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
o What marketable problem does the idea solve?
o Who will want to visit your site
o What will they be able to accomplish
o What makes this idea better than the competition
o Identify two degrees of difference
o How will your content build links?
o Who will write your unique content
o How will this website do if it only has 100 users?
* Know the Space before you get into it
o Identify the thought leaders and Linkerati
o Understand the internet neighborhood and the neighboring internet neighborhoods
o Socialize in the space
o Identify user wants and needs
o Find inspiration (aesthetic design, ideas, concepts)
o The art of stealing ideas (It’s fine to steal little pieces from different websites. Give credit where credit is due)
* Keyword Research
o Start early and design with flexibility in mind
o Identify themes
o Decide how this will affect your design
* Setting Goals
o What do you want to rank competitively for
o Is your online marketing plan primarily: Social Media, Paid Search or Natural Search
o Is there a goal to marketing other then selling the product
o 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
o Do not expect ANY press
o What will you blog about?
+ How many posts per week?
o Milestones
o Keep the big picture in mind
* Get a Domain (doesn’t even have to be the final. you can always 301)
o Base on your keyword research and your intuition
o New Domains
o Domize
o Identify pros and cons of the domain name early
o Have a friend spell it without seeing it. (“Hey Ab Fab, how would you spell jimmyriddle”)
o Buy canonicalzed versions, .com, .org .net. Others not necessary
o Buy typos
o Remember Engines are Registrars, Private registration is useless
o If you need to – buy a currently owned domain…
+ Way the pros and cons of the title (is it worth the price, Google, Delicious, Wikipedia)
+ Use a reputable source
+ Allow 2 months for transfer proceedings
* Work before the work (Start Building Links early)
o Execute your early stage marketing plan
o Make a blog
o Host funny images on your server
o Social media links
o Local Search registration
* Mockups (include SEO, Info Architecture, Siloing, H1, Title Tags)
o Think scaffolding not colors
o Write out your title tags and H1, H2 on your mockups
o Plan your information architecture (3 click theory)
o Entire section on navigation
o How will your homepage spread Link Juice
* Development Design (Hardware and Middleware)
o Pick a CMS
o The Pro and Cons of going custom
o HTML formatting (how does it look? how does it parse?)
o URL structure
o Bot Killers
* Design Design (Frontend)
o User and Search Engine Focused Design
o The 3 Components of Web Design
+ Interface Design
# Clickability
# Banana
# CSS
# Alt tags
+ Aesthetic Design
# UX
# CSS
+ Information Design
# At this point it should already be planned
# Now figure out how to implement into design
# Breadcrumbs?
# Visual Hierarchy of information
* Code
o Start Coding
* SEO Audit
o Get a different SEO to look at your site
o Nofollow
o Title tags
o H1
o SEO Browser
* Marketing
o Stunts
o Blogs
o Community
o Social Media
o Paid (Youtube)
* Tracking/Analytics
o The Infinity Loop (This process never ends)
o SERPS

Ab Fab Media Plymouth
(01753) 199694

(01752) 784262

david@abfabmedia.com