In this to-do list, I will guide you on what you need to do as a web designer to be on the road to success. Note that this list starts at the very basics. This guide will take you from choosing the right domain name, to getting the most traffic and clients to your website. If you’re new to web design, you may be thinking “Where do I go now? What do I do now?” Even if you aren’t new to web design, with this to-do list and my other guides which I will mention throughout this article, you can be on the right road to becoming a successful web designer. Make sure you take action as you read through or you will find yourself a month down the road and you still haven’t started! If you run into any trouble, please post a comment and I will guide you. I will add more things to this page as time goes by, so please check back for updates.
Update: thanks to your support, my to-do list has received an astonishing 2700 tweets! That is 2700 votes from web designers all over the world.
1. Get a domain that is easy to remember.
Recommended domain registrar: GoDaddy
I am always creating websites and it is extremely important to choose a good domain. Very often, I see domains like RandySullivanBestWebDesigner.com. It’s a really long, boring domain that nobody is going to remember or even finish typing in their browser. The great thing about domains is that they’re really cheap. But good names get sold fast, so if you thought of a good domain it’s generally a good idea to snatch it as quickly as possible. What I do is I put a twist on my domains. For instance WebDesignDev.com is really short and to the point – it tells the world I am a web designer and is a really catchy name – catchy enough for you to come to my website and read my articles and tutorials. I can bet that next time you want to read a fresh article or tutorial you will remember “WebDesignDev” because it’s so short and to the point and you may just type the name directly in the browser. As a matter of fact, almost 25% of my thousands of visitors are direct type-ins.
For all of my domains, I use GoDaddy, it is the largest domain registrar in the world and that is for a reason.
2. Host your domain.
Recommended hosting: HostGator
The most important thing about running an Internet Business is to have a reliable host. If you don’t have one, you are wasting your time. I recommend to everyone to always use HostGator. They are cheap, reliable and I have never heard a bad word about them. They answered any questions I have had in less than 1 hour. If you do decide to try to find a better host, please do your research. The worst thing in the world is to find your website is down, your host’s support is “unavailable”, and once it becomes available you find out they don’t have a recent back-up of your website. Ouch! I have had this happen to me more than once with different hosts, and I would hate to see that happen to you.
3. Connect your domain and hosting.
It’s really simple to host your domain. Log in to your GoDaddy account, on the left side you will find Domains > Domain Manager, click on Domain Manager and then click on your domain. You will see the tab Nameservers, click on that and change the name servers to the ones that HostGator sent you in the welcome e-mail. Make sure the option “I have specific nameservers for my domains” is selected before you update. The name servers will be something like:
NS1.Hostgator.COM and NS2.Hostgator.COM, only the 1 and 2 will be replaced by your server number. If you ever lose your welcome email, just send HostGator a support request to tickets (at) hostgator.com and they will send you a back-up of the email most likely within 1 hour. Once all of this is done, you will be able to create and upload your website. 
4. Create a blog
Tools you should use: Premium WordPress Theme.
Every web designer must have a blog. There is NO excuse not to have one. I have one – WebDesignDev.com, and you should have one too. Whether you are going to blog about web design articles and tutorials and help other web designers, like I do, or about your web design work, or about something completely unrelated, you should still have a blog.
Install your blog. This is super easy, and I will show you how to do this in under 1 minute using Install Central or Fantastico. Not all hosts have Fantastico, but HostGator gives you Fantastico for free). To begin, go to http://www.YourDomain.com/cpanel and log in with the control panel login and password your host provided. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and locate the Software/Services section, under which you will see Fantastico. Click on Fantastico. Once you are in, on the left side you will see “WordPress” under the Blogs section, click on that, then click on New Installation link. Fantastico will then ask you to specify the details such as your domain, the location of the blog (you can just type “Blog” in there to have it on http://www.YourDomain.com/blog), your admin user name and password, admin nick name, e-mail, site name and Description. Once you fill in the details, click “Install WordPress”. You will then be asked to confirm everything by clicking “Finish Installation”. Click Finish Installation and you’ve just created your first blog!
