Like many things there are good ways of doing things and bad ways of doing things. This is particularly true when trying to build an online presence.

Here is a list of tips that should help when considering your new website, blog or other Internet site. These tips are listed in no particular order as my primary aim in producing this list is to get everything down whilst it is fresh in my mind.

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 1 to 10

• Starting for the wrong reasons
  Be sure of what you really want from your site before you start, perhaps start with a hosted or managed site to test the water and see if it is right for you. Building a successful website is hard work
• Starting a site for profit and not for passion
  To maintain momentum and build a popular site you need a passion for the content in your site. Sites that are setup just as cash earners are often easily spotted, and avoided
• Updating your site irregularly
  Keep your content fresh and update it regularly. Let visitors know what sorts of topics you intend to write about and upcoming areas of interest
• Ignoring the value of web metrics
  But do not get caught up with them. Metrics are a tool, they are useful when planning your site but do not let them drive your site development
• Forgetting to include a comment or feedback system
  Encourage visitors to your site to get involved, comments are a handy way to start a discussion. Often new ideas, or different and refreshing points of view can emerge from open discussion
• Forgetting to ask people for feedback
  Ask family, friends, and site visitors what they think of your site. All feedback is positive feedback so take it constructively
• Not Including a web feed or subscription service such as RSS
  Visitors may not always be able to get to your site frequently and others may prefer reading site feeds – so do not miss out on potential visitors
• Failing to network with other, similar, sites
  Keep a look around for similar sites that share your interests and talk to them – you may find useful contacts this way
• Not thinking through your hosting
  Once you really get going you really do not want to be changing your hosting too often, think it through before you start
• Wondering if your site is up or down
  You may have the greatest content in the world – but is your site up? Try a service like ServiceUptime which will let you know when your site is not available

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 11 to 20

• Failing to spell check before publishing
  Regular poor spelling can be put off potential new visitors – use a spell checker
• Getting caught up in the design and/or mechanics
  When starting out it a useful rule of thumb is to think about the content first, then the navigation, then the design
• Skimping in vital areas
  A slow web site, bad graphics, or hosting issues can give you grief and chase away visitors
• Setting your text too small
  Not everyone has the same vision and some people have really high resolution monitors (meaning really small text)
• Using images and video without permission
  Do not get caught up with copyright issues, make sure you know where your images are from and include proper citations where necessary
• Forgetting to submit your site to search engines
  You need to let search engines know about your site, this is easily forgotten when starting out – start here http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
• Not checking your links work
  Both to your own content and links pointing out – Yahoo Site Explorer can help
• Not testing your site in different browsers
  Does your site work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome? Try a site like BrowserShots
• Filling your site with unnecessary things
  Do not be tempted to add too much clutter to your site, this will detract from the main content
• Getting the balance right – long pages versus too short pages
  Put essential information early on in your content articles to gain the attention of the reader and explain what the article is about

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 21 to 30

• Filling your sites with Advertisements
  When starting out your are unlikely to earn much, if any, revenue from Ads so why put them on your site? At best they will send visitors off to other sites
• Forgetting to include contact information
  Let people know how to get in touch with you
• Not Dealing with your 404
  A 404 is a page that is not found, you should use a custom 404 page and add your site information to it
• Moving your site around too much
  From hosting platform, content management system provider, or otherwise – once people know where your site it try and keep it there
• Not thinking through your domain name
  This will become ‘brand you’ so spend a little extra time getting it right first time, rebranding later can be time consuming and costly
• Forgetting about branding
  Talking of ‘brand you’, make your site instantly recognisable by standardising on colours, typeface, imagery – things we recognise can often seem friendlier and more agreeable
• Not Securing your site
  Do you leave your back door open when you go to the shops? Ok, maybe sometimes but you do not want to leave your backdoor open on your website or you will regret it
• Forgetting Text navigation as well as graphics
  Not everyone wants, or is able, to see your graphics so have a text alternative if possible
• Overdoing the graphics
  Unless you are intending a graphic rich site it might be best to keep the images down, you need to keep the readers focus on your content
• Not submitting your site to other sites like Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon
  There are many sites out there to help get your site noticed, so use them

