How To Make A Website From Scratch in 2024 | A Step-By-Step Beginner’s Guide

If you read this guide till the end, you’ll know exactly how to make a website from scratch, even if you’re a total newbie.

Whether you’re a freelance writer, a consultant, or a small business owner, you can easily create your website using WordPress in just 1-2writing hours.

I’m talking about creating a world-class responsive website that immediately makes an impression on your prospects, helps you stand out from the crowd, and converts visitors into high-paying customers.

Websites like Angry Birds…

Magazine sites like The Next Web…..

Corporate consultancy sites like Michael Hyatt & Co.

Or freelance consultant sites like Iconic Content

Just a few years ago, creating such sites would’ve cost you thousands of dollars. Today, you can do it for under $200.

This is what this mammoth guide is about.

Don’t worry if you’re a total newbie. I’ll hold your hand and walk you through all the steps to create a website and start making money online.

Let’s dive in.

The Things You Need To Make A Website From Scratch

You need only three things to get your website up and running.

• A domain name (your site’s URL www.yourwebsite.com) – usually costs $15/year.
• A fast and secure web hosting account to host your website files – $3.95/month
• WordPress to design, configure, and manage your site – free

If you’re in a hurry and don’t have the time to read this post till the end, here’s a summary of the steps you need to follow to create your website.

• Sign Up for a Bluehost web hosting account
• Register your domain name (comes free with a Bluehost account – you save $15)
• Install WordPress
• Choose and configure your website design theme
• Set up your site’s homepage and other important pages like About, Contact, Services, Blog, etc.
• Install the necessary WordPress plugins
• Set up your email address
• Publish your site

There’s a lot of detail to each of these points, which I’ll cover in this article ( I strongly recommend you read it).

How Much Does It Cost To Create A Website?

A website domain name (the URL people enter in a browser to visit a site) usually costs $15/year.

However, Bluehost, the best web hosting company for beginner bloggers and small businesses, offers a free domain name for the first year along with world-class website hosting services for $3.95/month (if you sign up for a three year plan which is what I suggest because it’s cheaper)

I’ve been a Bluehost customer since 2015, and it’s been an excellent experience which is why I am so confident in recommending them.

That’s it, no other expense because WordPress is free, and purchasing a premium theme for your site is optional.

Overall, you can start your website in less than $150 with a three-year Bluehost plan.

11 Easy Steps To Creating Your Website

Starting a website in 2024 is much easier as compared to a few years ago. You have all the tools you need to host, manage, design, and grow your site.

However, it’s still essential to follow the correct process while building your site.

In the rest of this post, I’ll break down the complete process of building a website into actionable steps so that you can implement them right away.

Let’s get started.

Step#1 – Have A Clear Goal For Making A Website

Why do you want a website?

What do you hope to accomplish from it?

What value will it add to your business or life?

These questions might sound very basic and obvious, but it’s critical to have clear answers to them before you start building your website.

Why?

Because your web hosting service, website design, domain, etc., will vary depending on your website’s goal.

For example, if you’re a freelance writer and want to create a website to attract clients, your site’s design, content, and marketing strategy would be completely different from a blog that’s monetized with Google Adsense.

You need to be clear about what you want to achieve with your site because there can be several objectives.

Do you want to sell products on your website and receive payments online?

Do you only want a corporate website where prospects can view your business deals, products & services and contact you via email?

Do you want to start a blog that you can monetize with affiliate marketing or advertisements?

Whatever the objective, you need to be clear about it because it directly impacts what we’ll do next.

Step#2: Choose A Brandable Domain Name For Your Site

The first thing you need to start a website is a domain name.

A domain name is a unique address that internet users can enter in their web browsers to visit a website.

For example, the domain name of my site is writingmydestiny.com

Your domain name can be anything as long as it has not been registered by someone else.

If you’re registering a new domain name, it should cost you around $15/year. However, some premium domains cost a lot more, but you shouldn’t worry about them.

Choosing the right domain name is crucial because it impacts your brand image and credibility. But don’t spend too much time on this step.

Just remember that your domain needs to have the qualities I’ve highlighted in this image.

Here are some tips for choosing the right domain name when making a new website.

1. Choose A Brandable Domain Name

Your site’s domain is a core part of your brand identity. Instead of generic words, it should be a name that you can easily use across brand assets like websites, social media accounts, PR campaigns, stationery, etc.

For example, if you’re a fitness trainer, a domain name like ExtremeFitness.com sounds much more like a brand as compared to something like FitnessTrainerInLA.com

2. It Should Be Relevant And Expandable

Your domain name should be relevant to your core business and should immediately give people an idea of what your company does.

At the same time, it should be a name that you can use to grow your business in the future without any problems.

For example, if your domain is HeadphonesExpert.com, you won’t be able to expand your product range to other closely related tech products like keyboards, mouse, drivers, software, etc.

3. It Should Be Short And Easy To Remember

Avoid domain names that too difficult to pronounce and spell or too long and complex to remember.

Here are a few examples of difficult domain names.

• DomainName.com – 90% of people will be confused by the double ‘n’
• My-Best-Domain-Name.com – Too long and confusing with hyphens.
• Pseudomonas.com – The spelling is too difficult for a typical user

Try limiting your domain names to two common words that are easy to spell and remember.

4. Stay Away From Exact Keyword Match Domains

Domain names made up of high-ranking keywords for the sole purpose of attracting search engine traffic are called exact match keywords.

Here’s an example, BestHeadphonesForGaming.com

As you can see, this domain doesn’t sound like a brand and is a keyword that it wants to rank for.

Exact match keywords have no SEO benefit now. And even if they do, they sound spammy, hurt your brand’s credibility, and make it hard for people to take your site seriously.

In short, stay away from them.

5. Choose A Dot Com TLD

Top-level domain (TLD) is the suffix or extension that comes after the first dot in your domain name.

Most domains use .COM but you also have the option using .NET, .ORG, .IO, or country level TLDs like .US, .AU, .UK etc.

My suggestion – stick to .COM TLDs because they’re easily recognizable and the default TLD internet users think of.

How To Register A Domain Name

Suppose you already have a domain name registered. In that case, you’ll need to transfer it to your web hosting account by replacing its default Domain Nameservers (DNS) settings with the DNS settings of your web hosting company.

If you don’t have a domain name yet, you can register it when you sign up for a web hosting account which I’ll cover in the next point.

Step#3: Sign Up For A Secure And High-Performance Web Hosting Service

Apart from a domain name, you need a web hosting account to create a website.

What is a web hosting service?

It’s an online storage service that securely hosts your website files, helps you manage your website data, and serves it to your website visitors.

The quality of your web hosting service directly impacts your website’s performance, user experience, search engine rankings, and ultimately your sales numbers.

There are hundreds of web hosting companies, and I’ve personally used at least 6 to 7 different hosting services.

I’ve been a Bluehost customer since 2015, and in my experience (and according to most experts), it is the best web hosting service for small businesses, freelancers, consultants, and beginner bloggers.

