Website Beginners Quick Start Guide
Purpose of This Guide
The purpose of this "Quick Start Guide" is to give someone who is a complete beginner at getting, building and promoting a website, a step by step plan to complete this task quickly and easily. If you're not a complete "newbie", you can probably skip the explanantion of "What is a Website?" and move on to "Getting Started". Even if you're an experienced pro, you might find the section on promoting your website very useful. So, let's get started.
What is a Website?
Basically, the easiest way to describe a website is to compare it to a piece of real estate. The only real difference is that a website is "virtual" real estate. Each website has basically three parts, and they correspond to parts of a real building. Consider your website, as compared to the Empire State Building. It has a name, a physical location (350 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10118) where the building is located, and then there's the actual building, itself.
For your website, you need a similar group of three things. You need a name, a location, and the actual site itself. You can, of course, own the location of your website, by setting it up to run and be accessed on a server, with a high speed connection to the internet, located in your home or office. But, for most people and businesses, its much easier and cheaper to "rent" the space. So, to get a website up and running, you'll have to do three things;
Getting Started
HostJacker has made it extremely simple and inexpensive for anyone, from a complete newbie to an experienced pro, to get one or more websites up and running quickly and easily. The old way of building a website could be very time consuming and difficult. First, you had to find a registrar to buy your domain name from, and then find a location to host it. Some companies offer both services, but their prices for one or the other are normally high. Then you had to buy and download software to build and "upload" your site, and then learn how to use it. Then you had to purchase a "template" to base your site design on, or find a free version with no restrictions that you liked, or spend hours or days designing your own. Then you had to actually build your website, code in all of the links between the various pages, and test all of your pages and links to make sure everything worked like it was supposed to.
At HostJacker, we've combined these three steps into one easy, quick, simple package. Plus, we give you tools, resources and FREE bonuses to help promote your website, once it is built. When you sign up for any hosting plan at HostJacker, you get a domain name registered FREE for one year (and for each year you continue to host with us!). Or, you can transfer an existing domain name, and get a FREE one year extension. Plus, you can register additional domain names for only $9.95 each per year for .com, .net, .org, and .info extensions, (plus others at rock bottom prices). Since even our lowest priced plan lets you host three (3) separate domains, you might want to consider getting a few different variations on the domain name you've chosen.
Once you have your hosting account and domain name, we have an online website builder that is simple and intuitive to use, and an assortment of FREE, unrestricted templates that you can use. This makes building your site so easy that it only takes a few hours to complete, instead of days or weeks. All of the links are automatically set up and working, so no pre-launch testing of each page is necessary. Plus, you have easy access, through our custom control panel, to a large assortment of point and click scripts that allow you to easily add a blog, a chat room, a photo gallery, a shopping cart or dozens of other features to your website, quickly and easily.
All you have to do is;
Monetizing Your Website
If your website is strictly a personal site or a business "image and info" site, and you have no plans to sell anything online, then you can skip this step. If not, then in order to operate a business, or e-commerce website that accepts payments, you need basically two things. A payment processor to accept, verify and process the payments you receive by credit card, debit card and e-checks, and a shopping cart and product pages to sell your merchandise. The site you have from HostJacker has a built in shopping cart and product page script called OScommerce, and you can activate it from your cpanel in your FREE scripts library. Activating it takes just a few clicks, and then you're ready to input your payment data and upload your product pictures and descriptions. There are easy to follow instructions and video tutorials available there to help you through this process.
Before you set up your shopping cart, you need the details of your payment processor. We recommend PayPal as the processor to use, especially for someone new to selling online. Their Premiere account is free and easy to sign up for, has no monthly fees, and charges a small per transaction fee plus a percentage of each sale. The more volume you do each month, the lower the percentage fee becomes. If you reach a certain volume level, you qualify for Merchant Account rates, and the fess are even smaller. Use the link below to see more about the details and fees charged. Once you sign up for your account, you can input the details into your OScommerce set-up area, and you're ready to sell. You can use the link below to sign up for your free PayPal Premiere account.
Once you have your account info, write it down and use it to set up your OScommerce shopping cart. Save your information in a secure place, you'll need it to access your account in the future.
Adding More Advanced Features
If you want to add certain features to your website, such as the audio players from the FREE "Easy Audio Generator", videos from your FREE video generator software, or additional pictures to the shopping and descriptions area or your blog, you're going to need FTP (file transfer protocol) software to "upload" those files from your computer to your website. The software we recommend is FREE and intuitively easy to use. Its called FileZilla. About the only thing you have to remember is to upload your files to the public_html file at your website (you'll see what I mean the first time you use the software). Once you download and install FileZilla, all you need to do is input the name of your website, your username, and your password. All of the other settings can normally stay at the defaults. You can set up all of your sites, if you have more than one. After that, its as easy as choosing your website from the site manager (under the "File" menu), and clicking connect. Click on the public_html file on the right side of the screen to open it, and then "drag and drop" the files from your computer (on the left side of the screen) to your website (the right side of the screen). FileZilla handles all of the work. You can download a FREE copy of FileZilla from the link below.
