Start an Online Business Website – 27 Rules to Follow

So, you’ve decided to become an Entrepreneur in the world of online business. There’s so much to do. You have your online business idea. Now, it’s time to start your online business website. 

You have a long road ahead of you. So we are going to help you. Here are 27 firm rules to start your online business website.

1. Start with the Right Web Hosting Company

So many people with great websites end up having trouble ranking. All because they started with the wrong website hosting company. In fact, this has happened to me a few different times. Then I changed web hosts, and all of my problems were solved.

Even though there’s a number of different issues that can arise from having a bad web host, there’s quite a few that can come up even when you have a good one. I will give you a very specific example or two from my personal experience.

I once had a web host that was great at first, but then over time, my websites’ load time went up to average 8 seconds. Not good. My bounce rate went up and… well… most of the people that came to my website ended up leaving before it finished loading.

Another example is down time. There was another very weird, but significant occurrence, where the web hosting company had 4 DAYS of downtime. This was during a peak seasonal time for my website’s sales to spike. I lost 4 days of sales while I was even PAYING FOR TRAFFIC to nowhere.

Also, it’s important to note that any good, quality, and reputable web host will offer you free SSL certificates. No additional charge. This leads to my next rule.

2. Use SSL (HTTPS) On Your Website

Look something up. Go ahead. If you look at all of the top results on Google, almost all of them use HTTPS. This is because they have an SSL certificate installed for their domain.

Actually SSL is now called TLS… it’s a slightly different protocol as SSL is a little outdated. However, people still call it SSL (or Secure Socket Layer).

This is a type of encryption that helps protect your users. Now, it doesn’t prevent your website from getting hacked, but we will talk about that later.

Again, all decent web hosts should provide an option to install a free SSL certificate.

3. Optimize Your Website Load Time

Current research shows that over 50% of mobile users leave a website if it doesn’t load within 3 seconds of clicking. This kind of relates to what we previously talked about with having a good web hosting company.

But you also have to optimize on your end. Check your time-to-first-byte (TTFB). But also optimize images, defer JavaScript, use caching, and make sure each of your website pages loads in under 3 seconds.

There is a lot to consider when optimizing your website load time. However, if you want to start an online business, your website should load fast. If it doesn’t, this one thing will kill your online business.

4. Your Website Should Be Mobile Compatible

Every single successful online business has a website that is mobile compatible. Your website should be mobile compatible too.

Having a mobile compatible website used to be difficult. People used to build a separate version of  their website that was mobile compatible. However, this isn’t the early 2000’s anymore.

Look, with modern web technology, having a mobile compatible website is super easy. You just need a proper website theme. A page builder helps too.

I recommend the Divi Theme and Page Builder.

It’s super simple to set up, customize, and it automates the mobile compatibility process. If you use it, your website is automatically mobile compatible. Done. Moving on.

5. Protect Your Website from Being Hacked

If you’ve been in the online business game while, you already know that websites get hacked all the time. I have personally had at least 8 different websites (I think that’s the right count) get hacked over the last 15 years.

Here’s the thing. There’s so many different ways to get hacked, and most of it is automated. It’s software that crawls and tries to hack your websites. If you have a successful website, the odds are you will probably have hundreds or even thousands of hack attempts PER DAY.

Therefore, it’s best to get this taken care of as soon as you get your website installed. There’s even crawlers that look for brand new websites that haven’t secured their websites yet. They find a hole, breach your website, and then basically put a quiet little time bomb on your website.

Once enough time passes, and you haven’t noticed this little piece of malware in your PHP code, it activates and starts using your server to email people, mining cryptocurrency using your server, or even stealing your user’s data.

Let me tell you, that is BAD NEWS for your online business. You want to install scanning and firewall protection on your website before you do anything else. If Google knows it’s there and is crawling it, so do these crawlers that look for holes to breach.

Also, it’s important to keep any software you use (WordPress, plugins, etc.) up to date to patch any vulnerabilities your website might have. A hacked website can destroy your online business right from the start.

