Simply do everything according to it, and you will rank high and start making money in no time.
Promote your Online Business
After you have something to show on your website, start promoting your online business. The best and most popular ways are SMM (social media marketing), which is sharing your new content in social media, give some tips and insights related to your industry and engage with your audience, and SEM (search engine marketing), which is creating a Google AdWords (Bing Ads or similar) Campaign, and optimizing it to make your target audience see your ads at the lowest cost possible.
Make Money
Now, the last and the most pleasant step of starting your online business is making money and growing your income. There are many ways to monetize your website from selling your own online or offline products to paid ads, articles and brand partnership.
Having an online business, you are don’t depend on the location of your clients, and don’t depend on the place, where you live. So, you can move to a beautiful place, you’ve been always dreaming about, and earn your passive income thanks to our specialists in digital marketing.
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