How to build a great website since the very first day

Online businesses could provide not just a complementary income but become a full-time career if they consolidate over time. That’s because it takes time for any company to build trust an authority among both customers and search engines.

Just as many large companies started one day with small offices and now they have large headquarters, in the same way many (if not all) online business started as simple blogs or web pages. Therefore one of your first goals in this industry should be to know how to build a great website as the foundation of a large authoritative business in the long run.

The thing is that if you start business both online and offline considering it as a hobby, giving it occasional time and attention, the result will be a hobby: it will provide you with rare small satisfaction, or maybe none until you give it the required seriousness

And when I think of seriousness, I’m not referring to invest money because the general idea is that most people who intend to thrive in this kind of business start with nothing or almost nothing to invest in. I’m talking to give it hard work to make it grow even during those times when it seems that nothing happens with it despite our efforts.

Think of your business as if it were already consolidated

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Having the idea of an already well-established business has a psychological effect as you might know. If you can imagine and actually feel what is like to have an online business with posts and pages ranked in first positions, a lot of visitors coming daily to your site and of course conversions reflected in your bank account, that would be a big boost in your motivation.

Nevertheless, there is a more immediate and handy effect. Thinking in your webpage and your whole business as a reliable and well-recognized company will help you to sketch a plane with the critical phases of its development to focus attention, time and energy on them and avoid getting lost in the most superficial aspects.

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In the beginning, it is easy to get distracted with the embellishing parts of your website, such as the theme, header, banners, widgets, colors, fonts, etc. These are essential parts to pay attention to, however, are not as critical as:

• Choosing a niche
• Knowing your audience
• Writing valuable content
• Formatting this content for SEO purposes
• Getting ranked at first positions within Google, Bing or Yahoo
• Attracting visitors
• Solving your visitor’s questions, problems or needs
• Monetizing your site
  …and more important things.

The desired success or final goal of your business is to get known and become a trustable and authoritative source of information to your audience to transmit the message you want and to push them into some specific actions like buying, asking, commenting, subscribing, etc. So if you focus from the very first day in the critical aspects above mentioned of your website, such a goal will be more easily tracked and eventually accomplished

Leadership starts with small details

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Don’t worry about not having the whole picture at the beginning of your journey. It is expected to go through a learning curve, but you can set up a solid building from the first brick.

Choosing a niche

It is critical at the first step to define a particular niche to target all your endeavors. It is usual to have a little bit of confusion here about what is a category which is something too broad to work with and a niche which is a smaller group of people sharing standard features, interests, and needs. It’s ok to explore this issue but not recommended to lasts too much time to decide on it because it is the cornerstone of your business and will define all your further activities.

Knowing your audience

The knowledge of the audience in your niche should grow as long as you build your business over time, do continuous research, and focus in more precise aspects of it. Nonetheless, a light search should provide you with some relevant information about the prospects who you are going to target your content.

Writing valuable content

You do not need to be an expert writer or create a masterpiece to produce a valuable blog post. What you need is to bring trustworthy information, proven facts, useful techniques, or even personal opinions based on expertise and research. Everyone knows about a particular topic more than average people. That’s what gives you a differentiation factor, and you can write it just the same as you talk with friends.

Formatting this content for SEO purposes

Google and other search engines have adjusted its algorithms to evaluate any content that is published online. Features like the number of words, proportion of keywords, title, headlines, images, meta title, meta description, internal links, external links, etc., are all taken into account to have your post or page ranked in the first places or even penalized for a bad evaluation. But don’t worry about it if it seems too much data to process at one time. There will always be a checklist available to take care of these details before posting systematically.

