A Clear Guide to Build Your Own Website

A Clear Guide to Build Your Own Website

You may find countless blogs & tutorials on “how to build your own website,” but none of them have tried to make the concept clear & a step by step guide for the beginners.

A few Years ago I decided to build my own website. But when I searched on the internet & try to research on this topic, I found that there are steps (not all of them) but no clear direction of where to go & how to do it. For example, if you are thinking about domain hosting, you will find many domain hosting service providers, but almost all of them have something negative. Such as some of them will show ads on your site & others will take double money from the 2nd year!

This guide is intended to make everything clear. Also, you will find effective & hassle free suggestion for every step. I am saying hassle-free because I have created my site using these & it’s effective.

So, let’s build your own website.

Steps needed to build your own website:

• Planning.
• Choose a niche which is your passion.
• Research keyword before buying a domain.
• Choose & register a domain name.
• Find a good hosting site.
• How to add a domain to hosting?
• Choose the right platform.
• Required WordPress plugins if you are using WordPress.
• Pick a catchy logo.
• Design the website.
• Start the website by creating contents.

Planning:

Planning is the most important phase of doing anything. And to build your own website you need to spend more time on planning than any other things. Before getting into something, you need to fix your goal. And there are several questions you need to find the answer first. They are,

What is the desired outcome from your website?

Ask yourself what you want to achieve from your website. If your target is small or large e-commerce based business, then you have to think about that. If you plan to make a blog, then you have to think about the topic. There will be several answers & every answer will take you to different roads. So what have you decided?

Who will be the visitors of your website?

After answering the first question will lead you into the 2nd one. You may be thinking why wasting time on these silly question, right? Answer of these question will determine many things. Even content website structure & website layout will change depending on your answers. I hope you figured who will be your website’s visitors.

Since you have decided about the outcome of your website as well as who will be the visitors, let’s move forward to next stage to build your own website.

Choose a niche which is your passion:

I have seen many talented people started their own website while being excited about their idea & planning. But after a certain time, you will start losing your hope if you don’t have the passion of that very branch or niche. Before even buying a domain you should think about the niche of your website.

What is niche? In easy words, niche means branch or criteria. If you are thinking about e-commerce, then think about which products you want to sell. If you are thinking about blogs, then decide the subject or area of your interest. It’s like choosing your subject in graduation which will make a strong impact on everything in the future. So to build your own website, choose a niche which is your passion otherwise you won’t continue it for a longer run.

You can ask yourself again & again are you interested in the topic of your website. Don’t even move forward before getting a subject which should be and must be your passion.

The best practice is to make several choices like option A, B & C then research about them like what are the options, the possibility and also the competition. Suppose you want to choose travel blog then you have to know about other blogs on this topic as well as options & possibility. And the single most important part of choosing niche is the keyword which will be discussed next due to its high importance.

Research keyword before buying a domain:

Technically keyword research has the part of both planning & choosing a niche. But due to its huge importance, it demands a standalone importance. Since you have a new website, you have the advantage of having a new site & have the liberty to make anything. But it also makes keyword research more challenging because the competition is intense.

Competition:

The competition is really intense. You may think how you will compete with websites that have years of experiences & budget. But don’t be afraid. Most of them have moved too far that to get a significant change in the SEO they need to invest huge time & money. Since you are going to build your own website, you can make it right from the beginning. So who has got the advantage now?

Keywords & its benefits:

There are several types of keywords. I am not talking about the keyword type by their genre but by their impact. They are,

Quick wins: These are lower volume keywords that will bring both visitors & revenue to make the things going for you.

Reasonable goal keywords: These keywords are medium in volume & will work as a brand ambassador for your business. You won’t be able to get the rank immediately due to the competence.

Whale keywords: These keywords have a very large impact on your website as well as your business. It will take a long, long time to get the things going for you since the level of competition is great here.

Now you know about keyword types, it’s necessary to learn where you will able to get them. Its another great benefit for starting a new one that you will have all the necessary data in your hand & all these tools will give you a clear idea of what you need to do & what you should avoid. To research your articles, you can use both Termexplorer or the more popular Google Adwords. There are plenty of tools available in the market, but I prefer these two tools due to its simplicity & the amount of extra added features. These tools will provide

• Highest monthly search volume of a keyword or long tail keyword.
• Highest contextual relevancy to your website or page.
• Least amount of indexed links.
• Lowest word count.

build your own website

Choose less competitive keyword

Also, keep in mind that you should choose less competitive keywords because less competitive keyword will give you quick success in the ranking. When you are searching the common terms remember that your competitors are doing the same thing & it will be hard for you to get good position. But there is a secret & you will be able to beat them using this technique.

