So, you have a strong plan to start your own online blog or an eCommerce business. Whether its a Blogging, eCommerce, Gifting, Consulting, Software Solutions or a knowledge-based one, you will still need a perfect kick-start.
It's pretty easy to have your own website live but wait, will it work successfully for the long run? Lots of people do start with free platforms such as Blogspot, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or even with recently available readymade Website Builders.
Sounds pretty cool, isn't it?
Well, make sure you do a little bit of homework before starting anything at first, or you might be stuck up and correcting those initially made mistakes and loopholes for a much longer time ahead. (At least for that one site)
Learn some background information about what site could be, what's the audience and what schema or design you will create. And more importantly, you have to stick to the plan, trust yourself and thrive to focus on what you have started.
Be aware of the competition, everyone out there wants to create their online space, so you need patience, focus and knowledge of competition in every field stand there. But it isn't that hard if you have a keen interest in the topic.
Site making is easy but a tedious process. It doesn't happen overnights. To expand your website reach, you can use tools that will support your marketing needs. Some trial and errors and you will succeed in the path of blogging and site making.
Along with top-quality content and proper marketing tools, you will certainly build a solid subscriber base to your website. To build a great site it is very important that you parallelly run various things so that your content gets popularized far beyond the boundaries.
Methods such as SEO, Email Marketing, Social Networking, running the Campaign, Keyword Analysis is some of the stuff you need to constantly monitor while your site grows.
There are many factors that are necessary to be considered right now if you expect really good results through your site making. If you avoid them and simply focus on your posts and articles, the end results will differ from other competitors.
So, make sure you have at least gone through all these tips and regularly update your knowledge.
Decide which Platform You Are Going to Use
Website Builders - Wix, Shopify, Weebly, Squarespace Or free blogging platforms such as Blogspot, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.?
Let's talk about Website Builders quickly
An enormous number of people use website builders to make a new website. Few names to include Wix, Shopify, Weebly, Squarespace and so on...
Why Website Builders? Anyone can make a website, regardless of technical skills, they are readymade solution providers.
Earlier days, people were to have enough knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), making things difficult at the start itself.
Website builders take care of all those technical jargon and rather help you focus on design and content. These are highly recommended for target-oriented industries such as Shopify for product-based eCommerce startup, or Wix for generic ideas or few products selling, etc.
What is the best way to build a website? Which Platform should I start with? Which Website builder should I use? Which is the most perfect platform? These are some questions we regularly get from people.
Wix and Weebly are two of the most popular builders to start with, their intuitive drag-and-drop features making web design feel like easier never before. Squarespace demands a higher level of creative skill, while Site123 is perfect for small websites and has excellent live chat support.
Their features include Ease of use, Value for money, Design flexibility, Features, Help and support, Customer score and so on...
For sure, these above choices are not the only worth considering, but best overall in our study, but again it depends upon your needs. Shopify is superb for eCommerce, while WordPress.com leads the way on blogging and knowledge-based sites.
Test your Website Builder
Almost all the Website builders offer free trials so you can see how it will work. Signing up is simple and free, you can check out here.
Sign Up for the Right Plan
Once you’ve selected a website builder, you will need to sign up for a plan. They offer multiple plans, such as basic, site with developer support, user customization, etc. A web developer alone can cost around $300 to $1500 depending upon your needs and his time involvement. A fully customized site built from scratch can cost up to thousands.
In the best scenario you can easily set up a basic plan, get a fully functioning template for a less than price of a coffee. A personal website setup can cost as low as 4-5$ a month, or a business site with thousands of visitors can go around $25 or more depending upon premium features and support.
Can you make a website for free?
Yes, you can, Using free platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger, get a domain registered and mount it on a good hosting provider will give your minimum invested say few dollars a year and a fully functional website.
Well, there are some good reasons why you should go for Wordpress - It includes ease of access, a vast number of attractive themes, solid social network sharing, excellent customer support, better hosting plan and few more.
It would be wise if you look for a WordPress theme for your new site.
