Website in a Week Part 1: How to Build a Professional Website from Scratch
An internet presence is a must for any heart-centered professional these days. A lot of people tell us they want to create their own websites and this article series tells you how to build a professional website from scratch quickly and easily.
Having a website isn’t optional any more. If people who are interested in your products or services google your name and nothing comes up, your reputation suffers. You’ve probably been putting this off, but you’ll be happy to know that getting started on the internet can be surprisingly easy. You may be surprised how quickly you can be up and running. You just have to know the basics you’ll learn here.
This article is the first of three articles on this topic. In Part 1, we describe how you can get your website up and running quickly and easily. Sometimes just getting started is the hardest part, and this article provides everything you need to get off to a good start.
Here is what we cover in the other two parts:
- Website in a Week Part 2: Effective Website Design Basics and Content Development
- Website in a Week Part 3: Building a List and Learning How to Sell Online
Building a Professional Website From Scratch
We have been on the internet since 1997. It has evolved in amazing ways and now provides opportunities for smart heart-centered professionals to create highly successful businesses and reach large numbers of people in ways that we couldn’t have imagined back in the 1990′s.
As you might imagine, we’ve gone through a number of stages in our professional growth on the internet. In the process, we have spent a lot of time researching, trying different approaches, and changing services as we discovered that we were missing essential features.
In retrospect, we can see that we could have saved ourselves a lot of effort by doing it right the first time. In the early days, we had to build our sites using html, which wasn’t easy. There weren’t a lot of tools and the choices we had to make were not as clear as they are now.
The Danger of Driving in the Dark When You Are Building Your Website
When we started on the internet in the late 1990′s, we felt like we were driving largely in the dark. We had to learn html, which is like learning a new language. Fortunately, it’s much easier now, amazingly so. Cyberspace is still changing every day and there is no way of knowing what might happen next. Regardless, getting off to the right start with high quality providers early in the development of your business will give you a firm foundation to build on in years to come.
There is no time like the present to build your site. Your domain name gains status with google and the other search engines with age. This means that every month you delay sets you back. On a related note, you also want to start building your list as soon as possible, because this will take time and you don’t want to wonder next year why you didn’t start today.
Turning on the Lights as You Build Your Website
We now have a small collection of websites and we have learned how to create a simple and effective site in less than a day. To save you some time and effort, we are providing this list of the services we use on our sites and there are important reasons for using each one.
This article should shed some light on the services you need and where to look. If you do extensive research, you will find that the products and services we use are the services that a large number of the most highly successful internet marketers and business owners are using.
The good news is that if you use these tools, you can have a website up and running in as little as a week. If you want to make rapid progress, you can even be up and running in just a couple of days.
How to Have Your Website Up and Running in a Week or Less
1. Register your domain name. This is your web address, like heartandsoulfofsuccess.com. When you go to namecheap.com, you can check to see if the name you want is available. Their prices are good, as are their terms and conditions. A hint for choosing your domain name is to pick a term that people will search for when they are looking for you.
When you are researching domain names, a wise place to start is with keyword research. Including keywords in your domain name helps you to get high ranking in the search engines.
Learning how to use keywords effectively is an education in itself. It is well worth the time, because it can make a tremendous difference in your success. We use a program called Market Samurai. We have explored a number of different systems for selecting keywords and this one stands out from the crowd. It has extensive tools and great training videos, so you can start to benefit immediately.
If you don’t want to invest in a program like Market Samurai, you can start by accessing google’s free keyword tool.
2. Get your web host. This is the server that stores your files and delivers them to the internet. We have used Hostgator for many years and we wouldn’t want to use anyone else. Their prices are good and they have what is considered to be the best control panel available. This makes a big difference in ways that we didn’t understand when we started out. We eventually had to change services to continue to grow and function well and we know you want to avoid having to do this.
Hostgator also provides 24-hour live customer service, which is a must for us. You can call them any time, 24-hours a day. This becomes a life saver when something unforeseen happens and you want to have your site back up and running right away. From our experience, they go above and beyond the call of duty to help when you have problems.
Once you sign up with hostgator, call them and have them help you to connect your domain name with your new server. This is how people find you when they type in your url. They can explain everything to you.
If you are just starting out, you probably are not aware of tools you’ll need as you build your business, but we can assure you that hostgator has some of the best. They will also help you to set up your site with wordpress, which we recommend next.
3. Install wordpress to create your website. You will be amazed how easy this is, just a few mouse clicks.
WordPress.org is considered to be the state of the art for websites today and it is free. It is a simple platform that allows you to create a blog and/or a static website with amazing ease, without having to know any technical language like html. This is made even easier with WordPress themes.
And, as mentioned, hostgator will help you to set up wordpress. Just give them a call. Once installed, your wordpress.org theme provides parameters for the design of your website. This includes things like the heading, menu bar, number and arrangement of columns and more.
With wordpress you have the choice of a huge variety of themes, which are different designs. When you set up wordpress, it comes with a simple theme, which you may want to use to get started. There are also many more that are available for free and others that you can purchase quite reasonably to provide additional features.
To show you an example of the basic wordpress theme, we set up a simple site at:
If you go to this URL, you will see a site that we created without using any special html language. We have several pages of information that we just uploaded in WordPress. We also added a custom header image and an opt-in form. We look at this as a good starting place. From here, you can add pages describing products and services, add a blog (which is built-in, of course) and more.
For most of our sites, we go a step further. We generally use the Thesis Theme for WordPress. Thesis is a highly rated theme, which is used by many internet professionals. It has a lot of terrific features that provide advanced controls. It also has built-in features that get your site ranked quickly and easily on the search engines. This has a high value, because it helps you to bring traffic to your site. And the thesis website has all kinds of training tools to help you every step of the way.
We are also using a theme that automates the kinds of functions people need on sites with sales pages. This one is called Optimize Press. You may want to take a look at this one, too. It provides easy-to-use templates for things like adding videos, opt-in forms, “Buy Now” buttons, and much, much more. The price is reasonable and it comes with excellent step-by-step training videos for everything that’s included.
With your website up and running, you are ready to customize.
4. Add content. When you get your site set up at hostgator, you should feel excited. Now you can type in your url and see it.
To get some bright ideas for adding content, follow this link to Website in a Week Part 2: Effective Website Design Basics and Content Development.
Having Marketing Partners as you Build Your Website
Once your site is up and running, you will want to start making income. One source of revenue is marketing partners.
Many, but not all, of the links in this series of articles lead to our marketing partners. If you use any of these links and purchase their products or services, we receive a referral fee. This doesn’t cost you anything and it is an approach we highly recommend for creating another revenue stream and diversifying your income.
We appreciate your confidence in us. If you use one of our links and purchase one of these services ,we want to give you a thank you gift, our downloadable Quickstart Marketing Workbook. It was written for Holistic Practitioners and it serves equally well for other heart centered professionals. Just email jane (@) heartandsoulofsuccess (.) org and tell us which service(s) you are using. Also, let us know if you have any other questions we could easily address in this article series.
Ready for more?
Go to Website in a Week Part 2: Effective Website Design Basics and Content Development
Go to Website in a Week Part 3: Building a List and Learning How to Sell Online
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