Add posts to your blog. After you install your blog and go to it, on the right side you will see a link called Login (YourDomain.com/wp-login.php – this is the link you will use from now on to log in to your blog’s admin panel). Click on the link and log in with the admin username and pass you created in Fantastico while installing WordPress. Now you are inside the WordPress Dashboard, which is where I am right now as I am writing this To-Do list : ) On the left side you will see Posts section, and under it “Add New”. Click on Add New and you will be able to create your first blog post.
Get a theme for your blog. There are many options when it comes to WordPress Themes. You can use one of the free themes, or get a really good premium theme which you can customize.
WebDesignDev runs on WordPress using a premium theme I bought from ThemeForest which I’ve customized. WordPress is extremely hot right now, and premium themes are really not that expensive. If you are serious about your work, I suggest getting one of the premium themes from ThemeForest. It’s also my go-to place when I need to customize WP theme designs for my clients.
Once you have your theme, it is really simple to upload it. I personally use FileZilla for uploading, which is 100% free and works like a charm. Once you download FileZilla, open it, and it’ll ask you for the Host, User Name and Password. For Host put the name of your website, for user name and password use your *Cpanel* user name and password, not WordPress. Once you are in, you will need to upload the theme to Public_html/Wp-Content/Themes folder (first find the public_html folder, then click on Wp-Content folder, then click on the Themes folder). Once you are in, simply drag the unzipped Theme from wherever you saved it on your computer to the Themes folder. Another way to upload is through your hosting cpanel. Log in to your cpanel, click on File Manager, then go to the Public_html/Wp-Content/Themes folder and click on Upload which is in the top navigation. Upload the zip file of your theme and then unzip it.
Customize your theme as you like. Once you have finished uploading your theme, log in to your WordPress admin (YourSite.com/wp-login.php) and click Appearance on the left side, you will see your theme there. Click on it and a preview will open up. In the top right corner you will see Activate, click on that and your theme is now live!
5. Get Twitter followers
Tools you should use: Tweet Adder
Twitter is a huge source of my traffic. After I write a new article or tutorial and tweet it I often get hundreds of tweets and retweets. Twitter allows me to dominate the web design niche. I see my Twitter followers as the people who I value and who value me and my work in return. What I did to get 32,000 followers on my WebDesignDev account was I went to one of the biggest names in Web Design industry, and every day manually added their most recent 100 followers (yes, it took a LONG time to do this). Those people would then come to my website, check out what great content I have, and follow me. Not only did they follow me on Twitter, but they became regular readers! I also noticed that Twitter followers are the loyal readers – they will stay on my website longer than someone who just came from Google or Yahoo. So over night you can start driving hundreds of targeted visitors to your website who are really interested in your website! But along the way I found an amazing tool to help me do what I was doing automatically, without me even being there.
Tool I use: Tweet Adder was made with one purpose in mind – to help you get Twitter Followers. It’s the one and only program currently on the market that gets you targeted Twitter followers on auto-pilot. It has really helped me to get the my 41,000 Twitter Followers.
6. Learn SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and build traffic to your site
Tool you should use: Seo Book
SEO is one of the most important things you need to learn to have a successful Internet business. Writing everything I know about SEO will likely take at least several hundred pages, but I will give you the most important things below. I have studied SEO for the past 8 years and have put in countless hours learning it. I can say it has paid off as I get around 50% of my traffic from search engines.
Tip: use Seo Book. It is the most well known SEO learning resource on the web, founded by global SEO expert Aaron Wall.