Already working with Blogger? No issue at all. If you are strong in your writing skills and social networking presence already, Blogger will help you in exactly the same way.
You may also like "Blogger or WordPress. Which Platform to Start with my New Blog?"
Make a Good Choice of a Responsive Template
Currently, there are so many ways to surf the internet, it includes smartphones, tablets, pcs, laptops, etc. So be wise and look for a site design that will nicely work on all the devices smoothly.
Purchase a Domain and Web Hosting Plan
If you have the plan to launch a new website, you need a name for it. It could be any random new name or a relative look-alike name which will easily suggest a niche of your content. e.g. 360gadgets.com, website name itself suggests what site is all about.
Search engines will also crawl your site accordingly once defined properly into their database.
Using free platforms such as blogger Blogspot is advised for initial stages only, to swim deep online, you need your own .com or .net site.
Looking for a better hosting plan, look for this "Blogspot Blog to Custom DreamHost Domain - SEO Web Hosting"
For an attractive and unique site name, you can do keyword research as well as see if they are still available to buy.
Create a Sitemap
After you create a few posts on your site, all you need to do is to tell the search engine about it. How? Through sitemap. A sitemap is an XML file that contains all URLs of your website posts. Your webmaster must know what content you have on your site so that their bots can search through.
Also see "How to Submit Sitemap to Google, Yahoo and Bing Search Engines?"
There are plenty of XML sitemap generators available on google. Just search them to get any good one. Get WordPress Yoast plugin here. For other CMS designs, you can use any, e.g. xmlsitemapgenerator
Customize Post's permalinks or URLs
What are these? These are the permanent links to your posts which will be crawled by the search engines. So design them wisely with proper keywords. Below are two links as an example on our site, decide which one looks better while someone visits the page.
http://www.choozurmobile.com/2014/02/add-your-blogger-xml-sitemaps.html
or
http://www.choozurmobile.com/2014/02/post.php?id/45&titleblogger-xml-sitemap=&432-sitemap-to-545or-google
Follow Internal Linking
Once you have enough posts on your site, the next step is to link them within new posts and vice versa. This will lead to more user engagement on your site and hence create a positive impact on search engines for better ranking. How to do this?
If you are creating one topic and you also have another post which is closely relevant to it, just try to link it within the same with few words or line suggestions.
e.g. You may also like "12 Effective tips to Increase Your website's Page Speed"
Ensure 301 and 302 URL redirects
There are two types of broken links appearance on any website. One where a page has been moved permanently and other is where a page is moved temporarily to some other location. 301 (permanent moved) is okay for search engines but for 302 they won't move your URLs with new ones, to do so you need to edit .htaccess file in your server directory.
For additional help, you can visit cpanel's forum page here.
Ensure 404 Errors!
When a user does not find anything on a link, it is called as 404 error (Surely you have deleted the page). This is not good if a new visitor sees your site like this and go away.
You can simply convert this event with some custom page e.g. "Oops! It seems something went wrong suddenly" or add a search box instead.
If you want to learn AdSense Basics see this "Google AdSense on New Websites - A Complete Guide"
Protect Hotlinking of your Website Data
Hotlinking is also called "Bandwidth theft" as someone may link to your images, videos, etc. on their pages and using your servers data bytes to do so. Honestly, you will be charged for all those extra data transfer and not the one who is hotlinking your content.
It is certainly a big issue if not taken care of on-time. Every time a page loads it has to use a server to download those files, if purposely someone is hotlinking your images/videos, you are in loss.
"1011 Error: Access Denied (Hotlinking Denied)"
How to avoid this?
You can add some codes to your .htaccess file which must be in your website's root directory.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?my-website.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ http://www.mysite.com/restrictedpage.html [R,L]
With this, when a user tries to insert your image links to their pages, a visitor will get a restricted page warning saying '1011 Error: Access Denied'.
There are URL hotlink checkers available freely. Click here to get one
WordPress users have an excellent plug-in for automatic image hotlinking protection.
