Monday 18 February 2013
Thursday 27 October 2011
INSTALLING A LINK DIRECTORY
If you have a website and want more people to link to you, installing a link directory is the right means for you to generate targeted Internet traffic. Indeed installing a link directory is a great way to get the trade links noticed on the Internet
For a basic rendezvous with the concept of link directory and its installation, read on the article till the end. I am sure, once you finish reading this web page you would not ask any questions as you would be busy installing a link directory. So read on.
What is a Link Directory? Link Directory is a platform on the Internet where various webmasters submit their links for free. The other webmasters can also exchange or trade links between them on a link directory. It is an effective and easy way to increase your search engine rankings. And that too for free!
In other words, you can also say that a link directory is a systematic record of resource links on a website. The links on a website are categorized according to their purpose. A website may support hundreds of links on its link page.
Why do people install a link directory? Every webmaster wishes to get the target audience on their websites. installing a link directory is appropriate way to get the desired traffic and attention to the link sites. A number of people make use of web directories to find out the related links for their websites. This makes the job of online searching quite easy for them. Each and every link directory has categories and sub categories links.
How to go about installing a link directory? You need to meet certain requirements for installing a link directory.
First of all you have to categorize your link directory. Your computer should have the definite script to run your link directory on a web server. The PHP scripting language is the best one to run your script on the Windows operating system. Other scripts like CGI are also used extensively for installing a link directory. The script can be purchased from any software store. The right script will make your installation easier. Some PHP scripts in the market are very powerful. They allow you to add as many categories in the link directory as possible. For installing such a link directory you must have a Linux operating system.
Also there are some scripts in the market that allow you to install the link directory on any of the operating system like Windows, UNIX and Linux. For installing any link directory, you should have a free space on your computer system. You may require 250 MB or more free space to install link directory software. Also you need to have a particular type of IP address for installation. If you do not have the right IP address, the Domain Name Server registrations may be lost and may result in the failure of the installation process.
Make one thing absolutely sure that the installation of your directory may be interrupted if the network is not properly connected. If you receive the connection errors such as “the link directory installation failed” or “error in installation”, check the network cable connection.
The domain name is the most important part of your link directory. Your link directory is installed with a particular domain name. Remember that the domain name should not be single. Create a domain name that suggests that the directory is a part of your organization. If your website domain name is “xyz.com”, the domain name of your directory must be some what like “ab.xyz.com”.
For a basic rendezvous with the concept of link directory and its installation, read on the article till the end. I am sure, once you finish reading this web page you would not ask any questions as you would be busy installing a link directory. So read on.
What is a Link Directory? Link Directory is a platform on the Internet where various webmasters submit their links for free. The other webmasters can also exchange or trade links between them on a link directory. It is an effective and easy way to increase your search engine rankings. And that too for free!
In other words, you can also say that a link directory is a systematic record of resource links on a website. The links on a website are categorized according to their purpose. A website may support hundreds of links on its link page.
Why do people install a link directory? Every webmaster wishes to get the target audience on their websites. installing a link directory is appropriate way to get the desired traffic and attention to the link sites. A number of people make use of web directories to find out the related links for their websites. This makes the job of online searching quite easy for them. Each and every link directory has categories and sub categories links.
How to go about installing a link directory? You need to meet certain requirements for installing a link directory.
First of all you have to categorize your link directory. Your computer should have the definite script to run your link directory on a web server. The PHP scripting language is the best one to run your script on the Windows operating system. Other scripts like CGI are also used extensively for installing a link directory. The script can be purchased from any software store. The right script will make your installation easier. Some PHP scripts in the market are very powerful. They allow you to add as many categories in the link directory as possible. For installing such a link directory you must have a Linux operating system.
Also there are some scripts in the market that allow you to install the link directory on any of the operating system like Windows, UNIX and Linux. For installing any link directory, you should have a free space on your computer system. You may require 250 MB or more free space to install link directory software. Also you need to have a particular type of IP address for installation. If you do not have the right IP address, the Domain Name Server registrations may be lost and may result in the failure of the installation process.
Make one thing absolutely sure that the installation of your directory may be interrupted if the network is not properly connected. If you receive the connection errors such as “the link directory installation failed” or “error in installation”, check the network cable connection.
The domain name is the most important part of your link directory. Your link directory is installed with a particular domain name. Remember that the domain name should not be single. Create a domain name that suggests that the directory is a part of your organization. If your website domain name is “xyz.com”, the domain name of your directory must be some what like “ab.xyz.com”.