You can sign up for a Bluehost account for just $3.95/month and get

• Unlimited monthly bandwidth
• A free domain name for the first year
• Free SSL Certificate (https://) for the first year
• Custom email addresses
• One-click WordPress installation
• 99.9% server uptime
• 24/7 Customer support via Live Chat, Email, and Phone

Here are the three main Bluehost pricing plans you get to choose from

If you’re starting from scratch and have a tight budget, the Basic plan is ideal for you because it gives you all the necessary tools and features to host your website.

However, if your budget allows it, I’d strongly suggest going for the Plus plan I’ve been using since 2015.

Everything in this plan is unlimited and gives you the best shared web hosting features at a very affordable price of $5.95/month (if you sign up for three years).

Before I tell you how to sign up and configure your Bluehost account, let me answer an important question.

The Two Main Types Of Web Hosting Services

There are various types of web hosting services, but you can broadly put them into two categories.

– Shared Web Hosting Services

In a shared web hosting plan, your website is hosted on servers that host other websites as well. Which means you have to share the resources with other sites.

If you’re using a world-class web hosting service like Bluehost, shared hosting does not affect your website’s performance as long as your traffic numbers are within a specific range (several thousand visitors per day).

I have a seasonal website hosted with Bluehost, which gets nearly 50K visitors per month throughout the year and 50K+ visitors per day for almost a week every year.

It has been working fine for years.

For most freelancers, small businesses, and beginner bloggers, shared web hosting offers the best value for money since it’s much cheaper than dedicated hosting.

However, once your site starts approaching 5K-7K visitors per day, you should consider switching to a dedicated web hosting service.

– Dedicated Web Hosting Services

Your site does not share servers and other critical website infrastructure resources with other sites in a dedicated web hosting service.

This results in better site speed, performance, and security and allows you to handle hundreds of thousands of visitors per day on your site without any downtimes.

However, it’s an unnecessary expense for small-medium traffic sites that can get the same benefits from a shared hosting account.

Setting Up Your Bluehost Web Hosting Account

Okay, so it’s time to purchase your Bluehost account and set up your website.

First of all, go to the Bluehost website and choose a web hosting plan.

If you want to start multiple websites with unlimited features, the Plus plan offers the best value for money.

However, I’ll go with the Basic plan for this tutorial since it’s ideal for small businesses, freelancers, and bloggers.

Click on “Select” under the Basic plan to get started.

Choosing a domain name for your site is the first thing you need to do. Bluehost gives you several TLD options but as I’ve said before, go for a .COM domain that’s brandable, relevant, expandable, and easy to remember.

If you already have a domain name, you’ll need to transfer it to your Bluehost account by replacing its DNS settings with the standard Bluehost DNS. You can read the step-by-step guide here.

Once you choose a domain, you need to create your account by filling up a standard account information form. If you want, you can also sign up using your Google account.

Just below the form, you need to choose your package term.

I recommend choosing the 36-month plan because it significantly reduces your package cost.

As you can see, the rates for the same plan are higher if you go for a 12 month or 24-month term.

• The 36-month plan would cost you $142.2 @ 3.95/month.
• The 24 month plan would cost $118.8 @ $4.95/month.
• The 12-month plan would cost you $71.4 @5.95/month.

Pro Tip: You can get additional discounts on the 36-month plan if you reach out to the Bluehost customer service team via Live Chat. I’ve done this multiple times, and they’re always very cooperating.

Just below the package information field, there are some additional features that you can purchase if you want.

Domain Privacy + Protection is a useful feature that costs less than $1 per month but protects your content information and hides it from public search.

If you don’t buy it, anyone can look at your email address and domain registration details by checking your site’s WHOIS record.

The rest of the features aren’t necessary, and I don’t suggest spending money on them since there are free alternatives available for most of them.

Next, choose your payment mode (credit/debit card or PayPal) and make the payment for your web hosting plan.

The final step is to accept the Terms & Conditions and click on Submit to complete your purchase.

Congratulations! you’ve just signed up for one of the best web hosting services in the world and taken a significant step towards building your website.

You’ll get an email receipt of your purchase and a separate welcome email from Bluehost with your account information and FTP login details.

You can now sign in to your account with your login credentials.

If you visit your website domain and don’t see an active site immediately, don’t worry.

It sometimes takes a few hours for brand new sites to show up.

Meanwhile, you can continue setting up your website.

Step#4: Install And Set Up WordPress On Your Site

Now that your web hosting account is active, it’s time to set up your website by installing WordPress CMS on it.

Why WordPress?

Because it’s the world’s most popular and widely used content management system (CMS) that powers more than 27% of the internet and dominates the global CMS market.

Thanks to WordPress, even non-technical users like me and you who have very little coding knowledge can easily create beautiful and high-performance websites.

And it’s completely free.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org – Which One Is Right For You?

Don’t get confused.

WordPress.com is a website and blog hosting service that uses WordPress CMS.

We’re not talking about it here.

The WordPress I’m asking you to install is WordPress.org, the world’s most popular CMS.

There are several differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, but we’re not going to discuss the details here.

All you need to know is that whenever you hear someone praise WordPress CMS, they’re talking about WordPress.org (like I’m doing in this article).

Back to the main topic.

Installing WordPress On Your BlueHost Site

Installing WordPress on your website is a breeze with BlueHost.

WordPress installation is a part of the account setup process in BlueHost we discussed in Step 3.

So, once you complete your account purchase, BlueHost takes you to WordPress installation by asking you to name your site.

Switch on the button next to “Do you want a blog?” to automatically add a blog to your site.

Next, tell BlueHost a bit about your site’s goals so that it can recommend relevant themes and plugins.

We’ll discuss theme selection and configuration in detail in the next steps so you can skip this part for now.

In case you didn’t realize, BlueHost has silently installed WordPress on your website in the background, congratulations!

If anyone visits your website URL now, they’ll see a “Coming Soon” page like this.

This is the default view of your site, and I know you don’t like it.

But don’t worry, we’ll completely transform it after we install and configure the right theme and plugins.

All good?

Let’s start configuring your site so that it’s ready for your visitors.

How To Log In To A WordPress Site

The default login URL for all WordPress sites is “https://yourdomain.com/wp-login”

You can also access the login page by using “wp-admin” instead of “wp-login”

When you enter this URL, you’ll be taken to your site’s login page, where you need to enter the email and password you chose during sign-up.

Just enter your details and press login to access your WordPress dashboard.

This is the area where you will perform all the routine management tasks of your WordPress website.

Now that you’re in your WordPress dashboard, here’s what you need to do next.

Step#5: Install The Necessary WordPress Plugins

To have all the necessary features on your WordPress site, you need to install certain plugins.

This is where WordPress is better than all other CMS platforms.

Its library of more than 500K plugins allows you to add any feature or function to your site with just a few clicks.

However, installing many plugins unnecessarily can slow your site down and put its security at risk.

This is why I’ve handpicked the essential plugins that every WordPress website needs.

