Find Web hosting
If you are designing a mid-level or large-scale Web site and plan to sell products or services from your Web site, you want to carefully evaluate potential Web hosting companies.
Choose one that is up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 99.9% of the time. I know this sound obvious, but believe me it’s not. How many times have I come across clients that were telling me “I signed up with a hosting company one year ago and they don’t exist anymore, please help me find the right one.”
There are hosting review forums out there, one of them is WebHostingTalk and the other one is FindMyHosting.
Establish a Domain Name
Selecting a domain that relates directly to the theme of your Web site increases the likelihood that search engines such as Google and Yahoo will rank your Web site for related keywords. Choose a domain name that contains the keywords and phrases that your Web site is about, or choose a domain name that is brandable.
When choosing a domain name, try to include, if possible, one or two of the major keywords your Web site is trying to rank for.
Tip: Cybersquatting occurs when someone registers a variation of your current domain name.
At the same time you register your primary domain name you should also register that same domain with common domain and country extensions. At least you should register the .com, .net, and .org extensions, as well as .co.uk and any other country with which you may want to eventually conduct direct business.
Securing a good domain name is not easy. Domaining is a business where domain names are purchased, usually in bulk, and monetized.
You may consider purchasing that domain in the domain secondary market from a Web site such as www.sedo.com, which brokers single domain names for as little a s $10 to as much as $10million.
Optimize for Multiple Browsers
Unfortunately, each individual browser does not read HTML code in the same fashion. It is possible to design a Web site a certain way and view it in Internet Explorer only to find out later that it looks much different in Firefox. A simple way is to download a version of each browser and test your Web site in each.
Also, you want to be sure that your Web site is designed with different screen resolutions in mind. Test your Web site with your computer’s resolution set to 800*600 and 1024*768.
Tip: Anybrowser.com offers a variety of tools that help you make sure your site is compatible with multiple browsers.
Design a Sitemap
Although not strictly necessary, consider naming the sitemap either sitemap.html or sitemap.php. Sometimes no matter how well you design your internal linking structure, your visitors may have a hard time finding exactly what they are looking for.
XML-Sitemaps.com helps automate this process. You can generate sitemaps that can be submitted to search engines.
Create a Company Information Page
A company information page helps build trust with your viewers by providing company biographies, history, and even photos to explain who you are and where you come from.
Place a link for your company information section on the home page of your Web site. Label the link as About Us, Company Information, or something similar so that users can easily find it.
If you are selling a product, your consumers want to know who you are, where you come from, and why they should trust your business.
Also statistics have shown that your Web site’s company information or About Us page is likely to be one of the most clicked pages or your entire site by new visitors.
Including an actual address and phone number can help to provide a sense of confidence in your visitor, which is especially important if you run an e-commerce Web site.
Create a Privacy Policy page
You should create a privacy policy to ensure your users are aware of your information collecting policies. Many in the SEO community theorize that having a privacy policy page can help to show the search-engine algorithms that you are in fact a legitimate business.
The purpose of having a privacy policy is to prove to your visitors that you are committed to protecting the privacy of their personal information. Privacy policies are particularly important if you collect e-mail addresses or any other type of demographic information about your visitors.
Tip: The Direct Marketing Association offers a tool for creating privacy policies that is freely available to all Web site owners.