Getting ranked at first positions within Google, Bing or Yahoo

Although the main search engines have the last word about ranking positions, which at the end of the day doesn’t depend exclusively on you if you watch for the right SEO points like ones mentioned in the last section. You’ll have more chances to compete with other sites in the world for better rankings which will also improve as long as you gain authority before search engines. So the sooner you can incorporate the habit of being aware for SEO in each one of your posts, the quicker you’ll get your posts in the first positions of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Attracting visitors and Solving your visitor’s questions, problems or needs

Catching the attention of a specific audience comes from the knowledge you have of them. What do they want?
What problems they have?
What are they looking for?
How can you help them to solve their troubles or needs?
These are some of the questions you can address since the very first day if you take the time to browse and find some forums, blogs, pages, etc., related to the main topics within your chosen niche. So in a glimpse, you should have enough data to start connecting with your audience.

Monetizing your site

You do not need to wait until you have hundreds of visitors per day on your website to establish monetization mechanisms. Even if you are not yet prepared to monetize since the first day, you should have in mind the many options you have at your disposal to do it since the more accessible ones like adsense or affiliate links to the more demanding but more rewarding options like writing and selling your own e-book or having an e-shop. What would you like to be earning in the next three, six, twelve months?

No need for tall buildings

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If you can focus on the points mentioned above and some others that you can find on proper training courses like those offered within Wealthy Affiliate, you can adequately build a robust website and an integral online business over time. Many if not all of those described activities can be done for free as they mainly require of your creativity and hard work.

Even any other of the embellishing parts while setting up your website should be available at no cost. All of this is part of the organic way of creating, building, and improving your site.

Of course, you always have the option to spend the money you want in any or all the elements of your business, like paying for a WordPress theme, hiring a ghostwriter or an SEO expert for perfecting your posts, or even start with pay-per-click campaigns to boost the monetization,

However, there are three things to take into consideration before you decide to give away any cent:

1. Many of us start this kind of business precisely because we don’t have enough money to spend, but on the contrary, we need another source of income.
2. Some of the expenditures you might do like paying for a pay-per-click campaign at least at the beginning could put you in a risky position and compromise your budget and finally harm your business instead of helping it
3. Really, you don’t need a spectacular display of power and energy to say that you are the new kid on the block. Keep your energy for later because this race is like a marathon, is a resistance process, not a speed one, and many of the bells and whistles you can spend your money and energy on, would act against you during bad times or at least be unnecessary at the beginning.

All starts with one idea

So what do you need right now to start?

• A solid background in informatics?
• Knowledge of complicated codes like HTML?
• A big budget to spend on buying a domain, hosting, and other web services?
• Hire someone to write for you?
• Hire some SEO expert?
• Invest in risky and ambitious strategies like PPC?

Categorically not!

The only thing what you need to start in this very moment is to have an idea about what you are really interested in communicating to others, whatever it is and where you want to be in the short, medium and long term.

That’s it!

The present-day could make the difference

If you could determine today what topic are you really passionate about. Or at least one that interests you enough as to do some research on it for communicating what you know with other individuals you are one step ahead of many people out there who are willing to start an online business but don’t have any idea of what it would be about.

I know it may sound too simple, however, can you tell right now what topic would be that, which you can see as a source of information that other people would like to have?

Be aware that I’m not talking about to think in something profitable. That would be a trap because you start by the wrong side imaging how could you earn some revenue of any kind of product or service. Don’t!

The idea here is to think of something that could bring real answers and solutions to people who are looking for them. What kind of problems people you know would have right now? Maybe are those related to their homes, or their health or their cars or their money. What would they need to solve that specific problem? What can you help them?

You see in just minutes your mind shift from thinking of “the market” to “the solutions.” Maybe you can’t see how radically different it is, but trust me it represents a whole world of difference, and I can assure you that the other perspective is which at the end of the day turn out more profitable and consistent income.

The purpose will move your feet

If a could leave you with a final message that would be that don’t pay much attention to technical or esthetic details because they will come almost automatically when you need them.

Instead, look for a higher purpose for your business. Think of those people who can benefit from your information, who will go to your site for a specific answer because they see you as an authority in a particular field.

Once you can outline that image in your mind, an inner force will drive you to look for any knowledge, tool, technique, etc., you need to make it.