Do not overlook this step.

Your domain name is one of the keys to success.
Making the wrong choice will hurt your branding, marketing, and SEO.

If you go to Google and do a search on most any product you will see that the keyword is usually reflected in the domain name for the top positions.
When it is not, then the site has compensated by other means, usually in Page Rank, (PR), and in-bound links, (IBL).
The "Wikipedia" is a good example of this as, due to the enormous amount of IBL they have, they often dominate the rankings.

There are two schools of thought when composing domain names.
One says that using hyphens is ok, the other says to not use them.
Google has indicated that domain names with more than one hyphen *might* be considered spammy.

That leave us with using one or none.
Personally I feel that it looks cleaner if one is used, but for search engines it is not necessary.

It is up to you.

Registering your domain names.
I suggest GoDaddy. Their service is priced well and service is reasonable.

Hosting is important for several reasons.

• Up Time.
  If your host suffers from down-time problems or if your site is not accessible online for any reason, your search engine listings could vanish.
  This could happen if your site was offline during a search engine spider's visit to your site.
  
• Service/Support.
  Your hosting company MUST get back to you for service requests promptly.
  GoDaddy is notorious for slow hosting support.
  
• Options. - Don't be fooled by exaggerated claims. Space and Bandwidth quotas are greatly inflated and 99% of sites do not even come close.
  • Space:
    A hosting plan should offer the client enough space to run their site and support services, forums, guestbooks, databases, or whatever you wish.
    My 0Grief hosting gives 250 MB disk space and only a few out of over 100 domains exceed that, and these are HUGE stores. Most do not even use 20%.
    
  • Bandwidth.
    Here we have the crux of the hosting service uncertainty.
    How much bandwidth does one need?
    We offer 10 GB Bandwidth on the basic plan. Most sites rarely hit 5% of that.
    One of my sites that is graphic intensive and gets about 1000 page views per day is at 10% of quota this month.
    If a site approaches the quota limit, the owner is notified and given the option to up-grade.
    
    Some service offer unlimited bandwidth but will shut a site down if it becomes very active.
    This can happen if your site gets noticed by the media.
    
  • Administration.
    You are going to spend a good bit of time in the administration sections of your server.
    The majority of it will be checking web stats and web mail.
    While there are numerous programs to manage this cPanel is about the best.
    
  • Optional programs. (Installed from the web server administration).
    Here we have a lot of variations.
    cPanel, which is one of the most used offers:
    • Advanced Guest Book
    • b2evolution
    • Coppermine Photo Galley
    • e107 CMS
    • GeekLog
    • InvisionBoard BBS
    • PostNuke CMS
    • WordPress Blog
    • PhpWiki
    • Chatroom
    • Bulletin Board
    • PhpMyChat
    • Agora Shopping Cart
    • HotLink Protection
    • Index Manager
    • IP Deny Manager
    • SSL Manager
      
  • Web Stats.
    Often overlooked when getting hosting, stats are most necessary to the running of a proper SEO or marketing campaign.
    As SEO is not an absolute science it is necessary to continually monitor your website metrics to see how your site is doing.
    You need to monitor traffic levels, entry pages, (landing pages), and exit pages, duration of visits, keywords/phrases used to find your site, and more.
    
• Support. (Did I say that twice? I guess I did.)
  If you have a problem or a question you need an answer NOW, not 2 days down the line.

Next week will be Week 3 - Layout of site. User studies, content display and navigation and Richard has volunteered some of his sites to be the guinea pigs.