THE DEVALUATION OF RECIPROCAL LINKS
Three or four years ago a massive link trading campaign could get your site to the top of the Search Engine Rankings (SERPs). However, things are changing quickly concerning reciprocal links. Companies like LinkAdage [ http://www.linkadage.com] are receiving increased reports that reciprocal links are becoming a less effective part of SEO. In fact, it now seems sites that go overboard with reciprocal link campaigns are getting penalized in the SERPs by having most of their reciprocal links completely ignored by the search engines.
Adding to the problem are the Link Exchange Networks that are popping up all over the web that put websites at risks associated with being part of an artificial linking network. Remember, any “link network scheme” is only as strong as its weakest link. It is to your advantage to stay away from these link exchange network schemes, programs, or clubs if you want to keep the search engines happy. If your dead set on trading links, do your trades one-on-one with other webmasters and not through some multi-level like link trading scheme. Remember, if you participate in an artificial link exchange network, one slight algorithm adjustment can knock all the participating sites out of the search index in one swoop.
Websites should have no more than 15% reciprocal or traded links. The key ingredient to SEO linkage strategy is to make your backlink structure look natural. Websites with huge amounts of reciprocal backlinks and few one-way links are clearly trying to game the search engines and today’s search engines algorithms are smart enough to spot and penalize these websites by potentially ignoring all of their reciprocal links. If you have gone too far with your reciprocal linking program, you are at risk of those links simply not being counted. This makes it extremely important to only use reciprocal links in moderation.
If you read any of the major search engine forums, you will see lots of threads about established websites that have been top 10 in the SERPs for years, suddenly dropping to the top 100 without making any changes. I have had the privilege of studying many of the affected sites, and the common denominator seems to be an over reliance on reciprocal linking programs. We believe that reciprocal links that formally counted as “real” backlinks are now being seen for what they are – links traded to game the search engine algorithms. If a website passes the 20% reciprocal link threshold, there is a very real danger that all of its reciprocal links will be discounted. The effect of this can be a disastrous drop in the SERPs. It seems many websites that have thousands of reciprocal links suddenly are only being credited for a handful of natural links they have accumulated over the years.
So what can you do?
If your website currently ranks well but relies heavily on reciprocal links to achieve its good rankings, now is the time to start figuring out a strategy to increase your percentage of one-way links to reciprocal links ratio. Here are a few simple things you can do to achieve this goal:
** Offer something on your site that inspires other webmasters to link to your website ** Write articles for content hungry sites in exchange for a link to your website ** Eliminate any cross-linking between your own sites ** Delete some of your reciprocal links to garbage websites ** Delete reciprocal links to totally unrelated websites ** Delete any reciprocal links received though participation in an artificial link network scheme. ** Start buying one-way links from related websites
Adding to the problem are the Link Exchange Networks that are popping up all over the web that put websites at risks associated with being part of an artificial linking network. Remember, any “link network scheme” is only as strong as its weakest link. It is to your advantage to stay away from these link exchange network schemes, programs, or clubs if you want to keep the search engines happy. If your dead set on trading links, do your trades one-on-one with other webmasters and not through some multi-level like link trading scheme. Remember, if you participate in an artificial link exchange network, one slight algorithm adjustment can knock all the participating sites out of the search index in one swoop.
Websites should have no more than 15% reciprocal or traded links. The key ingredient to SEO linkage strategy is to make your backlink structure look natural. Websites with huge amounts of reciprocal backlinks and few one-way links are clearly trying to game the search engines and today’s search engines algorithms are smart enough to spot and penalize these websites by potentially ignoring all of their reciprocal links. If you have gone too far with your reciprocal linking program, you are at risk of those links simply not being counted. This makes it extremely important to only use reciprocal links in moderation.
If you read any of the major search engine forums, you will see lots of threads about established websites that have been top 10 in the SERPs for years, suddenly dropping to the top 100 without making any changes. I have had the privilege of studying many of the affected sites, and the common denominator seems to be an over reliance on reciprocal linking programs. We believe that reciprocal links that formally counted as “real” backlinks are now being seen for what they are – links traded to game the search engine algorithms. If a website passes the 20% reciprocal link threshold, there is a very real danger that all of its reciprocal links will be discounted. The effect of this can be a disastrous drop in the SERPs. It seems many websites that have thousands of reciprocal links suddenly are only being credited for a handful of natural links they have accumulated over the years.
