How to create a website

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At the beginning of the internet, creating a website was a very difficult task, which required knowledge of programming languages ​​and mastery of programs to create and treat images. But over time, several alternatives have emerged. And now it’s very simple to register a name, create a website and produce quality images to make […]

At the beginning of the internet, creating a website was a very difficult task, which required knowledge of programming languages ​​and mastery of programs to create and treat images.

But over time, several alternatives have emerged. And now it is very simple to register a name, create a website and produce quality images to make the page more visually pleasing.

Even so, many companies preferred to “skip” the website step and go for the easy way: just create a Facebook profile or fan page and make it your main web address.

It’s true that you need to be on social media, but as long as you don’t have a website or blog, you are wasting the potential to gain an audience of your own.

In this post, we will explain how to create a website and why it is important, in addition to presenting the best solutions for you to put your page on the air in a simple and definitive way.

Are we going to know these solutions?

Website, blog or profile on social networks?

The most correct answer is: if possible, have all 3.

In the most recent survey by Cetic, the body responsible for studying internet usage indicators in Brazil, the percentage of Brazilian companies that have a website is 57%.

The number of companies present on social networks increased from 36% to 51%, and many of them do not have a website.

As for blogs, there are few statistics. The expectation is that the number will be even lower.

But, after all, what is each use for and why have the 3?

A blog is characterized by functioning as a virtual magazine, allowing to engage visitors with the content published continuously.

It is highly dynamic and can contain tips, guides, articles, infographics and content available openly to all visitors.

It can also be used to disseminate rich materials, which are free content by filling out an application form.

Meanwhile, the sites work in a more similar way to a showcase, as they are not renewed as often.

In addition, especially in the case of corporate websites, the website serves mainly to bring essential information – such as prices, products and contact channels.

The profiles and fan pages, in turn, serve to attract and relate with your audience on social networks.

There, the content is consumed quickly and soon stops appearing to people, which requires recurring and very interactive publications.

In view of these differences, the blog better serves the purpose of generating demand, while the website is more efficient to meet and direct the existing demand. Social networks, on the other hand, serve to relate in real-time with the public and can help to viralize the brand.

For this reason, it is valid to keep the 3, if possible.

Most successful companies integrate the 3 very well in a Digital Marketing strategy :

  • on the website, with links to the blog and profiles on social networks;
  • on the blog, promoting the engagement of visitors on social networks and using the site as a complement to institutional content;
  • and, on social networks, promoting blog and website content.

This is a practical way of working with Content Marketing to attract interested people, relate to them and turn them into customers.

How to create a website from scratch: know the shortcuts

Now, we will really explain how creating a website is possible, even for those who are laymen in the subject.

To do this, you need to follow these steps:

1. Register a domain

The first thing to do is to register your website domain and ensure that you can use it.

The domain, also known as the URL, is the address of your website. That is, what visitors need to type in the browser bar to reach your site.

There are several domain categories. The most common are .com and its Indian version, .co.in .

However, you can also use more specific categories. For example, .edu are the domains of education-related sites, and .gov, the government-related sites.

To have a domain, you need to register and pay for it.

Do not worry: if your domain is not completed and has not yet been registered by anyone, the cost is usually low (around $ 10.00 per year).

If it is already registered , you have 2 options:

  • locate the owner and make an offer to buy the domain;
  • or, most appropriate, think of an alternative name that is still free.

You can register your domain with the hosting contract (the next step in this article) or separately, directly at the body responsible for managing the domains: Interserver.net.

2. Host your website

If the domain is the address of your website, the hosting is the “land” that is at that address.

There are all the pages , images and files on your site, so that visitors can access them.

There are several hosting plans , and the 3 most common types are:

  • shared hosting;
  • dedicated hosting;
  • and cloud hosting.

The difference between shared hosting and dedicated hosting is that, in the 1st, despite paying a more affordable price, you will share the available server space with other sites – which reduces performance. Meanwhile, the 2nd ensures that each site has its own server.

In cloud hosting, on the other hand, your website is not on a physical machine, with its own processor and memory. Instead, the cloud becomes a network of machines that share these resources with each other.

By choosing this modality, your site will be on this network of machines, in an isolated part and dedicated only to it.

