How to Build a Website in 2021
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This previous yr was a doozy — rest room paper shortages, wildfires, homicide hornets, and, oh yeah, a world pandemic. Things can solely get higher in 2021, proper? Your resolutions would possibly embrace really studying the ebook in your Zoom ebook membership, calling your mother, or strolling off your new quarantine baking pastime.
But how’s this for a New Year’s Resolution: Build a profitable web site from the bottom up.
During the previous yr, a lot of day by day life moved on-line. Plus, with so many individuals needing further money, 2021 is a nice time to begin a aspect hustle, develop your small enterprise’s operations, or transfer your brick-and-mortar retailer on-line to higher serve a post-2020 world.
Sounds like a lofty aim however, belief us, you’ve obtained the makings of a champion.
by way of GIPHY
Building an internet presence is like operating a marathon. Those exhausting 26.2 miles require long-time endurance constructed over months of coaching. Marathoners practice one step at a time and full one mile at a time.
This information is your coaching plan.
As your trusty net host and digital coach, we’re right here to hold you on monitor as you construct, develop, safe, and promote your new web site. We’ve damaged this web site exercise plan into objectives and duties to full every quarter all through 2021, however be at liberty to work at your personal tempo. You do the sweating, and we’ll be proper with you (six toes away, after all) with step-by-step directions, water cups, and cheese-tastic motivational indicators.
Sound good? You made it by 2020, a marathon of a yr. We know you are able to do laborious issues.
So tie up your Nikes, pull in your fitness center shorts, and let’s get to work!
First Quarter: Build Your Website
Step 1: Decide on Your Mission
Ready to race proper off the beginning block into constructing your web site? We love the keenness. But earlier than even reaching the beginning line, you want to get in some warm-ups and conditioning to set up a stable basis. Every good web site begins with a considerate plan. Open a contemporary new digital doc (or seize a pen and paper in the event you’d favor to go old style) and full the next workout routines.
Find Your Purpose
Why would you like a web site in the primary place? What do you hope it is going to accomplish? Ask your self, “What is the aim of this web site?”
The prospects are countless — however you want to spell out what you need and who your target market is. Write down what you resolve; you’ll use this objective to information the whole lot else you do that yr.
Set Goals
Time to dive deeper into the reflecting and set some particular objectives in your web site. Grab your pen (or prepared your typing fingers) and, under your web site’s objective, jot down a few objectives. There are numerous choices.
These objectives ought to accomplish your web site’s objective and drive the remainder of your plans.
Don’t lose sight of your end line — and don’t be afraid to regulate your objectives over the approaching months.
Outline Your Content
You most likely shouldn’t bake a cake with out a recipe. Likewise, you may’t construct your web site till you realize what elements you want to make it a success. So go forward and description your content material to be sure to hit your objectives. Consider these elements:
Start together with your web site’s menu. What ought to its choices embrace? And in what order? Rank what’s most necessary to you — and your objectives — on the high.
Do you need to embrace a weblog? This will probably be useful for search engine marketing (search engine marketing) — extra on that in a minute — encourage engagement and group, construct your status, and set up you as an professional.
If the weblog is the cornerstone of your web site, take a while to define (or, for overachievers, write) your first few posts and plan some subjects you would possibly write about over the following yr.
The About Me web page is your house to inform your story and describe what you are promoting. Don’t skip out on this opportunity to join together with your clients.
Do you want a spot to describe the services or products you’re promoting, both on-line or in your bodily retailer? If your goal is to drum up enterprise straight from the online web page, that is important. Think about classes and subcategories of merchandise, and contemplate the way you would possibly describe or promote them to your web site guests.
What is included on the homepage? Your contact data? Maybe, though that might simply be its personal web page. A memorable photograph? Definitely.
Another homepage must-have: a name to motion (CTA). Your CTA ought to invite guests to do one thing, corresponding to take a look at your choices, join your e-newsletter, or delve into your weblog.
Related: How Do Websites Work?
Step 2: Choose a Domain and Platform
Ready. Get set. We are inching nearer to launching your web site, however earlier than we are able to get going, it first wants a identify and a place to stay.
Pick a Domain Name
Basically, a area is what you kind into the bar on the high of your browser to level to a particular web site. For instance, to discover us at DreamHost, you kind in dreamhost.com. A website consists of two elements:
Jot down a dream area and see whether it is out there for buy. If you may’t discover (or afford) your first-choice area identify, we’ll assist you to discover different nice choices.
Related: What Are the Different Ways to Build a Website?
Pick a Hosting Plan
The area identify is your web site’s tackle, and internet hosting is the bodily house (spoiler: a server) the place your web site lives. The internet hosting plan you select in your web site will impression many issues — like how briskly your web site masses and how much upkeep you’ve gotten to do.
