As with a real bricks and mortar house, you need solid foundations to build on when starting your WordPress website business. A website is considered a valuable piece of virtual real estate. A successful website can be worth more than your family home and without a solid backbone to your website, you run the risk of crippling your business before it even has a chance to get off the ground. Important tasks and systems need to be set in place before hanging out your “open for business” sign.

With each new WordPress website business I build, I religiously follow the same simple steps that lay the right foundations from the start.

WordPress Website Business Foundations

Keyword Research

This is the most important step when starting to build a WordPress website business. You should not just go and build any old website about any old topic. Correctly researching a niche can give you a huge advantage over your competitors. If you get this step right it will mean you have to do less work in the future. A great way to research your niche is to use the Google keyword tool and look for a keyword that people are searching for. When you find a keyword you must make sure that it has low competition, high search volume, and is also a potential moneymaker.

For example if you liked computers and wanted to build a website about them you could not simply make a website named computers.com. Obviously that name would not be available and that competition would be huge. So therefore you would research a smaller niche within the subject of computers. You could have something like computer repair, computer blue screens, computer problems, and so on. If you do not find a keyword with low competition and high search volume then you can dig down deeper by searching for longer tail keywords. So then you could be searching for something like laptop computer problems, computer monitor repair, laptop computer repair, DIY computer repair, and so on.

Buy The Right Domain Name

Once you have found the right keyword you should buy a domain name that contains that exact word if you can. This is proven to help in your search engine rankings for your WordPress website business. For example if you are looking for a computer tips website you should look for something like computertips.com. Do not get caught up in all the hype and go out and buy a fancy domain name when you really only need one that Google will understand and your visitors will remember. If the domain name that you want is not available use your keywords at the beginning and add another word on to it. For example you could look for computertipsonline.com computertipsforseniors.com and so on. Do not worry about a long domain name or even if you have to put a dash in it, because it will still work well in the search engines.

Have A Plan For Your WordPress Website Business

Do not run your new business with a blind fold over your eyes. Open your eyes and know the path you are about to travel. Set some stepping stones or goals to achieve along the way. Follow the yellow brick road. Of course you can deviate from this path, however you will achieve more if you have a plan to fall back on.

Get The Right WordPress Theme

Some people do not think that getting the right WordPress theme is important, however I feel it is important because if you get the right theme in the first place you will save a lot of time and effort. People spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to use each new WordPress theme that they install. I personally like to use a very limited number of themes and become an expert at customizing them. This way you are a master of your WordPress theme and you are not constantly learning how to customize it to suit your needs.

Setup Your Websites Accounts

There are numerous accounts to set up each time you start a new WordPress website business in a new niche. It is not good for websites to share accounts and the first thing that needs to be set up is an e-mail account. Some other accounts include:

• Setting up your feed burner account.
• Setting up your RSS feeds to submit content automatically to certain websites.
• Making a Facebook page.
• Opening a Twitter account.
• Setting up a Twitter feed account which will automatically publish content to certain websites.
• Creating a YouTube account.

Setup Your WordPress Categories The Right Way

When setting up your WordPress website categories it is important to use closely related keywords. I use the Google keyword tool to find related keywords to use.

After finding the related keywords you need to enter the categories in and write a SEO description for each category. This needs to be done right in the first place. You can add category descriptions by clicking on the Post link in the left column and then clicking on the categories link. You will see all the options to edit or setup your categories there.

Setup An Optin Capital Form

You might not be ready to communicate with a list, however always start collecting email addresses from the minute you start your website. You might be missing out on connecting with one of your most loyal followers. People are willing to wait a couple of weeks, at least, until they receive communication from you. It is better to keep them waiting for a short time instead of losing potential subscribers for your WordPress website business.

When I first started, I had my WordPress website business running for at least two years before I added and optin form. This was my biggest mistake. I eventually signed up for a free mail account at Mailchimp.com and have used them ever since. Now I have at least 10 or more auto responding e-mails set up for each website I build. I also have a newsletter that is automatically distributed to my subscribers at certain intervals. Once these things are set up, they are done forever.

Configure Blog Settings

To configure your blog settings you will just have to follow some simple steps.

• Changing your Permalinks. (Search engine friendly URL’s)
• Changing your privacy settings. (Let the world in)
• Going through your writing, reading, and discussion settings.
• Configure your WordPress website pinging options.

Install Plugins To Make Life Easy

Every WordPress website should have plug-ins to help the website promote itself. I use certain search engine optimization plug-ins that do most of the work for me. Here are some of the search engine optimization plug-ins I use on my websites. I have a set list of plug-ins that I install to every website by spell at Build. These include anti spam plug-ins, security plug-ins, related post plug-ins, and so on.

Setting Up The Sidebar Widgets

Setting up your sidebar is very important because it makes your website look like it is finished. People do not like to visit a half done, shabby website. You could add your optin form to your sidebar, maybe a Facebook like box, and also a popular post widget. These are just some examples of what you can do to make your WordPress website business look complete.

Build Some Solid Links For Your New WordPress Website Business

With each new website, part of its foundation, is to let the search engines know that it exists. If you have links pointing to your website, they could be called by Google Yahoo or being, and your website will be found almost immediately. This does not mean that you have to go around and beg for links because you can start off with many valuable free back links. Some of the websites where you can get free back links include Ezine articles, Youtube, Alexa.com, Statbrain.com, and many more. There are also free link directories, do follow blog commenting, and the list goes on. You should build these links with every new website you create. The busy at the website where you place the link the more chance you have of being recognized by the search engines.

Notes On Laying The Right Foundation For Your WordPress Website Business

• Laying the right foundations to your WordPress website business will pay off in the end.
• If you are a webmasters who has forgotten to do these simple tasks for you new WordPress website business it is still not too late. Go back and lay the foundations correctly and I guarantee that you will have no regrets.

After you have completed these steps, it is now time for you to publish some posts to your new website. This new post that you publish will be spread across the Internet automatically if you have laid your foundations correctly. The search engines should be visiting your new website within days.

Building a foundation for your WordPress website business is an easy task if you stick to the systems mentioned above.