The Beginners Guide to Building a Website

Building a website seems like a daunting task, but if you break it down into its steps. There are quite a few free website templates which you can use, such as WordPress.org, dotnetnuke.com or joomla.com. These can easily be set up by any one and should not take longer than a day to do so.

1. Research

Once you have an idea for your website, look for similar websites by goggling the keywords you think people will use to find your website. Take note of how these sites work and what you could do to make them better. Now you can start thinking about the design of your website.

2. Website Design

The design of your website should be based on the targeted customer. In other words you will need a clean professional look if you are dealing with corporates, whereas teenagers may prefer a funkier look.



3. The Technical Setup

You will need to purchase a domain name and hosting so that you can load the website onto the hosting services. If you want to sell goods from your website you must register with a online banking system such as PayPal.com.

4. Creating and Adding Content

Typically a website needs content for the following website pages:

Home - The core of your message should be reflected on this page. If you want to sell products, the most popular sellers should be displayed here.

Contact Us - This page should have a full list of contact details which includes email, address, telephone number, physical and postal address.

About Us - A short description of what you do and what your mission statement is.

Articles - Your articles will need a lot of planning and researching. Make sure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes before uploading them to your site.

Terms of Use - This should stipulate all the terms of use for your website. Include copyright, liability and age restrictions.

5. Testing Your Website

Once your website is uploaded to your server, do a thorough check. Click on each link, read each sentence and make sure it all works properly. Make sure your money path works. This is the most important part of your site.

6. Going Live

Once you are happy that all works well, you can go live and start advertising.

7. Maintaining the Site

Only half your job is done once your site is live. You should update your site at least once a week. Articles should be carefully prepared to contain keywords which people are likely to use when they search for what they want.

8. Analyzing Your Site

Sign up for free at http://www.googleanalytics.com. This tool will help you with all sorts of statistics based on what their search engine finds on your site. You can go to http://www.webseoanalytics.com to find what keywords search engines are ranking you on and how to improve your site.

A good idea is to find a qualified student to help you set up your website. It is good practice for them and they don't charge as much as professional services. Make sure you have a call to action on every page of your site.