Titles. Your <title> tag is your most important tag on the page, which is why you have to know how to set this tag properly. Before you set a title of your pages, you need to ask yourself: “What do I want people to find on my website/blog?” Most people think that they can set titles intuitively, but this is not always the case. You want to make sure you target the keywords that: 1) best describe your web design business/blog and 2) bring you the most traffic. I will discuss how to research titles shortly, but let me first discuss the <title> tag in more detail. You can see that the home page of WebDesignDev has <title>Web Design Tutorials | Create A Website | Make A Website | Learn Flash</title>. I am targeting 4 different keywords in a single title: 1) Web Design Tutorials; 2) Create A Website; 3) Make A Website; 4) Learn Flash. It is generally a good idea not to put too many keywords in the title since search engines will look at where in the title the targetted keyword is to see its important. So the keyword that appears say 50 characters after the beginning, is not nearly given as much weight as the keyword that appears first. I am targetting 4 keywords in my title, which is about as high as you want to go. It is of utmost importance to know which keywords will bring you the most traffic and which keywords to put first. If you just put “Web Design” for example, as the only thing in your title, you will probably not get much traffic. You must be thinking “but you just said the first keyword is the most important!” Yes, but “web design” is such a competitive term that you will need to do a LOT of SEO to get any kind of ranking there. Put a much more targeted keyword, such as “web design” followed by the name of your city, like “web design toronto” for example and follow it with several other keywords. Why is this a good title? And why is the title of WebDesignDev good? Look at the first 2 words – they are the same “web design” keyword that’s so hard to rank for, but they are followed with the word “tutorials” which is exactly what I am trying to target. I rank top 5 on Google, by the way, for that keyword : ) I am still giving my blog a chance to rank for “Web Design” by putting those 2 words first.
Keyword research. This is super important. If you don’t know what keywords to target, you can’t possibly bring many organic (search engine) visitors/customers to your web design website/blog. Google has a terrific keyword research tool I always use this tool before I create a title for any of my new articles to make sure that I choose the title that both describes what my articles are about and can bring me the highest number of visitors. In the box type the keyword that you think you want to use. Make sure to keep “use synonyms” checked so that you get all kinds of variations for the keyword. Once you get the results, to the top right of the first keyword you see in the list, right above it, you will see a drop down box that says “Broad”. Make sure to click it and select “Exact”. “Broad” simply tells you the total searches for that keyword including any search in which that keyword is just part of the search. This won’t give you an accurate idea of how much traffic you can expect from the keyword, so select “Exact” to see exactly how much traffic the keywords bring.
H tags. H tags vary from H1 to H6, H1 being the most important. You MUST have an H1 tag. This tag should come as early after your <body> tag as possible. Your H1 tag must contain your most important keywords. It is also the biggest tag visually, so use css styling to make it smaller. I won’t go into detail on how to use CSS in this article. Somewhere lower on the page you should use H2 tags for parts of your page that are second in importance. For example, my H1 tag is the same as my title: Web Designer TO-DO list (MUST-HAVE resources for Web Designers), and my H2 tags are the sections of my article, i.e. “Get a Domain”, “Host Your Domain” etc. This gives search engines a structured layout of what my page is about.
Meta tags. These tags are not as important as they once used to be, but you should still not neglect them. The meta tags go inside your <head> </head> tags. Search engines may refer to your meta tags if they don’t find the search keyword anywhere else in your article. Make sure your meta description tag is not too short, and not too long, since that can affect your rankings adversely. Also, make sure you have a reasonable number of meta keywords. A sample of meta description and keywords tags would be the following:
<meta name=”description” content=”Web Designer TO-DO list (MUST-HAVE resources for Web Designers) brought to you by WebDesignDev.com” />
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Web designer to do list, must have resource for web designers, web design, resources” />
Page Speed. This is VERY important. If your blog/web design site loads slowly, you will not rank as well as other websites. I have personally seen an increase of 200% in traffic simply by switching hosting. Make sure to use only the fastest hosting provider. Even if you already have hosting, shared hosting is very cheap and I would strongly encourage you to switch to the hosts that are known to be the fastest on the net.
Keyword density on page. This is another very important part of SEO. Search engines will look at how many times a certain keyword is repeated on the page to judge how relevant your page is in comparison to others. Make sure not to abuse this: intentionally “stuffing” the page with numerous keywords is considered “black hat” and is frowned upon by search engines. They will give you a penalty if you put too many keywords. And while it is impossible to know the “perfect” keyword density, strive for somewhere in the range of 5-10%.