Get here. Above codes used from source: inmotionhosting.com
Wrapping up,
Blogging is an easy and well-earning method but with proper steps and development techniques. A consistently avoided mistake can lead to time and earnings loss. I am constantly updating this post to give our subscribers enough and complete knowledge. I hope you enjoyed the post and keep commenting.
It's pretty easy to have your own website live but wait, will it work successfully for the long run? Lots of people do start with free platforms such as Blogspot, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or even with recently available readymade Website Builders.
Sounds pretty cool, isn't it?
Well, make sure you do a little bit of homework before starting anything at first, or you might be stuck up and correcting those initially made mistakes and loopholes for a much longer time ahead. (At least for that one site)
Learn some background information about what site could be, what's the audience and what schema or design you will create. And more importantly, you have to stick to the plan, trust yourself and thrive to focus on what you have started.
Be aware of the competition, everyone out there wants to create their online space, so you need patience, focus and knowledge of competition in every field stand there. But it isn't that hard if you have a keen interest in the topic.
Site making is easy but a tedious process. It doesn't happen overnights. To expand your website reach, you can use tools that will support your marketing needs. Some trial and errors and you will succeed in the path of blogging and site making.
Along with top-quality content and proper marketing tools, you will certainly build a solid subscriber base to your website. To build a great site it is very important that you parallelly run various things so that your content gets popularized far beyond the boundaries.
There are many factors that are necessary to be considered right now if you expect really good results through your site making. If you avoid them and simply focus on your posts and articles, the end results will differ from other competitors.
So, make sure you have at least gone through all these tips and regularly update your knowledge.
Decide which Platform You Are Going to Use
Website Builders - Wix, Shopify, Weebly, Squarespace Or free blogging platforms such as Blogspot, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.?
Let's talk about Website Builders quickly
An enormous number of people use website builders to make a new website. Few names to include Wix, Shopify, Weebly, Squarespace and so on...
Why Website Builders? Anyone can make a website, regardless of technical skills, they are readymade solution providers.
Earlier days, people were to have enough knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), making things difficult at the start itself.
Website builders take care of all those technical jargon and rather help you focus on design and content. These are highly recommended for target-oriented industries such as Shopify for product-based eCommerce startup, or Wix for generic ideas or few products selling, etc.
What is the best way to build a website? Which Platform should I start with? Which Website builder should I use? Which is the most perfect platform? These are some questions we regularly get from people.
Wix and Weebly are two of the most popular builders to start with, their intuitive drag-and-drop features making web design feel like easier never before. Squarespace demands a higher level of creative skill, while Site123 is perfect for small websites and has excellent live chat support.
Their features include Ease of use, Value for money, Design flexibility, Features, Help and support, Customer score and so on...
For sure, these above choices are not the only worth considering, but best overall in our study, but again it depends upon your needs. Shopify is superb for eCommerce, while WordPress.com leads the way on blogging and knowledge-based sites.
Test your Website Builder
Almost all the Website builders offer free trials so you can see how it will work. Signing up is simple and free, you can check out here.
Sign Up for the Right Plan
Once you’ve selected a website builder, you will need to sign up for a plan. They offer multiple plans, such as basic, site with developer support, user customization, etc. A web developer alone can cost around $300 to $1500 depending upon your needs and his time involvement. A fully customized site built from scratch can cost up to thousands.
In the best scenario you can easily set up a basic plan, get a fully functioning template for a less than price of a coffee. A personal website setup can cost as low as 4-5$ a month, or a business site with thousands of visitors can go around $25 or more depending upon premium features and support.
Can you make a website for free?
Yes, you can, Using free platforms such as Wordpress, Blogger, get a domain registered and mount it on a good hosting provider will give your minimum invested say few dollars a year and a fully functional website.
Well, there are some good reasons why you should go for Wordpress - It includes ease of access, a vast number of attractive themes, solid social network sharing, excellent customer support, better hosting plan and few more.
It would be wise if you look for a WordPress theme for your new site.
Already working with Blogger? No issue at all. If you are strong in your writing skills and social networking presence already, Blogger will help you in exactly the same way.
You may also like "Blogger or WordPress. Which Platform to Start with my New Blog?"
