From what I’ve recently read in the media, more and more people are starting up or thinking about starting new businesses after redundancy, no doubt because they want more control over their own future. When it comes to setting up a new online presence, there’s a few key things to do to make sure you get ahead early on, even if you’re not yet ready for a website!
Get a domain name
This is the first thing you need to do and try and get a domain name that is related to your business name. It’s getting more difficult to find nice domain names which aren’t taken, so brainstorm a few variations and see what’s taken and what isn’t. It’s worth checking that your domain name isn’t too similar to an existing site (as you don’t want to be sending visitors to your competitors if people get mixed up with your domain). If similar domains are taken, but their business offering is quite different from yours, then you’re probably OK to use it. Register your domain and any standard variations, e.g .com & .co.uk. Also hyphenated variations. When I started Forty First in 2002, fortyfirst.co.uk was registered but not being used, so I registered and started to use forty-first.co.uk (and registered .com). Since then fortyfirst.co.uk came up for sale, so I bought it along with the .com version. I don’t use them but own them, and it’s important that a competitor can’t get hold of variations of your domain.
Do Some Keyword Research
You may think that researching keywords is a little premature, particularly if you’re in the early stages of starting up your business, but it’s important to find out what keywords people may potentially use to find your products or services. It can also help with your market research. Once you find out how people search for your products/services, it can give you ideas for a niche and even how you may want to structure your site when you come to build it. Online market research is just as important as offline market research and you need to know not only the keywords to use but other businesses in your sector which you can also find from your keyword research and look at their offerings.
Put Up a Holding Page
Once you’ve registered your domain, put up a basic holding page saying your site is coming soon (even if it isn’t!) and link to the page from a website that is already in the search engines’ database. Even if you’re not going to be thinking about a website for a few months, the earlier the search engines know about your domain the better. It helps with ageing delays which search engines use in the way they rank sites – older sites tend to have an edge over newer sites and the sooner the search engines know about your site, the clock will start ticking.
Register Your Social Networking Profiles
Again, you may not be ready to start participating on social sites, but if it’s going to be a part of your online marketing, then it’s worthwhile making sure the name you want to use is available. Keep your name the same across all social media sites so as not to confuse people.
So if you’re starting a new venture, best of luck and hopefully these tips will help things move along a bit faster!
