Building your Website: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
There are many different ways to build a website. Which one is best? This depends on your familiarity with the online world and your skill level. For those who don’t have a lot of computer knowledge, there are many options to get a website up and running quickly. I won’t spend time talking about technical jargon, but I will tell you what you should look for:
· Reliability
· Customer Service
· Site Builder Program
So there is the hard way, from scratch, and the easy way where you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are many companies that offer WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors. These are very user-friendly site building programs that are web based. This provides an easy method for those not good with computers or who are new to the online environment to get a nice looking site. I have listed several companies that I have used to get started below. Visit their sites, compare the packages offered and see which might work best for your needs.
ProStores
The best part of ProStores is that it is affiliated with eBay and Paypal and thus fully integrated for your convenience. They offer a small business package for $29.95 per month, but you can start with a one-month free trial. ProStores offers a shopping cart, domain hosting and an easy to use site builder in an all in one package. The company is very reliable and customer service is great.
Register.com
This company is a pioneer in the online domain registration business and is very stable and reliable. They offer a one-page starter site with every domain registration that you can upgrade at any time. They also offer other useful services such as SEO tools, access to expert advice from SCORE professionals and URL forwarding. All their services come with 24/7 customer service and a 30-day money back guarantee.
WebSiteSource
Another good company is WebSiteSource. They offer domain registration and hosting packages starting at $6.85. Their site builder is fairly simple to use and there are bundles of extras included such as subdomains, marketing tools, an email manager and URL forwarding. They also offer 24/7 customer service and upgrade packages for when your business grows.
Once you have signed up with a service, read the tutorial to learn how exactly to work with their WYSIWYG editor so that you can quickly get your website up and running. For each page you have the opportunity to optimize the page for better search engine ranking. Do not skip this step!
There are several things you should do on all pages of your site:
· Insert relevant keywords
· Add a page description
· Optimize your images
For each page, you will want to come up with at least 20-50 keywords relevant to the content of that page. Brainstorm first, and then do a little research. There are several good tools for coming up with popular search terms that you can use as keywords. Once you have come up with several general terms, use an online keyword generator to expand your list.
In addition to relevant keywords, you should provide a 1-2 sentence description for each individual page. This description should include some of your chosen keywords and that also relates to the content on the page. This description will show under your listing on the search engine results page.
Equally important is optimizing the images on your pages. First, make sure your images are sized properly by cropping out anything unnecessary. Stick to a basic background and no more than 4-5 small images per page. You should compress your images so they are a good balance between image quality and image size. Your goal is to have a fast-loading, functional website that does not overburden the visitors eyes.
The most important thing to do, however, is utilize the alt tag with all images. If you are going to have an image, make it count. The alt tag provides descriptive text to the visitor in case the image does not load. The search engines crawl the alt tags associated with images so inserting the descriptions for all your images can help optimize your site and help you achieve a higher search engine ranking.