How to Start & Maintain a Successful Website
When the Internet began to gain popularity, large organizations, media groups and companies understood its power and built websites. Over the years, establishing a website has become a much simpler proposition and today neighborhood groups, civic organizations, schools and individuals have their own sites. Marketers encourage people who want to promote a product or service to create an online presence. A beginner may believe that only someone with a lot of money and know-how can start and maintain a website, but you can find plenty of useful tools and information to help you succeed.
Other People Are Reading
Instructions
-
-
1
Locate a web-hosting company to host the site. Web-hosting sites and resources include siteground.com, jerusahost.com and webhostinggeeks.com. Contact web-hosting companies to request to see their control panels and templates. Many webhosts offer clients the option of using templates that allow a beginner to build webpages. The web builder inserts text, hyperlinks and graphics and then formats the page similarly to the process used when creating a word processing document. Although the resulting website won't look like a site of a professional designer, it will allow you to experiment with the mechanics of building a site.
-
2
Select a domain name for the website. Purchase the domain name from a domain name site, such as domain.com, buydomains.com or godaddy.com. Do a search on the domain name site to determine if your chosen name already has been taken. A webmaster can register a domain name, giving him ownership of it and allowing him to create a website with that name. Website owners must pay an annual fee to renew their domain names. Some web-hosting companies help their customers register and renew domain names.
-
-
3
Plan the webpages for the site. Place a menu on the website's homepage to allow your visitors to navigate the site easily. Write the name and a short description of each webpage in the menu and insert a hyperlink that will link the menu listing to the correct page.
-
4
Build each webpage with the desired graphics and text. A website designer can help you build the pages or you can use the tools provided by your web-hosting company's page-builder. Web-hosting companies often include these tools as part of their service to clients.
-
5
Update the site frequently with new graphics and fresh content. Note, at the top of the website's homepage, the date of the last update. This allows the site's visitors to see that the site's information remains current.
-
6
Include relevant keywords in the site to improve its search engine optimization, or SEO. Enter the site URL into the search field of a keyword suggestion site such as goodkeywords.com or webconfs.com. These SEO sites will determine your website's theme and provide keyword suggestions. Make sure to emphasize these keywords throughout the site and in the site's meta tags. Meta tags are special tags webmasters use to provide information to search engines about their site's pages.
-
7
Use analytics software to collect and display data about the users who visit your site. Programs such as google.com/analytics and piwik.org can give you insights into your website traffic, allowing you to analyze information on your site's visitors and revise your marketing strategy.
-
8
Create a site map with a site-map builder, such as sitemaps-builder.com, xml-sitemaps.com or auditmypc.com and submit the site map to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml (with your site's URL instead of "www.yoursite.com").
-
1
References
- Photo Credit internet image by Photosani from Fotolia.com