DreamHost provides a number of nice choices to cowl a number of internet hosting wants (not that we’re biased about this in any respect, ahem).
For freshmen, we suggest shared internet hosting. It is inexpensive, quick, and meets the wants of any fundamental web site (and contains a free area registration!). You can all the time improve as your web site grows.
Ready to Build a Website?
We’ll be certain your web site is quick, safe, and all the time up so your guests belief you. Plans begin at $2.59/mo.
Choose a Platform
To construct your web site, you’ll want to choose a platform — and there’s no content material administration system (CMS) higher, in our opinion, than WordPress. And 75 million web sites agree with us. Like any highly effective instrument, there’s a studying curve to WordPress, however the open-source software program is free to use and fairly beginner-friendly.
Related: How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for Your Site
Step 3: Design and Launch
OK — with a set of objectives, a content material define, a area, internet hosting, and a platform picked in your new web site, it’s lastly time to get constructing!
Build Your WordPress Website
Head over to DreamHost’s WordPress internet hosting web page, choose the plan that’s best for you, set up WordPress, configure your settings, and begin constructing your web site. Pull out the checklist of objectives and content material define you made in the first step, and use them to information you in selecting a theme that matches your model.
Learn About Web Design Trends and Best Practices
No, you don’t want to grow to be a design professional in a single day. And by no means worry: Those WordPress themes we simply talked about are lovely and can prevent from main design blunders. But listed here are a few fundamental pointers to hold in thoughts as you get began in designing your web site:
If you lack the abilities (or time to study the abilities) to design a web site — and have some wiggle room in your finances — contemplate hiring a skilled designer to assist you to customise your web site’s look.
Related: 10 Web Design Lessons from a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Launch!
Go forward. Send your web site out into the world. Take a fast victory lap — you’ve earned it! But don’t lose your momentum; the work has solely began.
Second Quarter: Grow Your Website
So now you’ve gotten a web site. Yay!
Time to beef it up with some power coaching. That’s proper. Once your web site is up and operating, flip your consideration to attracting extra guests and bringing in some earnings.
Step 4: Monetize Your Site
Ready to convey in the massive bucks with a weblog or on-line retailer? Let’s get you arrange.
- Review your choices. Take a take a look at the services and products you’re promoting. Is there the rest you may add, particularly to entice again previous clients? Have you considered including an internet course or premium for-pay content material to your weblog?
- Add some advertisements. Include a little bit of delicate, tasteful promoting in your WordPress weblog to convey in some extra income.
Related: 25 Legit Ways You Can Make Money Online
- Affiliate advertising. Incorporating affiliate hyperlinks in your weblog or web site is one other method to add to your income stream. Basically, you’ll promote one other model’s product and supply hyperlinks to their web site. If your readers click on and make a buy, you’ll get a minimize of the sale in thanks in your referral.
- Investigate e-commerce options. How are you planning to promote and settle for fee in your web site? You’ll want to get that squared away earlier than selling your on-line retailer. If you’re utilizing WordPress, we suggest Woocommerce (a lot so, that we’ve even obtained internet hosting only for Woocommerce customers). Study up on the world of e-commerce and choose an internet fee gateway (be careful for sneaky transaction charges).
Related: How to Build an Awesome Online Store with the OceanWP Theme
Step 5: Adopt search engine marketing Best Practices
Once your web site is constructed and prepped to be monetized, you’re prepared to reel in the site visitors with search engine marketing.
search engine marketing is a group of methods web site house owners can (and may!) use to seem nearer to the highest of the outcomes on search engines like google.
Think about it: When you seek for one thing on Google, you most likely solely scan the primary few entries earlier than clicking — and so will your purchasers. Since Google bases its outcomes rating on a number of elements, it’s important to do the next:
- Brainstorm key phrases related to your web site. What search phrases do you assume (or hope) would more than likely lead readers to your web site? Use Google’s Keyword Planner to analysis and uncover new key phrases.
- Optimize your weblog posts. Plan content material round these key phrases and ensure to use them in your posts and headings — however watch out and inventive together with your placement to keep away from creating content material that sounds compelled. If you need assistance getting began, take a look at these search engine marketing instruments.
- Keep it contemporary. Regular updates and new content material provides you with a search-ranking increase. But don’t be afraid to clean up and repurpose previous content material.
- Create a sitemap. Sitemaps, that are mainly a hierarchical checklist of all of the pages and content material in your web site, assist Google’s search engine crawlers see and join the pages in your web site, making it simpler to current related data in search outcomes.
