While these recommendations are fairly basic, and many may feel that they go without saying, I wanted to highlight them here:

#1) Your own domain name

Domain names usually cost about $10 per year from sites like GoDaddy.com. Do a bit of research and try to register your business name or an easily remembered domain name. Shorter is better, and try to stay away from .net or hyphenated names if you can.Here’s a great article from SitePoint.com on choosing a domain name for your site.

#2) A website host and e-mail address.

I’ve had great success with HostGator. Their plans are cheap and they will auto-install WordPress blogging software for you. (See information on WordPress below.) As for your e-mail address, it’s fine to have a general address such as info@yourname.com. However, since sales are about personal connections, I want you to set-up me@yourname.com. Your webhost or designer can help with this if needed.

#3) A clear idea of your internet marketing goals.

This doesn’t have to be a long paper detailing all the aspects of your internet marketing. Focus on 3 key elements and WRITE THEM DOWN – don’t type them! There’s something about physically putting pen to paper that will help you judge your upcoming efforts against these goals.Your goals should be simple things to begin with. Things like “I want to ensure that my business is found with my top 5 keywords on Google”, “I want to improve my monthly communication with my current customers”, or “I want generate 10 new sales leads each month”. The key is to be very specific.Your goals will change – I would be worried if they didn’t! But right now, get out your favorite fountain pen, Bic ballpoint or Sharpie marker and decide what they are.

#4) A blog or other publishing platform

One of the most popular blogging platforms is free software called Wordpress. A blog will allow you to quickly and cost-effectively publish articles that relate to the products or services that you’re looking to sell. They show to potential customers that you know what you’re talking about and that you want to help them with their purchasing decision.A blog theme is the look and feel of your blog. Wile a custom-designed theme would be ideal, there are many free and cheap blog themes available. Begin by doing a Google search. If you’re working with a web designer, talk with them about the type of content that you plan to publish. He or she will often have great advice about how to feature certain content on your blog, how to deal with comment spam and how to include social bookmarking on all of your posts.

#5) An analytics package

The industry standard has quickly become Google Analytics. You can sign up for free, and if you have basic knowledge of HTML, you can add it to your website yourself. There are also several free plug-ins for WordPress that will allow you to include your Google Analytics code on each page of your blog. Google Analytics is fairly easy to use, and there are great newbie articles floating around on the internet for that as well. Well, that concludes my list of must-haves… Things that every person starting out with internet marketing should learn as much as they can about. However, remember one thing for me… To avoid exhaustion, stick to the things that you know and love to do. If you’re best at writing the articles for a blog, let your website developer handle the rest. If digging into analytics and determining where your strongest areas for improvement are, do your best to stick to that and let a copywriter or colleague make your posts!

I’m running a few experiments that some of you may be interested in. The first is in regards to getting your business to rank well for local or regional searches. Searches like “website development + Bozeman, MT“. Currently, Manifest Creative ranks 5th for this keyword search on Google.com.

Following the excellent advice of search marketing guru Rae Hoffman, in her excellent post entitled “Before You Launch that Local Small Business Website“, I’ve begun to register our website with each of the free directories that she recommends. I’ll keep each of you posted on the final results, both from a rankings and web traffic standpoint.

Due to the fact that we’ve not created any new content, nor have we optimized any of our pages for these keywords, here is what I suspect will happen:
1) No significant improvement for Google search engine ranking.
2) Slight increase in web traffic.
3) Better inclusion in “local” search results across all search engines.

Many of the websites that I registered with feed other search engines such as Ask.com and Lycos.com with local/regional search engine results. The local results are the listings that are displayed before the traditional results when you search with a regional keyword (see screenshot below). Many search engines also include a map.

So why is this important? Many of us are selling our products, services or other goods to others within our own locales. Many internet users are getting more specific about what they search for. Most of us know that if we search Google.com for “car dealerships“, we’re not likely to find what we seek. However, if we search for “car dealerships in Bozeman, MT” we’re much more likely to find relevant results.

Additionally, since these local results are often found above the traditional organic search results,  they are even more valuable for their top of mind awareness. Besides, since back-links are one of the most important aspects of search engine optimization, it is never a bad idea to have an additional link back to your website.

One last experiment – one that you can help with!

I’ve submitted the Western Art & Architecture magazine article “Green By Design” to a social bookmarking website called Digg.com. For those of you unfamiliar with the site, the general idea is that you submit a link or story that you like. Others who like the article you’ve submitted Digg it as well – thus voting for it. The more Diggs a page receives, the higher in the rankings it moves – generating more website visits.

I am hoping that each of you will take just a moment to visit the following address, and if necessary, register with Digg.com to vote for this article. When you’re on the Digg.com website, you can see how many times it’s been dugg by looking at the icon to the left of the headline. Feel free to leave a comment about the article too on the Digg website – that way I’ll know to add you to my friends list!

Here’s the link:
http://digg.com/environment/Green_by_Design_2

I’ll report back to each of you to tell you about the results, and perhaps we’ll all learn a thing or two about the power of social media!