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 31 to 40

• Not Twittering, FriendFeeding, other other opportunities to talk, about your site
  Twitter is becoming a global phenomenon and is a great place to get some traffic for your website
• Not taking part in other forums and comment on other sites
  Being active in your chosen area demonstrates your passion for your content and may lead to new visitors
• Thinking you are writing a book
  Keep articles shorter than in written form, or provide summaries linking to longer documents
• Not writing a brief summary about your site to help you remember what it is about
  Getting sidetracked from what your site is about can lead to problems, include an about page and review it regularly
• Not adding your site to your electronic signatures so when sending emails you get a mention
  When sending emails, comments, or using forums you might be able to include a link back to your site
• Getting caught up in statistics like PageRank, Technorati and Alexa rankings
  Focus your energy on your content and getting the word out and the metrics will take care of themselves
• Have nothing to bring people to the site like a free electronic book or posters
  Ok, so it seems everyone is offering electronic books these days but they do help to focus your concentration and are easily emailed around
• Forgetting to create a sitemap
  Include a page that allows the user to see what is on your site at a glance and navigate from there too
• Not being unique
  Find your voice and always try to find an opinion on things – or add to the existing body of knowledge with your own input
• Forgetting to add a favicon
  As part of your branding exercise, you should spend a little time to focus on your website icon (Add a shortcut icon (favicon) to your web site)

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 41 to 50

• Allowing un-moderated comments
  Spammers love un-moderated comments, allow regular visitors to leave un-moderated comments once you have established they are trustworthy
• Not using a CAPTCHA system – like reCAPTCHA
  CAPTCHA is a mechanism that forces you to type in a regularly changing phrase prior to submitting information, it can help keep out automated spam-bots
• Not including a robots.txt file
  Help search engine bots evaluate your site by telling them what they should and should not look at – read Creating a robots.txt file
• Not linking to authoritative sites
  When linking to sites to support your content try and find authoritative sites to link to – this will show you have done your homework and know what you are talking about
• Forgetting to make it clear what your website is about
  Pretend you a new, first time, visitor to your own website – is it clear what the site is about? You could start by reading your own About page mentioned earlier
• Running your critical mail on the same server as your website
  If your site is down your mail will probably be down too. Have a secondary mail service, store and forward, or redirection in place so you can email various support lines when your site is not working
• Writing a title before the content is written
  You can only really write a suitable title after you have finished your article so do not waste time on it early on. When you are ready find a snappy engaging title if you can
• Forgetting to add something new and instead just adding to the noise
  There are loads of ‘me too’ sites out there so always try and add something new to the information you provide – this will help you stand out
• Structuring your writing improperly
  It helps to start reading a lot, visit authoritative sites and get a feel for how they put their content together. Keep your content structured and logical and make it flow nicely
• Signing up for a web service and never using it
  If you sign up for a web service, say a news aggregator, try and make good use out of it – try not to leave too many half started projects lying around it will just eat into your time later on

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 51 to 60

• Getting sidetracked when writing articles
  Before writing an article have a clear message in mind and make sure you stick to the point to get this message across
• Posting your articles too quickly – sleep on them
  Never be tempted to post an article straight away if you can help it – try and sleep on it, your views and feelings may be different later but a post is difficult to change once posted
• Forgetting to social bookmark your best articles
  Be proud of your work and ensure you let others know of articles you are particularly pleased with
• Embedding too much incidental HTML giving your theme a headache without realising it
  Depending on how you edit your content, little bits of HTML can creep in as you edit it around which could break your visual design if unchecked
• Disorganised categories
  Break down your content into a small number of categories, this will make it easier for visitors to find related articles on your site
• Articles not matching the categories
  Make sure your articles match the categories you have assigned otherwise you will cause confusion for your visitor
• Mismatched imagery (unless that is deliberate of course!)
  If you are writing a serious discussion piece then a cartoon may not be appropriate and if you are writing a loose piece a hard formal picture may not be suitable – ensure they complement each other
• Music playing by default
  If you have to have music playing then leave it off by default and allow the visitor to play it. The visitor may be surfing late at night (or in the office during the day)
• Taking too much on
  Take small steps and focus on getting things right before you expand your site
• Spreading yourself too thinly
  There is little point in having a hundred categories each with just one article, or having lots of pages with very little on them

