Creating a successful online presence on the world wide web is not an easy task. And it is much more that creating an attractive design and building a strong website structure. Even before the website design & development process, you need to get involved in some strategic website planning activities to decide the course of your online presence.

Here are some key website planning considerations you should take care of before starting off the design and development process.

Efficient Keyword Research

One of the most important questions to ask yourself before creating a website is 'What is the purpose of the website?' Based on that along with the knowledge of what your industry audiences may search for on search engines to find the services/products your business offers. You need to research appropriate keywords and phrases for your website. There are plenty of free keyword research tools available on the Internet that can help you choose the right keywords for your business. Selecting relevant keywords and optimizing your website for the same will ensure quality web traffic and great rankings on the search engines.

Competition Analysis

First of all, enter your relevant keywords in the search engines and make a note of companies that fare well for the same. These are your competitors whom you will compete with in online market. Use the free backlinks checkers on the Internet and analyze the performance of your competitors on the search engines. Backlinks are what makes a website stronger, so if your competitor has a large number of backlinks, you would have to work really hard to push your website on the top slots. Also, take a note of the number of web pages that your competitors have. Because they have been in the industry earlier than you have, chances are they have hundreds of pages on their website. And your 10 page website will be no match for them. Therefore, you would need to build a website large enough to compete with them.

Tweak your USP

To get noticed on the world wide web and to ensure long term online success, you need to offer something different and better than your competitors to your audiences. Plan out a USP (Unique Selling Point) for your business and market it effectively. It could be anything like special offers for limited periods, better information, easier navigation, free stuff and so on. You could also analyze your competition and look for mistakes they are making and make sure you don't commit the same on your website. This goes a great deal in diverting traffic as well.

Quality Content

Content is the king and will remain so! People search for solutions on the Internet be it finding a product, finding some information, finding service providers and so on. If you are able to satiate their requirements and help them with relevant and informative content about the same, you have made it well.

Plan Your Marketing

Creating a website and placing it on the world wide web doesn't attract visitors. In fact, for your website to get noticed and become popular in cyberspace, you need to market it well. It is very important to optimize your website for search engine so that it fares well on the search engine results pages (SERPs) When your website ranks on the top positions of the search engine results, more visitors will come to your website. Its a vicious circle altogether!