So what can you do?
If your website currently ranks well but relies heavily on reciprocal links to achieve its good rankings, now is the time to start figuring out a strategy to increase your percentage of one-way links to reciprocal links ratio. Here are a few simple things you can do to achieve this goal:
** Offer something on your site that inspires other webmasters to link to your website ** Write articles for content hungry sites in exchange for a link to your website ** Eliminate any cross-linking between your own sites ** Delete some of your reciprocal links to garbage websites ** Delete reciprocal links to totally unrelated websites ** Delete any reciprocal links received though participation in an artificial link network scheme. ** Start buying one-way links from related websites
THE FACTORS THAT PLAY A ROLE IN YOUR WEBSITE RANKING
Have you ever had a proposal, estimate or quote for search engine optimization work and wondered what goes into the pricing? What makes one site need more work than another? Why do some sites increase rankings faster than others? Why do some sites get more traffic from their top page ranking than yours?
There are so many aspects of a web site that can decrease or boost your search engine rankings. Each web site is as unique as DNA and as such, will react differently to different marketing treatments.
What are these different factors that go into your web sites ranking? Here is a list of the most important aspects:
1. The State of Your Site Prior to the Optimization – Your web site can have many different attributes that contribute to its ability to rank well or not so well. Your sites PageRank for example, if your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, its going to take a lot longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking well. If your site is poorly designed, contains frames or is written entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be required to redesign your site so that it is search engine friendly. If your site has very few incoming links, a fair amount of link development will have to be done in order for you to see the rankings and traffic youre after. A web site that has been around for a while and developed its PageRank, has a search engine friendly design and obtains links on a frequent basis, will be able to reach top positions much faster than other sites, once an optimization campaign is under way.
2. The Keywords You Are Targeting – Some keywords are less competitive than others. If you search Google for a keyword or keyword phrase, youll see at the top of the results how many web pages are listed in those results. That is the amount of web sites that are competing with yours to reach top page placement for that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword phrase web design has approximately 303 million web pages listed in the results, whereas if you search for my name in quotations, courtney heard, you will see that there are only 508 web pages listed in the results. It is therefore, much easier to rank well for the keywords courtney heard than is is for web design. This is why you must choose keywords wisely. With tools such as wordtracker.com, you can find out approximately how many searches are performed for a given keyword or keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords are, the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site and the longer the optimization will take.
3. The Size of Your Target Market – If your site is targeting a global market, it will take a lot more effort to reach the top ten search results than if your site is targeting a regional market. It also depends on what sort of market youre targeting. If your site sells a product that only a small group of people will be interested in purchasing, your site will be optimized easier than if the product or service appealed to the global population. For instance, the keyword phrase real estate will require a lot more effort to reach top page placement for than real estate canada and even real estate vancouver.
4. Competitor Sites SEO Campaigns – You might find that once your optimization campaign is under way , your site jumps and slips and jumps and slips several times. This can be due to many things, but the one well look at is your competitors sites SEO campaigns. If your competitors are aggressively optimizing their own sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our 5th and final point…
5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign – Your own link development and SEO campaign should be thorough, covering all the aspects of a well optimized site and utilising all your resources for obtaining incoming links. If your SEO campaign isnt approached properly, your competitors can surpass you in the rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition and adjust your efforts accordingly.
As you can see, there are many, many things that make your site unique in the services it requires. Some sites can reach top page placement by just changing a title tag, while others wait 6 months to even be listed on Google. The bottom line is, educate yourself, ask questions, choose the right SEO company and be patient. In time, your top page placement will come.
About the Author: Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney’s articles are available at Abalone’s Resource Library.
There are so many aspects of a web site that can decrease or boost your search engine rankings. Each web site is as unique as DNA and as such, will react differently to different marketing treatments.
What are these different factors that go into your web sites ranking? Here is a list of the most important aspects:
1. The State of Your Site Prior to the Optimization – Your web site can have many different attributes that contribute to its ability to rank well or not so well. Your sites PageRank for example, if your PR is a 0/10 or 1/10, its going to take a lot longer and a lot more work to get your site ranking well. If your site is poorly designed, contains frames or is written entirely in Flash, a lot of work will be required to redesign your site so that it is search engine friendly. If your site has very few incoming links, a fair amount of link development will have to be done in order for you to see the rankings and traffic youre after. A web site that has been around for a while and developed its PageRank, has a search engine friendly design and obtains links on a frequent basis, will be able to reach top positions much faster than other sites, once an optimization campaign is under way.