6. Set Up Handling for 404 Pages in Advance

So, we all know that 404 pages are bad. You would think that a new website wouldn’t have any of these right? Well, you would be amazed at how quickly you can start racking up 404 pages when building a new website.

Again, when starting an online business, it’s best to just get something in place to start handling this right away.

Now, if you are already running Yoast SEO on your WordPress website, it might be best to go ahead and just upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium. It has lots of extra features that will help you dominate rankings with your website. If you are looking at a Free, yet powerful solution, read on.

Redirection is a plugin that I use on many of my websites. It makes it really easy to perform any 301 redirect, and tracks 404 errors. Any new 404 errors will show up on your dashboard. Then you can just point those pages to the appropriate URL with a 301 redirect. It’s that simple.

7. Use a Proper Website Theme and Page Builder

Setting your online business’s website with a proper theme is like wearing the appropriate clothing for an intense workout.

Let’s use a kickboxing class as an example. So, let’s say you wore business attire with dress shoes to a kickboxing class. Then you didn’t have any gloves or anything to protect your hands. Well… you probably wouldn’t perform very well, you would be very uncomfortable, it would be difficult, you would move slow, and you would get hurt.

That’s a great analogy. But you know what? We’ve already discussed a few reasons to have a proper website theme and page builder. Remember what we said about website load time and mobile compatibility? This is incredibly easy with the correct theme and page builder.

If you use WordPress, just use the Divi Theme and Page Builder.

It has even more features than what we’ve discussed. It has tons of support, documentation, and easy to follow tutorials.

There’s a huge amount of customization options and you can design and develop on the front end with the Visual Builder.

But wait, there’s more.

It has A/B testing, color management, easy software integration, widgets, modules, templated layouts, theme customizer, optimization settings… I could keep going.

The bottom line is, if you are using WordPress, just get Divi to make your life easier and your website better.

8. Research and Reference Your Online Competition

Anyone with experience in the world of business knows that you have to research your competition. In online business, not only should you research them, but reference them… often.

Online business is much different that location-based “Brick and Mortar” small business. With online business, we can easily reference our online competitors once we’ve found them to see what they’re doing to get traffic, promote products, or funnel users into customers.

One of the oldest (and often unused) tricks to success in online business is the completely fair and worthy strategy of “Being Better.” Sometimes, when I talk about this, people will say, “Really?”

Yes… Really. You wouldn’t believe this next part.

Did you know that if you make your website, content, and product better than your competition, people will choose yours instead of theirs if they compare?

Okay. So what’s my point?

When you go to write a product description, blog article, or landing page, research and reference your top competition. Then, make yours better.

If you decide to make a YouTube video for marketing purposes, research and reference your competing videos. What’s next?

You guessed it… Make yours better.

Now, as simple as this may sound, it can be quite difficult and even overwhelming at times when you try to do this. Now, let me share with you the ultimate trick to beating your competition in online business.

The trick is to look for the gaps you can fill in the market (where the competition for one specific piece of content is low), then dominate it. Make it so incredible, that nobody else will try to top you.

Now, this part is important. When you do this, take it one piece of content at a time. Otherwise, you will get overwhelmed, give up, or try to cut corners.

With that said, let’s give a quick example:

Let’s say you have one amazing product on your website. You’ve done all your research and you reference your competitors. You’ve made your product and everything about it better than your competition.

So, you have a product page (or description) that’s over 2200 words, well structured, and designed to be easy to read on any device. You have a marketing video on that page that shows everything that’s great about the product, how it’s better than the competition, and demonstrates the product in use. You have testimonials, infographics, Pinterest pins, and a “Frequently Asked Questions” area.

And of course, you have an entire gallery of the best product photos.

I’m sure you’re with me on this one. If this online business website only had a single photo of the product and a couple of sentences about it, are they really even trying?

The simple answer is no. They definitely are NOT trying the way their competitors are.

Moving on…

9. Use Your Site to Grow Your Online Audience

Anyone with a website should use their site to grow their online audience. In fact, this should be the primary goal for most websites. Especially the young websites that are in their beginnings.