Make a Good Choice of a Responsive Template
Currently, there are so many ways to surf the internet, it includes smartphones, tablets, pcs, laptops, etc. So be wise and look for a site design that will nicely work on all the devices smoothly.
Purchase a Domain and Web Hosting Plan
If you have the plan to launch a new website, you need a name for it. It could be any random new name or a relative look-alike name which will easily suggest a niche of your content. e.g. 360gadgets.com, website name itself suggests what site is all about.
Search engines will also crawl your site accordingly once defined properly into their database.
Using free platforms such as blogger Blogspot is advised for initial stages only, to swim deep online, you need your own .com or .net site.
Looking for a better hosting plan, look for this "Blogspot Blog to Custom DreamHost Domain - SEO Web Hosting"
For an attractive and unique site name, you can do keyword research as well as see if they are still available to buy.
Create a Sitemap
After you create a few posts on your site, all you need to do is to tell the search engine about it. How? Through sitemap. A sitemap is an XML file that contains all URLs of your website posts. Your webmaster must know what content you have on your site so that their bots can search through.
Also see "How to Submit Sitemap to Google, Yahoo and Bing Search Engines?"
There are plenty of XML sitemap generators available on google. Just search them to get any good one. Get WordPress Yoast plugin here. For other CMS designs, you can use any, e.g. xmlsitemapgenerator
Customize Post's permalinks or URLs
What are these? These are the permanent links to your posts which will be crawled by the search engines. So design them wisely with proper keywords. Below are two links as an example on our site, decide which one looks better while someone visits the page.
http://www.choozurmobile.com/2014/02/add-your-blogger-xml-sitemaps.html
or
http://www.choozurmobile.com/2014/02/post.php?id/45&titleblogger-xml-sitemap=&432-sitemap-to-545or-google
Follow Internal Linking
Once you have enough posts on your site, the next step is to link them within new posts and vice versa. This will lead to more user engagement on your site and hence create a positive impact on search engines for better ranking. How to do this?
If you are creating one topic and you also have another post which is closely relevant to it, just try to link it within the same with few words or line suggestions.
e.g. You may also like "12 Effective tips to Increase Your website's Page Speed"
Ensure 301 and 302 URL redirects
There are two types of broken links appearance on any website. One where a page has been moved permanently and other is where a page is moved temporarily to some other location. 301 (permanent moved) is okay for search engines but for 302 they won't move your URLs with new ones, to do so you need to edit .htaccess file in your server directory.
For additional help, you can visit cpanel's forum page here.
Ensure 404 Errors!
When a user does not find anything on a link, it is called as 404 error (Surely you have deleted the page). This is not good if a new visitor sees your site like this and go away.
You can simply convert this event with some custom page e.g. "Oops! It seems something went wrong suddenly" or add a search box instead.
If you want to learn AdSense Basics see this "Google AdSense on New Websites - A Complete Guide"
Protect Hotlinking of your Website Data
Hotlinking is also called "Bandwidth theft" as someone may link to your images, videos, etc. on their pages and using your servers data bytes to do so. Honestly, you will be charged for all those extra data transfer and not the one who is hotlinking your content.
It is certainly a big issue if not taken care of on-time. Every time a page loads it has to use a server to download those files, if purposely someone is hotlinking your images/videos, you are in loss.
"1011 Error: Access Denied (Hotlinking Denied)"
How to avoid this?
You can add some codes to your .htaccess file which must be in your website's root directory.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?my-website.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ http://www.mysite.com/restrictedpage.html [R,L]
With this, when a user tries to insert your image links to their pages, a visitor will get a restricted page warning saying '1011 Error: Access Denied'.
WordPress users have an excellent plug-in for automatic image hotlinking protection.
Get here. Above codes used from source: inmotionhosting.com
Wrapping up,
Blogging is an easy and well-earning method but with proper steps and development techniques. A consistently avoided mistake can lead to time and earnings loss. I am constantly updating this post to give our subscribers enough and complete knowledge. I hope you enjoyed the post and keep commenting.
