In step 2 of the Process page, I suggest that “By the end of this step, all content for the website should be sent to me.” But sometimes that’s not as clearcut as it seems. So here’s a list of common things I’ll need from you by the end of this step -

Basic website information
Photos and other images should be high quality, high resolution. Images can be resized to 72 dpi but otherwise left full size and I will modify them as needed for the pages they go on. Images need to be marked/labeled so I know what page they go on. Renaming the image file “homepage1.jpg” for example, or providing a list (image1.jpg goes on main page, etc) is a big time saver. Text can be written into the email itself, or in a Word or pdf file.

• Home page text and images
• About us page text and images
• Content page text
  • Address, phone numbers, alternate emails, do you want a map to your location? What form fields do you want in your contact form? Common ones include Name, Email, Phone, and a Comments/Questions section, but you can request any other information you want.
• Other page text and images
• Hosting information – account/ftp information

eCommerce site information

• I typically add your initial products to your website, so unless you prefer to do it youself after it goes live, I need product photos, description, options (like if it comes in different sizes, colors, etc), price, and weight if you ship by weight. Product photos can be resized to 72dpi.
• I need to do the initial set up of Mals-e to hook it up with my system
  • I will need your PayPal, merchant account or other payment processor information. Depending on how you accept payments, this will differ.
  • I will also set up the shipping and tax information, so I need to know your shipping rates and how much sales tax to charge, and to who (if applicable).

Search engine optimization
I will need your title, description and keyword information. I can help you with this, but read on to learn more about them…

First, how do you want to be found through search engines? “Florida candles”, “homemade soda”, “Nevada seamstress”, etc.

Now consider search engine results. When you type in a search, the results are given like this, which are hidden meta tags in your website’s code:

Your title is very important. It has to be relevant to what your business/website is about. If you cater to a specific group, like brides, and sell a specific product, like custom shoes, and have a retail store in a specific area, you’ll want your website title to look something like: Custom bridal shoes :: Serving brides in the City, State area.

The description is more helpful for the user doing the search, but the search engines do look at it for relevant information. If you leave your description meta tag out, the first text on your website will be displayed and it might not reflect your site as good as it could to the user.

Last for meta tags (but not least for SEO), is keywords. A list of words or short phrases, relevent to your website. For the bridal shoe example above, a list like: bride, bridal, wedding, pumps, high heels, flats, city, surrounding cities, state, retail store street, etc.

All of that though is second place to your website content and link backs. Search engines look into your code and place your site in the results based on the amount of high quality content and coding, and how many good standing websites are linking to yours. My job is to make sure your website’s code is up to standards, and your website’s content is the best it can be, but you will need to list, or have listed, your site by other websites. D

DO NOT let services that promise “top google placement” touch your website or place links. Bad linking and bad coding (using link farms or hidden text/links, among other tricks) can and does cause your website to become banned from Google and other search engines. It takes time to get good results. 2-8 weeks just to show up on Google and months to get placed higher in the results. It is worth it to be patient!