Probably the most critical part of Internet marketing for your business is organizing your website so it will achieve your overall goals.  However, most business people ignore this critical step, or leave it to their web designer to take care of, which can often be even worse. 

By strategically planning your new website or an update of your existing website, you will ensure you have a marketing piece that showcases your business to its best, allows you to be in control of ongoing content updates, and achieves the goals you have set for your business.  Here are a number of important steps to take in the website planning process:

1.  List all the information about your product or service that a visitor to your website might be interested in knowing.  If you are planning a website for a school, for example, the visitors would be interested in how man students attend, classroom sizes, staff information and sports offered.  Take the time to brainstorm as many areas related to your product, service or industry that someone might be interested in when visiting the website.

2.  Take on the role of your website visitor.  Surf the Internet and visit various sites offering similar services, then review them as a potential customer would.  As a visitor who is genuinely interested in your product or service, what are the good things and bad things about each site you visit?  Are you driven to take action?  Can you find what you are looking for fast? Are there a lot of pages to navigate through to get to what you are looking for?  Take notes on all this information with the purpose of making your own website as visitor friendly as possible.

3.  Research to find out what keywords your visitors might search for. There are free keyword search tools through Google that are completely adequate for this type of research.  By typing in a general phrase such as “exercise video”, other keywords will come up that are related.  Your visitors already have questions about these things.  By arming yourself with this information, you will be able to plan your website to answer their questions right away. 

4.  Make sure to plan your website to grow.  Don’t be lured into a website format that won’t let you expand easily to add new content pages or products.  A good website is a constant work in process. 

5.  Plan a website that you can control, rather than be at the mercy of a web designer to make even small changes to your website.   Old fashioned websites that only a web developer can change do not work in today’s dynamic Internet marketing environment that demands new content added regularly.  Your new website should be on a platform that lets you add content quickly and easily.

Your website is most often one of the biggest marketing expenses your business will encounter.  Make the most of your investment with a new website that supports the goals you have set for your business. 

Marty Dickinson is the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for over 10 years. His specialty is Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.

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