2. The Keywords You Are Targeting – Some keywords are less competitive than others. If you search Google for a keyword or keyword phrase, youll see at the top of the results how many web pages are listed in those results. That is the amount of web sites that are competing with yours to reach top page placement for that keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the keyword phrase web design has approximately 303 million web pages listed in the results, whereas if you search for my name in quotations, courtney heard, you will see that there are only 508 web pages listed in the results. It is therefore, much easier to rank well for the keywords courtney heard than is is for web design. This is why you must choose keywords wisely. With tools such as wordtracker.com, you can find out approximately how many searches are performed for a given keyword or keyword phrase. The more competitive those keywords are, the higher the cost will be to optimize your web site and the longer the optimization will take.
3. The Size of Your Target Market – If your site is targeting a global market, it will take a lot more effort to reach the top ten search results than if your site is targeting a regional market. It also depends on what sort of market youre targeting. If your site sells a product that only a small group of people will be interested in purchasing, your site will be optimized easier than if the product or service appealed to the global population. For instance, the keyword phrase real estate will require a lot more effort to reach top page placement for than real estate canada and even real estate vancouver.
4. Competitor Sites SEO Campaigns – You might find that once your optimization campaign is under way , your site jumps and slips and jumps and slips several times. This can be due to many things, but the one well look at is your competitors sites SEO campaigns. If your competitors are aggressively optimizing their own sites for search engines, they can also be achieving new rankings and displacing your site. This brings us to our 5th and final point…
5. Your Own SEO and Link Development Campaign – Your own link development and SEO campaign should be thorough, covering all the aspects of a well optimized site and utilising all your resources for obtaining incoming links. If your SEO campaign isnt approached properly, your competitors can surpass you in the rankings easily. You must be aware of your competition and adjust your efforts accordingly.
As you can see, there are many, many things that make your site unique in the services it requires. Some sites can reach top page placement by just changing a title tag, while others wait 6 months to even be listed on Google. The bottom line is, educate yourself, ask questions, choose the right SEO company and be patient. In time, your top page placement will come.
About the Author: Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney’s articles are available at Abalone’s Resource Library.
THE INTERNET'S NEW SECRET WEAPON FOR GETTING FREE PUBLICITY
You probably don’t even know about them. Few people do.
Even fewer people realize how many different ways you can use them to get free publicity, increase your search engine rankings, and make yourself a media celebrity in your field.
I’m talking about “news alerts.”
Google offers Google News Alerts at www.news.google.com. Look in the column to the left of the page.
Yahoo has a similar service, as do a number of other web portals and news outlets.
News alerts are the Internet’s new — and one of its most powerful — secrets weapons for attracting attention from radio, TV and newspaper reporters.
You can sign up for news alerts for free. Then you choose keywords related to your industry, and whenever those keywords show up in a news story–practically anywhere–you get an email notification and a link to the story..
News alerts allow you to identify and contact the journalist who did the story to suggest a follow up, offer another angle, etc. on the story they’ve already done.
You can even set up news alerts for a competitor’s name. If they’re quoted in a story somewhere, you’ll be notified by email. That gives you an opportunity to contact the reporter who wrote the story and position yourself as a future resource for similar pieces.
You can also set up your news alerts so that every time your name appears in the media, it sends you an email notification.
Its a great way to find out when your news releases, tip sheets, or articles have been published. This can be extremely valuable since people who print your stuff dont always let you know theyre doing it.
Furthermore, when you find out that something by you or about you has been published, you can get copies or reprints to use in a multitude of ways to further establish your credentials with the media.
For instance, you can print out stories you may want to include in your media kit, or even mail to journalists to reassure them that your topic really IS newsworthy– and that you indeed ARE an expert in your field.
I got quite a giggle — and a little bit of a shock — when I set up a news alert for my own name recently.
I got an alert from Google a few days later telling me the name “George McKenzie” had appeared in a Scottish TV story.
When I clicked on the link, I found out it wasn’t really about me–it was about a Scottish lawyer named Sir George McKenzie, an advisor to King Charles the Second 300 years ago.
I won’t give you the details here — a little too gruesome for a family friendly article.
News alerts are one of the Internet’s most important developments for helping people get the attention of the media.
They’re free, easy, versatile, valuable, and best of all–your competitors probably don’t have a clue they exist.