Every online business should have a way to get people on their Email List. Also, you should feel comfortable asking users to sign up for your email list, follow you on Instagram, like your Facebook page, or subscribe to your YouTube Channel.

Many online business owners that I’ve talked with in the past tell me that their goal is to get people to buy the product, or email them for a consultation.

See, here’s the problem.

If you don’t grow your online audience, you only have one shot to get that person to buy your product or email you.

However, if you get them on your email list, Instagram following, YouTube channel, or Facebook feed, you can put the opportunity in front of them over and over again.

It gets better. On top of that, you have a collection of extremely targeted potential customers that at one point or another, already showed interest in you.

They intentionally gave you their email address, followed you, subscribed, call it what you will. That potential customer intentionally added themselves to your online audience list. So that you can show them more, give them a coupon, reach out and say hello to them.

Saying hello can really grow your audience, and can create something that we call “Superfans.” Keep reading because there’s more on that later.

10. Write Quality Content for All Web Pages and Posts

So, this is incredibly important. Again, it sounds simple. I mean, who would put poor quality content anywhere on their website?

Honestly, the majority of the internet is poor quality content. But we won’t get into that right now.

So it’s absolutely mind-blowing how many people I’ve witnessed over the years that have completely failed with their website because they didn’t have quality content (or any at all for that matter).

In fact, back when I used to build websites for people, the hardest part was always getting someone, anyone at all, to give me any text to put on their website.

Look. I’m not talking about a handful of clients here. I’m talking about 80-90% of my clients had no idea of what they wanted to put on their websites. It was like they were shocked when I asked them about any type of text, sentences, marketing copy, technical writing… It didn’t matter, they were literally caught off guard that there had to be text on there.

Then when I suggested hiring a writer, or even me trying to write some content for them, they acted like it would be a waste of time or money to “make text” for their website.

This is so important, yet so simple.

Regardless of your industry, niche, or audience, you must have text for your website. If there’s nothing for people to read, then there’s nothing for the Search Engines to crawl. There’s no way for your website to rank.

With that said, the content should be good. High quality content is one of the most important things for a website. If you want to be an online business owner and start a website, you, or someone working for you, is going to have to do a little bit of writing.

There’s a good way to make sure your content has some level of good quality. You should have content that does one of these things:

• Answers a Question
• Solves a Problem
• Helps People with Something
• Gives Value to Consumers
• Is Entertaining
• Makes Readers Feel Something

For example:

If you are a graphic designer, make tutorials to help readers aspire to become a graphic designer. If you have an accounting firm, write content that helps people understand tax law or what they can write off. If you are selling makeup products, give makeup tips.

If you are selling trailer hitches, write “How-To” posts about safely towing different things using different vehicles. Horse trailers, campers, other vehicles, boats… anything you might need a trailer hitch for!

Also, content doesn’t necessarily have to be just writing. Some other types of content are podcasts, videos, music, graphics, photos… You see what I’m saying, right?

11. Keep Web Content Relevant to Your Business

For some people, this may seem like an obvious rule for your website. However, even some of the largest websites often have trouble keeping web content relevant to their business.

For example:

Imagine that you have a website that says “Pet” in the domain name, and your website is all about pets, dogs, cats, pet toys, pet health, and so on, you have content relevant to your website.

The problem begins when you start putting content on your website about politics, finance, car insurance, or pretty much anything that’s not relevant to pets.

Bottom line… Your content should be at least 75% relevant overall to your website’s topics or purpose.

Here’s why:

Search engines, social platforms, smart devices, and even artificial intelligence, and beginning to focus on relevance in regard to areas of content and knowledge on the web. This applies to so many different areas that I will have to write an entirely different article on Relevance.

Now, this is important. It’s especially important in this industry to consider and understand what search engines are used for. What is their primary purpose? What is their main objective?

The goal of a search engine is to try to help users find exactly what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. Hopefully, the content that appears first to a user, is 100% relevant to what they were searching for. That’s the goal.