Related: The Internet’s Most Successful Bloggers Share Their Top Tips
To get began, take a look at our newbie’s search engine marketing information. Once you’re prepared to transfer on to extra superior techniques, you’ll need to contemplate investing in a devoted search engine marketing instrument — SEMrush is a resolution we really feel snug recommending.
It comes at an inexpensive worth with all of the options you want to assist develop your site visitors: key phrase analysis and content material audit instruments, a highly effective backlink analyzer, and easy-to-read competitor insights.
If this appears like one thing you’re in, we’ve labored out a free two-week trial with SEMrush so you may see if the instrument is a good match in your web site with out a long-term dedication!
Step 6: Take Care of the Details
Now that your web site has been up and operating for a whereas, it’s time for some spring cleansing. Let’s be certain your web site is up to par and simple to entry for all of your potential clients.
Clean and Polish
Start with a few routine maintenance duties, and set reminders to do them once more in one other six months:
Go Mobile
Take a take a look at how your web site appears on the small display. If your web site isn’t optimized for cell — that’s, if it doesn’t look pretty much as good and cargo as quick on cell gadgets because it does on a laptop — you’re lacking out. Responsive design issues in 2021.
Many potential clients use telephones or tablets in place of a house laptop, and a few store on the go. Plus, your Google search rankings may damage in case your web site isn’t mobile-friendly. Pull your web site up in your smartphone, and make any crucial modifications.
Review Your Traffic
If you haven’t already, set up Google Analytics onto your WordPress web site. Google Analytics is a plugin that tracks and analyzes key knowledge about your web site, together with:
- Page views: At a look, this stat will reveal your hottest pages and posts in the previous day, month, and yr.
- Unique guests: Using IP addresses, Google Analytics will monitor what number of distinctive guests your web site attracts.
- Bounce price: Sometimes guests will click on away out of your web site after viewing just one web page; this stat will let you understand how usually that dreaded “bounce” occurs.
- Session length: When somebody visits your web site, how lengthy do they stick round? Check this quantity for the reply.
- Traffic supply: You would possibly all of the sudden see a rise in site visitors to a specific web page, and Google Analytics will assist you to pinpoint what hyperlink is sending the guests.
Studying these statistics will assist you to discover modifications to make to draw extra guests and encourage them to keep longer (and hopefully make a buy).
Related: Learn How to Grow Your Website with Google Analytics
Third Quarter: Secure Your Website
Time to work on endurance. You need your web site to stick round for the lengthy haul. Now it’s time to beef up your safety practices and shield your knowledge.
Step 7: Tighten Website Security
When it comes to safety, you may relaxation straightforward at night time: you’re already heading in the right direction to holding your data and buyer’s knowledge secure with WordPress and DreamHost. But there are a few extra steps you may take to tighten up safety.
- Switch to HTTPS. The “S” in HTTPS stands for “safe,” and it’s (shock) the safer model of HTTP, encrypting your knowledge as it’s transferred out of your web site to a consumer’s browser. Add that all-important “S” by getting an SSL/TLS certificates (supplied free of charge with all DreamHost internet hosting plans).
- Enable a firewall. You most likely have a firewall in your laptop, defending you from undesirable assaults. And, in the event you’re certainly one of our clients, fortunate you: DreamHost contains a built-in Web Application Firewall (WAF) to supply your web site related safety.
- Use two-factor authentication. This would require you to signal in to your web site with a code that’s first despatched to your cell phone. While it may be a little bit of a trouble in your finish, this step goes a good distance in holding your web site safe. Use a WordPress plugin like Two-Factor Authentication.
- Add an SSL safety certificates. At DreamHost, we wish you and your web site’s customers to really feel assured about their knowledge and monetary transactions. We additionally need you to have the option to give attention to constructing your web site’s following — that’s why we provide SSL/TLS certificates free with all of our internet hosting plans!
- Back up your web site. Hackers gonna hack. Even with all of your efforts to safe your web site, safety breaches and different disasters are nonetheless a chance. So be certain to often backup your web site. That method, if the unthinkable occurs, you received’t lose all your digital property.
- Scan for malware. Hackers can actually mess issues up in your web site by putting in malware, which might mess with the code and steal safe knowledge. Scan your web site often to be certain it’s clear. DreamHost clients can join DreamShield, an add-on that can routinely scan your web site for malware.
- Pick a robust password. Don’t make it straightforward for simply anybody to stroll into your digital entrance door; select a password that’s lengthy, unusual, and used solely in your web site.
Step 8: Speed Things Up
Nothing is extra of a drag than a sluggish web site. Keep your web site up to velocity by:
- Installing a caching plugin for sooner load instances. The “cache” is the place your laptop shops lately used data, such because the recordsdata of a lately visited web site. A caching WordPress plugin pulls knowledge from the native cache as an alternative of reloading it absolutely each time, thus rushing issues up.
