Digital Insanity

As you may have guessed, there is a right and wrong way to build a website. In this article we’re going to cover the right way to do it. Successfully building a website starts from the basic corner stone planning. You need to see how much competition you’ll be facing by building a website on a certain topic. For this article we will assume you have a clear idea what topic you want to build a website on.

To ensure that you have a chance to rank, you need to research how much competition you will be competing against. This is done by comparing how many websites there are to the search volume, or amount of people looking for your keyword. We will do this by performing an exact search. I would suggest using Google, since more than 70% of all searches on the Internet are preformed through them. Exact searches are performed by placing your keywords in quotation marks, example “my keywords”.

This will return the number of websites with that exact phrase. Note the number of websites down, you’ll need it in a second. The next thing that you need to do is find out how much search volume there is for your keyword. If you’ve used Google to find out how many competing websites there are, you can use their AdWords Keyword Tool to find the search volume. What is the search volume? It is the approximate number of searches preformed for each keyword per month.

Now that we know the amount of searchers, we will be able to calculate if this is a good niche to build a website in. Divide the number of websites by the search volume. Websites/Search Volume = Competition. If there are 500 websites and 100 searchers, there would be 5 sites for each potential visitor. The more websites there are for each visitor, the longer it will take you to rank for more competitive keywords.

From there you can begin to build your website. The next step is registering a domain name with your keyword in the actual URL. For example purposes let us say the key word is “tap dancing”, the corresponding domain could look like: tapdancingshoestobeattheblues.com Since that is really hard to read you could also use a hyphenated version: tap-dancing-shoes-to-beat-the-blues.com There, isn’t that much easier to read?

Now let us start building a website! In today’s online environment there is an almost limitless amount of resources available on the coding aspect of how to build a website. But I am going to give you a little tip in that regard that might save you a couple of years.

If you would have set out to build a website even five years ago, your learning curve would have been much steeper, but you would have found plenty of resources teaching you how to code from scratch. If you started to build a ten years ago, those resources would have been gone and you would have had to buy a book to learn the basics or go to college.

Today there are more options available than ever before, and you can build a website with advanced features over the course of a weekend. Now I know what you’re think… How can I build a website like that, I don’t even know how to code? Well, on today’s Internet you don’t need to code to build a website. There are many different solutions that provide the user with a friendly interface, sitting like a thin layer between you and the server. These content management systems and blogging systems allow you to interact and build a website directly from your browser.

The one that I recommend the most is WordPress. It is completely free when you run it from your own web hosting account and is the most stable and secure out of all of the systems I’ve evaluated. No wonder why it is the most popular solution for people that want to blog and build a website today.

Better yet, it can be enhanced and changed to fit your tastes and needs through the huge selection of free plugins and themes. These themes and plugins are accessed from the same “backend” that you build a website from. This takes the pressure of keeping things updated from weighing too heavily on your shoulders and allows you to use your time to build a website.

The next piece needed to build a website is web hosting. Just as your domain name gives you an address online, people need something to see once they get there. This is where web hosting comes in.

And this is where I want to place a word of caution when you build a website. Web hosts are not all the same, and they may not all fit your needs. Besides the difference of hosting costs, some only supply you with minimal server resources suitable for running simple websites. This can be a major headache for both you and your visitors if you build a website that is more than a simple static page.

Why? Well, there are several factors that are directly affected by this problem. If you build a website that is meant to be seen, your chances of this happening go down greatly if your website runs slow. You only have 5 seconds to capture a persons attention when they first come to your website. That means you have a very short window to make your message clear and encourage them to read further. If your website takes longer than 10 seconds to load you’ll also lose the visitor.

What does that mean for you when you build a website to sell a product or service? Lost customers. Couple that with the fact that search engines will begin ranking websites in part by how fast they load, and sub par web hosting translates into wasted money. I have been with more than a few web hosting companies over the years and have used a little trick to evaluate their service. I am sharing this with you now because I wish I would have used this when I built my first website.

When you register, only register for one month, this is the shortest period of time they’ll generally let you make an account for. After the month is coming close to an end and you’ve had a chance to evaluate them, rate how happy you are with their service. If you’re still not sure, renew for another month or find another web host to move your website to.

This might sound like extra work when you build a website, but let me put it this way. Would you really want to be locked into a year long contract (sometimes longer) with a web hosting company that you’re unhappy with? A lot of people get pulled into these longer contracts when they learn how to build a website because they are given special offers as new customers or when they sign up for long periods of time.

And while it may appear at first like you’re saving some money when you build a website on their server, if it doesn’t meet your needs, you’re left with two options. One, tough it out and watch your efforts go to waste because of slow performance, or two, purchase additional hosting somewhere else.

It is important not to get sucked into the sales pitch or the chance to save a few dollars unless you know and trust the company. Building a website should be your primary goal, not dealing with a web host’s limitations. There are good web hosting companies out there, my current web host offers a coupon to try their service 30 days for only a penny. If you’re not satisfied they will even refund you your penny.

In my opinion this is one of the most important steps when you build a website. Most of the other problems you encounter can be ironed out if you are willing to spend a little effort working on them. This is the only one that stands to cost you the most money.