The way they do this is by trying to make sure that the website that delivers this is some sort of authority in the topic of the search phrase. Be the authority of your topics.

This leads directly to my next point.

12. Don’t Link to Your Website Just Anywhere Online

Yep… Relevance applies here too. In fact, 75% of your incoming links should be coming from pages with content on it relevant to yours. That’s the goal anyway.

Now, I’m not saying that you should meticulously go through your links and make sure you hit exactly that number (some people do stuff like this). The point is that you shouldn’t link to your website from just anywhere on the web.

I know what you’re thinking… “Where should I link from?” Well this is a difficult question with a very complicated answer.

The truth is, Google doesn’t really want YOU to link to your website from anywhere. Not much anyway. Google wants OTHER PEOPLE to link to your website.

So, if you were a search engine algorithm (if it was a person), where do you think you should link from? An algorithm would tell you that other people should be linking to you, not you.

But wait, there’s a more important topic about linking that we need to cover right now.

There are good links and bad links that you can get to your website. Good links are a big reason so many websites rank well. Bad links are the reason many huge websites have crumbled into an abyss of darkness, never to see light again.

No. I’m not kidding. You need to be careful where your links come from online. Entire online businesses, people, families, have lost their income stream because someone decided to “Build Backlinks” to their website and made some poor choices. Or even worse, they paid someone a lot of money to build these links that led to their demise.

Sorry, I’m not trying to scare you. Moving on to other important rules.

13. Quality Web Content to Keep Users On Your Site

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

“This is pretty obvious. Why would someone put poor quality web content on their site?”

People do it all the time. In fact, it’s almost the norm. Sometimes it happens when people get behind schedule. It could happen when you decide to monetize your websi13te.

Let me break this down for you.

So, you will see this quite a bit, because it used to work. However, many people still do this thinking it will work. People will write a 500 word piece of content, find a free stock photo to slap on it as a featured image, add a link to their home page as an anchor link in the text somewhere, and call it good.

I can already tell you that this level of quality will NOT be acceptable in most cases. Now, let’s talk about how monetizing can destroy the quality of your content or website.

Have you ever searched for something on Google, then saw the perfect search result. It’s like you already know when you click it that this search result is going to be exactly what you’re looking for.

Then, the page loads up, there’s a video ad autoplaying in the bottom corner of your browser, no matter how much you scroll. There’s ads all across the top. There’s a fake “READ” or “DOWNLOAD” button right under the page title. Then, after about 6 seconds a giant popup covers the screen. You can’t find the “X” to close it anywhere.

You know exactly what I’m talking about. Right?

What an awful user experience. What about that awesome content that’s in there somewhere? There’s a lot of really big and popular websites that do this too. Well, this is a result of going overboard with monetizing a website. I think that in the future, websites that do this will start to fall off the rankings because of poor user experience.

Let me tell you. I hate websites like this and will avoid them at all costs. Keep your web content high quality and that will help keep users on your website. Which, in turn, will increase dwell time and conversions.

14. Structure Your Web Content for Search Engines

There’s a big difference between writing and writing for the web. You can’t just have a title, then paragraphs of content anymore. Most page content should follow these rules:

• Use H1 HTML tag for page title headings
• Separate your page content into sections with headings
• Use H2 tags section headings
• Use H3 tags as needed for subheadings under H2 headings
• Keep paragraphs short
• Try to limit text under each heading to a max of 500 words
• Use similar semantics to your target keyphrase in your content
• Try to get “Snippets” from Google by getting to the point and answering questions

The other important aspect of web content structure is where you put it on your website, and how you link it. This is incredibly important as well.

There’s pyramid structure, flat structure, and SILO structure. I’m not going to go into details about them here, but your website should really have a defined structure. Without a structure, Google sees it more as just a bunch of random web pages.

Google uses website structures to help determine content importance and relevance. Even though you can rank on Google without having a good website structure, optimizing your structure can easily boost your search rankings. It could be the only thing keeping you from the top of Google.