The main advantage is that, because it is not a physical machine, your site is not subject to hardware defects. In addition, once hosted in the cloud, it’s easier to increase your website’s ability to receive visitors, as hiring additional resources is simple.

To choose the best hosting, the ideal is to evaluate the size of your website, the forecast of accesses per day and, of course, your available budget.

It is worth remembering that many companies work with registration and hosting services. So, if you have not yet registered your domain, you can do this by hiring the hosting.

2.1. Extra tip for choosing accommodation

There is a tool for controlling hosting services called cPanel. It is the most common and easiest to use after hiring the hosting.

Before choosing your server, check if the hosting you have chosen uses this technology.

When in doubt, ask the seller or open a support ticket to be sure.

This is the visual interface of the latest version of cPanel:

3. Choose a website builder

Remember what we said that you don’t need deep programming or design skills to create a website?

The reason is that today there are website builders. They come with ready-made themes and extra features, which you can combine and customize to create something with your brand’s face.

The most used website builder is WordPress.org. Just be careful not to confuse it with WordPress.com which, although it is a little easier to use, is much more limited in terms of options and autonomy. WordPress.org that, although it is a little easier to use, it is much more limited in terms of options and autonomy.

In addition, WordPress.com uses its own hosting and domain. The sites are under the address “nomedamarca.wordpress.com” and, therefore, do not look professional. The ideal is to always use a registered domain specifically for your brand.WordPress. com uses brand name. WordPress. com ”and, therefore,

In addition to WordPress, there are other interesting builders you can try, like Wix and Joomla!.

3.1. Bonus: installing WordPress

If you chose to use WordPress, as is our recommendation, we have a very simple step by step to install this website builder.

Don’t be alarmed by acronyms and names in English. Most of these tools already have very friendly versions for those who do not understand programming languages.

Come on:

  1. download the latest version of WordPress and unzip the .zip file received in a folder;
  2. create a database for your website. Most servers currently use cPanel as an administrative panel and you can use the MySQL Database Wizard for it ;
    1. Click on “ create a database ”, then on “ create database users ” and, finally, on “ add a user to database ”. Remember to write down everything you have filled in, for later reference;
    2. if you don’t have cPanel, you can use phpMyAdmin or MySQL Client to do this – but it’s a lot of work! So consider using a hosting that has cPanel.
  3. do the upload of files. Do you know those files you downloaded from WordPress and unzipped on your computer? Use cPanel to upload them to the directory where your site will work;
  4. install WordPress. With the files and the database in place, just go to the address of install.php. It will be something like “www.yourdomain.com.br/wp-admin/install.php”;www . yourdomain . com . br / wp – admin / install . PHP ” ;
  5. ready! When the setup finishes running, you will be greeted by a “welcome” screen, where you will fill in the blog title, the user, the password and the email. Once this is done, you will be guided to define your project: / li>

4. Define your goal

Let’s skip the technical part of your site a little bit. After all, you already have a registered domain, a hosting for your files and even installed WordPress or some other builder of your choice.

Now it’s time to think about the purpose of your website (considering that your goal is not to make sales directly through the website since we would be talking about e-commerce, which follows other practices).

Some functions are quite common to almost all sites:

  • present a line of products and services;
  • help people find your location, that is, the physical address of your company;
  • reinforce the reliability of your brand through customer testimonials, successful cases or presentations by your team;
  • disseminate educational materials and other offers to generate leads;
  • open a channel of contact with your company;
  • among others.

All of these functions may be well distributed on your website, but we recommend that you define the main objective to prevent your homepage from being polluted by excessive information.

Your goal has a lot to do with your digital marketing strategy: making your company better known, generating leads for your sales team, among others.

So, at this stage, take the time to think about who your audience is, what content they hope to find on your website (and on your blog too!) And how to organize your pages so that they are satisfied and want to explore other content.

5. List the sections of your website

Most sites end up containing the most common sections:

  • home page, with a good opening image or a carousel of images and striking phrases;
  • who we are, telling a little bit of the story and, sometimes, of the work team;
  • products or services, with a list of what the company offers;
  • customers, usually highlighting the biggest and best known;
  • portfolio or main success cases as a way to demonstrate that the company is reliable and delivers what it promises;
  • contact via form, in addition to addresses and phone numbers.

The reason for the websites being formed by these pages is only one: it usually works.