Even fewer people realize how many different ways you can use them to get free publicity, increase your search engine rankings, and make yourself a media celebrity in your field.
I’m talking about “news alerts.”
Google offers Google News Alerts at www.news.google.com. Look in the column to the left of the page.
Yahoo has a similar service, as do a number of other web portals and news outlets.
News alerts are the Internet’s new — and one of its most powerful — secrets weapons for attracting attention from radio, TV and newspaper reporters.
You can sign up for news alerts for free. Then you choose keywords related to your industry, and whenever those keywords show up in a news story–practically anywhere–you get an email notification and a link to the story..
News alerts allow you to identify and contact the journalist who did the story to suggest a follow up, offer another angle, etc. on the story they’ve already done.
You can even set up news alerts for a competitor’s name. If they’re quoted in a story somewhere, you’ll be notified by email. That gives you an opportunity to contact the reporter who wrote the story and position yourself as a future resource for similar pieces.
You can also set up your news alerts so that every time your name appears in the media, it sends you an email notification.
Its a great way to find out when your news releases, tip sheets, or articles have been published. This can be extremely valuable since people who print your stuff dont always let you know theyre doing it.
Furthermore, when you find out that something by you or about you has been published, you can get copies or reprints to use in a multitude of ways to further establish your credentials with the media.
For instance, you can print out stories you may want to include in your media kit, or even mail to journalists to reassure them that your topic really IS newsworthy– and that you indeed ARE an expert in your field.
I got quite a giggle — and a little bit of a shock — when I set up a news alert for my own name recently.
I got an alert from Google a few days later telling me the name “George McKenzie” had appeared in a Scottish TV story.
When I clicked on the link, I found out it wasn’t really about me–it was about a Scottish lawyer named Sir George McKenzie, an advisor to King Charles the Second 300 years ago.
I won’t give you the details here — a little too gruesome for a family friendly article.
News alerts are one of the Internet’s most important developments for helping people get the attention of the media.
They’re free, easy, versatile, valuable, and best of all–your competitors probably don’t have a clue they exist.
THE RIGHT NAVIGATOR FOR YOU
If you think its hard to decide what navigational style to use and what design fits you best, then read on and be enlightened
Text links are the simplest sort of navigation. Usually they contain one to two words and are filed in an array. Example to this is the array Home About Us- Contact Us. Using this links, you can load fast. With this cascading style you can also apply varying colors, background and other attributes such as underlines. Text links can also help your search engine rankings to soar. Nevertheless, some of its disadvantages are being not flashy and the size cannot be exacted. The fonts in this style can be shown on different operating system such as Linux and Windows.
Graphic buttons is another navigational style. They are not fast loading compared to text links, however, they are eye-catchers. They can flow with your pages design. Graphic buttons also maintain a width and a height which is kept standard transversely in all browsers if the height and width are provided in the images tag. Their disadvantage though is that it requires longer loading time. They are also less descriptive, require more labor and more bandwidth to download from the server. The use of mouse will double the downloading time. Graphic buttons are oftentimes applied for few links or a maximum of five links.
Image map is also a style where one image is divided into hot spots for the navigation. The advantages of image map include an easy set up of one image. However, this style has many disadvantages. First, they create frustration when trying to put in another link. With regards to the users, it requires them to actually observe in order to find the right boundaries.
Apart from the different styles of the links, you must also decide how to layout. Basically the navigation location is up to you, but endeavor some proper positioning. Explore your imagination to get what you want to achieve.
Remember that navigation should be in the interest of your visitors. If they have trouble finding their way around your site it means that navigation is not effective. Try to plan it again until you have best results.
Text links are the simplest sort of navigation. Usually they contain one to two words and are filed in an array. Example to this is the array Home About Us- Contact Us. Using this links, you can load fast. With this cascading style you can also apply varying colors, background and other attributes such as underlines. Text links can also help your search engine rankings to soar. Nevertheless, some of its disadvantages are being not flashy and the size cannot be exacted. The fonts in this style can be shown on different operating system such as Linux and Windows.
Graphic buttons is another navigational style. They are not fast loading compared to text links, however, they are eye-catchers. They can flow with your pages design. Graphic buttons also maintain a width and a height which is kept standard transversely in all browsers if the height and width are provided in the images tag. Their disadvantage though is that it requires longer loading time. They are also less descriptive, require more labor and more bandwidth to download from the server. The use of mouse will double the downloading time. Graphic buttons are oftentimes applied for few links or a maximum of five links.