15. Start Using Call to Action to Convert Users

If you aren’t already using clever, suggestive calls to action on your website, now is the time to start. A good way to get started or optimize your call to action techniques is to research and reference your competitors, or some of the bigger businesses in a related industry.

Here’s why:

Some of the larger businesses that have an online presence have an entire team of marketers doing split testing, hotmap research, and other time consuming things to increase their conversions. So, that means that they’ve already spent lots of time and money figuring it out, then putting it online for the world to see.

It’s not wrong or immoral for you to look at other websites to get some inspiration. So start using good call to action methods and start converting users on your website.

16. Post 1 to 3 Articles per Week on Your Site

The common phrase among online business owners, internet marketers, and SEO consultants is “Content is King.” And it’s true.

Research shows that most websites have a point in which their traffic begins to grow exponentially. Based on several different statistics and studies, reaching this point is based on a few different factors related to content:

• Total Number of Articles
• Consistency of Publishing New Articles
• Quality of Articles
• Word Count of Articles
• Total Website Word Count

Now, you have to understand that there’s several ways to go about reaching this tipping point. And remember, it also depends on your niche, industry, and competition.

Here’s how I would do it to guarantee some level of success, without really pointing to a specific style, industry, topic, or business model. Here’s how it should go:

1. Keep Most Articles Over 1,700 Words.
2. Have at Least a Few Articles Over 3,500 Words
3. Keep Your Content High Quality
4. Focus on Relevance to Your Website Topics
5. Post 1 to 3 Articles per Week on Your Website
6. Look for Exponential Growth at 50-70 Published Articles
7. Watch for a Spike at 12 Months of Posting Consistently 
8. Look for Another Exponential Growth Tier at 100-150 Articles

If you look at this little process, essentially, it can all be summed up to one rule. Post 1 to 3 Articles per Week on Your Site.

Honestly, that’s why I have this rule here. It solves most of the process for you as long as you keep your content high quality, relevant, and long form.

It’s important to note, that people have reported large dips in traffic from breaking consistency. For example, taking a two week vacation from posting when you’ve been posting 1 to 3 times per week for the last 6 months. Consistency is important.

17. Share Your Website Content on Social Media

If you aren’t sharing the web content you create on Social Media, you aren’t doing your best to compete on the internet.

At a minimum, you should have a Facebook Page, Instagram Account, Twitter Account, and Pinterest Account. There are other platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Medium that are a little different, but can get you a lot of audience and traffic.

For some brands, they go all out with social media and have a presence on 30+ platforms. Some people don’t even know that there’s that many social media websites where they can share their content!

In the end, you should focus on what works for you and your audience. Try out a lot of them, then focus on where you get results.

18. Be Personable. Be Real. Be You!

So many small online businesses are guilty of not doing this. They want to focus on looking like a large company. They try to build a front like they are bigger, or are afraid to put their name or face on their brand.

If you are afraid to put your name or face on your own brand, there’s obviously something wrong with your business or brand. Embrace your online business. Be your own biggest fan.

Consider this. If you don’t want to be associated with your business or product, why would anyone else?

Look, these days, people like having the personal, trustable touch of a small business. If someone finds out that you are intentionally trying to keep your name or face away from the business, that is a HUGE RED FLAG to them. 

Take advantage of being small! Put your face on your business. Let people know that they can contact you and talk to you. So many consumers prefer a person they can trust over a large company where they have nobody to talk to. Some people won’t use a brand that doesn’t have a name and face to go along with it.

Don’t try to be someone or something you’re not. Let your customers know that you are personable. That you are real. Let them know who you are.

19. Note What’s Working and What’s Not for Your Online Business

Do more of what works, and less of what isn’t working. I see this all the time and people keep doing what’s not working for them. Sometimes it’s because they are doing what’s comfortable to them. And when it doesn’t work, they have trouble stepping out of their comfort zone.

I see this with social media marketing all the time. Here’s an example.