How To Install A WordPress Plugin

Hover your pointer on the Plugins link in your WordPress dashboard and click on “Add New”

This will take you to the WordPress plugin section, where you can search from a database of hundreds of thousands of WordPress plugins.

Once you find the plugin you’re looking for, click on the “Install Now” button next to its name.

After the plugin is installed, you need to click “Activate” to start using the plugin on your site.

Let me now give you the list of WordPress plugins you should install on your site.

Note: You can find all of these plugins by searching for their names in the WordPress Plugin Library, as I’ve just shown you.

1) reCaptcha by BestWebSoft

If you don’t install this plugin, your site will be bombarded with spam comments and emails every day.

Trust me, I’ve tried many other anti-spam plugins, but this one’s the best.

Here’s what it does.

It adds a simple reCaptcha checkbox under every form on your site. As a result, bots and spam never get through.

To use this plugin,

• Install and activate it from the WordPress Plugin Library.
• Create your website profile on Google reCaptcha(takes 5 minutes).

• Copy your unique Site Key and Secret Key from the Google reCaptcha site.

• Go to the settings of reCaptcha by BestWebSoft from your site’s “Installed Plugins” section.

• Paste the unique Site Key and Secret Key in your plugin settings.

The plugin is now ready to kill spam on your site.

Remember the WordPress login form I showed you earlier?

This is how it appears once you install and activate this plugin.

And here’s how the comment form under your posts and pages will appear to your visitors.

Users will have to manually click on the “I’m not a robot” checkbox to comment or log in to your site.

Bots can’t do that, hence zero spam.

2) Yoast SEO

To drive traffic to your site, you need to optimize it for Google Search and other search engines.

Yoast SEO makes it very easy to perform all the basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tasks and build a solid SEO foundation for your site.

This is why it’s the world’s most popular SEO plugin.

I’ll discuss Yoast SEO and how to configure it later in the post.

3) Elementor Pro

Elementor Pro is the most popular page builder tool for WordPress websites.

It is the only paid plugin on this list, but it’s worth every penny because its drag & drop functions make website designing a breeze.

It’s like having a professional website designer on your team at a fraction of the cost ($4.10/month, to be exact)

Elementor also has a free version with limited features but to experience its true power, you need to sign up for the pro version.

4) Site Kit By Google

Site Kit by Google gives you a snapshot of your site’s search performance in your WordPress dashboard.

It is integrated with your Google Analytics, Search Console, and Adsense accounts. It gives you a holistic view of your site’s search performance, revenue, best-performing content, and overall user experience.

A really handy tool for every website owner.

5) WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is another vital plugin you need to have on your WordPress site. It helps improve your site’s overall performance and speed by caching its static HTML content and reducing its load times.

6) Easy Table of Contents

This plugin auto-generates a nice looking and clickable table of content using which your readers can easily navigate through long-form content.

Really handy plugin to have.

7) Sumo

Sumo is one of the best plugins to capture email addresses and turn your website visitors into email subscribers. Plus, it gives you several other useful features like social media sharing buttons, announcement bars, welcome mats, etc.

It has a paid version, but the free plan should be good enough for your needs.

8) Wordfence Security

The last plugin on this list is essential. If you don’t want your website to be hacked or destroyed by malware, make sure you install Wordfence Security to your site.

It’s a free plugin, but it’s a life-saver.

Trust me, I learned it the hard way.

Okay, so now that you have all the necessary plugins on your WordPress site, let’s start working on its appearance.

Step#6: Get An Attractive Logo For Your Website

Your site’s logo is an integral part of its brand identity. However, a great logo design doesn’t need to be overly complex.

Some of the world’s most well-known and popular brands have straightforward logos.

Don’t spend too much time on this step. All you need is a presentable logo that resonates with your overall brand image.

There are two ways to get yourself an excellent logo design.

i) Design A Logo With Canva

Canva is a handy free tool to create logos, banners, social media images, blog images, and infographics.

I’ve been using it for years to create all kinds of graphics and images for my blog content and customers.

It gives you dozens of logo design templates and a drag & drop interface using which you can create a logo for your site in just a few minutes.

If you regularly need images and graphics for your content, I seriously suggest signing up for a Canva Pro account.

ii) Run A Design Contest On 99Designs

Want a professionally designed logo at a very affordable price?

Run a design contest on 99Designs, one of the world’s leading freelance marketplace sites for design projects.

He’s how it works.

You only need to describe your brand and the kind f logo you’re looking for, set a winning price, and start a contest to invite logo designs from thousands of designers.

Choose the winning design, pay for it, and use it on your site.

That’s it.

Step#7: Install And Configure A Responsive WordPress Design Theme

After all the background work we’ve done so far, we’re finally here to start designing your website.

Thankfully, you don’t need to hire an expensive designer to create your site. Instead, you can choose the right design from thousands of free and premium WordPress themes.

Let me show you how.

1. Search For The Right WordPress Theme

There’s a never-ending supply of high-quality WordPress themes (both free and premium) that you can use for your website.

However, the theme you choose needs to have the following qualities.

i) Responsive Design

According to Statcounter, more than 51% of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices.

A responsive website design adjusts according to the device it is viewed on. If your site’s design isn’t responsive, it won’t appear properly on mobile devices. As a result, you’ll lose out on a large chunk of your visitors.

Plus, your search ranking will suffer because of Google’s Mobile-First policy.

In short, make sure you install a responsive WordPress theme to your site.

ii) Fast Load Speed

No matter how attractive your theme looks, don’t use it if it slows down your site and hurts the user experience.

According to research, an average internet user abandons a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Every additional second means more lost traffic and customers.

Slow speed also hurts your search rankings since Google considers page load time one of the key search ranking factors.

iii) Page Builder Support

Page builders like Elementor and Visual Composer allow you to completely transform your site using drag & drop elements and save you tons of time.

Make sure you install a theme that supports WordPress page builders.

iv) Regular Updates

Themes that are not regularly updated pose a major risk to your site’s existence because they’re vulnerable to cyber-attacks and other security threats.

Plus, with so many advancements in website design technology, themes can quickly get outdated if they’re not updated regularly by the theme designers.

So make sure the theme you install gets regular version updates.

v) Fully Customizable

The WordPress theme you choose for your site needs to be fully customizable so that you can mold it according to your business needs.

It needs to have multiple templates, widgets, shortcodes, and other features that allow you to change its look and feel as you wish.

vi) Active Customer Support

Last but not least, the theme you choose needs to come with active customer support and a broad user base so that you can turn to them for advice whenever you get stuck or face a technical problem.

How To Find And Install A WordPress Theme

You can choose a free or premium WordPress theme for your site, depending on your design preferences.

Premium themes usually come with more features and better security and cost you anywhere between $21 and $200. However, you can find a good premium theme for around $50.

But if you don’t want to spend money, there are lots of great free WordPress themes as well.

