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How to build a website
Explaining how to build a website has turned out to be a lot
more complicated than I first anticipated.
Without knowing what your goals are for your website I have to
anticipate that your goals are similar to mine, which may be way off base. So I plan on writing a series of articles
that will point you in the right direction not matter what type of website you
want to build. This article will be a
primer for how to get started laying out your plans.
Start with an end goal in mind. I have always looked at website building from
a point of view of a developer. Meaning
that I will choose a market based on its merits for exploitation and not
necessarily for the personal interest I may have in that market. This website is one of the few exceptions to
that rule. All of my personal interests
are in the site, I love to help people and I love the Internet. Those two interests combined to form this
site and it makes it easier to do the work that is involved in running this
site. Time has been the only thing
standing in my way. That being said I am
going to recommend that if you are a first time website builder that you choose
not only a niche that can be exploited but also one that you have personal
interest in. If your end goal is to have
a product that you can sell to your visitors, or have a community of people who
pay monthly to belong to your site then you have a goal you can work backward
from.
After you have decided what your end goal is, you can then
start looking for ways to make inroads into your market. The most important thing you will ever do is
find keywords and keyphrases that you will use to attract visitors to your
site. Watch this video about how to keyword
research and find a list of at least 30 good keyphrases that you will use
for your site. This is the point after
you have chosen enough keyphrases that you can actually start thinking about
what your site should look like. And
this is also the point that you should start communicating with me on the forum so that I can help you
decide what type of website you should build, meaning what script you should use
or if you should build a straight HTML website.
Unfortunately there are just too many variables to tell you straight out
that one type of site is best for every application. Building the site is actually the easy part
of this whole equation; the hard part is getting people to your site and
clicking on your ads or buying your products.
It is not as hard as some people would lead you to believe but it does
take either time and patience or money.
Once you have decided what type of site you are going to build
then you should take the necessary time to lay out the site the right way. There are certain things that you can do that
will help you increase the visibility of your site, and help visitors get to
all of the places you want them to go.
Most first time web builders really miss the boat when it comes to
internal linking. Internal linking is
the linking that you do inside your website.
Most commonly this linking is the structure or categories and sections
of your site, but it includes everything from the menus to the links within
articles or pictures. This is another
area that I can greatly help you with after you have started building the site
and have a base laid out I can take a look at the site and your list of
keyphrases and make recommendations on how to improve you internal
linking. This small step could mean the
difference in ranking number 1 for your phrase or number 11. And believe me when I tell you that number 1
means a huge difference in visitors compared to number 11.
Now you have a website built and keywords all picked out,
your site is live and you are ready to start building content for your
site. This is the point at which most
people either really get frustrated or really motivated. If you think that just because you spent all that
time building the best website you could build, that people are going to start
flocking to buy what you are offering then you are going to be one of the
extremely frustrated. Now is when the
real work begins. Like I said above
there are now really only 2 ways to start getting visitors and those are
through either buying advertising or through a consistent link building
campaign. You can buy advertising
through Google or Yahoo and get immediate results. That is a fine way to start getting traffic,
but for your money I believe there are better ways to get long term
results. 100% of the companies I work
with have used advertising to drive traffic for years and are looking for ways
to get away from spending that ever increasing amount of money. Every year you use advertising it will cost
you more than the previous year to drive the same amount of visitors to your
site. Check out this article about how
to develop
a linking strategy and put the strategy to use on your site. If you have done your keyword research
correctly then you will get results, I guarantee it.
This is just a basic primer on how to build a website but I
hope that you will find it useful and take advantage of the help that we are
offering to you here. I know you can
succeed if you have a plan and stick to it.
Don’t start out crazy by buying a domain name and hosting and then try
to decide what you are going to do with it.
Also check out this thread
at the forum, if you are not sure what type of site you want to build. I can set up some demo sites for you to decide
what the best script for your site is.
Last update : 28-04-2008 20:26
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