Do You Make Money Online

DIY Website – Part 3

Once you are ready to move ahead the next step is to purchase a domain. Buying a domain is a simple process, but you may not get exactly what you want. Using our example we established that canterburykitchens.co.uk would be the best choice of domain for our needs. Finding out if this domain is available is a simple case of going to a domain providers website and carrying out an availability search.

The simplest way to buy a domain is to buy it with a hosting plan. This is not always the best way if you plan to host more than one website, or a separate company or personal blog.

Another factor that is important in choosing a hosting plan is the platform that you are going to use to create and manage the website and its content. Many website hosting companies offer website builders, but these can be restrictive as the website is managed online and this ties you to your hosting provider.

Building your website on low cost simple visual software is very quick and easy to master,  but can make the job more complicated as the site grows in size. This is however often the  best way to get started because no knowledge of code is necessary. One such program that  offers low cost and simplicity is Coffee Cup Visual Site Designer.

Coffee Cup Visual Site Designer is low cost and easy to use. It also has a number of plug-gins that can be purchased separately. This makes it possible to buy only the functionality that you need instead of buying an expensive platform with a lot of functions that you will never use. Because the website is built on your desktop it is highly portable and can be managed and backed up with ease.

For those who are willing to learn just a little more the benefits of using WordPress far outweigh the freedom of a low cost desktop platform.

WordPress is a content management system/blogging platform that has extensive functionality for search engine optimisation and a host of other excellent features.
WordPress is widely used among the internet marketing community and is favoured for its ease of use and extended functionality. Although easy to use there is a little more to mastering it than Visual Site Designer, but even the most armature web-master can quickly and easily turn out an impressive and professional website/blog.

As WordPress is open source software it is 100% free. There are a range of plug-gins available for just about everything that you can think of. These include auto responders, video players, membership site set up, search engine optimisation and many more plug-gins and widgets. There are also a number of excellent learning rerources available in the form of e-books and courses.

Learning to use WordPress may take a little time, but in my opinion it is the best way forward in most cases. One good way to have the best of both worlds is to use both platforms. You can get a website up and running quickly with a visual website designer. Doing this will give you a grounding in basic design and the mechanics of a website.

Once online you can build a second website using WordPress and this will be the one that you develop and build upon. This may seem like a lot of work, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Having a small website built around the company name or brand will give a second easy point of contact for existing customers and will help to strengthen the company brand. This website may only be four or five pages and should take no more than a day or so to put together. The WordPress website/blog can then be set up and developed over time.

Using Cosy Kitchens as an example we would build coseykitchens.co.uk on a 30 day free trial of Coffee Cup Visual Site designer. We would then build and develop canterburykitchens.co.uk on WordPress.

Assuming that canterburykitchens.co.uk was not available, we can make a slight change, but still keep our keyword intact. We might take the initials of the company and use it as a prefix. For example ck-canterburykitchens.co.uk. Of course our first choice would be an exact match, but there is always an alternitive e.g canterburykitchens-4u.co.uk. The main thing is to keep the keyword intact and not break it up e.g canterbury-kitchens.co.uk. Although both words are in the previous example putting (-) between the two words means that we no longer have an exact match to the phrase. This makes our url just slightly less relevant.

Choosing the right hosting provider is essential and like everything else you get what you pay for. Having said that web hosting is a highly competitive business and you can get a really good package at a very low cost. If you plan to use WordPress it is a good idea to choose a provider that has automated WordPress installation as manual installation can be complicated. One such provider is Hostgator Hostgator also offers a package that enables an individual to host unlimited websites for a low set monthly fee ($7.95 per month at the time of writing 02/2010). For this and other reasons I tend to recommend them. Hostgator has a wealth of website and email tools that come as standard features. WordPress installation is a simple matter of filling in a few options and clicking install. If you want to add multiple domains to Hostgator these can be purchased from Hostgator or from a third party provider like Proud Domains

The creation of the website itself should remain firmly focused around the search terms that you have chosen to target. These should all be terms that people are likely to type in a search, that are highly relevant to the company, its product, services and location.