If you think about it, these items bring together what most customers and potential customers want to know about almost every company.

But that does not mean that you must follow the same path! Use the purpose of your website to define more clearly what sections it needs to contain. More than that: to define what will be the contents of each page.

At this stage, the idea is that you already make a list of the items that must be contained in each section.

You can use pen and paper to make a diagram like this:

Simple, isn’t it? You just created your site map, one of the most important elements of good information architecture!

6. Choose a theme

Back to the settings …

To use WordPress, you need a good theme. And, now that the purpose of your site and the pages that will be contained on it are clearer, it will be easy to choose a striking look.

There are hundreds of high-quality options (we’ve even made a list of the 145 best free WordPress themes ). Just choose the one whose characteristics are more compatible with the profile and the needs of your website.

However, among the many characteristics that a theme can have (or not), one of them is indispensable: responsiveness.

Sites made with a responsive theme can adapt to an optimized display in different browsers and screen sizes. This characteristic is important because, currently, many users access websites through mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones.

If your website is not easy to navigate or view on these devices, you can lose a lot of traffic and even be penalized for its positioning on major search engines, such as Google.

6.1. Extra: setting up your theme

The main WordPress themes allow you to configure and customize the chosen theme.

To do this, select “Customize” from the menu:

In each theme, the level of customization can change. Most will allow you to customize elements of the layout, such as menu, colours, identity and more.

7. Produce content

At this point, you have already defined the purpose and sections of your site. Everything is already beginning to take shape with the choice of the theme.

It’s time to start writing!

First, create the pages corresponding to each section of the site:

The tips for writing the content of each page are the same as we have already given for writing good blog posts :

  • define the central theme, which, in the case of websites, is what the user is looking for when they clicked on the link that will take them to that page;
  • create a list of topics, because, in addition to facilitating the scan, it will help to understand the beginning, the middle and the end of your content;
  • divide topics into subtopics. In this case, the subtopics can already be the content of each paragraph, if the content of your page is not as large as a blog post;
  • review the topics to make sure they make sense;
  • get to work: turn your topics into texts ;
  • review your content, preferably with the help of someone who has not read it before.

Throughout this process, take your target audience very seriously.

For example: do you use acronyms and terms that your audience does not know to explain your company’s products or services? If this happens, it is essential to explain the meanings.

Remember that, for Content Marketing, there is no writer without a reader. Then, deliver relevant content and easy to read for your visitors.

8. Create the images

In other articles, we have already explained how important it is to use attractive and quality images. They add credibility to your content, as well as helping to convert visitors into leads.

If you have questions about how to make amazing images, let’s summarize some of our top tips:

  • see tutorials and tips (there is a lot of material on our blog and on our YouTube channel on how to make professional images);
  • search for professional image references, not just on competing sites, but on sites and blogs you often visit. Save these images as inspiration and never copy them without permission;
  • create or use a color palette (later, we will indicate a tool to help with that part);
  • adopt a style that adds consistency to your site. Photos and illustrations must “speak the same language”;
  • create the images respecting your own knowledge. If you are unable to hire a Designer at the moment, try to “do the simple thing” to avoid the most common mistakes.

Tools that will help a lot

Now that you know the step by step of creating a website, let us know some tools that can help you to ensure the success of your project:

PIXLR

As we explained, if you have a website, you need images.

In some cases, you can buy them using image banks like ShutterStock or GettyImages.

In other cases, however, you may not find exactly what you want, or prefer not to pay for a simpler graphic element.

The Pixlr is a free alternative to create and adjust images. It works within the browser, that is, it does not need to be installed and can be used at any time.

Coolors

The colors you will use on your website are very important.

In addition to being aligned with the visual identity of your brand, they have a great impact on the impression that your website makes on visitors.

The Coolors is an online color scheme generator completely free. Just click on “Generate”, and you will receive a random suggestion.

You can also use an image as a reference or start from a specific color, as the main color of your brand.

Yoast SEO

With WordPress installed, we recommend that you add the Yoast SEO plugin, which helps in optimizing your website for search engines:

Many people are afraid of SEO as if it were a very complicated technique.

There are really many aspects involved in optimization. Those who do not work professionally with this topic may not know all the recommendations for obtaining a good ranking.

Yoast is an alternative to simplify this process.

