The standard "How to Build a Website" teaching is mostly based on suggesting Wordpress, the free Content Management System. Yes, it is an impressive tool, but not what I believe to be the best solution to the question "How to build a Website".

At least not if you want free traffic form the Search Engines for a long time with the least effort. I admit that for absolute Newbies Wordpress seems to be the tool with the least time investment. But since I personally wanted to build really successful Internet sites, I had to do some learning on my own.

How to Build a Website

It is the same thing as with the stock market. If you do what everybody else does, you get what everybody else gets. Followed the standard answer to "How to Build a Website" myself...

Last week I built a Roofing Austin website. I myself followed the trend and did build sites based on Wordpress (wouldn't recommend that any more), Joomla, Site builders and ... finally found HTML. For good.

If you follow some rules, you get exceptional results.

And though Wordpress, Joomla and the Plesk Site builder (ie. the Hostgator Site Builder) promise you to make Web building a breeze, if you really want to achieve anything, you need to invest a lot of time and learning with these Site Builders. And you still have to live with their disadvantages compared to HTML.

How to Build a Website ... with HTML?

HTML is the basic language of the web. If you know some HTML, you can teach your website to do whatever you want, but still control it 100%. With Site Builders like Wordpress you don't know what happens behind the scenes, and though installing a plugin or Template seems like an easy enough thing to do, it ain't. And you also have to trust the developers.

How to Build a Website with HTML

No, I became successful (measured in free Google traffic) when I stopped doing what everybody did and started learning and implementing some rules. And HTML. Mind you, I am no millionaire. Absolutely not. And I am still on my way. But I am more and more successful.

Though it is no good idea to do so, Wordpress forces you to link every page to every page. It is very hard to change this in Wordpress (especially as a Noob) habit. Yes, you can, but you need to learn a lot to do so.

And honestly, I never mastered Joomla. Though I am the type who loves to play with tools like Joomla, I never really understood it. I wasted my time. And I am still waiting to see my first really successful Joomla site.

And what about the standard site builders? Once you know basic HTML, you see what spaghetti code is often produced by all WYSIWYG (What you see is What you get) site building tools I tested.

Server based (like the Hostgator/Plesk Site Builder) or local Site Builder tools like XSITE Pro or CoffeeCup Visual Editor may be easier to use for the user, but they also have some downsides.

Though esp. Xsite Pro (click for review) may be a good starting point for you. And that's good news for you: If you invest some time to learn what most people think they will never need, you are easily ahead of the curve. No need to invest the 10.000 hours Malcolm Gladwell thinks anybody must invest to become successful.

Since most people not even think about how to even get better in building websites (Wordpress is just perfect, right?), they don't even compete with you. So, let me show you how to get ahead of the pack, not follow it.

Hostgator or Sitesell

Ok then, what do I suggest is the best way to build a website? Well, firstly it is building your site on a tested and proven foundation. I am speaking about HTML.

Yes, in the beginning this seems to be much more complicated that putting up a Wordpress blog with a one click installation. There is a lot of help about how to build an HTML website online. You start with a template, as you do with Wordpress (the best online tutorial I found is called W3Schools).

Then you "fill in" the textarea of the template with your text and save the file under the keyword you are targeting (I explained this in much my tutorial "How to Build a Website to Make Money" as your filename, like /howtobuildawebsite.html.

Secondly, you also need a good hosting company. After having perused several, there are two of them I can suggest to you. If I had no experience in HTML or setting up a website at all and need a lot of instructions and support, have a look at SiteSell. They do a great job of teaching you everything you need to start from scratch. Including a good keyword research tool and instructions how to set it all up, also providing the templates.

If you are a complete web noob, I would start there. Since you have the possibility to either use a web based site builder or build your own HTML websites and upload them, I would suggest you go the "Upload your own HTML" route at SiteSell. So you really learn HTML and stay flexible.

If you are more experienced I suggest you get yourself an account with Hostgator.

Why?

For me they have the best support on the web. And whenever I have a problem, they solved it for me or helped me solve it. They even coded for me. I never have seen any other host helping you with coding. So for a great price and with high reliability, they also offer you a good environment to grow your HTML websites. And for the tricks how to use HTML to get the best results, I again suggest my tutorial already mentioned to you above. In it I explain how to structure your website and how to target the right visitors for your site.

Making or creating a website can be a challenging task and especially for beginners. However, the following tutorial provides all the steps that need to be followed to make the process easier. In addition to that, there are more articles on this page to elaborate and provide more information about the steps that are quite complicated. Apart from knowing to surf the internet, the following are the guidelines for making your site.

