- Getting Started (cont'd)
The seven steps to designing your new website:
Plan
| Design
| Create
| Check/Re-check
| Upload
| Promote
| Maintain
Maintaining Your Website
Congratulations, you have a website! Or at least
you should if you've been doing this step by step. So,
you're done, right? Well, sort of. All that's left
now is to maintain your site. It's also one of the most
important parts. Keeping your site up to date and adding
new information from time to time is a very important part of
having a website.
One of the most important parts
of having your site is to make sure that the information on
your site is current. If you will be including a press
release area on your site, make sure that you are regularly
adding press releases. Visitors who hit the site and
find that the last press release is dated a year ago may think
that the site hasn't been updated since then. Better to
have no dates than old dates. If you are selling
products on your site, make sure that your prices are
current. Customers may very well use your site as a
point of reference before calling. Should they get one
price on the phone and another on the site, they will likely
be leery of your company.
Consider adding something to
your site to keep visitors coming back. This could be
something as basic as weekly sales, coupons or free project
sheets, or as complicated as a message board
forum.
Keep in mind that your site
isn't the only thing that needs maintaining. You also
need to make sure that your domain registration is kept
current and valid. Why? Well, because the company
you register your domain with may need to contact you to renew
your registration. This information is also used when
you try to transfer your domain from one hosting company to
another. Make sure that you are listed as the
administrative contact for the site and that the email address
is current. Also make sure that the street address
listed for you or your company as the registrant is
correct. If you'd like to check your domain registration
information, go
here and enter your domain without the www prefix.
Last, but certainly not least
you need to make sure that your search engine listings are
maintained. One of the biggest mistakes many people make
is listing their site once and assuming that means it is
forever listed. While your listing may remain in the
search engines database almost indefinitely, without
maintenance, your ranking will slide over time. As new
sites with similar topics or keywords list their site after
yours, your site will be bumped down the list. Reworking
and re-listing your site on a regular basis (we recommend at
least a monthly look) is key to keeping your rankings in good
shape.
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