How to Begin a Website

Beginning a website can seem like a daunting task. However, we can break how to begin a website down into several subsections.

• Choosing a Domain Name

• Registering your Domain Name and Getting it Online

• Finding a great looking Free template for content

• Getting visitors (through SEO and other means for free)

Choosing a Domain Name

The starting point is choosing your Domain Name. This may seem like an easy task, but odds are your first, second, third etc. choice will already be taken. We need to get a little creative here. We can add "e", "my", "the" etc. to your chosen Domain name and chances are we will get lucky. You can also use a free online tool called Domainsbot (Google it!) to give you some great options when your fist choice domain is taken up.

We also want to make sure we make the Domain Name relevant. Search Engines love to rank sites high who's keywords are in the URL. Make the Domain Name as relevant and as short as possible - so visitors can easily recall your Domain Name if they want to revisit!

Registering your Domain Name and Getting it Online

Perhaps the easiest of the 4 steps. The hosting company you select will actually do this for you. All you have to do is select a hosting company. I would not suggest free hosting companies. They're servers tend to be oversubscribed. Picture it like Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Everything tends to grind to a halt! Do a little research online, Google "web hosting providers" - you certainly have a vast choice! The 2 I have had great experiences with are Fat Cow and HostGator. The only 1 I have had any issues with is 1and1.

Finding a Great Looking Free Template for Content

I will dispel two myths here:

• You don't have to spend thousands on developing a website, in fact you don't have to spend anything!

• You don't have to be a web genius to get your content from your PC to the Web

There are lots of great free resources where you can download templates from the web, just do a Google search for "free web templates". My favorite resources for free web templates are Templatemo, Template4all, dezinehub and Free CSS Templates.

You can also download a free FTP client to upload data (think of it as copy and paste, from your PC to your place on the web) using FileZilla

Getting Visitors

The fun begins! Your best source of visitors will be from the Search Engines. This is known as organic traffic, and is highly targeted because people are searching for keywords that match the content of your website. We use something called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for this. You've probably heard that term before. The better optimized your website, the higher it will rank in the Search Engines.

The one thing that irritates me is how SEO companies make SEO sound so complex. It's not, nor should it be intimidating. Think about it, SEO companies are making it sound that way because they want your money, plain and simple. The cornerstone of any SEO campaign is to build backlinks back to your website. This can be accomplished through:

• Article Directories (like the one you're reading this on now!!)

• Web 2.0 Properties (WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, Squidoo, Hubpages etc.)

• Social Bookmarking sites (Digg, Mixx etc.)

• Blog Commenting (find Blogs similar to yours and post useful information)

• Forum Signatures (find forums related to your content - you can usually place a link in your signature)

• .EDU/.GOV backlinks (score VERY high with the Search Engines!!)