After you have a site planned, what are the things to do first, in terms of making sure you do things so that marketing online will be simple enough?

I'm not an expert on this, but I'd think an early task would be to have a look at your content and be aware of which keywords you want to have in it. I think it's desirable to have a good keyword density that doesn't seem unnatural to the casual reader.

It's planning and execution, and it's not just the site but your strategy. You have to make sure everything is in sync. The more efficient you are now, the easy it will be to grow and alter as you gain consumers.

If you have a site planned on a specific topic...the first thing to do is to as orrymain said planning and execution..make categories and sub categories and see to it that there is something to read in each on of them. I have also found that people when coming to a new site read the about us page the most and that is one thing you have to design first of all.

I'd say if someone is using a name for their company or site, they should make sure that it's available and not already in use by another company.

It would be bad to put a lot of time into a site, only to find out that you can't keep the name of it.

That 'about us' page is very important. I've gone to sites and left after seeing a 'coming soon' page when the site's been around for ages. That page is a reflection of the company.