How to Create a Website

David Hawke

Finding your idea

If you want a website but don't know what subject to build your site around, get a pen and a piece of paper and just start writing the ideas that come into your head.

• A tip - always have a piece of paper and something to write with close by. If you're like me your best idea will pop into your head while you're standing in line at the grocery store. You need to be able to write it down.
• I don't know how many ideas I've lost just by not having a piece of paper with me. It's been a lot.

You might come up with a great idea quickly or it could take a while, don't worry it will come to you.

When you find your idea

Start again with the paper and write all the things you want to add to this website.

With that start doing a website layout. Your site should only go 3 pages deep. I'll explain - Your main page is your home page, that page has a menu called 2nd tier pages and those go to 3rd tier pages as in the picture below.

If you go deeper than 3 tiers the search engines will have a hard time looking through your site.

The picture above was done with a program called Mind Meister; it's free up to 4 or 5 maps and a great program to lay out a website on.

Find your keywords

Use five or less keywords per page on your website. Again the search engines like this better. You also need to refer to your keywords in your content, so if you have 150 keywords you could be writing for a long time.

Your first keyword is the most important; it will go everywhere, in your page title, your page description and in your content.

If you use XSitePro the program will help you get this right by analyzing your page for you.

Write your Content

Writing content for your website can seem a little intimidating at first.

But I'm here to tell you that if you can have a conversation, you can write good website content.

The Net writing Masters Course might help you out. This is a free course and it will help you with writing website content. It is written by Ken Evoy who owns SiteBuildIt. Make sure to read my article about Site Build It before you purchase anything.

Please do download your copy of this course today. It is in PDF format, so you will need Adobe reader to see it. If you don't have adobe reader download it here.

Upload your website

Now that you've built your new website you've got to get it on the internet.

You can upload your website using ftp (file transfer protocol).

There are different programs on the internet that will do this SmartFTP.com seems to be a popular one.

If you use XSitePro the program will handle this for you. Also with my bonuses that I'll e-mail to you after purchasing XSitePro, you'll get a video on how to set up the ftp upload.

 Your site is online!

Great! Welcome to the wonderful world of websites!

Now you need traffic. Most traffic you get will come from search engines, so start submitting your site to them.

• Submit your site to Google.
• Submit your site to Yahoo.
• Suggest your site to Open Directory Project.

I said suggest your site to Open Directory because they are different than Search Engines.

• A directory is harder to get listed in.
• Your site will be looked at by an actual person and not another computer. If you click on the link they will tell you all about it.

Being included in a directory is a good thing. Search engines also like your site better if you get into a directory.

You can create traffic by adding your site to social networking sites, like digg.com and Google bookmarks.

You'll find a list of social sites at the bottom of this page. If you like my site please feel free to click any or all of them for me! Thanks!

If you have XSitePro the program will add all that for you too. (I know I keep talking about XSitePro but it is really that good!)

Sitemaps

If you don't have a sitemap you need to get one. Check out Sitemaps.org for help with that.

Once you have a sitemap in XML format submit the map to Google. Start here, when you enter your domain name this will tell you what Google knows about your site. You'll get to the part of adding a sitemap from here.

Thank you for reading this article. If you have any questions or comments please e-mail them to me. david@vippatron.com

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