Back then website design was often the first consideration. Then one notified the search engines and maybe joined a web ring or two and waited. The web rings guaranteed your site visitors, and then it had to catch fire to succeed.

After all, it accomplishes little to get a good ranking by a search engine and yet be passed over by the human viewing the search engine results. Content was king. Some SEO people today say content is history. That might well explain the reason their websites are lost deep among the millions of sites in their category on the internet. Content especially fresh content is still very important.

Today, that would be known as the proverbial 'getting the cart before the horse'. There is quiet a bit of research to be done before a website design is even considered if one wishes to have a website with traffic and a website with impact.

In fact the first thing to decide is what type of impact do you hope to have. If you want to reach the evangelical faithful you will need a totally different website than if your target is the wickins. One type of website design will be required to sell tapes and books while quiet another may be more appropriate for disseminating information, setting up an FFA site, starting an online auction, or streaming a TV or radio station, etc.

Once you know the primary objective of your website, like a brick and mortar store you will need a name. Settling on the right name for your web site and translating it to a url can be quiet time consuming. Remember you are no longer locked into TLD like dot org, dot com. Dot gov and dot mil are off limits for personal, business, commercial, education and religious websites from the start so forget about them. There are now, however, hundreds of other roots available.

Now that you have identified your little corner of the internet, you need to know who else occupies your niche. How long have they been there? What kind traffic are they generating? What is their conversion rate? Where do they rank on the major search engines? What are their key words? Who are the top five to ten listings on each of the search engines? These are your competition?not the nine million who show up further down the list.

What is in a website name? As I have often pointed out, choosing the right domain name could be a great step towards search engine optimization as well as increased website traffic prior to website design and web site promotion considerations. It is important that you get this first step, First; and that you get it right. Changing it down the road can be done but it gets confusing and expensive not to mention time consuming.

We live and work in an ever changing environment on the www. Believe me, search engine changes and other considerations beyond your control will create enough consternation and extra work for you down the road, you don't need to help to them.

What is in a name? First impression! And, you only get one chance to make it. So this is truly very important. If you can't get potential visitors past you sites name and url, it won't matter whether you are listed first or last or somewhere in between on the search engines.

Burk Pendergrass, Computerman Website Design