Building Your Own Website
Over the years we have spoken to many people that have chosen to build their own website instead of hiring a professional company. The most common thing we hear is “Why doesn’t my site rank higher”? Unfortunately there is no simple answer to this question so we have outlined some of the more important aspects of building a website.
Website Design
Website design start with the first step, putting pen to paper to get a rough idea of how you would like the layout to look. Professional web designers use tools such as Adobe Photoshop which can be quite costly but simple piece of paper and perhaps some colored pencils can get you started. You will also need to choose your primary colors that will be used throughout the website. It is important to also decide which font to use throughout your website as well as what color any hyperlinks may be.
Keyword Research
Another important part of the planning stage is to decide which keywords will be the most important for gaining organic traffic to your site. Professional web designers utilize tools such as Google Ads or other “paid for” sites that generate keywords for specific search parameters but it can also be done free with some simple research. Talk to some of your friends or even post a question on social media of “How would you look up [my business] in a search engine”. Look/listen to the responses and choose the most common queries and use them as keywords in your site. Keyword placement is one of the more important tasks in web design so be sure to cover all possibilities.
While getting your keywords set up it is important to understand the difference between “Short Tail” and “Long Tail” keywords. A short tail keyword is a one to three word search such as “keywords” “short keywords” or “short tail keywords”. Long tail keywords consist of commonly used phrases that an end user may use to find your product or service. Some examples of long tail keywords would be “soft touch pressure washing” or “car detailing with hand wax”. Long tail keywords are normally used for specific products or services and not generally used on each individual page.
Choosing a Hosting Platform
There are many different platforms to choose from that novice web builders can choose from. There are sites that come pre-loaded with templates such as Wix and Shopify that focus their marketing efforts towards the inexperienced designer. Although these types of sites are easy to navigate and understand, they do not offer all of the freedom of using your own platform. Hosting platforms that allow you to fully design your own site and have more control over how it works are a better way to go. Companies like Godaddy, Siteground, and Bluehost offer similar tools but some do not have as much speed with page download time.
When choosing your site hosting platform you must also remember what you need it for. Will you be running an E-Commerce site, a WordPress site, or a simple HTML site? Choosing the correct platform is extremely important so be sure to do your research.