To search for free WordPress themes, go to your WordPress Dashboard–> Appearance–> Themes

On the themes page, you can see the default themes that are already installed on your site. To search for new themes, click on “Add New Theme”

In this section, you can choose from thousands of free WordPress themes. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are more than 3800 active free themes in the WordPress theme library right now.

You can either search for a particular theme from the search box or click on the Popular tab to see the most popular free themes.

You can also refine your search by choosing the exact features you want in a theme.

As you can see from the filters above, you can find themes for every type of website.

If you’re just starting, I suggest going for a free but high-rated WordPress theme to save money.

But make sure it has all the qualities I mentioned earlier.

2. Install The WordPress Theme You Like

You can choose any free theme that meets your requirements. I like Astra, one of the most popular WordPress themes right now.

I’m using it on multiple sites in different niches because of the wide range of ready-to-use templates it offers, plus it’s a fully responsive theme with lightning speed that you can customize according to your needs.

In short, it’s one of the best free WordPress themes I’ve seen because usually, you’ll only find such features in premium WordPress themes.

I’ll use Astra for the rest of this article to set up a WordPress website.

It’s one of the first themes listed in the WordPress Popular themes section (just search for it if you can’t see it).

To install the theme to your site, click on the Install button.

The installation process will take a few seconds, after which you can activate the theme to start using it.

The theme is now active on your site.

But it still doesn’t look pretty because we need to configure it.

3. Import And Use A Design Template By Astra

This is where you’ll start enjoying this process (if you aren’t already).

Astra comes with many free, fully responsive, and high-quality WordPress theme templates for different industries.

Whether you’re creating a site for your freelance writing business, a brick-and-mortar store, an eCommerce site, or any other type of business, you’ll find templates to match your style.

To access the templates, click on Appearance–>Astra Options from your WordPress dashboard.

Here, you’ll need to activate the starter templates plugins, after which it will start appearing under Appearance in your dashboard.

Before you see the templates, you’ll need to choose a page builder plugin to edit the themes.

Make sure you choose Elementor (I’ve already mentioned it in the plugins section).

This will take you to the templates page, where you can see all the free and premium Astra templates.

Filter the results to view only the free options.

There you go.

Dozens of high-quality templates you can use for free.

Looking at those templates, why would you need to hire a designer or spend on expensive premium themes, especially when you’re just starting?

I clicked on one of the templates that I liked, and it took me to the template’s dedicated page, where I can see more details about it.

It’s meant for coaches and consultants, but I think it’ll work well for freelance writers and even regular bloggers.

It gives you a choice to download the homepage design only or import the complete site design.

You can also preview the template live before importing it to your site.

Let’s have a look.

Looks perfect.

Let’s import the full template so that we can quickly set up your site.

Leave the default settings in place and click import. The import process will take a few seconds.

Your site has been transformed.

It now looks like a professionally designed website of a six-figure consultant.

But you need to customize it before you can start using it for yourself because currently, it’s full of dummy content.

Let’s do this.

Customizing Astra Design Template With Elementor

Astra comes with the free version of Elementor, my favorite WordPress site builder.

Using Elementor, you can change the appearance of your website in any way you want.

To get started, click on “Edit With Elementor” at the top of your screen.

This will take you to the Elementor edit interface, where you’ll have a long list of drag & drop elements that you can use on your site.

Using Elementor, you can change the homepage text, add videos, insert testimonials, add CTA buttons, new text paragraphs, and so much more.

Elementor Pro, the paid version, has even more darg & drop elements like email pop-ups, animated headlines, login, and sign-up forms, counters, etc.

Let me change the heading of this page for you.

You can edit every page of your site in the same way.

For example, in the GIF below, I’m adding a video to one of the site’s pages.

As you can see, there’s a lot you can do with Elementor to modify the look of your site.

If you need more ideas or help using Elementor, I suggest following the Elementor 101 video series on their YouTube channel in which shows you lots of different ways to use Elementor.

Other than this, the template is ready for use. Just add your images and content, move to the next step.

4. Add Your Logo To The Site

Remember the logo we created earlier in the article?

It’s time to use it on your site.

Go to Astra Options in your WordPress dashboard and click on Upload Logo

This will open WordPress Customizer, where you can edit all the visual aspects of your site plus several other settings like header, footer, menus, etc.

Click on Site Identity to change your site’s logo.

From this section, you can replace the default theme logo with your new logo.

Once you have uploaded your logo, you can adjust its size using the Logo Width controls.

Other than changing the logo, you can also edit the fonts and colors on your site.

5. Change The Fonts And Colors Of Your Site

To change your site’s font style or the overall typography, go to the Global settings in WordPress Customizer.

In this section, choose Typography.

You can edit both the Base Typography style (the font style used all over your site) and the style of your headings.

From this section, click on the dropdown menu to choose the font you like, adjust its size, line spacing, etc.

To change the colors of your site, go to the Global settings again, and click Colors.

Choose the colors you want for the text content, links, and headings on your site.

These options allow you to fully customize your site and make it look exactly the way you want.

But wait, there’s more you can do in the WordPress Customizer.

6. Add A Sidebar To Your Site

Sidebars are typically used on the internal pages of a website or its blog.

You can add a sidebar to your Astra site from WordPress Customizer.

As you can see, you can add a sidebar through your site or in specific sections like blog posts, archives, or pages only.

For each section, you can choose a sidebar on the left, on the right, or no sidebar at all.

Plus, you can also adjust the width of the sidebar from this section.

There’s a lot more you can do from the WordPress Customization section if you explore the other options available to you.

We’ll move on to the other things we need to do to set up your site.

Don’t worry, we’re pretty close to finishing this.

Step#8: Add The Necessary Pages To Your Website

Apart from the homepage, every site has other essential pages that tell the visitors more about its business, people, services/products, etc.

In general, most websites have the following pages.

• About: A page that introduces the people behind a website.
• Services/Products: A page that lists all the products & services offered by a business.
• Portfolio/Samples: A mandatory page for consultant and freelancer websites that showcases their best work.
• Shop: If you’re selling products online, this is an important page to have.
• Contact: A page with a contact form that visitors can use to get in touch.

Depending on your website, you might also need to include the following pages on your site.

• Privacy Policy
• Return Policy
• Affiliate Disclosure

Since we have imported the complete website template from Astra, we already have some of these pages on our site.

You only need to edit them using Elementor, as I showed you earlier (when logged in to your site, visit any page and click on “Edit With Elementor” on the top of your screen).

For example, on the contact page, you just need to change the contact info that’s visible on the page and change the email address connected with the contact form.

Again, you can easily do it by visiting the page and clicking on “Edit With Elementor.”

All the messages from this contact form are sent to your WordPress admin email by default.

If you want to change it, go to the WPForms plugin from your WordPress dashboard.

Choose the form you want to edit.

In the form section, click on Settings–>Notifications

Here you can see that the “Send To Email Address” is set to your default admin email. You can replace it with any email address you want. If you’re going to send the messages from your site’s contact form to multiple emails, enter all of them separated with commas.