Internal links. Many people don’t realize that the anchor text of your internal links, if used properly, can give a HUGE boost to your rankings. And the best part of it is that these links are free! Use the same Google keyword research tool (unfortunately, Google took this tool away. Now the only way to get keyword ideas is through Google Keyword Planner, available exclusively inside their Adwords interface) to see how to set the anchor text of your internal links, such as your navigation links. Always have a link either in your footer or your top navigation with your most important keyword pointing to your home page. This means every internal page you have will give your main page a boost for that keyword!
External links. These are harder to get than internal links, since someone else has to link to you. But these links are considered extremely valuable by search engines. Every external link is a “vote” for your website, and the text for that link tells search engines the subject of that vote. Try to get as many external links as possible.
Content is king. If you have quality content, not only will people find it interesting to read, but other websites and blogs will link to you too. By writing this web designer to-do list, I am hoping I have provided you with something that you found extremely useful that will help you in your web design career.
Use Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/). You need to analyze which keywords are bringing you traffic. You also need to use the keyword tool I mentioned earlier to see which keywords are not bringing you traffic, but which you can add to you pages. For instance, you could be ranked #9 for a given keyword, and by simply tweaking some words on the page (i.e. adding more repetitions of that keyword) could push you to the first page. Don’t be afraid to experiment. People’s biggest fear is “I am already ranking ok, if I change something I could get less traffic.” Write down or remember the changes you make. If something you do negatively affects your ranking, you can simply undo it and get the rankings back very quickly. Use this principle to improve your rankings.
Don’t be afraid to take action – action gets you results.
This is all the time I have today to devote to this to-do list, but I will add more as soon as I can! Check back often for updates!
If you love my Web Designer To-Do list and resources page, make sure to follow me on Twitter@WebDesignDev.
Great advice! I love reading all of your blogs. Very intuitive.
Good article.
Have never used GoDaddy and have always found Namecheap to be superb for a registrar.
Hostgator I would place on the don’t use list now. I used them for years but their service has gotten atrocious since they were bought out a couple years ago. Had to switch recently when they locked me out of my own sites with no recourse for 4 days. Switched to Liquid Web and am much happier.
thanks for sharing this ! SEO tips are really good
Thanks, Its very helpful.
Couple of points I disagree on :
1. Godaddy
There are much better, cheaper and anonymous domain name registars out there, which will anonymity for free.
2. Hostgator
I have heard complainst about them from other designers who have been in the industry for years, not to mention they are not as cheap as claimed. Arvixe arvixe is cheaper, and provides more bandwidth and features.
3. Premium themes
If you are a webdesigner and you use someone else’s theme, save if it is a modified child theme, you are frankly not a designer. If you cannot design a webpage, you should not be designing webpages. Either make your own theme, learn how to, or don’t use a CMS and make a static site. Learning to theme for WP is easier than all the other CMS packages.
The rest is solid information
Thanks for putting all piece together! Seomoz is always a great source. Seomoz.org is now moz.org
Here is the perfect steps to get into the online space with own web site, well written. Thanks for sharing.
You do realize that anybody who recommends GoDaddy loses every experienced reader, right?
I quit reading after that crap of a recommendation.
Jack, I only recommend GoDaddy as a domain registrar, but NOT as a web host.
Iggy
Not the biggest fan of godaddy.com. But if you are trying to see if a domain is taken try domai.nr. Great resources and they don’t steal your domain name like godaddy.com
Thank you for sharing your tips. I find Ipage to be quite affordable. I paid $32 for a year of hosting. I try to refrain from suggesting godaddy because I feel all you are paying them is for there advertising rather than quality of service.
hi this is very use full for all website designers…i like it..
Hi, I love the information. I am not that young but I love webdesign. Can you please explain to me how do I make money out of webdesign/blog? Like, after I create my webpage, what will the customers look for and how do I get paid? I need a second job and this from home will be fantastic as again, I love web design. Thank you so much for all the information you have posted!
