Want a business on-line but you are not sure where to start? Well… the following is an overview of the things you need to consider in the initial phase of creating a website that makes money. The initial phase is about the actual set up of the site just before it goes on-line.

The main considerations in the initial phase of web design are:

• creating a structure for your website
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

This article will deal with the key processes involved with SEO. Search Engine Optimisation is the process you need to go through to ensure that search engines are able to drive traffic to your site. Most people in searching for a site will use key words or phrases through a search engine. The most effective way to drive visitors to your site is to get a high listing on the Google search engine. So effective SEO in essence is about the process you employ to ensure top rankings in the search engines for the most relevant search terms on a website.

From the setting up of the website until it is listed and hopefully then making you money, there is a particular time frame i.e. anywhere from 12 to 18 months, depending on how hard you want to work. This is what you can expect to do in the initial phase.

Initial Phase - Month 1 to 3 - No direct sales from the web site.

The initial stage is about putting your site together and putting it on-line. See below.

• Plan to build a site with a 100 pages of content.
• Choose a domain name that has branding and name recognition in it. Putting keywords in the domain name is no longer important to search engines.
• Design your site to maximize simplicity and speed for your surfers, where your site responds instantly to a request. The response rate locally should be no more than 3-4 seconds. More text content than html content. Pages should be usable in all browsers i.e. keep it close to HTML 3.2 . Avoid Flash, Java and Javascript. Arrange the site in a logical manner complete with keywords throughout the content.
• Keep pages small - over 5k and under 10k if possible. Search engines and surfers alike work best with this. Build a page of content and put 200-500 words per day on-line. Use a keyword suggestion tool to help you isolate the core keywords for your topic area.
• Put the keyword once in the following places: title, description tag, heading, URL, in bold, in italic and high on the page. Keyword density should be around 5 and 20%. Use correct sentences and spell check.
• Use outward bound links from every page linking to high ranking sites and put the keyword in the link text.
• Cross link within your site. Linking across pages within your site helps to improve your Page Rank (PR) score in Google. You may wish to search out for information on how Google ranks pages.
• When putting your website on-line go make sure you have an individual Internet Protocol (IP) number. Make sure you link all your pages to other pages on your site. A menu on every page should link back to your main ‘topic index’ pages. Surfers should be able to logically navigate their way around your site. Settle for nothing less than a quality site.

This initial phase is important as it is the crucial preparation period to maximize the potential for search engine spiders to come and find you. Without the spiders no search engine listings, no listings no visitors or customers. It is an intense period of work with little reward immediately in visitors or money. Patience is important. Remember there are many resources on-line to help you with effective search engine optimisation (optimization). In part 2 you will learn about what to expect from months 5 - 12.

Michiel Van Kets provides articles for Dave Glynn, who owns Searchenginesensation.com. They are part of Atomic Web Solutions and offer professional search engine optimisation (optimization) and web marketing services including pay-per-click campaign setup and management.