Some people are addicted to Instagram. They’ve used it for years. Now, they start an online business, and they spend several more years focusing on growing their Instagram Audience, because it’s what they know. But still no conversions. They finally hit a few thousand followers, none of which convert to paying customers.

Should they keep focusing on Instagram? Well, I’m not saying to delete their account, or to stop promoting on that platform altogether, but you should see what else might work better for you.

The same goes for business models. If your subscription box business isn’t taking off. If nobody is converting, maybe you should start asking your audience to find out why.

Make the change to find out what works.

Remember, just because you are invested in something, doesn’t mean it’s working. Sometimes it’s best to stop and begin focusing on something else that will work.

There have been several occasions where I pulled the plug on an entire business because it was eating up my time, and just not working.

It happens to everyone. We have to make decisions on how we spend our time, and what we focus on. Sometimes the choice is hard, but being able to do this can often be the difference between success and failure.

20. Listen to Your Audience to Improve Your Online Business

Regardless of who you are, what level you think you’re at, or what industry you are in… You should always listen to your audience.

Not only is it polite, but they are kind of your entire fanbase right? Without them, you don’t really have a business. They literally make you successful. Be thankful for them.

Also, it’s the best way to monetize your online business. By listening to your audience, you can figure out what they want, and give it to them. This is a great way to improve your online business.

If you have a small handful of people in your audience that want something specific, you can bet that there are a lot more people online that want the same thing as them. Consider what your audience wants, and give it to them!

Even if you have just 100 people in your audience, one single person could give you an idea of what 100,000 people want online.

Do you need input or feedback on something? Maybe you need a focus group or someone to bounce ideas off of. Maybe even a test group to help you improve your digital products. Just ask your audience!

Let me tell you, there has been several times throughout history where people even find long term partnerships through their audience.

Need to build some links to your website? Want to get the word out on social media? Talk to your audience! Seriously. Your audience is your fanbase, and you should engage with them regularly.

21. Stop Doing Busywork, and Start Doing Important Work

Have you ever felt like you worked really hard on something, but didn’t really make any progress? Well don’t feel alone.

I’m EXTREMELY guilty of this myself.

You see, this often comes with being a perfectionist. You end up working on lots of little things that aren’t a priority, or that eat up lots of your time without any results.

For example:

Binge watching YouTube. Some watching is okay, but if you watch 100 hours of YouTube videos about how to do things, then don’t take any action, you can’t call it productive.

But here’s the thing.

Don’t reinvent the wheel on standard tasks and processes. If you do, you will spend way too much time figuring out something that’s already been figured out. And when you’re done, it will be lower quality and less efficient.

Don’t spend all your time on something for no results.

A good rule of thumb is to set goals for every task you perform. With your goal, make it time-bound. Set a limit to how long you can perform that task. Even if you break time constraint in the end, set it so you can have a better idea of how much time you are spending on something.

This is one of the reasons all internet marketers use content calendars.

Also, be sure to keep the Big Picture goal in mind. Organize and prioritize your work. Which is more important? Spending 2 hours figuring out the perfect hashtag combination on your Instagram post, or spending 2 hours finishing that blog article that was supposed to be published already?

Honestly, if you scroll social media 6 hours a day looking at memes and cat videos, you cannot call that productive work. Also, people that do this often have trouble starting an online business because they get too distracted.

Be the creator, not the consumer.

22. Start Taking Action to Improve Your Online Business

Once you build it, it’s all done right?

Well no. Not usually. There’s always more to do. Don’t let that overwhelm you, but it’s true. There’s always something you can do to improve. And you should.

What that might be really depends on where you are with your online business. However, once you have an audience, you should definitely try to improve what you can for them. The more you improve things for your audience, the easier it is to retain and grow your audience.

Also, focus on improving conversions. No conversions yet? Well, you definitely need to improve your conversions then.

Whatever the priority is, start taking action to improve your online business. Don’t just sit and “wait for something to happen.” Don’t wait. Take action to make yourself and your business better.

23. Plan in Advance to Get Ahead of Schedule

Planning in advance is the ultimate secret weapon to success for internet marketers. That’s why scheduling platforms for content and social media have blown up in the last few years.