You have to choose low competitive keywords to beat your mighty competitors. Then you just need to spend some time. You need to find which keywords they are using to get good ranking. Then you can find keywords they have avoided or maybe ignored. You can work on them. Long tail keywords are also a good way to get relatively quick ranking. To learn more about the whole process as well as necessary tools read how to find low competition keywords with semrush.

To build your own website, you need to spend more time on keyword research rather doing other things. You are not going to build your own website but also building a business or something you dreamt about. So you need to spend some extra time to get yourself prepared.

Choose & register a domain name:

If you have done everything right then, the next logical step is to buy your domain name. We used to call it “buy, ” but the appropriate term is register. But before thinking about buying a domain just sit back & think of the name. Normally the domain name is very very important for your website’s success. These are the things you should keep in mind before choosing a name,

• It should be easy to type.
• The short name means less mistake when typing by visitors.
• Use keywords in the name.
• Target an area if your website is local.
• Don’t use numbers or hyphens in the domain name.
• The domain name should be easy to remember.
• Research the name because it can be a copyrighted brand of others.
• Appropriate name extension like .com, .usa, ca, nz.
• Protect your brand by buying other domains as well as misspelled domains.
• Act quickly because it can be bought by anyone anytime.

If you have taken care of issues mentioned above, then let’s buy a domain. Here you will find top 10 domain hosting sites that also let you register a domain. You will even find hosting with a free domain registration.

Find a good hosting site:

After buying a domain name, you have to think about the hosting service. Domain hosting is very critical because it will dictate your website’s future activity. If you want to build your own website, I suggest you research on hosting’s services. Important things you need to remember are,

• You should know your hosting needs.
• Investigate on hosting reliability and uptime guarantees.
• Study web host upgrading options for future.
• Check all hosting features (such as number domains allowed) if you need more than one domain.
• Check prices on both at signup and renewal.
• Check hosting control panel.
• Read hosting company’s Terms of Services (ToS).
• Supporting features such as site backup, environmental friendliness, etc.

Before buying hosting services, you have to understand your need. Hosting services’ prices are based on traffic, storage, site builder, etc. You will find some hosting company will charge you just $1/month first year, but next year it rises to $9/month. You can avoid this extra cost by knowing your needs and choose the best one for you.

Another very very important issue is the closer the hosting service to your target area, the better the service will be. If you want to build your website based in the US then you should choose the hosting service based in the US. Otherwise, the loading speed will significantly increase. It also plays an important role in SEO. Read more about it at How to Choose the Right Web Hosting.

How to add a domain to hosting:

If you are not a tech guy like me, then you should learn how to add a domain to a hosting server. After finalizing your hosting server, you have to proceed to add the domain.

There are two basic steps to add a domain to a hosting account. These are changing the nameservers for the domain to our hosting ones and add your domain name.

• Find your web host’s’ domain name server (DNS) settings.
• Possible DNS are ns1.example.com & ns2.example.com.
• You will receive them via email when you signed up for hosting.
• Add nameservers to your domain with your registrar.
• Log into your registrar account and find the custom nameservers section.
• Most registrars will have it labeled as DNS Settings or Domain Name Server Setup.
• Wait up to 72 hours for the changes to take effect.
• Once the name servers have been updated, it can take a while to take effect.
• Your nameservers might update and change over in the less than 2 hours

The main thing is you need to get the DNS nameserver & put them into your domain control panel.

If you have created your hosting & domain at GoDaddy, then read add domains article to learn more.

Choose the right platform:

If you want to build a website, then there are a lot of available platforms. You may have already researched about them & got overwhelmed by the information. No matter what the platform you choose, always remember to choose the one that gives you the functionality you need. Popular platforms are,

Website builder:

2 very popular website builders are Wix & Weebly & they allow you to create websites using a drag and drop interface which is pretty easy. You simply select a template that matches the functionality you need and customize the content from there, but the problem is the area of customization is pretty limited.

