This post is a little different than what you might be used to. Instead of talking at you, I would like to talk with you. I would like to propose a blogging outline, not actually blog on the given subject (yet!).
First, allow me to explain myself. I have been under-utilizing my blogging privileges the last three months and I would like to try to make this up to all of you. I have made the same excuses that everyone makes. “I am too busy,” “I’ll get to it later,” “My dog ate my keyboard.” I know these are bad excuses (except the last one) and so do you. There are plenty of people who work many more hours than I do (i.e., Rand) and even more people who write excellent blog posts who have less material to work with than me.
The truth is, I love blogging! It is my favorite part of my “job” and quite possibly the aspect that has taught me the most about the internet. Every time I post, I eagerly read the comments and obsessively follow the conversation if it travels around the internet.
Here is the part that involves you.
I would like to write posts only about material that you want to read about. Below is my proposal for you. If you choose not to accept it, I would love to hear your feedback so that I can be led in the right direction.
My Blog Proposal:
You wouldn’t start an offline company without considering marketing, yet many people try to start online companies without considering internet marketing and SEO.
I want to start an internet company and document the entire process from an internet marketing perspective. There are plenty of blogs about about starting a company, but very few (if any) that explain how to do it while solely focusing on internet marketing.
I will not include general start up advice. Instead, I will write as if I am the SEO manager whose only job is to do SEO for the company. To be perfectly honest, I do plan on trying to make money from the company but it is not my main concern. I have acquired a lot of internet marketing knowledge over the past year and I feel like if I don’t start applying it soon, I will explode! This is my effort to stop thinking and start doing.
Blogging Outline:
This is not a definitive plan. It is not tested yet and I plan to try these ideas out and blog about the results. I have only started one company in my life and it ended in a scary legal battle. I do not claim to be even a moderately skilled entrepreneur, but I do have enough SEO skills to make a notable attempt. Below is my plan:
(Each category will be at least one blog post.)
- Formulating the idea
- What marketable problem does the idea solve?
- Who will want to visit your site
- What will they be able to accomplish
- Unique Selling Proposition (Thanks, Dr. Mani)
- What “unfair” advantage do you have over your competition to make you better than them
- Identify two degrees of difference
- How will your content build links?
- Who will write your unique content
- How will this website do if it only has 100 users?
- Know the space before you get into it
- Identify the thought leaders and Linkerati
- Understand the internet neighborhood and the neighboring internet neighborhoods
- Socialize in the space
- Identify user wants and needs
- Find inspiration (aesthetic design, ideas, concepts)
- The art of stealing ideas (It’s fine to steal little pieces from different websites. Give credit where credit is due)
- Keyword research
- Start early and design with flexibility in mind
- Run test PPC campaigns (Thanks KS-Katz)
- Identify themes
- Decide how this will affect your design
- Setting goals
- What do you want to rank competitively for
- Is your online marketing plan primarily: Social Media, Paid Search or Natural Search
- Is there a goal to marketing other then selling the product
- 1 hour of marketing for every two hours of coding?
- Plan
- Make a flexible outline
- Think SEO and marketing from the beginning
- Create an early stage marketing plan
- Create a high level long term marketing plan (do not expect ANY press)
- What will you blog about?
- Milestones
- Keep the big picture in mind
- Get a domain (doesn’t even have to be the final. you can always 301)
- Base on your keyword research and your intuition
- New domains
- Domize
- Identify pros and cons of the domain name early
- Have a friend spell it without seeing it. (“Hey Jeff, how would you spell ziontd”)
- Buy canonicalized versions (.com, .org .net — others not necessary)
- Buy typos
- Remember engines are registrars, so private registration is useless
- If you need to buy a currently owned domain…
- Weigh the pros and cons of the title (Is it worth the price? Google, Delicious, Wikipedia are all nonsense words)
- Use a reputable source
- Allow 2 months for transfer proceedings
- Work before the work (Start building links early)
- Execute your early stage marketing plan
- Make a blog
- Host funny images on your server
- Social media links
- Local search registration
- Mockups (include SEO, Info architecture, siloing, H1, title tags)
- Think scaffolding, not colors
- Write out your title tags and H1, H2 on your mockups
- Plan your information architecture (3 click theory)
- Entire section on navigation
- How will your homepage spread link juice
- Establish a clear call to action on every page (Thanks, Jordan)
- Development design (hardware and middleware)
- Pick a CMS
- The SEO pros and cons of going custom
- HTML formatting (how does it look? how does it parse?)
- URL structure
- Bot killers
- Server administration (Thanks, Darren)
- Apache vs. IIS
- The importance of IP addresses
- DNS management
- Design design (frontend)
- User and search engine focused design
- The 3 Components of web design
- Interface design
- Clickability
- Banana (call to action)
- CSS
- Alt tags
- Aesthetic design
- Information design
- At this point it should already be planned
- Now figure out how to implement into design
- Breadcrumbs?
- Visual Hierarchy of information
- Interface design
- Code
- SEO audit
- Marketing
- Stunts
- Blogs
- Community
- Social media
- Paid (YouTube)
- Tracking/Analytics
- The infinity loop (This process never ends)
- SERPS
- Reputation management / social media tracking
That’s all I have for right now. I look forward to hearing your opinions and expertise in the comments. As always, e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. If that’s not your style, feel free to contact me on Twitter (DannyDover) and/or Linkedin (Danny Dover). Thanks!
