Here are a few bullet points on what you should do before you start building a website. Before I start building I like to draw the entire design on a piece of paper and build it from there. That way you can you can save time instead of editing in the computer. Here is a simple checklist I follow when building a website.

Layout

-Consistent navigation bar and main logo.

-Page footer that includes copyright information and a contact email address.

-Remember that most people use an 800 x 600 resolution so you should design your pages to be no less than 750 pixels wide.

-Make sure the text on the page is easy to read. If you use a black background it is best to use white text so that people can read it.

-Grab attention with the homepage. Put as much relevant information on the main page as you can

-Check Browser Compatibility

Navigation

-If you are using buttons as your text, add links to the bottom of your page. Some people use text browsers and search bots only look at text not pictures.

-Make sure the homepage is under 50 kb for fast loading

-Navigation should be big and simple and easy to find

-Check Links to ensure they are not broken

Search Engine Optimization

-Make sure your meta tags are defined (title, keywords, description)

-Make sure all your alt tags are filled in

-Make sure there are plenty of links and they are not broken

-Preview you pages in a text browsers

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A fellow twitterer was nice enough to review my websites out of the kindness of her heart. She has brought something to my attention with one of my websites which forced me to look at my other ones. My one website PoolPuppy.com is a swimming pool company directory. It has a slim amount of content but I really haven’t promoted it that much or have added the features to it that I want to yet. But she told me that if you typed in “Puppy Swimming Pool” in Google, that PoolPuppy.com was the first one to appear. I was shocked and felt like a freaking idiot. How did I miss that? I don’t sell Puppy Swimming Pools but the name alone pulled the wrong information. She told me to go back and re-evaluate my alt tags and meta tags which I will do tonight. I think I am going to completely remove the word puppy as much as I can. It’s just a brand I came up with.

That also brings me to my other site which is called SwimUniversity.com. I think with this site I am going to have to get rid of all my meta tags and alt tags that have to do with a University. I do not run a college, I run a swimming pool care website, but I can see where Google can get confused and not give me the ranking my websites deserved. So again thank you for the tip @yuyudin. What a big help she was today. See this is how Twitter can impact your life.

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