6 Steps To Setting Up Your Online Presence

Establishing a presence on the internet is essential for any business these days. A website not only shows customers that you’re a legitimate business, but also allows new and old customers alike to find you when they’re looking for your services, and buy from you. A strong online presence can have a huge positive effect on your revenue.

If you have no presence online, here are some steps to get started and set your business up for success, both on and offline.

Set Up Your LLC

The first step to an online presence is to make sure the legalities of your business are taken care of. For practical purposes, creating an LLC (limited liability company) is better than creating a corporation -- it’s simpler, but it still protects you personally and can be very flexible.

While we can't give legal advice, these businesses can:

• Legal Zoom/Biz Counsel: You can use affordable services such as Legal Zoom or Biz Counsel for basic advice on starting your business. However, these services often employ attorneys with less experience, so you may want to be wary.
• Ventac: We recommend beginning with a more trusted platform such as Ventac.us. Ventac connects you with attorneys who’ve been working for decades; some are professors, and most have their own firms. Even though it’s a little more pricey, it’s much more reliable. You can get your first month for 50% with the code TC2020first.

For any further legal advice, it’s better to hire a professional company, particularly one that understands your industry.

Branding

Before your business goes online, you need to define your brand. How will your business present itself online (and offline)? How do you want to be perceived, and by who? Your brand will define many aspects of your website, so it’s crucial to do this step before working with a web designer.

Branding includes:

• Your logo: this will show up on your site and be your identifier on the internet, as well as everywhere else.
• Your color palette: The color palette is divided into primary (the 2-3 colors of your brand/logo) and secondary, which expands to the website and other marketing collaterals, so your brand maintains consistency. 
• Your fonts: beyond the font you use for your logo, your brand will need a couple of other fonts to create contrast between information. It is also important to choose fonts that are available to use; a good resource for choosing your font is Google fonts.

Get a Domain

Once you’ve defined what your brand will look like online, you have to choose and secure a name for your site, i.e. a domain -- before you start creating your site.

How do you choose a domain name? Here are a few aspects to keep in mind. 

Your domain name should:

• Try to stick to a .com domain if possible, as it’s the most common one (we recommend .org for an organization or .edu for academics).
• Keep it short (6-14 characters), so it’s easy for an online user to remember and to type correctly.
• Make it easy to spell and understand, and avoid things like double letters and hyphens.
• Make it brandable and unique: for example, facebook.com is a much better domain name than connectwithfriends.com.
• Make sure your domain matches available names for your social media profiles: you want to keep it consistent so users can find you easily. For example, if you want to find Texas A&M University, you’d go to tamu.edu; on Instagram, their handle is also @tamu.

Of course, to pick a domain name, you have to make sure it’s actually available. There are many domains that already have owners, so you have to find one that you can claim. To find and claim a domain name, follow these steps:

1. Find a reliable domain registrar; GoDaddy and SiteGround are two excellent options, but there are many more accredited domain registrars.
2. Run a domain name search on their site and find the best available option, based on the above criteria.
3. Purchase the domain name; we recommend purchasing the protection plan as well.

Get Hosting

Once you have secured a domain name, you now need to find a hosting provider. If a domain is like your business’ address, your web host is the house. A web host is a company with servers (computers) where your website files are stored. Hosting is important because it allows for other aspects of your business, such as your email, to match your domain. Example: www.forbes.com email: [email protected] 

Most companies that sell domains also offer hosting services, so you can often find a good deal on hosting from them, or get the domain for free. However, this may not be the best option for your business. When choosing hosting, keep the following in mind:

• How much support will you need? Some hosting offers complete management of your site, including security issues, patches, and backups. But if you have someone in-house who can do this for you, you don’t have to pay for hosting with as much support.
• How much traffic will you be getting? Hosting providers usually charge you based on bandwidth, and if you get a lot of visitors, you’ll need a lot of bandwidth.
• What type of server will you need? Different types of servers offer different benefits -- for example, shared servers are cheaper, but cloud-based servers allow you to upgrade your plan at the drop of a hat.

Website

Once you have your branding, domain, and hosting, you can start creating your website. Although there are sites that will let you create a website yourself using a pre-built template, it’s better to work with a web designer. Not only will they be able to handle the technical aspects of web design better, but they’ll incorporate your branding into your site, and create personalized solutions that will help you differentiate your brand from competitors.

You should also consider what kind of website you need. If you plan to sell products online, you’ll need an e-commerce site that lists every product and includes a cart and checkout. If not, you’ll need a lead generation website that gives visitors information about your business and encourages them to contact you, book an appointment, etc.

Your website should always include a few basic pages: Home page, a contact page, an About Us page, and a page for each of your services. You can add more based on your needs, such as a blog or an online catalog. Of course, each page should be consistent in design, colors, fonts, and voice, according to your branding.

SEO

Once you have a website that’s live, you technically have an online presence -- but it doesn’t mean much if nobody’s finding your website. A true online presence means that when internet users search for your products or services, your website appears at the top of their search results, and with so many websites out there, the competition is fierce.

To rank on search engines like Google, doing search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessity. SEO improves your website so that Google ranks it higher, adjusting things like loading speeds, metadata, user experience, and more. A good SEO strategy will also include creating new content for your site, so you can target keywords that your potential customers are searching for. Finally, SEO strategies take actions that happen outside of your site, but that improves its visibility and ranking.