- Optimizing your pictures. High-res photographs can take an extra-long scorching second to load, however there’s no want to sacrifice high quality.
- Testing your velocity. Even if it looks as if your web page is loading usually, get in the behavior of often testing your velocity. Simply kind your URL into Google’s PageSpeed insights for fast evaluation and ideas to get a sooner rating.
Related: 12 Reasons Why Your Website Is Slow (And How to Fix Them)
Step 9: Prepare for Trolls
By the time you’ve reached this step, you’ve most likely obtained followers. But as your web site builds a group, it is going to additionally appeal to a number of the slimier creatures lurking in the anonymity of the online: spammers, trolls, and merciless commentators. Keep these ideas in thoughts as you take care of the underbelly of the online:
- Don’t feed the trolls. This is rule No. 1 when it comes to trolls. Don’t have interaction; it is going to simply feed the fireplace.
- Understand the distinction between trolling and disagreement. Not everybody who disagrees with you is a troll; normally, they’re reliable readers with a totally different viewpoint. Feel free to defend your self and your arguments, and be open to altering your thoughts — and reminding aggressive commenters to play good.
- Establish a commenting coverage. Spell out in your readers the way you count on them to behave, what the results are for violations, and clarify that trolls will not be invited to the get together.
- Block or delete. If a trolling put up will get too out of hand, don’t be afraid to step in and shut it down.
Fourth Quarter: Promote Your Website
Congratulations! You’re formally three-quarters of the best way by this marathon [splashes water on face]. Don’t lose that momentum; proceed robust and regular to the end line. Think of all of the orange slices awaiting you. To get there, your subsequent process is promotion.
Step 10: Advertise
You’ve obtained a great point going, and it’s time to inform the world. Advertising, even for the newbie web site proprietor, is a no-brainer that may be easy, efficient, and inexpensive. Try your hand at two fundamental kinds of focused promoting:
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising: search engine marketing technique will organically transfer you to the highest of the search outcomes. With Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisements, you’ll take issues extra into your personal arms by paying to land atop the search engine end result pages (SERPs). The better part? You solely have to pay for premium placement if somebody clicks in your hyperlink. You select the key phrases you need to convey up your advert, and you may set and restrict your personal finances.
- Social Media Advertising: Facebook is a well-oiled, data-collecting machine, and you need to use its energy to goal promoting straight to your preferrred viewers. You can create a Facebook advert that reaches customers based mostly on particular data corresponding to age, gender, pursuits, and so on. As with Google Adwords, you’ll set a finances and pay for clicks. Get on Instagram and leverage your feed and tales for some nice free promoting in your model. Follow this information to slim down which social media platform you need to use for what you are promoting.
Step 11: Market with Email
Email is likely one of the finest instruments your e-commerce web site has for locating new clients, bringing again earlier ones, and sustaining relationships.
Learn the Basics
Study up on e mail advertising, a tried-and-true advertising methodology that entails gathering e mail addresses as a method to share content material and construct relationships with present and potential clients.
Collect Email Addresses
You can’t ship any mail in the event you don’t know the place it’s going. But don’t be spammy and shady about it; create opt-in kinds straight in your web site inviting guests to subscribe. Try providing one thing in trade for an e mail tackle, corresponding to a low cost off a first buy or entry to a free e-book.
Create an Email Newsletter
Email newsletters stay among the best methods to join together with your clients, so create one and make it the middle of your e mail advertising technique. Use it as a method to showcase your voice and your model, share information and upcoming occasions for what you are promoting, and introduce new merchandise (however don’t be too pushy). Send it out often, loaded with contemporary content material, after which solicit suggestions.
Want to Build a Website?
Join our month-to-month e-newsletter for ideas and tips to develop your on-line presence.
Bring Your Customers Back
Beyond a e-newsletter, what different kinds of emails will have interaction your clients? Always ship buy receipts and ensure to welcome new subscribers. Consider reaching out to previous clients to announce gross sales, share reductions, and invite them again to the fold.
Step 12: Get Creative
Now that you just’ve lined your bases with promoting and e mail advertising, dig deeper and get a little inventive in extending your web site’s attain. Try out these promotion concepts:
You’ve made it to the end line! You’ve labored laborious, and your web site is actually one to be pleased with. Now, hit the showers, champ.
And in the event you haven’t launched your web site but, we’re right here for you. Start off on the proper foot with DreamHost’s shared internet hosting plan. It’s probably the most inexpensive method to make all of your web site desires come true — severely, plans begin at simply $2.59/month — with out sacrificing high quality and efficiency. Create your web site as we speak!
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