Feb 2, 2010
Basic Website Building Tips
I will be introducing website building basics in this post. I was contemplating on whether this article should be written or not, since there are numerous in-depth resources on this topic. However, it doesn’t hurt to highlight some key important aspects of building websites for the inexperienced webmasters.
It’s quite easy to build a website without any experience at all. There are so many tools that generate the coding for you. For example, a blog can be built with absolutely no knowledge of HTML, PHP, Javascript, etc. All you need to do is write some random gibberish, post a few pictures and voila you’ve got a website running. But will people come and read your work? Is your work any different from another Joe Blow’s work? Does your content provide value to your readers?
Unique Content
People preach about importance of unique content all the time, however I would like to give you a different perspective. I am not disagreeing with the significance of unique content, but it really depends on what kind of website you are building. This blog for example, if I just went and copy and pasted someone else’s content it would be pointless and a total waste of time. Google probably wouldn’t even index my site due to duplication. Unique content for my blog is very important. On the other hand, if this was a blog was not about making money but instead posts funny video around the internet, your content is undoubtedly not unique. However, even though you took the videos off another site like YouTube, it still generates value to you users. How? You took the time and effort to sift through all that crap on YouTube until you found a video you thought was genuinely funny. You could always go out and shoot a funny video and post it on your website, and it guarantees that it’s unique but chances are you aren’t funny and no one will appreciate your work.
Domain Name
There are a few things you have to keep in mind for domain names. There are two types, gTLD and ccTLD. gTLD stands for generic top level domains and ccTLD stands for country-code top level domains. gTLDs are the .COM .NET .ORG and the ccTLDs are the .UK, .CC, .TV. Why does it matter? It matters because if you pick a ccTLD Google will think you are targeting a specific country only. For example, if you have a domainname.fr (France) Google will think your website is in French and target French audiences only. Know who your target audience is and choose accordingly.
Another thing that comes to mind about domain names is the choice between non-www or www. As you know climbmywayout.com and www.climbmywayout.com will both lead you to my website. However, to Google (I talk specifically about Google because it’s the largest search engine) it’s two different pages. Since Google thinks it’s two different pages, it may index them both. A word of caution, Google will lower your page rank if they see duplicate content on your website. There are two ways to solve this problem. You can use either use mod_rewrite (assuming you are running Apache Web Server) or you can use canonical URLs.
Mod_rewrite method:
Make a file called .htaccess if there isn’t one on the server. Put the following code in it:
RewriteEngine on
Rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.climbmywayout\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.climbmywayout.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Adding this code will force climbmywayout.com into www.climbmywayout.com so you will only have one URL leading to the main page.
Canonical URLs:
You can add <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.climbmywayout.com/”/> inbetween the <head></head> tags.
For more information about canonical URLs you can visit http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
Web Hosting
There are countless number of webhosts out there, and most of them are unreliable so be careful when you are choosing a host. It’s a tedious task to have to move your website, or in a worst case scenario you lose all your data. I not going to recommend any hosts at the moment, but I will give a few pointers in host choices.
First ask yourself, geographically where will your visitors be coming from? You don’t want to get a host in Germany because it’s cheap when all your visitors are coming from the United States. It will lag for your primary visitors. I for one hate slow loading sites.
Choosing between shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server can be a headache too. Say you want to start a video hosting website, obviously you need a lot of resources and bandwidth and a shared hosting account may not suffice and it’s a hassle to move to a VPS or dedicated server later on. On second thought, you are just starting out and you have no traffic yet, is it worth the VPS or dedicated server? This one’s your call, save money or save time.
Note: There has always been a misconception about shared hosting that if you are placed on a server that had an account causing mischief it will affect your page ranking. By mischief I mean spammers, content duplicators, or cheaters. Google will not punish your page ranking for that.
Monetizing
I will briefly discuss about monetizing your new website. I will get into detail on this in future posts as this topic is very content specific. Here are several types of advertising:
- Cost-per-click (CPC) is paid by every unique click on the ad. Examples are Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Clicksor, etc.
- Cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) is paid for every one thousand impression of the ad. Examples are Fastclick, Doubleclick, etc.
- Cost-per-action (CPA) is paid by commission of every sale you generate for the advertiser. Examples are Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.
A lot of these advertisers overlap carrying more than just one style of advertising and you need to find the right combo to maximize the revenue of your website.
Here is a list of DON’T DOs:
- Have more than one popup
- Have a full page ad show on every webpage
- Trick people into clicking your ads
- Click your own ads
- Use fake traffic
Keep in mind, before going haywire on sticking those ads into your site, concentrate on your content. It doesn’t matter if you have a million ads on your site, if your content sucks and no one will come and those ads are nothing but decoration.
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