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When you decide to build a website, here are some items to consider:

• See if your business name is available as a domain for your website. Go to Go Daddy or one of the other sites to check on name availability and options. Then choose a domain name.
• Select about eight or so keywords. Think local. These should be terms that people would use to search for your business; for example: Don’s Jewelry Store, La Quinta Jewelers, Jewelry stores in the Coachella Valley, etc.
• Decide on the number of pages (minimum should be home, services, about, contact).
• Determine contact info (phone, email fax and/or address).
• Develop a call to action (for example, call us today for a free consultation).
• Select authentic images (not stock ones), if possible. Studies have shown that people look at authentic pics. In fact, if you have an important message to communicate, put it by an image.
• Say what you do in the very first sentence or as a headline or tagline.
• Write content (including testimonials) placing the most important messages at the top.
• Consider creating a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and other social media sites. Your website will link to them and vice versa.
• Call Big Rig Media and begin developing your website.

SEO

If you’ve ever wondered about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), this is all you need to do in the beginning.

• Develop Title (60 characters) and Description (160 characters) meta tags for the site (Big Rig Media will put them in).
  (Note: If you want to see what a competitor is using, right click to the right of their home page, then click on view source. Amongst all of the gibberish look for their title and description.)
• Use as many keywords, title and description meta tags as you can in the content.

Content (Print readers read, web readers scan)

• List benefits instead of features.
• Discuss just one idea per sentence.
• Write in short sentences (7 to 15 words) and short paragraphs (3 to 5 sentences).
• Address the website to your customer or prospect so write from the you viewpoint as much as possible instead of we, us or I.
• Apply bullet points, a lot of white space and under 250 words per page.