Today, creating a website has become accessible to everyone, thanks to the many online solutions. But to create a visible and effective website, you have to consider several criteria, such as the demands of search engines and competition on the web, which are increasingly strong. It is, therefore, better to call on creative professionals who generally combine different skills: design, SEO, development, writing… To help you step by step in the creation of your website, here are some tips.
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Take the Time to Analyze your Needs
Analyzing your needs should be the first step in building your website. Before even requesting a quote from a web agency, define your needs, ask yourself these few questions:
Who are you? Craftsman, SME, independent, association, local authority…?
What products or services do you offer?
What types of customers are you targeting? BtoB, BtoC…?
Why do you want to create a website? To sell products online, to be visible on the web, to win new customers…?
Do not forget either to define your means, financial and human. If necessary, you can formalize this step and trace your needs in a specification. This specification is very important in creating a website and another web project unless you want to create a showcase site.
Call on Professionals
To create a professional and efficient website, using a web professional has become essential. Admittedly, today it is quite easy to create a simple website to show your vacation photos, for example, but to create a site well positioned on search engines, that’s a whole different story.
To make sure you’re working with a serious professional, avoid free websites, One-Shot sales professionals, or those that promise to get your site to # 1 on search engines in just a month. Indeed, creating a well-positioned site is neither easy nor free. Also, for creating your site, favor open source solutions (like WordPress) and beware of proprietary creation software.
Take Care of your Collaboration With your Web Service Provider
To create an effective website, you need to invest yourself fully. You are in the best position to define your objectives, your activity, your products, the image you want to convey. However, know that creating a site is a team effort. You must, therefore, share your vision with your web provider. It is also important to build trust. Remember that one of the keys to success is good long-term support.
And so that the collaboration is effective and constructive define precisely the role of each one and his perimeter of intervention. Some of the points you will need to study include:
the creation of the graphic charter
the production of editorial content
drafting of legal notices
site hosting
Indicate who is in charge to avoid any misunderstanding. Also, make sure that everyone respects the deadlines defined in the specifications.
Remain Owner of your Site; It’s Content.
In terms of security, you must ensure that you remain the owner of your domain name and all your content. It would help if you also had control over your sources (files and database). Having access to these sources allows you to keep control of the lines of code and adapt them to your needs. So don’t be fooled by rental formulas or online website creation services because your content may no longer belong to you.
Choose Reliable and Secure Hosting
An effective website is also a secure site. Among the security points to see is web hosting. This component is too often overlooked, yet an unsecured site is an open the door to hacking. To remedy this, choose professional solutions in outsourcing, especially if you do not have the necessary skills to secure your site or administer a server. Of course, you will not get a 100% secure site (that does not exist…), but you will have efficient, reliable, and secure hosting. In any case, avoid free hosting offers.
Establish an SEO Strategy from the Design of the Site
SEO, for Search Engine Optimization or natural referencing, is an essential element to take into account when designing your website. It brings together more than 200 criteria to be met. Neglecting them could lead to a complete overhaul if you ever decide to improve your site’s positioning. So, from the design stage, give importance to the tree structure and prioritization of your content. Also, consider choosing the right keywords and producing optimized content.
Make the Difference Between Positioning and SEO
Positioning refers to the position in the search engine results pages (e.g., 1st page 3rd position) on which a website or a web page appears following the request of an Internet user (phrase or keywords). This position is assigned by Google’s algorithms and is not the result of chance. Note that it is advisable to view an Internet site as a set of pages and not as a single entity. Therefore, always keep in mind that a visitor can come to your site from pages other than the home page, and each page should be optimized for a keyword.
As for SEO, it means all the techniques used to improve the positioning of a website. It is about implementing the maximum of recommendations required by search engines so that your site is relevant to Internet users’ requests.
We will retain two types of referencing, natural referencing (SEO)and paid to reference. The first is to work on the content of your web pages and their external factors like inbound links and social media presence. This referencing takes longer to set up but is more durable. For the second, it is to use the Google Ads tool with a paid campaign. You will have to buy keywords from Google so that it best positions your website in the results dedicated to “Ads”. This visibility is for a limited time, and the more competitive the keyword, the more expensive it will be. For a single click made by an Internet user on your ad, your fund is debited by the chosen keyword’s amount. When your pot is exhausted, and if you have not worked on your natural referencing, you disappear.
Do Not Bet Everything on the Design of the Site
A “beautiful” site is not necessarily synonymous with an effective site. Moreover, this notion is subjective. So don’t overestimate the importance of your website design. What matters above all is the user experience and the ergonomics of the site. As a communication and sales tool, your site must be of service to the Internet user. Keep in mind that your visitors won’t come back to your site because they like its design. They will come back because it provided them with interesting and readable content, and because it is fluid, easy to use …
Bring your Website to Life
Your task does not end with putting your website online. It just marks the beginning of your digital presence. To keep your site alive, you must think about its upkeep, maintenance and bring the necessary updates. If you don’t update the content on your site, search engines will gradually downgrade it. This is one of the reasons why you should regularly add quality content and monitor the indexing of your pages in search engines. Also, consider promoting your website. You can even turn it into a profit center, but in this case, it will be necessary to capture more traffic by putting in place a good SEO strategy.