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 61 to 70

• Underutilising social networking sites to increase exposure of your site
  We have already mentioned Twitter, but also consider Facebook, MySpace, Xing, LinkedIn, Bebo, and others…
• Making it difficult for people to add your site to social bookmarking sites
  Try a service like AddThis to provide a quick way for people to share your content
• Forgetting to create a discussion – instead of being one sided
  Try not to talk ‘at’ the audience, try engaging the audience with questions and asking for feedback
• Forgetting to allow users to subscribe to updates of your site
  Services like FeedBlitz allow you to offer an email subscription to your site so visitors receive updates via email
• Improperly handling 404 errors
  Ok, so you have left a message on your 404 site as mentioned above, how about redirecting your visitors to a more suitable location on your site like your sitemap?
• Not networking off-line, for example visiting seminars
  You can learn all sorts of information in the real world, and you can meet interesting people too, this can lead to new ideas for content and bring more visitors to your site. We all like putting a face to the name
• Deciding not to add a Podcast or Video to your site
  Make your site a little more dynamic and provide for users who are not big fans of reading, include audio articles and videos – if you cannot produce your own sites like YouTube allow you to embed videos others have produced – make sure you play them through before you embed them though!
• Missing the opportunity to contribute to Wiki and other authoritative sites
  Build your authority in your subject by contributing to peer sites and authoritative sites
• Forgetting to ask others for their opinions of your site
  Never stop asking for feedback, you might be surprised by things you will learn about your site simply by asking others
• Not using shorter, friendlier web URL names, words instead of numbers
  Making your URL names friendlier can make them easier to read and understand, allow people to visit www.yoursite.com/sitemap instead of www.yoursite.com/p=s1 for example

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 71 to 80

• Not-including Flash alternatives
  There are still users out there who don’t or can’t run Flash, some business may block Flash content so you your audience may be missing something important – have alternatives ready
• Forgetting to protect your brand identity
  Include a media or press area explaining who can use what and how, perhaps you could even include a section containing images, press releases, and logos you are happy for people to freely use
• Forgetting to submit your site to the Open Directory Project
  You can submit your site to the human-reviewed web directory and attract more visitors to your site
• Missing Freebies
  Give away freebies advertising your websites, cups, pens, tee-shirts, calendars
• Inaccessible Site
  Make your site accessible, especially for people who need assistance. Perhaps audio options or text only pages can help reach a new audience that was previously unaware of your site
• Underutilising indirect promotion opportunities
  Include a reference to your website on things you send out and on discussion boards, forums, and other media
• One way discussions
  Open up opportunities for discussion by using polls and surveys to get talking, new ideas may emerge from this too
• No Search facility
  Make your content easier to find by adding a search facility to your site, you could check out Google Site Search
• No sitemap.xml file
  Give the search engines a helping hand and use an XML sitemap. Your sitemap can then be submitted to Google, Yahoo and many other search engines to help them crawl your website. Try a site like XML Sitemaps
• Not using focused keywords to ensure your site gets noticed
  Decide on a few keywords you want your site to be associated with and use them to focus your writing. Do not overuse your keywords as this can cause “keyword density” issues with search engines, read more about keyword balance in The Fine Art of Keyword Density

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 81 to 90

• Not allowing people to print your page or mail it to others using electronic mail
  Longer articles may benefit from a print option for offline reading, perhaps even an eBook consolidating a bunch of your articles?
• Missing opportunities to be topical
  Look to topical events, big sporting events, elections, and other major events for new article ideas and to start discussions going
• Not using analytics like Google Analytics, Alexa, Quantcast or Woopra
  These sites can give you useful insights into your visitors allowing you to understand more about your site visitors, but like the metrics mentioned above these are tools – do not let them drive you – stick with your passion
• Not including references to other sites to support your articles
  It can often support your articles to include peer references and links to other authoritative sites
• Wasting money on improper SEO
  Do your homework before signing up to anyone offering SEO – there is no magic pill and the degree of results varies greatly so be sure you know what are looking for before signing up
• Not meeting industry standards
  Validate your CSS and HTML using W3C to ensure it complies to standards
• Not really meaning what you say
  Avoid saying things you would not say to your boss (including potential future bosses), family and friends
• Clutter
  Detracting attention from the content you really want people to see, evaluate the value from widgets, images, flashy text and other incidental elements that may detract from your main content
• Randomly assigning unorganised tags and categories
  I have been so guilty of this in the past, but once you start getting into the hundreds or thousands of articles you do not want to be reorganising things. Think it through before you start. Think of categories as sections and tags as keywords
• Not including an archive page
  Do not forget your old content, make it accessible to visitors by including an archive page, link this with your search function mentioned earlier