How To Create A New Page In WordPress

If you want to create a new page, you can do it from your WordPress dashboard.

Go to your WP dashboard, hover the mouse over Pages, and click on Add New.

Create your page, give it a title, and add your content (text, images, video, etc.) in the section below.

In the right-side panel, you can configure the different settings of your page, for example, its visibility, layout, sidebar settings, etc.

You can also click on the “Edit With Elementor” button to visually build the page using Elementor.

The WordPress Block Editor (which you’re using) allows you to add different elements on your page from the “+” icon.

When you’re done creating your content and editing the page, click on the Publish button to make your page publicly available.

How To Add A Blog To Your WordPress Website

The template we’ve imported from Astra doesn’t have a blog page by default (most of the other templates already have it).

No problem, we can create it ourselves.

Go to your WordPress dashboard, hover your mouse over Pages, and click on Add New.

Now name your page as Blog (or whatever you want) and enable a right-hand sidebar from the settings section of the page.

Now go to your WordPress dashboard again and click on Appearance–>Customize.

In the customization menu, click on Homepage Settings

Here you’ll see that your homepage is set to “Home” (a static page). Leave it that way.

Below the Homepage menu, there’s a Posts page menu.

Click on the menu and choose the Blog page that we just created.

Select the Blog page and click on Publish to finish the setup.

Now when you go to the URL “yourwebsite.com/blog,” you’ll see a blog page.

Every new blog post you create will appear on this page. Plus, you can use the sidebar for advertising or any other purpose you want.

How To Create A Blog Post In WordPress

Creating a blog post in WordPress is very easy.

Log in to your WordPress dashboard, hover your pointer over Posts, and click on Add New.

To create a post, give it a title and enter your content in the editor below.

Once you complete a post, set a featured image, assign tags, and choose a relevant category for it before finally pushing the Publish button on the top.

Step#9: Configure Your Site’s Navigation Menu

Now that you have configured and set up all your website pages, one of the final things in terms of your site’s appearance is to create a navigation menu.

The navigation menu includes links to your site’s main pages that visitors can use for navigation.

Source

It is usually a part of a website’s header and appears on all its pages.

How do you create a menu?

Go to your WordPress Dashboard–>Appearance–> Customize

On the customize page, click on Menus

If you notice in the screenshot below, the current navigation menu of the site does not have a link to the Blog page.

We can simply go to the Menus section from the customization page and add the Blog page link to our existing menu.

But I’m creating a new menu to show you how it is set up from scratch.

When you click on the “Create New Menu” button, it takes you to the next step, where you need to name your menu and choose the locations where you want to display it.

If you notice, I’ve marked it as the Primary Menu, which means it will replace the existing menu. But it won’t show in the Footer section.

In the next step, you need to add links to your menu.

When you click on the Add Item button, it will show you a list of the existing pages of your site.

To add any page to your menu, just click on it.

As you can see, when you click on the pages in the section highlighted with green color, the links will be added to your menu list highlighted in red.

If you want to add a page to your menu that doesn’t exist right now, you can create it by clicking on the Add button in the green highlighted section.

Once you add all the links to your menu, click on the “Add Items” button again to collapse the page list.

As you can see, the Blog link is now visible in our main navigation menu.

You can add more links to your navigation menu by following the same steps.

Plus, you can also create multiple navigation menus and use them on different pages when required.

Set Up An SEO Friendly URL Structure By Configuring WordPress Permalinks

The default URL structure for WordPress websites looks like this.

https://www.writingmydestiny.com/?p=123

From an SEO perspective, this is a pretty useless URL because it doesn’t tell you or the search engines anything about its content or topic.

An SEO-friendly URL, on the other hand, is made up of relevant keywords. Just by looking at the URL, you can tell what the page is about.

To turn the default WordPress URLs into SEO-friendly URLs, follow these steps.

• Go to your WordPress Dashboard–>Settings–>Permalinks
• Your current permalink structure is set to Plain, which shows pages by their id numbers.

• For SEO-friendly URLs, choose the “Post name” URL format.

• As you can see, the Post Name URL format uses keywords in URLs which makes them more descriptive. Here’s how your URLs will now appear.

https://writingmydestiny.com/guest-blogging

• When you write a new blog post or create a page on your WordPress website, keep your URLs limited to 2-3 keywords max.

As far as the visual setup of your website is concerned, we’re all done.

You now have a website worth presenting to your clients and target audience.

Congratulations!

But there’s still some administrative and backend work to be done.

Step#10: Set Up Your Professional Email Addresses

When I started my first site way back in 2007, getting a custom email address, instead of a generic Gmail or Yahoo account, was such a great feeling.

I felt like an actual business owner 🙂

I used it to reach out to other website owners for partnerships, major blogs in my niche for guest blogging opportunities, and my clients and prospects to discuss their projects.

It made me look more professional compared to a random freelancer with a Gmail address.

In short, a custom email address is another big part of your overall branding game.

How To Create An Email Address In Bluehost?

Login to your Bluehost account and click Email & Office in the side menu of your account’s home screen.

On the Email Accounts page, you can see the list of your existing email addresses and several other email options that I’ll discuss shortly.

For now, click on “Create An Email Account.”

This opens up an email sign-up form.

Choose your domain name from the list, and enter your name or anything else you want to use as an email.

I’d suggest using your name for your email address like [email protected]. It looks professional and authentic as compared to emails like [email protected] or [email protected].

Next, create a solid password that you can also remember. Make sure you include uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters to create a strong password.

In Mailbox storage, assign unlimited storage to your primary email address. If you have other team members, assign storage limits to their email addresses.

Click on “Create” to finish setting up your email address.

Your email address will now start appearing in the email address list on the Email manager page like this.

But how do you send and receive emails at this address?

Here’s a simple solution.

How To Set Up An Email Forwarder In Bluehost

The first option is to set up a forwarder on your email account so that all your emails are automatically forwarded to your Gmail or Yahoo account from where you can read them.

To set an email forwarder, click on the “View Details” button next to your email address on the Email Manager page in Bluehost.

This will open your email address settings from where you can change your password, edit your email storage quota, set autoresponders, and create forwarders.

Click on “Forward This Mailbox” to set up a forwarder.

This will take you to the email forwarder setup page.

In the “Address To Forward” field, choose your custom domain email address.

Just below it, choose the “Forward to this address” option and enter the email address where you want to forward your emails.

Click “Submit” to complete the forwarder settings.

Any emails sent to your custom domain email will now be forwarded to your personal email, where you can read them.

But if you respond to the forwarded emails, they will be sent from your personal email.

I’m okay with this.

But if you’re not, you can set use Bluehost webmail to send/receive emails and manage your inbox.

How To Check Email In Bluehost – Webmail In Bluehost

You can easily check your Bluehost inbox and respond to emails by logging into Bluehost Webmail.

Simply go to https://bluehost.com/webmail and enter your email and password to access your inbox.

When you log in, you’ll see a page where you need to choose your default email client.

