How to Build a Website Right (the first time)

A recent study of people trying to make a living online discovered a few interesting facts. Almost 50% of those people didn't have a unique, professional website of their own. And, those that did, averaged almost 10 times as much income as those who didn't! Those marketers who didn't have a website said it was either too hard to build one and get it up and running, or that it was just too expensive to pay for a really good web host, and cheap web hosts lacked the tools they needed to make a really good site, and they just didn't have the support they needed to help them with questions or problems. Plus, many of them felt overwhelmed with the idea of building a website, and just didn't know where to start or what to do first. All of these are valid concerns.
Many people are paying way too much for their web hosting, and others are hosting with companies that provide marginal service and support. Many people get "roped in" by advertisements for hosting accounts that only cost three or four dollars a month, only to find that they have to sign up for 3-4 years to get that price, and that the add-ons and extras they need for their site can more than double that price. Then, after you get your domain name and web hosting set up, what do you do next to build an impressive, really professional looking, SEO optimized web site?

In this article, I'll try to help you, step by step, to build a web site you can be proud of, and that will be able to attract traffic and make you a profit, as well. First of all, don't go and sign up for a domain name or web hosting now! You really won't need it for a few weeks or a month, and there's no reason to pay for it while you're not going to be using it.

Here are the six steps you need to take, in the order you need to take them, in order to build a unique, professional, profit pulling website.

1.Decide on your area of expertise or “niche”. What product(s) do you plan on selling, and is there a market for those products? What is the competition in that market like? Are there a lot of other well constructed and optimized sites that carry similar products? Examine the top 10 listings for your major keywords in Google, Yahoo! and MSN to find out what they're doing, and do you think you can compete with them. This can be a lot of work, but there are specialized tools and software to make it easier. Some of these, like the Google keyword tool and the Wordtracker trial, are free. Other, better tools may cost you a few dollars, but save you days of time and work, and will give you values for the effectiveness of your keywords (KEI). This is just a numerical comparison of how large your market is versus how much competition there is in that market. There are a few tools like this out there, but I use the full version of WebCEO. You can get a free trial version at WebCEO Free Trial. Really brainstorm at this point. If your first idea doesn't have a lot of searches on Google, YaHoo! or MSN, or if the competition is too tough, think of another idea. You want to be in a field you can succeed in. The one exception to this is if your website is an extension of your brick and mortar business. In that case, spend more time researching for keywords that your competition may have missed, but that get a fair amount of daily searches. 2.Generate an extensive keyword list for the niche you choose, and print it out. You don't want just the most searched for keywords, you also want the “long tail” (more than 3 words) keywords that apply to your site, even if they're searched for infrequently. Most people search using a combination of from 2-4 words. One word, or 5 or more word, searches only account for about 25% of the total. Still, these long terms will be easier to rank highly for, and that business is easier to get, especially if you give people exactly what they're looking for with the long tail searches. The tools mentioned above can also help with this. Try adding brand names to your keywords, or more specific and less common terms for each one. 3.Begin collecting information related to the topic of your site, and write some of your own, unique content. You can find PLR (private label rights) articles on just about any topic. Visit free giveaway sites to find some, or do a search for “PLR articles on (your topic)”. Article directories can also be a source of info, but those articles normally come with restricted rights. Still, you can get ideas from those articles to write your own unique content. Don't plagiarize other people's work! Besides being simply wrong, it can get you in real legal trouble, and the search engines will definitely recognize duplicate content. With your PLR articles, you have the right to edit and adapt them, and you should definitely do so. Try to add your own unique perspective to each one you plan on using. Keep the keyword list you generated above next to you while you write, and try to include a good amount of those words in your content, without making it sound weird or strange. It can help to try and create one article specifically geared towards each high KEI keyword you have. These can be used as posts in your blog, or on your ADDITIONAL INFO pages. 4.Design your website on paper, and decide what content you'll place where, and how the pages will link together. Basically, create a map of your site. A common design will include at least some of these pages. HOME ��" Your main landing page (index.html) / ABOUT US (OUR COMPANY) / OUR PRODUCTS (& / or OUR SERVICES) (leads to your e-commerce shopping cart) / ASK A QUESTION (or SUPPORT) / ADDITIONAL INFO / CONTACT US (address, email address or form, phone) / OUR NEWSLETTER (leads to a sign-up page) / BUY NOW (leads to purchase page) / YOUR SHOPPING CART / SIGN IN / SIGN UP. A main menu linking to these pages should appear on all of them, usually at the top, or on the left side, or both. You may also want to add special areas to your website, like a blog or a mailing list to send out your newsletter or sales flyers. These areas may or may not be linked directly to your other pages. 5.Create, edit and proof the written portion of your content, using Notepad. Almost every Windows computer has this simple html editor. Simply type out, and use Copy/Paste, to build your pages. Make a separate file for each page (index.txt, aboutus.txt, etc.) and save them all in a file named “YourNiche”Website, or something similar. (HINT: don't hit return when your text runs off the side of the page, until you're ready to make a paragraph break.) Don't worry too much about links and product listings yet, just get the basic written copy done. If you don't have Notepad on your computer, you can use Writer in Open Office, which is a free software package available from openoffice.org. Just don't worry about formatting the content yet (bold, fonts, headers, bullet points, numbered lists, etc.), you'll do that later. Collect, or make any images you may want on your web site. Your logo, for instance, or pictures of your offices, products, associates, etc. Collect them in a folder named “images”, in your website folder. 6.Now you're finally ready to register a domain name and get your hosting set up. With all of the background work done, getting your site set up will be much quicker and easier, and you won't be paying for something you're not using, while you accomplish everything above. You may also need FTP (file transfer protocol) software, to manipulate certain pages in your web site. You can get a free, easy to use one called Filezilla, at sourceforge.net.

