Nowadays, building a website is essential for every sole entrepreneur, freelancer, business, organization, and the like. It’s a platform through which you’ll reach your target audience or market from anywhere in the world. Through a professionally built website, you’ll be able to present yourself or your business as a trusted and reputable professional/brand in the industry.
If you’re a freelancer, you can use a well-designed website to display your services and present your brand or profile. You can even use your website as a portfolio to demonstrate your skills and experience through published works.
No matter what goal you have for your business, career, or organization, a website can help you achieve it. That’s why if you don’t have one, it may be high time that you build your website.
Here are two of the most essential factors you need to do when building a website:
1. Choose A Domain Name
To get started with building your own website, the first thing you should do is choose a domain name. It usually refers to the website name and address being used by the visitors when they begin finding your site on the web. If you have a good domain name, then you can instantly create a positive impression on your visitors. And although having EMDs or exact match domains is not necessary, a domain name can help you rank better in SEO or search engine optimization.
To help you make the right domain name, you can apply the following tips:
- First, you have to choose the right domain name extension, such as .net, .org, or .com. Since .com is the most popular, it’s best to go with it since most people are more familiar with .com.
- Most importantly, consider keywords in your niche. Incorporate it into your brand, so it can help with your SEO ranking.
- Also, make your domain name short and concise, which should be up to 12-14 characters because shorter names are more likely to generate more traffic aside from being easy to remember.
- You should also use brandable domain names instead of generic ones. When using the brandable ones, your domain name will stand out over generic ones because they mean something and sound good; they will easily click with the audience—making your website more visible online.
2. Sign Up With Web Hosting
Aside from the domain name, building a website is also about signing up with the right web hosting. Primarily, web hosting refers to a service that maintains and keeps your website files on a secure server. Without a reliable web host, your website may not be accessible to others.
But since, there are many web hosting companies out there, you need to choose the one that will suit your needs. Below are the features you should look for in a web host:
- Free one-click-install for WordPress
- Customized email accounts
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 24/7 Customer support, preferably live chat
3. Add Content/Pages
Your website will be useless without relevant content/web pages. In most cases, pages are essential for your website since they provide information to educate search engines and users about your site. When people come to your website, they’re looking for certain information and one way to provide it is through your content. Remember, providing your users with the information they’re looking for can encourage them to stay on your site and consequently, be your consumer or client.
On the other hand, the following are the essential pages your website should have:
- Homepage – This is the primary page your visitors will see upon going to your website.
- About page – This usually contains information about your business and your website as a whole.
- Contact page – This is the page that allows visitors to contact you for queries.
- Blog page – This page contains different information that may interest your visitors. This is the listing of your recent blog posts about anything that’s related to your business, products, or services, or information that your users may be looking for.
Moreover, if you want to optimize your website for search engines, you can add backlinks (incoming links to a webpage) to your blog posts to rank higher on all major search slides. But, if you want to ensure that unreputable sites don’t link back to your site, then, it’s best to use digital tools such as a backlink checker.
- Products/Services page – This page is intended for showcasing your products or services to your visitors.
4. Pick And Customize Your Template Design
When building a website, it’s also important to choose and customize your template design. Generally, templates offer a framework for websites since it’s a canvas that you can use to incorporate all the content of your site and make it functional.
However, having a website to attract more clients and generate more revenues has something to do with customization. This means you should customize your chosen template design through the following:
- Incorporating new pages
- Adding new elements such as menus and contact form
- Selecting a unique color palette
- Linking social media channels
- Changing the colors, fonts, and sizes of the buttons.
5. Test And Publish Your Website
Before making your website live on the web, make sure to check if it’s working properly on all major browsers. You can do this by clicking through each page and feature on every browser to ensure the page loads quickly, the images show up without problems, links are incorporated correctly, and the overall format looks good.
However, if you want a full analysis of all the factors comprising your website and check the overall performance of your site, then, conducting a website audit can be an excellent idea. Once everything goes smoothly, it’s time to announce that your site is live on the web and ready to serve all users.
Conclusion
Now that you know what web hosting to use, you can now use it to set up your website. By picking the right domain name, you can establish your online presence well. Adding content, building your web pages, and customizing the design of your website will all contribute to its success. Just remember to test each page and make sure everything is properly functioning before making it live.
Great piece, one addition: wordpress is by far one of the easiest platforms to self build a website. its greatly customizable and you dont have to be a coder before getting to use it perfectly as there are plugins that make customisations super easy. Would recommend wordpress to any newbie that wants to build their own website
That is a great tip especially to those new to the blogosphere. Short but very precise info… Appreciate your sharing this one. A must read article!