Let’s go with Roundcube and also check the box that says “open my inbox when I log in” to save time the next time we log in.

This takes you to your inbox, which has a standard look (although a bit outdated) and from where you can send, receive and manage your emails.

All the emails you send from this inbox will show your custom email address to the recipient.

Bluehost also has complete step-by-step guidelines on setting up your custom email on different email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, etc., or your iPhone and Android devices.

You can read it here.

Step#11: Assign The Necessary WordPress Admin Roles

Okay, this is really important if you have more than one person involved in your site’s management.

WordPress allows you to assign various roles to users with different permissions.

As the owner of your site, you will keep all the permissions for yourself. But you will assign the necessary permissions to any of your team members.

This ensures that your site remains secure and free of any unauthorized access.

Here’s how to do it.

Go to your WordPress Dashboard–>Users–>All Users

On this page, you can see the list of your existing users.

I’m now the only user with the Administrator role, which has all the permissions.

Click on Add New to create a new user profile.

Fill in the details of the person you want to add as a user and choose their role from the dropdown list.

As you can see, there are multiple roles, each with its own set of permissions.

Keep the Administrator role to yourself and assign the contributor or author roles if you have other team members.

Step#12: Set Up A Solid SEO Foundation For Your Website

If you want your website to get regular traffic, you need to optimize it for search engines.

Why? Because Google Search is the best way to drive an unlimited number of visitors to your site.

Just look at this insane statistic.

Google Search processes more than 3.5 billion searches every single day.

92% of all online experiences start with a search query, while 46% of eCommerce searches start with Google Search.

In short, if your site is optimized and ranks for the keywords that your target audience is searching for on Google Search, you will never have to worry about getting people to your site.

So how do you lay down a solid SEO foundation for your site?

Let me explain

1. Set Up A Google Search Console Account For Your Site

Google Search Console is your control panel from where you can monitor your site’s search performance, communicate with Google, and view and fix any indexing errors.

All Google users already have a Search Console account, and you only have to activate it. (sign up for a Google account if you aren’t a user yet).

Follow these steps to set up your account.

• Sign in to your Gmail Id and visit Google Search Console

• If it’s your first time here, Search Console will ask you to add a domain or a URL to your account. Choose the first option.

• When you enter your domain in Search Console, it will ask you to verify that you are the site owner.

Google Search Console Domain Verification In Bluehost

• To verify your ownership, copy the text verification record.
• Sign in to your Bluehost account and go to Domain Manager from cPanel.

• In Domain Manager, choose your domain name and click on “Manage” next to DNS Zone Editor.

• In the DNS Zone Editor, choose your domain name, and choose TXT from the Type dropdown menu.

• Now paste the verification text you copied from Google Search Console in the TXT Value field.

• Click on “add record” to finish editing your DNS record.
• Now go back to Google Search Console and click on Verify to complete the verification process.

It sometimes takes a few hours for DNS records to update, so don’t worry if the verification doesn’t work immediately.

Once your site is verified, you can now use your Google Search Console account.

Here’s how your main dashboard will appear.

Your Google Search Console account setup is now complete.

2. Set Up A Google Analytics Account For Your Site

Google Analytics is the world’s most popular web analytics tool that tells you in detail about your website visitors, their demographics, your daily traffic numbers, your most popular content, best traffic sources, and a lot more.

Without an analytics account, you won’t have any insights on who’s coming to your site and how popular your content is.

Setting up Google Analytics is simple.

• Sign in to your Gmail account and visit Google Analytics

• Click on the Start button and name your analytics account.

• Choose “Web” as your tracking type in the next step since you mainly want to track your website traffic.

• Enter the website URL that you want to track.

• This will take you to the settings of your Analytics account. To enable tracking on your site, you need to copy your unique Google Analytics tracking code from your account and paste it into the HTML code of all the pages on your website that you want to track. We’ll simply copy/paste this code to the Header of our site since it loads with every page. This way, tracking will be enabled on our complete website.

• To add the Analytics code to your website’s header, go to your WordPress dashboard–>Appearance–>Theme Editor.

• Be careful in this section. If you don’t understand coding, don’t make any changes on this page. Just simply click on the Header.php page in the Theme Files list.

• In the HTML code of header.php, scroll down to find the <head> tag, click on it, take your cursor to the end of the tag, and then press ENTER. Now paste the Google Analytics code that you copied from your account right below the <head> tag, and press the Update button.

That’s it, you have enabled Google Analytics tracking on your site.

It usually takes 24 hours before your Google Analytics account starts showing your traffic numbers.

Here’s how your Analytics dashboard will look like when it has active data to show.

Now, whenever you want to see how much traffic your site is getting or which pages on your site are the most popular, just head over to your Analytics account and dive into your site’s traffic data.

3. Configure Google Site Kit On Your WordPress Site

SiteKit is a handy WordPress plugin by Google that allows you to see the data from your Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and Google PageSpeed Insights in your WordPress dashboard.

It gives you a holistic picture of your site’s search engine performance and saves time by giving you all the data in one place.

You can install the plugin from the WordPress plugin library.

Once installed, here’s how the plugin should be set up.

• Go to your WordPress dashboard–> SiteKit
• Click on Start Setup to begin the process.

• In the next few steps, you’ll need to verify the ownership of your site.
• But since you’ve already configured both Google Search Console and Google Analytics by verifying your site ownership, you don’t need to repeat the whole process.
• Just click Sign In with your Google account and follow along the process.

• When you complete the installation process, your Search Console account will be linked with your SiteKit plugin.
• Now you’ll be redirected to your WordPress dashboard from where you can link the other services to your account.

• Just click on the Connect Service links under AdSense, Analytics, and PageSpeed Insights to link them to your SiteKit plugin.

This is how the plugin will appear in your main WordPress dashboard after all the services are linked.

As you can see, it gives you a summary version of your site’s search stats in the dashboard.

But if you click on the SiteKit link in the left panel and go to the plugin’s page, you’ll get more detailed stats.

It shows you your traffic source distribution for the last 28 days, along with the total number of impressions, clicks, and unique visitors from search.

If you scroll down, you’ll get details of your most popular pages and the search terms that bring in the most traffic.

If you scroll down, even more, you’ll get a live score of your site’s PageSpeed test performance.

Under each section, there’s a link to the tool from where the data is originating (Search Console, Analytics, etc.)

If you click on those links, you’ll be taken to the original reports in the respective tools, where you can explore the data even more.

Overall, Google SiteKit is a convenient plugin to have because it gives you a comprehensive snapshot of your site’s SEO performance in your WordPress dashboard.

4. Configure Yoast SEO Plugin On Your WordPress Site

Now that we have configured Google Search Console and Google Analytics let’s now set up your site for search engine domination.

What we’ll do here is that we’ll set up your site’s SEO title, URL structure, sitemap, and other fundamental SEO settings so that your site becomes search engine friendly.