Build up a portfolio, start by making sites. Either make your own site and make a few sites for friends and put that up as your portfolio, try to make some for charities and/or create your own site and sign up with Elance or oDesk and start finding work. Once you have a few sites in your portfolio, you’ll be getting invites on Elance and then later you don’t need to use Elance or oDesk, people will come to you. For blogging, post on your own site, and share via fb, twtter, etc. also on sites like Hongkiat and blogging sites about web design. Have decent SEO and also, always keep learning!
Thanks for the post 😀
I have to say that for the last couple of hours i have been hooked by the amazing articles on this website. Keep up the wonderful work.
Very nice article, and great tips. SEO for your website is must for its promotion.
brilliant tips everyone should use to their advantage!
very interesting to know that twitter followers stay on the page longer than google or search led traffic. good post, thanks.
Very usefull to-do-list you got there.
I mis the like button, FB and Twitterbutton and a link to a FB fanpage on your blog
Hi Ruud,
Thank you. Those buttons are available at the top of the page. Link to FB page will come soon!
Like your thought about blogs for web designers.
WP templates may be installed within wordpress, as well. Just go to “Appearance” section on left sidebar from wp admin-panel, then choose “Themes”, “Install Themes” and “Upload”. After that activate new template and thats it !!!
I am the new user of your website. good work.
This list is a good reminder. Thanks
Very interesting and well documented article, I have learned a lot of things reading it ! Thank you 🙂
Nice list, good if your just starting out in the web world
Very Useful tips.
Thank you.
Since I’m just starting out, this is a great how-to checklist. Thanks!
Nice collection of information for web designers 🙂
This is definitely useful for anyone who is starting out– and even experienced designers sometimes forget a thing or two. You’ve got all the major ideas on here. Great job– keep it up!
After a long time I found ur site really helpful for me to go further from domain name registration, thank u for ur valuable suggestion, it really helped me a lot
i know very little abut html,css,xml,etc as i’m an engineering student.but i’m not able to design web pages and i also dnt know how to practice..i want to become a web designer.i’m familier with almost evrythng u said..but the problem i’m facing is how to practice..please suggest me..
Great article. Very helpful!
Really a great source for newbie web designers as the blog put forwards the information and some facts in a better way, your blog provided a niche idea for all the website designers, who often do mistake…great !dea…
Keep it up
Danny Higson
Very useful article for beginners presented in very smart way, i’d recommend it for reading to everyone who is just beginning!
Thanks for recourse.
a must read and recommend to freshers in WD.
Thanks a lot Iggy for the heads up, This site has become EXTREMELY resourceful and by the way, how do I go about talking to you guys about possibly running some of my company’s banner ads on your site? Are there packages you offer that I can see online? I know this is off topic for this subject and I’m not quite sure where I should be posting this Iggy but I figured since your moderating this you might be able to point me in the right direction?
Cheers bud and Thanks again,
Jeremiah R.
Chairman & CEO
Hi Jeremiah,
Please email me at advertising (at) webdesigndev.com and we can discuss. Thank you for your positive feedback.
Sincerely,
Iggy
This is a really good post, and I have really fallen in love with this site over the last month, but this is the first time I’m posting…. I have a question.. How often does the content here get updated? It seems that this post has been sitting up there for about 2 months now, which is pretty lengthy without having a new post go up – unless of course I’m just an idiot as usual and I’m missing the new posts and there right in front of me? can someone point me in the right direction here?
Cheers,
Jeremiah
Chairman & CEO
Hi Jeremiah,
We have a few stickies that say on top, so you should just check out the posts several spots below the top ones for the latest ones 🙂
Thanks,
Iggy
I just bought 3 years of 4GH hosting from GoDaddy at $2.22/mo but you don’t have them listed as a recommended hosting provider – should I switch to iPage (that was the other host I considered)?