Get your domain name

The domain name is like the identity of your page. It serves the same purpose as a business name. Every website creator, just like a business person, must get a right to use a domain name and this right is obtained by paying a certain annual fee to the business registrar. It is important to note that as a newcomer, you need to take enough precautions to avoid making mistakes when obtaining the domain name.

Find a web host and open a web hosting account

The main aim of creating any site is to post information in such a way that everybody in the world can connect to the internet and access it. This is where a web host comes in. It is a company that has many machines that are connected to the internet. The role of the firm is to provide a home for your website. These days, there are many web hosts in the market, and this means you will need to consider various factors such as whether to use SSL for your webpage or not. Using SSL means that the web will have an address of https://.

Unlike in the old days, almost everyone on the internet is using this SSL, and it would be wise for you to use it right from the beginning instead of going through a lot of trouble changing it afterward. You also need to consider the rates the company is charging for the SSL certificates. Some companies offer them for free while others will require you to buy the license or pay a monthly fee. After choosing the right company, point the name of your website to the location of the web host.

Design the web pages

You'll need to decide if you will be doing the work yourself or hiring a web designing company. The advantage of hiring a firm is that you let them do everything for you. If you decide to design the pages, the first thing that you need to do is to learn how to broadcast a simple web page. If you want to develop your site and avoid all technical details, you should consider getting assistance from many web editors available on the internet, either free or commercial. Good examples of these web editors include the Microsoft Expression Web, Dreamweaver, BlueGriffon, Linux and Mac OS X. Whether they are free or commercial, these editors have tutorials that provide guidance on how to design the entire websites and how to deal with all the issues involved in web designing. However, the most important thing that has to be done at this stage is to create a site that is search engine friendly so that the site will have a good ranking on Google.

Testing the website

This is a significant step that needs to be done adequately. You need to check your page as you design it. It will help you ensure that it is compatible with chrome, opera mini, internet explorer, Firefox and other major browsers. Those running Ma can use the virtual machine software. Also, ensure that the underlying code of your page (HTML and CSS) does not contain any syntax errors so that it can still work with different browser versions in future.


Update the credit card information

It is necessary for the people who are doing affiliate marketing or online selling to learn how to accept credit card information on your site. Most importantly, add the “buy now” button. To earn more money, you can include advertisers and free sponsors.

Promote your page

At this point, your site is ready. In case it is not already linked to other websites, you need to submit it to the search engines. For the submission process to be successful, you have to create a webmaster account and confirm that the webpage is yours. The only way your web will get noticed and increasing the ranking is by promoting it through word of mouth, newspaper and, search engines and social media sites. There are various blog companies you can take advantage of that can help you create press releases.

Even in retirement, I am still attached to this computer.  Some friends wanted me to help them with their websites, so I recently took an online class on SEO. At first, I had no idea what SEO was or that anyone needed it. Well, I thought it couldn't hurt to check it out. A local design company helps a very small class at the community college. It was cheap and figure I would probably learn a few things. At my age anything computer and 'new technology' is always overwhelming. I barely go on Facebook. But it's the only way I get to see my grand kid's recent photos.

Then I took the plunge and took a local community SEO class. To my surprise, they broke the information down and started at the basics. I am excited now to see what I can do to get my 'site ranked.'

This is what I've learned and I will try to break it down the best I can.

The first step before tackling any SEO on your website:

In preparing your website for search engine optimization (SEO), it helps to take a look at the web's top sites at the Alexa 500.

In order of popularity; they are Google, YouTube, Facebook, Baidu, Yahoo, Amazon, and Wikipedia. Do everything you can to have links to your website on these major internet sites. You can benefit greatly from piggybacking off of their success. SEO methods require that you cater your search engine outreach to your local area - doing a local search. Look up the Wikipedia article and make sure that your company website is on the list of sources at the bottom. All this requires is creating a free Wikipedia account and discretely adding the web link on the list of companies. Make sure that your company has an article. Here is a link on how to set up an Wikipedia account.

Ok, so that seemed pretty simple.
Many SEO strategies involve SEO content marketing. This means creating valuable content that is effective using key terms that relate to your business. I was trying to come up with the right keywords that other people like to type in for a major search engine like Google. The same goes if you are doing it for a particular term like 'consulting'. While this is helpful, have a broad strategy in mind. Do not just focus on Google because everyone else is doing so. When everyone is doing something, your competition will be stiffer. Look at the social networking sites. Having a YouTube channel can be a big boost to your brand. Sell stuff through Amazon. Write a clear and impartial article about your company on Wikipedia - like I mentioned before. These are all helpful steps to improving your brand's image. In my case 'consulting' was a little too broad - so I started to use the example 'Austin SEO Consulting'. Being in Round Rock - I would have a better chance of ranking when using the term 'Austin'.