Doing so won’t immediately open traffic floodgates to your site, but it will put you in a position where if you regularly publish high-quality content on your blog, your site will rank high in search results.

Thankfully, there’s a plugin called Yoast SEO (I mentioned it in the Plugins section of this article) that’ll do all the technical stuff for you in easy steps.

How To Set Up Yoast SEO Plugin In WordPress

Once you install the Yoast SEO plugin from the WordPress Plugin library, follow these steps.

• In your WordPress dashboard, go to SEO–>General.

• Allow Yoast to index all your site’s pages by clicking on the button in the screenshot. The process will complete in just a few seconds.

• Now start the Yoast SEO configuration wizard, which will set up all the basics of your site’s SEO. I have attached the screenshots of what you need to do at each step of the wizard.

• Choose your business type in this step.

• If this is a company website, a consultancy, or a freelance writer site, choose Organization. Add the name of your company, upload your logo, and add your social media accounts.

• If your site has multiple authors, choose yes, otherwise select No.

• Use your site’s official name.

• I recommend signing up for the Yoast SEO newsletter so that you keep learning the basics of SEO

• That’s it, the setup is complete. But there’s one small thing left to do.

Go to your WordPress dashboard –> SEO–> Search Appearance

• In this section, disable the indexing of Tags on your site.

We’re all done here.

Your site’s basic SEO has been configured.

How To Optimize Page Titles And Meta Descriptions For SEO

We’ve completed the overall SEO of your site.

Now you need t do a couple of things.

• Optimize the titles and meta descriptions of all the existing pages of the site.
• Optimize the titles and meta descriptions of all the posts/blog articles you publish in the future (on-going activity).

Let me demonstrate how you’ll do it.

Go to your WordPress Dashboard–> Pages–> All Pages

You can see the full list of pages of your site in this section.

Let’s optimize the Home page title and meta description.

When you click on Edit under the Home page, it’ll take you to the WordPress Editor, where you can change the page’s content.

If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll see the Yoast SEO widget.

This is the widget you’ll use to optimize the title and the meta description of your page for search engines.

Start by choosing a focus keyword.

This is the main keyword or phrase for which you want to optimize your page. You’ll need to find target keywords for each of your pages and your overall content strategy using keyword research (here’s a brilliant keyword research guide to help you).

Let’s assume the focus keyword of our home page is “Content Marketing Services.” We want our site to show up in search results when someone searches Google for this keyword.

We’re optimizing your homepage title, so you need to use this keyword in your title in a natural way while positioning your company to offer these services.

Here are a sample title and meta description I created.

The meta description doesn’t directly impact search rankings even if you don’t use your target keyword in it. But it’s a short description of your page that appears in the search results and has a crucial role in persuading users to click on your title.

So make sure you write an engaging meta description for all your pages and articles.

The Slug field you see above the meta description is the URL of your page. In this case, it is “https://yourwebsite.com/home.”

Generally, however, it should be comprised of your main focus keyword

Apart from helping you optimize your page titles, URLs, and meta descriptions for search engines, Yoast SEO also gives you recommendations on optimizing the overall content of your page more effectively.

You can view them in the SEO analysis section that comes right after the meta description box in the widget.

You have to do this for every page and blog post on your website.

Make sure you create unique meta descriptions for every page so that there’s no duplication in search results.

That’s all you need to know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for now. If you want to learn more, here’s a handy beginner’s guide to SEO.

Step#13: Add An Online Store/eCommerce Features To Your Site (optional)

If you want to sell products on your WordPress website, add eCommerce features like product catalogs and payment collection, or wish to turn your site into a fully functional online store, WooCommerce has you covered.

It is one of the world’s most popular eCommerce solutions that powers more than 26% of all online stores and dominates the WordPress eCommerce market with a share of more than 90%.

And here’s the best part.

It is completely free and straightforward to use.

How To Set Up A WordPress eCommerce Store With WooCommerce

To set up WooCommerce on your WordPress site, follow these instructions

• Install and Activate the WooCommerce plugin from the WordPress Plugin Library.
• As soon as you activate the plugin, it will start the auto-configuration wizard that asks you a series of questions about your business to set up your account in less than 5 minutes.

• Just follow the instructions, and your site will be set up in no time.
• After the setup is complete, if you go to the Pages section in your WordPress dashboard, you’ll find new eCommerce store pages added by WooCommerce.

• These are ready-to-use online store pages, but they’re still empty because you need to add products to your store and complete the remaining items in the WooCommerce setup.
• Click on WooCommerce in your WordPress dashboard to go to the plugin’s settings area.

• There are some additional paid features in WooCommerce, like membership sites that you can ignore if you don’t need them.
• Go to “Add my products” to start populating your store.
• Adding products is simple and works like any other WordPress post or page (as you can see in the screenshot).

• Give a title to your product and add a detailed description in bullet format that highlights your product’s key features and benefits. The more detailed your product descriptions are, the better for your customers and store’s SEO.
• If you scroll down the page, you’ll find the standard Yoast SEO widget where you can optimize your product page the same way that I described earlier.

• Below the SEO widget, you have the complete product data section to enter every detail of your product like pricing, inventory, shipping, additional attributes, variations, etc.

• In this “Product short description” section, enter a summarized introduction of your product that can be displayed on the product listing page.
• And finally, add your main product featured image, plus any additional images you want to add to show on the product page.

• You can publish as many products as you want using this process.
• Here’s a sample view of how your online store would look like when your store is fully populated.

• And here’s an example of a WooCommerce store product page.

• After adding products to your store, there are a few other steps like configuring shipping, taxes, etc., if it applies to your store.
• And finally, you need to set up the payment methods using which your clients can pay for the products on your website.
• You can do it from the WooCommerce settings section in your WordPress dashboard.

• WooCommerce supports the following payment methods: Stripe, PayPal, Cash On Delivery (COD), Bank Transfer.

That’s all you need to do to set up your WordPress eCommerce website.

You can now use Facebook and Google Ads or SEO to drive traffic to your online store, sell products from your website, and collect payments online.

Step#14: Publish Your WordPress Website

If you’ve read this far and implemented everything, I’ve told you, congratulations!

Your new WordPress website is ready to go live.

You can now publish all the draft pages, make them public, and start promoting your site to attract visitors.

Step#15: Create A Long-Term Content Marketing Strategy

The last step in making a successful website is an ongoing thing.

Content Marketing is one of the most profitable and long-term ways to market your business, products, and services and establish yourself as the go-to expert in your industry.

According to a recent survey of more than 3400 marketers by HubSpot, 60% of marketers consider content marketing very important for their business.

The finding makes complete sense because the same survey in 2019 found that the number one focus of 77% of marketers was creating written content (ahead of all other marketing activities).

But what exactly is content marketing, and why are marketers so excited about it?

What Is Content Marketing & Why Is It Important?

Simply put, content marketing is a value-driven marketing strategy in which you convert strangers into subscribers and subscribers into customers by publishing valuable, high-quality, actionable, and well-researched content.

