IntroductionSo, you want a website? Than this page is the right place for you. I'm going to explain how you can create a beautiful website.
There's very little that you need to build a website, and everything you need is available on the Internet. In other words, you just need to know where to start.
There are many CMS (Content Management Systems), but most of them are advanced. Joomla, Wordpress and others, are powerful open source CMS, but they are hard to use.
Here is a list of what you do need:
- Basic computer skills
- Access to a PC
- Access to the Internet
There are five steps in publishing a page:
- Define your objectives
- Get a web hosting account
- Create your site
- Promote your website
- Track your hits, and tune
Define your objectives
There are many good reasons for building a web page but it is important that your goals are clear. Your objectives determine the content and the design of your site. Many people build home pages as a hobby, purely for their own personal development. Others build them to promote business.
Knowledge of web development can help you in your career. Many businesses today have their own corporate Intranet sites. This are internal internet systems, used to share corporate information. The ability to communicate electronically is a valuable skill to employers.
Try to answer following questions:
- What do I want to do with my website?
- Who do I want to reach?
- How can I reach these goals?
Create a web hosting account
Next you need to create a web hosting account.
We order a hosting account, but we select the option "easy site" at "type of hosting". It asks you a few questions like your domain name, how much disk space you will need and some personal information.
After you filled out the form, it will ask you to select a payment method. You can choose "Paypal" or "Bank transfer". As soon as we receive your payment, your hosting gets activated. If you use Paypal, your hosting will be active in a few minutes.
Create your site
You will get an email with the login information for your site control panel. Now you need to login to your website and create an admin user:
You do this by surfing to http://www.yourdomain.com/admin
When you create your page, you will be asked to choose a design from the list. This will be a starterfor your site. You can also choose a design from another site on the web. Just enter the url of your choice, and it will be installed on your site.
Now, you can start filling up the data, or modifying the design. You get a lot of options to manage the information on your website. In a few minutes, your website can be online.
This page has some tools like text editing, adding objects, and so on. It's rather easy.
Promote your website
The difficult part begins now. You need to get visitors on your site. Your website is already optimized for search engines. But you still need to tell them it exists.
One way to do this is by adding your site at google using this page. This procedure will take some time. In my experience, it usually takes about 14 days.
Google gives your site a really low ranking, and your site will not be easily found on the web. Search engines have a lot of parameters on which they decide what value a page has on a certain keyword. I will try to explain a portion of how to optimize your site.
You need to spread your links. The more links you have to your website on the web, the better your site scores in general. Try to list your site on relevant sites.
Search engines, google for example, look for keywords in the content of your site. It does this by looking for words in bold, titles, underlined text and so on. So try to put some words in bold, and choose the titles of your pages wisely.
Should I use paid marketing?
If you have commercial purposes, it might be a good choice to pay for marketing. I show you some successful ways to promote your website online.
Google adwords: If you want traffic from people who are searching for certain keywords, than google adwords is a good way to start. However, this may be a quite expensive way of marketing your products, because many people on the web are not looking to actually buy.
Lead generators: There are agencies that specialize in providing qualified leads to businesses. The process of lead generation is actually very easy. An agency develops a website or partnerships with several websites in which they promote your products. A consumer finds these directories or informational sites and they are able to complete an online quote request form. This form is submitted to the agency. The buyers information is verified and matched to the appropriate providers. These matched leads are then sent via email to the prospective providers with full contact information and purchasing requirements.
Opt-in Mailing list: Many people believe that their website is their main marketing tool. In fact, your main marketing tool is your opt-in mailing list. A web site is just a way to build your mailing list, by collecting the email addresses of your visitors.