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 91 to 100

• Forgetting the rule of remixability
  When writing your content keep in mind how it could be used later, content is much easier to reuse and remix if it is clearly focused. If you have two distinctly different ideas perhaps you could write two different articles?
• Not following up communications from readers and followers
  If people have taken the time to communicate with you – you should always try to follow it up – it will help to make a connection with people and may lead to more visitors
• Thinking you know everything and forgetting to keep learning
  Always keep looking for new ideas and new ways of doing things. The Internet is a great resource but do not forget about books, newspapers, magazines and face to face discussions. There is always something new to learn
• Not putting information for people to get in touch
  So, you are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy and Xing? Let people know how to find you – perhaps include them on your contact page mentioned above
• Being a “Me Too” site without adding anything new
  It is worth saying again, add something new if you can. If it is a news article it may be tricky but discussion articles are great for exploring issues further or fusing different ideas together to create something new
• Forgetting to take time away to do other things
  Get up and move around. Do not sit at the computer all day trying to think up posts. There is a world out there you know! Most of my post ideas pop up whilst walking – I struggle to sit at a computer with a blank screen waiting for ideas to come
• Not utilising your contacts
  If you have spent time building relationships with other people you may be able to ask for a favour from time to time (remember to return the favour)
• Using things most people cannot access or are unfamiliar with
  Being at the cutting edge is great but if most other people cannot access what you have produced then you may miss huge opportunities. Use alternatives for the rest of us
• Not keeping your technology up to date
  By reading technology sites like www.jasonslater.co.uk (I did have to get one shameless plug in!)
• No information about the site owner and post authors
  In addition to contact information it is worth including information about the site owners and all the article authors in case a reader wants to get in touch

Mistakes to avoid when building a website, from 101 to 110

• Failing to recognise popular posts and themes and featuring/expanding them
  You can use metrics programs described above to identify popular articles, you can also see which have the most comments – clearly there is some opportunity for further discussion
• Forgetting that what you write will remain for a very long time
  Who might read your content in the future? Will your views be the same? Are the facts correct? Will a future boss read it?
• Sitting back and waiting for the visitors to arrive
  You need to be pro-active in encouraging people to visit your site. Find your ‘unique selling point’ which helps you stand out from the crowd
• Writing aimed at search engines instead of writing for people (e.g. keyword stuffing)
  When visitors read your content it can become quite obvious if you have keyword stuffed your article to try and get better ranking placements. Try and write naturally with a smooth flow and incorporate keywords only where appropriate.
• Forgetting to explain technical jargon clearly
  If you work in an area where technical jargon is commonplace it helps to explain certain terms, or perhaps include a link to a glossary
• Sticking too tightly to ‘the rules’ – break out from time to time and do something different
  Sometimes breaking common rules and convention can help drive a point across and help you stand out from the crowd, you may even discover a new way of doing things that you can share with everyone
• Reorganising things too frequently – we can’t find what we are looking for and you may generate 404s
  It can be tempting to keep moving things around but once the search engines notice you and link backs start occurring you could do more harm than good by rearranging content
• Lack of regular milestones and goals for your site and project – how can you really measure or plan where you are going without them?
  You need to keep focused on where you want your site to be and actively drive towards your goals. Have a clear set of goals and objectives and set minor and major milestones to reward you with progress
• Failing to describe products clearly
  If you are talking about a project, or selling a service be clear about exactly what it is, what it does, and how it works. It may be obvious to you but not to everyone else
• Moving your blog to a new domain and not telling anyone where it is
  A common error especially when starting out is to migrate your blog, either to a new platform or new domain name but not forgetting to let people know about it – leave messages on your old site letting people know where to go

Mistakes to void when building a website, from 111 to beyond

• Being unprepared for visitor surges
  If one or more of your articles catch the crest of a wave of public interest you may suddenly get deluged with traffic. Get ready for this by looking to caching your dynamically produced content
• Forgetting to back your site up regularly
  What would you do if your content was gone tomorrow? Make a backup, something you can read, and keep it safe – update your backup regularly
• Hiding keywords or phrases in your site hoping to get better rankings in the search engines.
  Do not do this – the search engines will punish you for it
• Forgetting to sign up for a service uptime monitor to automatically alert you when your site is not working
  Plenty of sites will tell you if your site is up or down but it may be worth signing up to receive an email alert or SMS message to let you know your site is down
• Not letting other sites know about your new articles
  This is often known as ‘pinging’ and a number of sites can help you with this including Ping-O-Matic
• Duplicating your content
  Search engines are beginning to take a dim view of duplicate content so make sure it is fresh and original – read more in Deftly dealing with duplicate content
• Signing up for advertising schemes without any traffic
  What is the point? The only thing Ad schemes are likely to do at this point is send your visitors elsewhere – why would you do that?
• Writing without clear focus and structure
  Consider using the services of a writing coach and editor to help improve your writing skills and improve the impact of your articles, you can learn more from sites like Confident Writing
• Plodding on regardless
  One of the worst things you could do is carry on with your site with a half-hearted effort. If things are not working, take a step back, take some time out, reflect on your site and do something about it

Phew, there we have it 118 things to avoid when building your website or blog. (I know there are 119, I could not resisting throwing an extra one in there!).

If you have any website building tips or experiences to share please add them in comments below.

Good luck with your site.

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