Jamie, GoDaddy is the worst possible host you can have. They are a great domain registrar (and the places where I register my domains) but I would never use their hosting. When you run into a problem with GoDaddy’s hosting, their “support” gives you a template response read from a script. In comparison, HostGator’s support (or iPage) will basically do anything you ask them. That $2.22 month will cost you much more than it will save you in the long run – trust me. I am not even going to mention GoDaddy’s completely counter-intuitive hosting control panel, as compared to the award winning cPanel used by HostGator. I hope you make the right decision 🙂
Best of luck,
Iggy
Jamie, Iggy is totally right here, you have no idea. I used godaddy for about 3 years and have over 40 domains with them. (use to have about 80 but have slowly been moving them over to hostgator and hostmonster) They are the WORST host on earth, by far, you have no idea, their support is pitiful like Iggy said but worse yet, they use phpmyadmin instead of cpanel – I don’t know how familiar you are with the 2 but phpmyadmin is nothing like cpanel, when looking for a host you want to try and find cpanel – I think Iggy will agree with me here. Both hostgator and hostmonster come with cpanel, this is important for SQL/Database management, which means it’s equally important if your going to be using WordPress or Drupal or Joomla, anyone of those on godaddy are just a pain to get setup… Just an FYI.
Cheers and Good luck to you – I would get yourself setup at another host immediately and point the DNS over there.
Jeremiah R.
Chairman & CEO
I totally agree with Jeremiah. GoDaddy, if you are reading this…put some money into your hosting support and get a cPanel license already!
really nice share. I’ll be keeping this article close for reference. 🙂
Nice post!
But i got a question 😉
Is a Blog enough or is an extra homepage better?
Sry for my bad english! 😉
That is great post. It’s very nice. Thanks for shearing your ideas.
its cool. love it……!
Great summary of SEO and marketing techniques. I’ll be keeping this article close for reference.
Great list List, it work as essential check list for website. Thanks for sharing… 🙂
hello, im just fresher to this web designing field , im not getting ur words of domain,i page hostghoter , twitter , can u pls guide me about how can we make money online in web designing, i realy very much waiting for your replay
Great post! You covered alot of good points here. Alot of web designers neglect to learn seo when it is infact a huge part of success. Thanks for sharing!
Wow that was amazing roundup…Yes designers should know SEO..Which is very big task in online world today…All the designer should follow these stuff..Amazing stuff from you…Happy work..Keep rocking..thanks for sharing.
Great primer article for people just getting started. While I agree with getting a Twitter tribe, I’d probably include a branded YouTube channel and FB page for business users.
Gracias por compartir éstos conceptos, no dejes de avisarme cuando publiques nuevos artículos, saludos.
this is real helpful for me..thanks for sharing this…
Wonderful step by step instructions!
Thanks for sharing!
Create a blog
I had no idea that I could create
A Blog in Cplanel. I’m going to
Get on that! Thanks.
Thanks a lot, this is really helpful for me.
Thanks a lot, this is really helpful for my just first site. i really enjoy your site. i hope read many interesting posts. thanks again.
Love your work
straight foreword
shortly
direct to the point
wish god fulfill all your hopes.
by the way my name is Ibrahim and i am a Muslim
This is great, a very helpful one…… thanks a lot!!!!!
Thanks for some really helpful tips, I’m just in the process of redesigning a 2yr old Blog, Starting Another & just finished coding a WebApp called “NFOPic” & all of these tips will come in handy in one way or another on all of these sites.
Regards,
pxld.in
Great sources, I love your post, this is really helpful for creating my new blog. Thank you!
Grate article, very useful for anyone who is just getting started with web design and development.
loads of stuffs in just one piece. Thanks man! don’t have choice but to bookmark this article for reference in future. Thanks once again!
Nice post, lots of detail, thanks.
Thanks for the very well thought out and written article. I’m a big fan of SEOMoz. Their free browser toolbar add-on is a must.
Good you covered all the basics in a single post. Both building a website and marketing it is essential for an online business.
I’ve been using a HostGator Reseller account for about 5 years now. I have never had any problems using their Reseller services and neither have any of my clients. Their support is top notch and the reliability of their services unparalleled.