We have already established that the two main keywords that we want to target for Cosy Kitchens are “ Canterbury Kitchens” and “Kitchens Canterbury”. These two phrases will be the main focus of the page. We also want to increase our chances on this page with a few more broad terms. These can be changed and experimented with once the website is online. We will be able to see what words are bringing traffic in the searches and how frequently using tools like statcounter. We need a starting point so for our example I will choose the following:-
canterbury kitchens, Kitchens canterbury, canterbury kitchen, kitchen canerbury, cosy kitchens, kitchen fitting services, kitchen suppliers, kitchen planners, kitchen repairs,
kitchen parts, kitchen services.

All of these are possible search terms that people might combine with the word Canterbury.

All website creation platforms have some method that allows the input of a title, a description and some keywords (Meta Tags) to each page that is created. These are not all seen on the page itself by the user , but are extremely important elements of the page. These elements of the page can be thought of as our place to tell the search engines what terms are relevant to the page. The only drawback is that the search engine will read the page and decide to what extent it agrees with you. It will use many factors to decide the placement of your page, but there is a lot that we can do to gain its favour.

For Cosy kitchens home page we will want to include our main keywords in the title and description. We also need to introduce them several times in the page content. The page title needs to catch the eye of the person searching as well as have our keywords present.

Our title could read as follows:-
Title.
Canterbury Kitchens – Kitchen fitting products & services in the Canterbury area. The title has a number of keyword phrases that can be formed as well as an exact match on “canterbury kitchens” (our Main Keyword).

We also have kitchen fitting, kitchen products, kitchen services, kitchen fitting services, fitting kitchens and more. All of them are possible search terms and all can be added to Canterbury to create a niche keyword phrase. Once we get online we will be able to see which of these keywords are working and improve on those that are not. The main keyword is also right at the front of the title and we will do this in the description and page content also.

The description for the page must now be set up to capitalise on the keywords in the title. Once again the main keyword should be close to the opening statement. At the same time this is your chance to get the searchers attention. The keyword richness of the description needs to be balanced with something that reads well and encourages the prospect to click. This is also necessary throughout the page content and will need some careful thought.

Our title and description might look something like the one below. Canterbury Kitchens – Kitchen fitting products & services in the Canterbury area. Visit Canterburykitchens.com for great prices on kitchens, kitchen products & services. Our kitchen supply and fitting services cover Canterbury and the surrounding areas. Free planning and quotation services and all the benefits of a small local company.

Http://canterburykitchens.co.uk/

Our keywords are now in the title, description and the url for the home page. If our next keyword was kitchen fitter and the page name or ID was kitchenfitter. We would repeat what we have just done using phrases like kitchen fitter, fitted kitchens, kitchen fitting services, kitchen design and so on. Because the domain name has the word Canterbury in it, all subsequent pages will have it in the url.

Example:-

Http://canterburykitchens.co.uk/kitchenfitter.html

The content of the pages will also be formed around the keywords and once again it needs to be balanced with the need to generate enquiries. Google likes text rich pages that give lots of good and relevant information about the page subject. People like pretty things and pictures so we need to take striking a balance one step further. This isn’t as challenging as it sounds as the subject matter is relevant to the page. All that we need to is to not get carried away with graphics, but instead just use them to make the page pleasing to the eye and balanced. Overdoing the page with graphics will also slow the loading speed, another disike of Google’s.

Once a home page, a contact page and one or two other pages have been created the website should be put online. Websites page rank is also effected by age, so it is a good idea to start maturing your website as early as possible. A resources or links page will also be needed to allow you to place links to related products and services. This is extremely important as you will want people to link to your website, thus helping to improve your page rank.

NEXT Developing The Website.