Content management system:

Content management systems are special platforms that will allow you great control of your website’s design, functionality, and overall performance. WordPress is the most popular CMS platform. With this, you buy your own domain, set up website hosting, and have the CMS software installed on your web server for your domain. You will need to choose a theme for your website, add plugins for enhanced functionality, and then create your contents.

The best part is designs, plugins, developers, and services are available due to the popularity of WordPress platform. Also, you can build static websites, blogs, e-commerce, forums, membership sites, and other websites with WordPress platform.

E-Commerce platforms:

If you are thinking about selling your products online, then you have to choose e-commerce to build your own website. Shopify & Bigcommerce are two very popular e-commerce platforms in the market.

Hosting, security, payment processing & transaction process are included in the price of these platforms.

HTML templates:

If you are a tech guy, then you can upload your own HTML files after getting a simple hosting solution. It is a great alternative & you can play with your own codes & build your own website as you like it.

Required WordPress plugins if you are using WordPress:

Due to the massive popularity, WordPress may be the ultimate platform you are going to use to build your own website. Lots of useful plugins are available & you should use them to extract more result from your website. To make things more clear, I am going to discuss some of the best WordPress plugins on the internet.

• WordPress SEO by Yoast
• Backupbuddy
• W3 total cache
• WPForms
• OptinMonster
• Edit Flow
• Soliloque
• Sucuri
• Floating Social Bar
• Discus
• Login Lockdown

These necessary tools will make your road to building your own website friendly & easy. You always have the liberty to choose or remove tools from your WordPress platform anytime.

Pick a catchy logo:

The logo is another vital element of your website & also creates a sense of engagement with your viewers. It’s the first & foremost part of your website in the field of branding. You can create your logo, or you can get from different online sites. A popular way is to use Fiverr (freelance site) & you can get your desired logo at a price as cheap as $5!

No matter how you create your logo, don’t forget to make it catchy & attractive.

Design your website/Choose a theme or template for your site:

Designing a website takes a lot of time & you will be able to reflect yourself in the form your website’s design. But it takes a lot of time to learn how to design your website. You can use these steps to start to design your website,

• Determine your site’s purpose.
• Plan how the design will work on your site.
• Start designing the site on paper or a graphics tool.
• Create the site’s content.
• Begin building the site with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other tools(WordPress).
• Test the site.
• Upload the site to a hosting provider and test again for possible error.

Testing is an important part of building your own website. You have to test your website on all available platforms like Google Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer as well as with mobile platforms. Mobile platform optimization is a vital part of the good ranking.

Some not so important but essential parts are choosing the typography, color scheme, etc. These will make the website more attractive & but don’t forget that you have the liberty to make something unique. To avoid copying someone else’s website & choose a unique format to build your own website.

If you want to design your new website, then I recommend thinking about your goal because while some people rely on money, you can certainly found a lot of free tools to design.

If you want to sell products from your website, then you need to learn about e-commerce. You also need to think about payment gateway (read how to accept credit card on your website). Some tools are optimized for e-commerce. If you want to build your own website as a blog, then WordPress provides the best support.

Some very popular web design tools are Pattern Lab, Vivaldi, Avocode, UXPin, etc.

Start the website by creating contents:

Contents are the most important & also the most ignored part of a website. This is the part where you need to be careful and selective. But before writing contents, you need to prepare keywords. Contents need to be SEO friendly to get better rank in the SERP. Google puts a lot of emphasizing on contents, so you have to put a lot of focus on it as well. Contents have a lot of qualities.

The top known qualities of contents are,

• SEO friendly.
• Proper keyword density.
• Unique & plagiarism free.
• Bigger the better.
• Easy to understand etc.

The best idea is to start preparing your contents before building your website. This way you will have a pile of contents & you will be able to post them regularly. Also, contents are related to your website’s core idea so don’t forget to make them related to your website. Never copy contents from other site or page. It will decrease your ranking significantly though there are lots of ranking factors work behind to show a result in SERP.

Most of the time it happens that people lose their interest after some day. So your website should reflect your passion or your business. Always remember that there is no easy way to get the result quickly. If you want to build your own website, you have to build your interest on it too.

If you have managed to build your own website, then a new door of opportunity has been opened. Go start blogging or start selling your products & be a successful entrepreneur.