Another very simple step to take is to write a blog using Blogger. Blogger is fantastic - a free site for articles relating to what you do. I started to use this and its pretty easy. Did I mention it's free?

Another option is to post stuff on Reddit. I mean stuff like videos. If you have viral videos on YouTube showing your staff doing weird stuff, this can help draw attention to your company. Often, people fail to distinguish themselves from the competition because they are afraid to try something different. For the example 'Austin SEO consulting' themed your keyword terms around something unusual and attractive, like beer, cows, trucks, bar, cowboy, etc. I know its hard to relate the two - but I know I can be creative. When people type this in, your site will be more likely to pop up. Having embedded links on pages like Wikipedia, Amazon, and Facebook is also really important.

So there are a few random things I learned.  Each on their own don't mean much.  But if you're lookigng to increase the visibility of your consltant or small business, they are a good start.

CP/M This was my first exposure to microcomputers (Wow!  64k!) and, though the IBM PC sported 640k, it was two years before my personal programming started feeling cramped.  After seeing the Print Screen key on the IBM PC, I enhanced this operating system to give it a Print Screen function — Zilog80A Assembly was fun. 

MS-DOS It was really the floppy disks that I got tired of — rather than actually running out of real memory.  Thus, my upgrade to an IBM XT-compatible with a 20meg hard drive was like sheer heaven to me.  Oh, and that 8mHz Turbo button seemed like pure genius.

IBM OS/2 &MS Windows 3.1 I outgrew that 20meg hard drive long before I finally bit the bullet and bought an IBM AT-compatible computer.  I went for a full tower this time because I had also outgrown the expansion slots.  I was also tired of command-line prompts (CP/M was the same way) and DOS-SHELL, but I wasn't overly impressed with "Windows" either.  OS/2 was getting a lot of fanfare, at the time, so I went with a 33mHz (turbo), 16meg real, and 128meg storage system (later, I had to add a second 320meg drive).  Wow!  Who could want more?

MS Windows'95 & '98 Before I retired, I ran on a 450mHz, 192meg real, and 11gig storage system which is peer-to-peer networked with two other personal computers — and we're talking about my home here! 

Surprisingly, perhaps, I have no (what I call) "formal" experience in the microcomputer world.  However, I bought my first microcomputer in 1982 — a Zenith/Heathkit Z90 — after IBM unveiled the "PC" (or, Personal Computer) to the world and, since then, I've broadened my own horizons by exploring programming on the personal level, i.e., at home and for myself.  From there, I've even sold and installed a custom-built application at a client site.  The table below will give you a glimpse into where my explorations have taken me.

Hint:  Don't forget what a "PC" is — a personal computer.  Don't try to make it into a corporate-wide computing solution unless you (#1) get all the facts, (#2) know exactly what the company needs, (#3) know exactly where the company is going, and (#4) have absolutely no doubts that the "PC" will be able to take the company there with the minimum amount of trouble as compared to all other possible solutions.  Nine times out of ten, the PC will not be the corporate-wide answer that many people make it out to be; however, this does not mean that the entire corporation will not benefit from a "PC on every desk" scenario.  It will just not be the total computing solution for the corporation.

The majority of my experience has been in the mainframe area — as that is what I normally work with in my employment-type opportunities.  Almost all of that experience has been in non-MVS-type environments, too.  However, I'm confident that I still have much to offer (even in MVS-type environments) after the many years of strong experience and much accumulated knowledge in the areas listed in the table below.

Hint:  Don't believe all the hype that the mainframe is an outdated and overpriced concept that can easily be replaced by a minicomputer or a microcomputer network: achieving a significant reduction in staff and hardware costs without sacrificing power and functionality.  That is a myth.  For example, today's microcomputer (a.k.a., a PC) may seem cheaper and more powerful than a mainframe on the surface, but this is only because it services a single user.  Try attaching upwards of 10,000 users (which mainframes can easily handle, and more) and just see into what kind of troubles and costs you will run.  J

Something I wrote quite a few years ago, that I thought I'd copy for posterity...

With the explosion of public and commercial interest in the Internet, I would have been a fool not to expand the repertoire of services that I have to offer, to a potential client, into the Internet.  As a start, this takes the form of web page and web site design & coding services which may, eventually, go all the way to web hosting services — we'll see.  J

Believe it, or not...  It was my son who actually got me on the ball to undertake a little adult education into the language of the Internet — HTML and its permutations.  How?  Well, first he reached the point where he was heading off for college and he made the "old man" proud by deciding to get a degree in programming.  Then, he started asking me questions about web page design & coding that I couldn't answer.  So, not to be outdone, I set out to find the answers and to make sure, from now on, to keep pace with the computer industry.