Image map is also a style where one image is divided into hot spots for the navigation. The advantages of image map include an easy set up of one image. However, this style has many disadvantages. First, they create frustration when trying to put in another link. With regards to the users, it requires them to actually observe in order to find the right boundaries.
Apart from the different styles of the links, you must also decide how to layout. Basically the navigation location is up to you, but endeavor some proper positioning. Explore your imagination to get what you want to achieve.
Remember that navigation should be in the interest of your visitors. If they have trouble finding their way around your site it means that navigation is not effective. Try to plan it again until you have best results.
MAKE A WEBSITE OF YOUR OWN .QUICK SIMPLE AND EASY
Learning how to make your own website needn't be difficult. Nowadays there are all sorts of places where the hassle of designing your own website is at least partially taken care of for you.
I'm going to assume that you want your own complete website with its own hosting and its own domain name. This gives you the most control over your site and once you get the hang of it, isn't much harder than using one of the many services out there that let people design simple one page websites on communal web space.
1. Get a domain name
Deciding on a domain name that's going to be relevant to your website is one of the first things you need to do. You'll probably need to search a bit - it's unlikely that you'll be able to buy a dot com domain with just one word in it nowadays. But two or three words, maybe separated by a hyphen, are pretty easy. Then you'll need to register the domain with a service such as NameCheap.
2. Get some hosting space
Although your regular email account may come with some hosting space, it's better to rent space on a commercial server. Hosting is available from as little as a dollar a month but it pays to spend a bit more to get a reliable host who'll give you support when you need it.
3. Point your domain at your web space
This is a simple
matter of copying and pasting a couple settings that your hosting people will give you into your domain name control panel. The reason for doing this is it gives you more flexibility than buying your domain name through your web host. If the worst happens and your host disappears or gives you super-bad service, you can simply point your domain at a new host and carry on with very little disruption. If you want to do a web based shop, check that your host allows you to build your online shop easily - most will have an ecommerce package or the option of easily installing a shop script.
4. Design your website
This needn't be as daunting as it first sounds. I tend to use Wordpress, which is usually available as a one click install, for most of my website designs nowadays. You can add new pages at the click of a button and there are thousands of different designs and a myriad of extras that will help your site stand out from the crowd. If you need to get more complicated, software like Front Page lets you design web sites in a very similar way to using a word processor. Unless you think you're going to be the next Amazon, in which case you'll need a team of skilled programmers, that's probably all you'll need.
5. Start writing
You've now got the skeleton of a website. All you need to do is to breathe some life into it by writing words, uploading photographs and embedding the occasional YouTube video if you want to brighten things up a bit.
I'm going to assume that you want your own complete website with its own hosting and its own domain name. This gives you the most control over your site and once you get the hang of it, isn't much harder than using one of the many services out there that let people design simple one page websites on communal web space.
1. Get a domain name
Deciding on a domain name that's going to be relevant to your website is one of the first things you need to do. You'll probably need to search a bit - it's unlikely that you'll be able to buy a dot com domain with just one word in it nowadays. But two or three words, maybe separated by a hyphen, are pretty easy. Then you'll need to register the domain with a service such as NameCheap.
2. Get some hosting space
Although your regular email account may come with some hosting space, it's better to rent space on a commercial server. Hosting is available from as little as a dollar a month but it pays to spend a bit more to get a reliable host who'll give you support when you need it.
3. Point your domain at your web space
This is a simple
matter of copying and pasting a couple settings that your hosting people will give you into your domain name control panel. The reason for doing this is it gives you more flexibility than buying your domain name through your web host. If the worst happens and your host disappears or gives you super-bad service, you can simply point your domain at a new host and carry on with very little disruption. If you want to do a web based shop, check that your host allows you to build your online shop easily - most will have an ecommerce package or the option of easily installing a shop script.
4. Design your website
This needn't be as daunting as it first sounds. I tend to use Wordpress, which is usually available as a one click install, for most of my website designs nowadays. You can add new pages at the click of a button and there are thousands of different designs and a myriad of extras that will help your site stand out from the crowd. If you need to get more complicated, software like Front Page lets you design web sites in a very similar way to using a word processor. Unless you think you're going to be the next Amazon, in which case you'll need a team of skilled programmers, that's probably all you'll need.
5. Start writing
You've now got the skeleton of a website. All you need to do is to breathe some life into it by writing words, uploading photographs and embedding the occasional YouTube video if you want to brighten things up a bit.
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