How to Build a Website - Tutorial

Building a website is not only for the professional web developer these days. Whether you would like to build a website to promote your business, product, or service or to just talk about your hobbies or share family photos, anyone who knows how to point and click can build a professional looking website with relatively no knowledge of html. However, there are key aspects to building a website that should be taken into consideration; such as design concept, content, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This tutorial will walk you through the basic steps of building a website from basic concept and design to adding links and multimedia.

Concept and Design

First, decide the topic of your website. What do you want to relay to those who visit your website?

· Professional: Make notes of pertinent information that would be important to visitors such as products, services, and hours of operations, contact information, and company history.

· Personal: Would you like to share your hobbies and interest or stay in touch with family? This type of website is fun to create because you can be more liberal and creative with the design.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the key to website success! Once your website is built, you will need to submit it to the major search engines so that their robots can “crawl” your site to see where it should be placed in search rankings. Search engines base rankings on a number of factors with the main factor the keyword density (the amount of keywords used on your pages versus the amount of words on the page) and relevancy of those keywords to the rest of the page content. Regardless of what anyone says, there really is no such thing as “the perfect keyword density,” however there are a few set rules to follow that will help you in optimizing keywords when building a website. 1) Use keywords in the page title (i.e. How to Build a Website Tutorial); in this example, the keywords are “Build,” “Website,” and “Tutorial.” You will notice that I have used these words or variants of these words throughout this tutorial . 2) Words or headings that are bold are considered more important by search engine crawlers so bold the keywords when applicable. 3) Keywords should be scattered throughout the webpage body, not just in the header, although keywords higher in the page are considered more important. 4) Do not stuff the page with keywords. Write the website content in a natural manner. Keywords do not have to be used in sequence. Do not be afraid to use variants of keywords. 5) Compare competing websites for keywords.

Web Based Site Builders

If you are not an html guru, you are not alone. Luckily, there are online services (some free) that allow you to build and host a website on their servers. These service providers offer professional looking templates and most are very user friendly. If you are new to building websites, this is the way to go. As I mentioned, most provide the service for free but offer upgraded accounts which will remove third party adds, add more bandwidth (useful for websites that see a lot of traffic), and extra disk space for saving more information to your website.

Domain Name

The website domain name is the address url visitors will type into the web browser to locate your site. The domain name should be something that is easy for visitors to remember. Web based site builders will provide a free url (i.e. http://www.freewebs.com/sgsasaki73 ), however it is best to purchase a unique domain name when building your website. Search engines put higher rankings on sites that have a unique url (i.e. http://www.stephaniesasaki.com ). Purchasing a domain name is very inexpensive and can be purchased through many different outlets online.

Adding Links

All websites are comprised of links, which is how visitors navigate from one page to another. When building your website, you may find it necessary to add additional links whether they are to another website or so that visitors can email you. Depending on the website builder you choose, the “link” button may appear differently. In most instances, the link icon will show what appears to be a link in a chain (shown). Once you are in the links menu, you should have the option to select what type of link you would like to create (i.e. another website, email, etc.). When creating a link allowing visitors to email you, the proper format is “mailto:youremail@home.net ). In the majority of website builders, you do not have to type in the words “mailto:) however I thought it important to let you know the proper format in the event you have to create a manual link for email. Always choose to open the link in another screen if given the option. Doing this will prevent visitors from leaving your site after they have clicked the link.

Adding Multimedia

The majority of online website builders allow for the addition of multimedia. This could come in the form of photos, videos, audio, PDF documents, etc. Adding multimedia items to your website is an excellent way of lending credibility and professionalism to a site. Each website builder has its’ own format for adding multimedia items. If you have difficulty incorporating multimedia into your website, visit the help section or message boards of the website builder you have chosen. Valuable information and advice can be found this way.