You can also use FileZilla to download a page off of your website and modify it. To add audio, you have to insert the code generated by "Easy Audio Generator" into a spot on your page. The easy, FREE way to do this is to use the free Notepad software that is probably already on your Windows based computer (look under "Programs" and "Accessories"). First, save a copy of the page under a slightly different name in a different file using copy and paste, and rename it by adding "old" to the name right before the .html (i.e. - index.html becomes indexold.html) Open the original file using Notepad. Then, simply copy and paste the code for the audio player under the line of text where you want the player to appear. Then click "File" and "Save" (DO NOT USE "SAVE AS" TO CHANGE THE NAME HERE!), then close Notepad. Before you upload the changed file to your website, check that it works properly and looks correct by double clicking on it in "Your Documents". If it doesn't look quite right, you can keep opening the file in Notepad and changing it until it does. Nothing changes on your website until you upload the changed page! Plus you have another "good" copy to play with, if you totally mess this one up!
Before you upload the page, but after connecting to your site with FileZilla, right click on the file you're changing on the website (right side of screen), and change its name by adding "old" to it, right before the .html. now, when you upload the new file (without the "old" in the name), it won't erase the original file. If everything works and looks fine when you visit the page, you're good. If it doesn't, just use FileZilla to delete the file you uploaded, and change the name of the original file back to what it was (without "old" in it). Then start over. Don't worry, you haven't damaged anything, and you'll get the hang of it after a few times.
If you want to totally build and design your website offline, there really aren't any good free or cheap solutions I can recommend, unless you want to learn how to code html (not all that easy or quick to do!). If you really want to do everthing off-line and then upload it, you're probably going to need a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) software package to do it. There are some inexpensive ones, but every cheap one I've seen is limited in features and/or difficult to use. The only one i tried that I liked, is no longer available. The really easy, good programs cost $200-$400 dollars or more. One major benfit of hosting with HostJacker is that you have an easy online program you can use for FREE, but if you really want to get software to make major changes to your pages off-line, I'd suggest NetObjects Fusion 10. It's at the bottom of the price range (just under $200), and is quick to learn and easy to use. It also has all the features you could possibly want, and it's interface is similar to the website builder at HostJacker. It also produces reasonably "clean" code, something you'll appreciate if you have to go in and add or change a few things using Notepad. If you'd like to try it out, there is a free trial version you can download. To get it, use the link below.
Of course, now that your site is up and running, you want people to be able to find it and enjoy it, and if its a business (or e-commerce) website, to buy from it. You're next step is to promote your website to a worldwide audience, and hopefully make it as well known and easy to find as the Empire State Building.
Promoting Your Website
There are literally thousands of courses and e-books out there on the topic of promoting or marketing your website, and we'll only be covering the basics here. The basics are really pretty simple and easy to do, with the FREE tools and resources that HostJacker provides. You'll want to make sure your website is set up and contains a good bit of "content" before you start this. Basically, you only need to do four things to get your website "noticed".
1. Getting Indexed and Listed - HostJacker gives you a FREE Search Engine submission tool that you can use to submit your site to over 200 search engines and directories. Make sure you have a separate email account, such as one at Google or Yahoo!, and use it for your submissions. You'll receive quite a few "confirmation emails", and you'll have to click on the links in those to verify your automatic submissions.
Secret Tip 1: To get more quickly listed in Yahoo!, start a blog on your website (check in your FREE scripts, I like WordPress, myself). Post a few entries about things to do with, and containing a fair amount of, your keywords. Then go to your Yahoo! home page, opt in for My Yahoo! beta , and add your blog to your list of favorite blogs.
Secret Tip 2: To get indexed more quickly by Google, set up an adsense account, and put the code for the ads on one or more pages of your site. If yours isn't an e-commerce site, you can always set up a "Sponsors" or "Links" page to place the code. Make sure that page has menu links back to the other pages on your site, and post some relevant content on that page, as well.
2. Getting Ranked- To get high rankings in the search engines takes time, and a little bit of work. Search engines reward quality content based on specific keywords, and relevant inbound links, with high rankings. Choose your keywords wisely. You can use one of several free keyword selection tools to find good keywords for your website, or you can buy keyword selection software to help with this task. My favorite of the free ones is the one provided by Overture.com. For a really good, really complete keyword research tool, there isn't anything that can compare to Keyword Elite. To check it out, Click Here! Once you have a list of good keywords, list them on your websites keyword area in the header, using the FREE website design tool at HostJacker, and use as many as you can in a natural sounding paragraph in your website's description area.