Thanks for this post. I’m sure it will help many individuals starting their journey online.
Cute article, newbe web designers will have a good starting point.
What a great post, I really like the excellent information you post in your blog, with interesting topics, accurate and quality information is sought, congratulations and thanks for your input. Greetings
What you do it’s inspiring. Coming to your blog is refueling.
Thanks Iggy.
Very good information Thanks!
Very useful information. Thanks!
BluSky
The “WebDesigner” coupon is not available for HostNine VPS level 2, it will cost me about 60$/month :s
Hi Pedro,
It will work on all shared hosting plans from HostNine, as well as all Reseller hosting plans.
Is the coupon a Lifetime discount?
I can´t see in the website if the reseller plan level 1 supports PHP and MySQL databases…
Hi Pedro,
The coupon will apply to the initial order. Level 1 definitely supports PHP and MySQL databases – you can verify this by clicking on “compare all plans” link on the Reseller Hosting page.
What do you think about Mochahost VPS hosting services, a VPS from only 12$, I´m doing some research to allocate severall web sites, and I think that´s a good choice. Can you gave me your opinion?
I would suggest going with HostNine and using coupon “WebDesigner” – this will give you a price of under $2.8, which is about 4 and a half times cheaper than Mochahost VPS.
Nice information. I am into SEO field. So i can understand these things are easily. And I found more interesting information from this blog.. Thanks for sharing dude…
Excellent information for new web designers and check list for old designers 🙂
Thanks a ton for the Twitter suggestions. One of our clients is having a problem with getting followers right now.
You are very welcome 🙂
Very Informative! Thanks!
About SEO.
dont forget to use Google Webmaster & Google Analytics.
Those are powerfull tools to analyze the blog and the traffic.
I’ve been with godaddy.com for many years. They have been there for questions if I had any and always for technical assistance. I highly recommend them.
Thank you for such a great list of tips! So helpful.
i want to register and host a domain for an not-for-profit ngo
between hostgator – bluehost – 1and1 – godaddy
which do you suggest and why ? (or another)
thanks
Hi Georgecy,
I would suggest HostGator due to their reliability and speed of servers.
Sincerely,
Iggy
I’m about to start a web design business. What’s the easiest step process to have your clients sign up with hostgator and earn commissions?
Thanks,
Make sure you offer each of your web design clients to host their website for them. Hosting and web design go hand in hand, so it shouldn’t be difficult for you to sell hosting to them.
Iggy
Excellent information for all web designers new and old.
I use justHost and have been more than happy with their services and support, I am just starting out and think this is a great to do list.
Thanks for the tips!
Keep them coming 🙂
hi….
very informative…………………. !!! hope wil get in future also…..
Wow! Amazing article. The Twitter thingy is one heckuva technique. Thanks!
very helpful information…
Great article. Glad to see we have been on the right trail since we are already following down the paths you suggested. However we are using iPower for our web host instead of Host Gator. Also looking at Buzzom as a comparison to MarketMeTweet.
Hi Joe,
Thank you for the feedback. I suggest you read this article to increase your Twitter followers from 230 to a much higher number: How I got 28,500 Twitter Followers. I would also still strongly recommend HostGator over other hosts, however the choice of course is yours : )
But what is it that it does not make GoDaddy a good hosting company? Can you give some examples?
How can I spot that Godaddy is not, but HostGator is a good hosting company?
When you call or contact GoDaddy technical support, they read from a script of questions and answers. Whenever your support question falls outside of it, they will simply refer you to some documentation and won’t help you. HostGator, on the other hand, will take care of any support question you have for you. That’s the difference. I have had hosting with both GoDaddy and HostGator so I am speaking directly from experience.
thanks…………
Why is it that you don’t mention GoDaddy as a hosting party but only as a domain registrar? What’s wrong with the hosting of GoDaddy?
That’s a great question Pasquinel. While GoDaddy is a great domain registrar, it is not a great hosting company. HostGator is infinitely more reliable, faster and with much, much better hosting support.