It shows you exactly where you need to enter your keywords and helps to regulate the frequency and position of those terms in the text.

It is worth stressing that Yoast SEO does not replace the work of a good SEO analyst (the plugin will not find the most relevant keywords for your content, for example).

Even so, it is great to support for those who are starting to develop a website.

Check out our guide explaining how to use Yoast in the best way.

Google Analytics

There is no point in having a beautiful website and not knowing what is happening to it.

Do you know…

  • if you are getting traffic?
  • how do users get to your site?
  • what pages are most viewed?
  • how much time, on average, does a visitor spend within the site?

Without the answers to these questions, it is impossible to improve your website or take advantage to generate business.

Fortunately, all of this information is easily obtained.

Google is able to do automatic crawling. Just create an account on the Google Analytics service and insert a code on your website.

Google Analytics analyzes will be displayed in a very friendly control panel, with tables and graphs. These metrics (or KPIs ) will be the basis for you to devise strategies to develop your website in the long term.

SEO: search engine optimization

We have already indicated the use of Yoast SEO, which optimizes pages to increase the chances of them appearing among the first Google results when someone searches for a keyword that you have prioritized in your content.

Even with Yoast SEO, it is important that you understand some very simple concepts that help in this optimization.

So let’s go over 4 quick SEO tips for your site to be well rated by Google and other search engines:

1. Title

The title of your website is what is on the browser tab:

And also, highlighted on the Google results page and other mechanisms:

It has a fundamental value to optimize your page. Try to keep it below 60 characters and use the most important keyword in the content.

2. URL

The URL is the address of your page and is also shown on the Google results page:

The same recommendation as the title is valid: do not exceed 60 characters and, whenever possible, use the most important keyword in the content.

3. Keyword

Believe me: you need a keyword strategy.

Search and define the keywords that your audience is looking for during the purchase journey and produce content focused on those terms.

With this, you attract interested people, who can become customers.

An important SEO factor is your page gaining quality links.

The more sites that link to your content, the more Google will understand that your content is relevant to users. As a result, your position in the search results tends to improve.

There are several strategies for getting these links. Let’s go over some?

The backlinks (links from other domains that link to your site) remain the main influence for a page and ranking on Google.

But it is not enough to acquire links from many different domains. It is important that those domains that are referencing your content also have authority.

In practice, it may be better to receive fewer links – but from sites that Google considers reliable and authoritative in the matter – than to receive a large number of links coming from sites of low or doubtful credibility in the eyes of Google.

So, the first tip is: never buy links from other sites. If a page is selling links, it is only a matter of time before Google realizes this practice and starts to penalize that domain – and that, together, penalizing the pages linked to it.

If you want to invest money in digital marketing campaigns, it is preferable to advertise on Facebook Ads or Google Adwords.

To earn quality links, there are 3 simple tips:

  • write great content. If the content on your site is relevant and quality, it will be linked by other pages. It may be that he receives fewer links, but certainly, the visitors who arrive at your site through these links will be more qualified, with the potential to become leads or customers;
  • comment on other sites by linking to a page on your site, but only when your content is relevant. Never force content that is irrelevant or unrelated to the article just to appear in the comments;
  • partner with content, exchanging links when relevant to the audience of both sites.

In general, as sites tend to have more institutional material than blogs, they are likely to receive fewer links.

Still, it is important to work to achieve some quality links. They can make all the difference when competing for the top positions in Google’s search results.

The power of content marketing to attract the right people

What is a website – or a blog – without good content?

Content marketing is a powerful tool for generating customers and revenue.

With constant and relevant content production, you will gain more and more interested visitors, converting your website into a business-making machine.

To create quality content, you need to have a good strategy, with planning and organization.

Some important tips:

  • prepare an editorial calendar, respecting a recurring publication. If your site has a “success stories” section for your customers, how about updating it with a new story every month ?;
  • develop a sales funnel, understanding your customer’s purchase journey and reflecting this advancement of the journey on your website;
  • create well-structured guidelines, seeking to offer content that covers the entire journey. Leave depth and diversity to your blog. On the website, be objective and try to communicate with contacts at different stages of the funnel;
  • write thinking about a persona, that is, adapting the tone of writing and the complexity of the content to the maturity of who you expect to visit your site.

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