Ten Easy Steps: How to Build A WordPress Website For Beginners
Owning a website is more popular than ever. There are currently 1.18 billion websites in the world, however, only 17% of these are active. There are currently 450 million websites that use WordPress. The platform has thousands of plugins and themes available. I do not know of another platform that can compete with WordPress on this front.
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Another great appeal is you don’t need any coding or technical skills to start a website using WordPress. Virtually anyone can build their own website using WordPress. In this post, I will outline how to build a WordPress website in 10 easy steps.
The first step is to choose your niche. This is a really important step in building your website. If you are building the website for your business then this may be a straightforward step. However, if you are not sure what you want your website to focus on this is a step you will want to spend plenty of time on.
You could start by writing a list of topics that are of interest and ideally where you have plenty of knowledge. When building your website you need to be aware that content is king. If you don’t choose a niche that interests you there is a risk you will quickly become bored and your website will become one of the 83% inactive websites.
When you have chosen a topic that interests you and you are confident you can write plenty about it you should niche down again. For example, perhaps you want to start a website about gaming. This is a great topic however it is also broad and it will be challenging to get lots of traffic due to competition. You could niche this topic down further into topics like gaming headphones, Fortnite tips, The Sims tips, gaming chairs, etc.
You are all set with your niche. The next step to building a website is choosing a name. Again, write a list of names related to your niche. Your name shouldn’t be too long, easily memorable, and relate to your niche. If you are building a website with a view to selling it you may want to consider a .com address.
Another important consideration is social media. You will likely start Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profiles for your website to build brand awareness. Therefore, when choosing a domain name check the availability on social media sites. Your brand will be stronger if your social media sites align with your domain name.
The web host is the service that will keep your website online. Therefore you want to choose a web host that is reliable. At Stinko’s Sites, I use IONOS for a number of reasons, one of which is its impressive uptime of 99.8%.
However, they also have great deals on domain names, SSL certificates, and professional email addresses, and you can build your WordPress website directly from IONOS. They also have a managed version of WordPress if you want extra assistance.
However, you may also want to take a look at WP Engine. At WP Engine you could see a 40% increase in your site's speed and an 18% better at driving online sales. This is excellent news for SEO and conversion. They also offer a no-hassle, 60-day money-back guarantee.
Boost conversion and SEO with the fastest performance in WordPress.
Now you have chosen your niche, your domain name, and your web host it is finally time to install WordPress. If you choose IONOS this is a super easy and quick step with the click of one button.
The next step to building a website is choosing a theme. One of the brilliant features of WordPress is the thousands of themes available. There are a number of free and premium WordPress themes available. There is no doubt you will find a theme that suits your niche.
It is important to remember that not all themes are built equal. Whilst there is an abundance of free WordPress themes it can pay to invest in a theme if you are serious about your website and its success. A well-built theme will improve your search engine optimization, offer you more functionality, and provide premade layouts.
At Stinko’s Sites, I use the Div theme. Divi is described as the most powerful WordPress theme out there and is used by over 800,000 professional web designers and website owners.
There are lots of reasons Divi is super popular including the 100’s premade templates suitable for a wide range of niches, the wide range of customization options, the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, and the 40 modules available, to name a few. You can view a demo of Divi here and find out exactly how great it is.
There are literally thousands of WordPress plugins. These plugins can add awesome power and functionality to your website. You should select your plugins carefully as too many can slow down your website. A slow website can seriously impact your SEO. This is bad as SEO is important for organic visits and website popularity.
When you install a plugin ensure it will add value to your website. There are some great plugins to increase popularity including PushNotification plugins. This is a plugin that alerts previous visitors that a new post has been published. There are also essential plugins depending on where your target audience is based. If your website is based in Europe you will need a cookie plugin to be compliant with GDPR regulations.
There are a number of important pages you need to have in place. This includes your privacy page. Don’t worry, you do not need to be a lawyer to have an accurate privacy page. WordPress has a template version that you can amend and PrivacyPolicies is a free website to assist you in writing a privacy policy. This can be copied and pasted directly to your privacy page.
Step 8 to building your WordPress website in 10 easy steps is probably the most exciting. You get to publish your website. Getting to and completing step 8 is the easy part.
In order to make your website a success you will need to add a contact on a regular basis. The content needs to be useful, readable, and of interest to your readers. You should consider adding relevant images to your posts including infographics. This will make your posts more shareable, readable, and popular.
When you hear marketing you think of a marketing company and spending thousands of pounds/dollars/euros. Although you can send money on marketing and this may get you results quicker there are free options available. Search engine optimization (SEO) is still one of the best ways to get traffic to your website and best of all it is free if you do it yourself. There is a lot of information about SEO and keywords play a huge part.
Social media should also be part of your marketing strategy. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are all great ways to increase interest and gain traffic. However, your posts need to be interesting and regular.
You will want to ensure your website is backed up. There are various plugins available to support this. There may be a cost however if all your content suddenly goes missing this could be devastating.
There you go, how to build a WordPress website in 10 easy steps.
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Originally published at https://stinkossites.com on February 5, 2022.