Very nice article. I love the way you talk about SEO and how to start. Some of designers jump a few steps and forget about the essentials. Nice job.
really nice points added in this article…thanks
This is a fantastic article. The SEO bit is very important and the advice you give is absolutely true. I’m glad to see you mentioned the internal link structure. This is so often overlooked or people just aren’t aware of how important it is. Great advice and great article.
Useful article, especially the twitter insight. Check out my blog and thanks!
Really great post. I found your notes on Twitter really helpful. Cheers.
I think Very nice!
**Thank
Hey nice, Now we can forward clients to this article when they ask how it works.
Thanks 🙂
You are very welcome! 🙂 Feel free to forward them here. We will try to add more things to the list as soon as we can.
Even though I’m sick of seeing this article on my Twitter updates, it does provide some useful information for new webmasters starting out.
I would like to echo @Caryn’s comment and bump this to ask for good alternatives to GoDaddy? Anyone? 🙂
Thanks, Deborah
Most hosting services provide an option for you to purchase your domain. I find it to be more work and more costly in the end if you do what this article says — WOW … I have my own opinion but will keep that to myself of what I think the first 3 are .. UGH .. anyhow, it is SMARTER to figure out where you want to host FIRST, then purchase your domain through your hoster. No DNS changes, no forwards, no swapping .. And if you change your mind, no transfer fee either to bring your domain over to your hosting server. oh and the best part — I’m not giving godaddy another red cent!!! Hosting services I have used in the past do include HostGator — which is what I switched to after I felt GD was not the place I wanted to be — If you have a WordPress site you don’t want to be there either — they are horrible with the WP software. I am currently with Dreamhost AND I have purchased my domains through both services, THANKS. Also FatCow is a good service. BlueHost is another suggestion, however, I don’t feel their “claim” to be green is all too truthful, considering they use diesel fuel to run their servers. 🙁 That’s my 2 Cents …
Best To-Do list. best blog, SEO, and Twitter tips. Thanks you
I switched to host gator about half a year ago after an extensive research on hosting reviews. It was honestly one of the best moves I made as a freelancer as it has allowed me to stop worrying about reliability from hosting and focus on more important things.
It also got me set up with reseller hosting which has been great.
Thanks again, as always for the great read. SEO has been on my to do list for quite a while but reading something like this helps motivate me to get it back on track.
Very helpful post! Another resource I found extremely helpful was peachpit.com/adobecs5 which has books, free video tutorials, and articles on the upgraded Flash, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver
Nice To-Do list. Good blog, SEO, and Twitter tips. Thanks!
Very useful. Great post.
Very nice!
your post is very informative. About SEO and hosting is very useful And i will definitely use these information.
iPage is running a sweet deal right now – I signed up. I’m presenting to 500 people tomorrow. Thinking it’s a good option for first time hosting service buyers.
Frankly speaking,your site is fully loaded with the information i need to know.I am presently learning webdesign, using microsoft frontpage.i dont have a website yet.i will check out gato webhost you recommend whenever i am ready for my web hosting.
Regards.
Emeka O.
A must read thank you so much for putting these tips together, and for sharing it.
thanks for this lovely information, i m planning to make my own blog and this will defenatly help me…keep posting such kind of information this is very helpful for others.
Nice info, the twitter tip was very useful.
Great tips! Loved each and every one of them… I will definitely try HostGator for my upcoming blog.. Thank you 🙂
Very informative post. Ill check back some time for updates keep up the good work
I’d echo your recommendation on HostGator. I’ve been very pleased with them since starting with them in January. And that was after two bad experiences with other hosts in the prior 6 months.
On GoDaddy, I’d suggest people check them out before starting with them. I find their advertising and some of their advertising and posts to be sexist and demeaning to women. I’ve got a lot of urls I’ve purchased through them in the past, but am looking to move elsewhere. Other recommendations welcome. Thanks!
I am so happy because I have chance to read this article . Thanks a
lot for that. Please send me another I will be waiting . I would like to be professional webdesigner.