You better believe, every successful blogger, YouTuber, and digital marketer plan in advance to get ahead of schedule. Some of them have their next 6 months planned out on a content calendar already.

One of the reasons they do this is to have a plan and stay consistent. Also, the “algorithms” on all of the different content platforms (Google, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) like consistency.

This also allows you some time to take the occasional break. Reward yourself for your hard work from time to time.

Most online businesses that don’t plan in advance… fail. It’s a fact.

Have you ever heard this phrase before?

“If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.”

It’s true. In fact, I believe it’s true in all aspects of life. This brings us to my next point, which is so important because it’s one of the largest causes of failure.

24. Stay Consistent. Launch and Execute the Plan

Execute the plan, even if the plan changes a little. Whatever you need to do to stay consistent.

Over the years, I’ve seen great people with lots of potential do research, plan everything out, take the leap, then abruptly stop… almost completely. This is more common than you would think.

They take a short break for a week or two. Next thing they know, they haven’t touched anything in a year.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Let me tell you, I’ve done this. Some of the most successful people in the world have done it. Do you know why?

Because it’s incredibly easy to do! Especially if things get overwhelming after you start, or things don’t go according to plan.

If you want to be in the world of Online Business, you will have to be adaptable, and be open to change. You will also have to have a certain amount of time, consistency, and dedication. If you don’t have these things, why are you starting an online business?

Your website and online business will really struggle if you don’t stay consistent.

Make time and dedicate yourself to reaching the goal. Even if it’s just 2 inches at a time. Execute the plan and accomplish your goals.

25. Batch Create Content for Your Website and Business

Batch content creation is an advanced method that has led a lot of different websites and online businesses to success. It works so well that it almost feels like cheating.

This is where you set aside a chunk of time (usually an entire day) to create several weeks worth of content to schedule.

Allow me to explain… using an example.

Successful YouTubers will often set aside one day for shooting and capturing video. They will record 4 or 5 different videos in one day.

Then, they will set aside the next entire day for editing those videos. Now they have enough videos to post one per week for the next 4 to 5 weeks.

People that do this for a living will take this a step further. They will do this with everything. They will batch create blog articles, graphics, social media posts, YouTube videos, and Podcasts.

This often goes on for weeks. Then, when they get 3 to 4 weeks ahead of schedule on everything, they will stop for a couple of weeks to focus on creating digital products and planning their next topics for their content.

Batching content is an essential tool in your digital marketing arsenal. It’s a great way to be efficient, stay organized, and grow your audience.

26. Start Building Relationships with Other Sites and Online Businesses

It’s so important to begin building relationships with other websites and businesses in your topic. Basically, make friends with your competitors.

Typically, when we talk about competitors in online business, we don’t necessarily mean someone that you directly compete with. Do NOT see them as the enemy. We are referring to someone else that has similar content to you.

This is a great way to get backlinks to your website from other relevant websites. Building these relationships will open up doors for cross promotions, audience sharing, guest posting, and collaborations.

27. Optimize Your Website Content

A website can have the best, most engaging, incredible content in the world, but if the content isn’t optimized for search engines (specifically Google), it won’t rank well. It just won’t.

Every piece of content you create, should have a purpose. With this purpose, should come a specific topic and keyphrase to go along with it.

Every page on your website should be as optimized as possible. You should optimize page titles, body text, images, alt text, URL slugs, metadata, descriptions, load time, structure, subheadings, sitemaps, and everything else you possibly can.

Do you use WordPress? Get the Yoast SEO plugin. It will help you.

Conclusion: 27 Rules to Start an Online Business Website

Success online isn’t a random lucky occurrence. It’s a combination of knowledge, planning, hard work, smart work, dedication, and consistency. These are the 27 rules I try to follow anytime I start a new online business website.

I hope that these rules help you the way they’ve helped me. Now, talk to me.

Have I left anything out? What topic would you like to know more about? Let me know in the comments below!