Probably the most critical part of Internet marketing for your business is organizing your website so it will achieve your overall goals.  Yet, most people completely bypass this important step or, worse, just turn the whole project over to a website designer to handle. 

The process of carefully planning the outline of a new website or upgrade to an existing website will secure for you not only a vehicle to show off your business in the best light, but also one that you are able to control the process of updating content, and, most importantly, achieve your business goals.  Below are a number of steps to follow while planning your new website:

1.  Create a list of anything your website visitors will want to know about the product or service you are offering.  If you are planning a website for a school, for example, the visitors would be interested in how man students attend, classroom sizes, staff information and sports offered.  Try to list every possible topic about your industry, service or product that a visitor to your new website might be interested in knowing.

2.  Put yourself into the visitor’s shoes.  Surf the Internet and visit various sites offering similar services, then review them as a potential customer would.  As a visitor who is genuinely interested in your product or service, what are the good things and bad things about each site you visit?  Are you inspired to take action from the website?  Can you find what you are looking for fast? Are there a lot of pages to navigate through to get to what you are looking for?  Take notes on all this information with the purpose of making your own website as visitor friendly as possible.

3.  Investigate to find out the keywords your visitors will most likely search for to find your website. Google has a free keyword research tool that will work fine for this purpose.  Enter a general phrase related to your product or service, such as “coffee filters” and other related keywords will appear.  These are the topics that people are searching for already.  Knowing this, you can plan your website content to answer their questions up front. 

4.  Plan your new website so that it can expand.  Don’t be lured into a website format that won’t let you expand easily to add new content pages or products.  A website is not static, but rather should change constantly to meet your customer needs. 

5.  Plan a website that you can control, rather than be at the mercy of a web designer to make even small changes to your website.   Successful Internet marketing today relies on a dynamic website with fresh content added often, and having an antiquated website that only your designer can change will just not work anymore.  It is to your advantage to plan a website platform that will allow you to add content quickly and simply.

Usually, a new website is one of your business’ largest expenses.  Make the most of your investment with a new website that supports the goals you have set for your business. 

Marty Dickinson is the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for over 10 years. His specialty is Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.