How to Start an Internet Company That Will Be Noticed: The Proposal and Outline

Update 7-29-09: I have decided to put this series on hold for a while. I will continue it once I get more time to experiment with the ideas before recommending them. I am sure both of us can appreciate that :-p Cheers!

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This post is a little different than what you might be used to. Instead of talking at you, I would like to talk with you. I would like to propose a blogging outline, not actually blog on the given subject (yet!).

First, allow me to explain myself. I have been under-utilizing my blogging privileges the last three months and I would like to try to make this up to all of you. I have made the same excuses that everyone makes. “I am too busy,” “I’ll get to it later," “My dog ate my keyboard.” I know these are bad excuses (except the last one) and so do you. There are plenty of people who work many more hours than I do (i.e., Rand) and even more people who write excellent blog posts who have less material to work with than me.

The truth is, I love blogging! It is my favorite part of my “job” and quite possibly the aspect that has taught me the most about the internet. Every time I post, I eagerly read the comments and obsessively follow the conversation if it travels around the internet.

Here is the part that involves you.

I would like to write posts only about material that you want to read about. Below is my proposal for you. If you choose not to accept it, I would love to hear your feedback so that I can be led in the right direction.

My Blog Proposal:

You wouldn’t start an offline company without considering marketing, yet many people try to start online companies without considering internet marketing and SEO.

I want to start an internet company and document the entire process from an internet marketing perspective. There are plenty of blogs about about starting a company, but very few (if any) that explain how to do it while solely focusing on internet marketing.

I will not include general start up advice. Instead, I will write as if I am the SEO manager whose only job is to do SEO for the company. To be perfectly honest, I do plan on trying to make money from the company but it is not my main concern. I have acquired a lot of internet marketing knowledge over the past year and I feel like if I don’t start applying it soon, I will explode! This is my effort to stop thinking and start doing.

Blogging Outline:

This is not a definitive plan. It is not tested yet and I plan to try these ideas out and blog about the results. I have only started one company in my life and it ended in a scary legal battle. I do not claim to be even a moderately skilled entrepreneur, but I do have enough SEO skills to make a notable attempt. Below is my plan:

(Each category will be at least one blog post.)

• Formulating the idea
  • What marketable problem does the idea solve?
  • Who will want to visit your site
  • What will they be able to accomplish
  • Unique Selling Proposition (Thanks, Dr. Mani)
  • What "unfair" advantage do you have over your competition to make you better than them
  • Identify two degrees of difference
  • How will your content build links?
  • Who will write your unique content
  • How will this website do if it only has 100 users?
• Know the space before you get into it
  • Identify the thought leaders and Linkerati
  • Understand the internet neighborhood and the neighboring internet neighborhoods
  • Socialize in the space
  • Identify user wants and needs
  • Find inspiration (aesthetic design, ideas, concepts)
  • The art of stealing ideas (It’s fine to steal little pieces from different websites. Give credit where credit is due)
• Keyword research
  
  • Start early and design with flexibility in mind
  • Run test PPC campaigns (Thanks KS-Katz)
  • Identify themes
  • Decide how this will affect your design
• Setting goals
  • What do you want to rank competitively for
  • Is your online marketing plan primarily: Social Media, Paid Search or Natural Search
  • Is there a goal to marketing other then selling the product
  • 1 hour of marketing for every two hours of coding?
• Plan
  • Make a flexible outline
  • Think SEO and marketing from the beginning
    
  • Create an early stage marketing plan
    
  • Create a high level long term marketing plan (do not expect ANY press)
  • What will you blog about?
    • How many posts per week?
  • Milestones
  • Keep the big picture in mind
• Get a domain (doesn't even have to be the final. you can always 301)
  • Base on your keyword research and your intuition
  • New domains
  • Domize
  • Identify pros and cons of the domain name early
  • Have a friend spell it without seeing it. ("Hey Jeff, how would you spell ziontd")
  • Buy canonicalized versions (.com, .org .net -- others not necessary)
  • Buy typos
  • Remember engines are registrars, so private registration is useless
  • If you need to buy a currently owned domain...
    • Weigh the pros and cons of the title (Is it worth the price? Google, Delicious, Wikipedia are all nonsense words)
    • Use a reputable source
    • Allow 2 months for transfer proceedings
• Work before the work (Start building links early)
  • Execute your early stage marketing plan
  • Make a blog
  • Host funny images on your server
  • Social media links
  • Local search registration
• Mockups (include SEO, Info architecture, siloing, H1, title tags)
  • Think scaffolding, not colors
  • Write out your title tags and H1, H2 on your mockups
  • Plan your information architecture (3 click theory)
  • Entire section on navigation
  • How will your homepage spread link juice
  • Establish a clear call to action on every page (Thanks, Jordan)
• Development design (hardware and middleware)
  • Pick a CMS
    
  • The SEO pros and cons of going custom
  • HTML formatting (how does it look? how does it parse?)
  • URL structure
  • Bot killers
  • Server administration (Thanks, Darren)
    • Apache vs. IIS
    • The importance of IP addresses
    • DNS management
• Design design (frontend)
  • User and search engine focused design
  • The 3 Components of web design
    • Interface design
      • Clickability
      • Banana (call to action)
        
      • CSS
      • Alt tags
    • Aesthetic design
      • UX
      • CSS
      • Branding
    • Information design
      • At this point it should already be planned
      • Now figure out how to implement into design
      • Breadcrumbs?
      • Visual Hierarchy of information
• Code
  • Start coding
• SEO audit
  
  • Get a different SEO to look at your site
  • Nofollow
  • Title tags
  • H1
  • SEO Browser
  • SEOmoz tools (Term Targeting)
• Marketing
  
  • Stunts
  • Blogs
    
  • Community
  • Social media
  • Paid (YouTube)
• Tracking/Analytics
  • The infinity loop (This process never ends)
  • SERPS
  • Reputation management / social media tracking

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That's all I have for right now. I look forward to hearing your opinions and expertise in the comments. As always, e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. If that's not your style, feel free to contact me on Twitter (DannyDover) and/or Linkedin (Danny Dover). Thanks!