Print out your keyword list and keep it handy whenever you're writing copy for your website, posts to your blog, or reviews of your products. Use your keywords as much as possible in those areas, while keeping the text clean and natural sounding. One thing you can do is use Keyword Elite to analyze your articles and other text, to make sure your keyword density isn't too high or too low. To help your rankings in the search engines, you should constantly and consistently add content to your website. An easy way to do this is to use your blog to do product reviews for the items that you are selling. Use a basic formula for your reveiws (basic info about product, pros and cons, overall recommendation), and put a link from your product to the review, and from your review to the product. Try to do about 2-3 postings a week, and remember to use your keywords in your reveiw, and to "tag" your post with the keywords that apply to it.
3. Getting Links - One easy way to get a lot of backlinks to your website is to post some of your reviews as articles or off-site blog posts. At http://www.blogger.com, you have your own blog that you can use to re-post your blog articles (make minor changes to them, so they aren't identical to your postings on your website). You can use "copy and paste" to post the article, and then edit in a few changes. Don't forget to link your post back to your product's page, or the main home page of your website. As a bonus, blogger.com is now affiliated with Google through gmail, so you can use you gmail id to log in and set up your account, plus your posts (and the links back to your website) should get Google's attention.
There are many free online article submission sites, and several free press release sites as well. You can re-submit your articles and reviews to these sites to get even more backlinks. For press releases, a little more change is necessary. For example, a review of a new product you're carrying should be re-formatted to be an announcement of the product's release, and how it improves on previous products or fills a need. http://www.prfree.com is one truly free online press release site that has good distribution. Try to submit to these sites on a regular basis.
Forums are another good place to advertise your site. Do a search for forums specifically related to your keywords, or try http://www.big-boards.com for a place to start. Don't advertise here, except in forums that specifically allow it. Just post questions and answers as you can, and make sure your signature includes a backlink to your web site!
Also, try checking out Yahoo! Answers. Search for questions relating to your website's theme, and try to provide a thoughtful answer. Although they don't allow spamming or advertising, if someone asks "where can I find..." something or some info that you have on your site, it isn't spamming to direct them there. This site can also help you come up with ideas for information or products that you should have on your site, but don't.
Secret Tip : Find a question, quickly research and add the info to your site (through your blog, perhaps), and then answer the question by stating that "the answer to your question can be found here, (your blog post address)".
4. Getting Traffic - All of the ideas above may start your traffic trickling in, but you can always use more. Online advertising using PPC (Pay-Per-Click) on Google, Yahoo!, Search123 and other search engines is one way to do this. See the EXTRA FREE BONUSES page for a step by step guide to to getting started with a lot of FREE advertising funds from each of them. Buying unlimited clicks for a flat fee from sites like http://www.excite.com is another thing you can consider. You can also get FREE advertising and keyword positions from a site like SearchBigDaddy. Just remember that you "get what you pay for". Free and flat rate advertising will probaly get you less traffic than PPC. If you use PPC, make sure you set daily spending limits, and track your ads to make sure that they are bringing you sales and not just traffic. If an ad campaign isn't making you a profit, stop it and tweak it a bit, and test it again. When you find ads that are really profitable, gradually increase your daily spend limit, and keep tracking them to make sure thay stay profitable. Also, you can use http://www.craigslist.com and other online FREE classified ads to promote your site. Again, test several ads at different sites, and when you find one that works, spread it around. Your website stats can help tell you where you traffic comes from, so you can decide which ad and/or site is best.
For off-line advertising, you can get as creative as you want. You could start with business cards, bumper stickers, pens, notepads, magnetic car signs, anything you want (and can afford to produce. Some sites have had great success with regular mail promotions. Business cards that advertise an on-line only business can be a bit different from most. Just a great graphic, a catchy and interest provoking phrase, and your web address can be all that you include, especially if your web address relates to your product. If you sell cat toys, for example, and your site name is crazycattoys.com, your phrase could be "Is Your Cat CRAZY?", with your web address underneath. Leave these cards everywhere you go, and give one to everyone you meet. You can also use lots of other traditional methods. Bumper stickers, car magnets, classified ads, etc. Just because you sell on-line, doesn't mean you have to only advertise on-line. A good source for inexpensive, high quality advertising materials and business cards is VistaPrint.
Those are the basics. So, get started building and promoting. You might also want to bookmark this guide. In the future we'll update it and add to it, giving you access to other free and inexpensive ways to promote your website and increase your rankings. And, just remember to keep updating, testing and promoting your website on a regular basis.
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