Here's a few hints about getting your web hosting. For a business, you definitely don't want to use “free” hosting. It may be tempting, but the small space and bandwidth, the “domain name” which includes the free hosts name, the mandatory ads, the other restrictions, and the almost total lack of support, just won't allow you to build a professional e-commerce web site.

Really cheap web hosts, especially those that allow you to pay “by the month”, have their own set of problems. Lack of support, outdated, unreliable servers, and restrictions on the programs and scripts you can use are among them. Perhaps the worst problem you'll face with one of the cut-rate hosts is that you may be sharing your IP address with scammers, spammers, hackers, and phishers. These low life members of the internet world specifically target low priced, pay by the month, hosting companies. They know their website will be shut down in a few days or weeks, so they want to invest as little as possible in it. They collect what money they can from their scams, and then move on to another host. Meanwhile, your web site (which shared their IP address), may be blocked from sending mail to all the major mail servers, until your host confirms that they have closed the offending account.

Also, because they have so many complaints of spam to deal with, many of these hosting companies have adopted a “guilty until proven innocent” attitude. This means that if a few of your customers click your mail into their Spam folder, rather than just using your unsubscribe link, you can be accused of spamming! They didn't mean to cause you a problem, they just didn't want to get your emails anymore. Some cheap hosts will shut down your website, and lock your domain name, until you provide documentation that those messages weren't spam. Of course, you should be able to do this, but in the meantime, your site can be shut down for weeks!

If money is no object, a full priced Premium hosting company will give you a large amount of space and bandwidth, a variety of tools and bonuses, and the support is usually at least decent, although this can vary from host to host. Some of the larger ones seem to spend more money on celebrity endorsements and TV ads than on their tech support departments. Of course, this will cost you $24.95 to $39.95 per month per site (if paid yearly), plus many do have a one time set-up fee of $30-$99 per website.

Personally, I've tried both a few cheap and a couple of different premium web hosts over a period of about six years. None of them lived up to my expectations, in one way or another. I've had a web site of mine shut down due to a spam complaint by a large, well known, cheap hosting company, and even though I was innocent, it took 12 days to get it unlocked. I've hosted with a large premium host that took an average of 24-48 hours to answer simple support questions. Another Premium host told me that the Pearl modules I'd ask to have updated were done. After two weeks of fiddling around with a script that I couldn't get to work, I checked, and found out the upgrades had never been done! Still, overall, I've found you do “get what you pay for”, and I'd recommend a premium host over a dirt cheap one, any day.

By chance, I happened to find my current host, because of my wife's business. They have a fantastic program, with all of the features, tools, space and bonuses of any premium host out there, plus some SEO and software bonuses that the others don't have. And the price was so low, I almost didn't give them a try, since I didn't want a repeat of my experiences with some of the other cheap web hosts. Unfortunately for most people, they only offered their hosting packages to professionals in the real estate and mortgage lending industries. It was a “bonus” they offered to the affiliates who do business with them. Since my wife owns a mortgage brokerage, and was using their wholesale lending products, she was offered the opportunity to use their hosting service, and I decided to give it a try. I actually assumed the support would probably be marginal, but the price was so good, I was willing to risk it. I was wrong. They said all support questions would be handled within an hour, and I've actually always had an answer in no more than 15-20 minutes.

The good news is, since the recent meltdown in the real estate market, they've lost a lot of clients, who simply went out of business. This company had a decision to make. They could either offer their service to a wider range of clients, or shut the program down. Due mainly to the fact that their current clients (me included) were adamant about the fact that they wanted to continue to host their websites with them, they decided to establish a new online presence that would give everyone an opportunity to use their web hosting and domain name registration service. Now, you can host your site anywhere you'd like, but if you want a premium hosting service with all of tools and extras, without paying the $400-$500 a year premium price, I'd recommend HostJacker.com, as the best option.

One of their best features is their free online website builder. This can save you several hundred dollars over buying a WYSIWIG software package to use. Just choose a template, name your pages, and paste in your content and images. It automatically establishes your links between pages, and launches your site with one click. They also have a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try them out with no risk. Once you've completed steps 1-5 above, you can go to HostJacker.com to find out more.

I hope this article has been of help to you in starting to build your own, unique web site. In future articles, I'll go over each step in detail, and give you more free and cheap tools you can use for each step. If you decide you'd like to get these articles in the form of a newsletter, my next article will have a link you can use to sign up, and I'll send each detailed step right to your Inbox.



About the Author
Jack S. Pooley Tampa, Florida 813-882-8878 http://www.upaas.com