The content can be in the form of blog posts, white papers, landing pages, videos, images, podcasts, etc.

The core objective of content marketing is to establish your brand as the go-to expert in your niche by answering the most common questions of your target audience more comprehensively than your competitors.

Why is content marketing so important?

Because most consumer buying decisions are now based on the content, they consume on the internet through blog posts and videos.

According to a study, 61% of U.S consumers have made at least one purchase because of a blog post, while 70% of consumers learn about a brand because of its content rather than paid ads.

In short, if you want to consistently drive traffic to your site from search engines, social networks, and referrals, there’s no better strategy than content marketing.

How To Create A Long-Term Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing strategy is an extensive topic, but I’ll list some of the fundamental things you need to do to create the foundations of a solid content strategy that you can follow for years to come.

1. Identify The Needs Of Your Audience

To create useful and problem-solving content, you first need to understand your audience’s main problems and needs.

Let me quickly give you a few ideas to understand your audience better.

– Keyword Rarticleesearch

Keyword research is the process of finding out what keywords your target audience is searching for on Google Search.

It is one of the main ways to find out the actual needs of your audience.

To perform keyword research, you’ll need to use a keyword research tool. I recommend using SEMRush since it has one of the best and most updated search databases.

To begin your search, just enter the URL of any of your main competitors in SEMrush to see what keywords they’re ranking for.

For example, if your site is about weight loss, fitness, and training, or if your brand sells products related to these topics, NerdFitness is the perfect site for inspiration.

If you click on the “Organic Research” link in the left panel, you’ll get the list of the top keywords NerdFitness is currently ranking for.

In the top organic keywords, you can see search terms such as paleo diet, strength training, personal trainer, etc.

NerdFitness is getting thousands of visitors every month from these keywords.

Why are we doing this?

Because NerdFitness is exactly the kind of site, we’re trying to emulate in terms of content. The topics they are ranking for are also relevant to us.

Just going through the keyword lists, you’ll get a fair idea of what topics your audience wants to learn about.

What do you do with this data?

The two main terminologies to remember are “Volume” and “Keyword Difficulty (KD).

Volume shows the number of monthly searches for a keyword in Google Search.

Keyword Difficulty (KD) shows how difficult it is to rank for this keyword in the top 10 based on the strength of the other sites that are ranking for this keyword (on a scale of 0 to 100, the higher the score, the more difficult it is to rank for a keyword).

You need to find the keywords with a big enough search volume (5000+ at least) and a low KD score (anything below 30 is good, but the lower the better from your perspective.)

Make a list of such keywords and create comprehensive content about them that’s better (more in-depth, more images, more stats, more backlinks) than the content which is currently ranking in the top 10.

This is just the beginning of keyword research, but I’ll stop here because right now, our objective is to understand the topics on which we should base our content strategy.

If you want to learn about keyword research in more depth, here’s a super useful guide to answer all your questions.

– Google Search

Now that we have an idea of our target topics let’s see how Google Search can help us dig deeper.

Let’s choose “Paleo diet” from the list of keywords we just saw.

Type this keyword in Google Search but don’t hit the enter key so that Google Search shows us more keyword ideas.

Do you see all those keywords and searches in the dropdown?

These are the most common searches about the paleo diet in Google Search.

Now press the enter key to see the results for this keyword.

On the search results page, there’s a section named “People also ask.” It lists the most common questions people ask on different websites and searches on Google about your target keyword.

Keep clicking on these questions, and more relevant questions will keep adding to the list.

This section alone is a goldmine for customer research and tells you so much about what your audience wants to learn about a topic.

Use these insights to extract article ideas for your blog and overall content strategy.

– Forums & Social Media

Quora, Reddit, and other industry-specific forums and social media groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., have thousands of threads with detailed discussions about different topics.

Exploring them will help you learn about the needs of your audience and the emotions they are experiencing because of their problems.

For example, here’s a post on Reddit in which one user has shared her feeling about being overweight and what it has done to her life.

Or this thread by someone who started regretting his failure to control his weight is now negatively affecting his life.

Or this girl who is now being body-shamed by her own family and friends.

If you read through each thread, there’s a lot more than just keywords you can extract from them.

They tell you about the raw emotion people with weight problems experience and the kind of problems they face in life.

You also see that they’re desperate for help and, in most cases, have lost hope in themselves.

These sources are gold for you if you’re running a weight loss and fitness blog or a brand in this niche.

They tell you so much about your audience and the angles you can use to create content that answers their problems, makes them feel better and motivates them to take action.

If you follow the three methods I’ve shared so far, you’ll have more content ideas than you can handle.

But there’s more.

2. Analyze Your Competitors’ Content Strategy

Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply learn from what’s working for your competitors?

Search for any of your popular competitors in SEMrush and scroll down to get a long list of other competing sites in your niche.

Visit their sites to see which content is performing the best.

For example, NerdFitness has a “Classic Posts” section in its blog sidebar that lists some of its most popular articles.

These are the topics and posts that bring them the most traffic and sales, which is why they’ve highlighted them on their main page.

Similarly, you can use a tool like BuzzSumo to find the most popular content on any topic.

For example, I searched for “paleo diet” in BuzzSumo and found the articles on this topic with the most number of social shares.

These are the topics and articles that resonate with your audience the most.

Analyze how your competitors have written them and adopt a similar approach to get similar results.

3. Create In-Depth, Actionable, Link-Worthy Content

Now that you know what topics to target, your job is pretty straightforward.

Create better content on your target topics than your competitors.

To be more specific, here’s what you should do.

• Install a Chrome extension called “Detailed SEO Chrome Extension.”
• Search for your target keyword in Google Search and open the top 10 ranking pages in separate tabs.
• Now go to each tab and click on the Detailed SEO icon in your Chrome browser.

• This Chrome extension gives you a complete On-Page SEO analysis of the page you’re viewing. For example, it shows your page title, meta description used for SEO, total word count, and other important information.

• The Headers tab shows you the number of headings and H tags used on the page, plus the keywords used in its headers.

• The Links tab shows you the number of internal and external links used on the page.

• And the Images tab shows you the total number of images on the page, plus the images with or without Alt-Tags.

How should you make use of this information?

Note down the word count and the number of images in the top 10 pages ranking for your target keyword.

Find the average length of the top-ranking content by adding the words of the top 10 pages and dividing them by 10.

If the average word count o the top 10 pages is 1200 words, try to create a page that is at least 2500-3000 words long targeting the same keyword.

Similarly, if the average number of images in your competing content is 5, try using at least 15-20 screenshots and relevant images like I’ve done in this article.

Use your target keyword in your page title, headings, and image alt-text.

Include more data, examples, and references to research to make your content more valuable and link-worthy.

And before you hit the publish button, use Grammarly to run a quick grammar check on your content to make sure it’s easy to read and free of typos and plagiarism.

In short, aim to create a piece of content that is significantly more valuable and comprehensive than your competing content.

4. Promote Your Content Through Outreach

If you’ve followed the advice I’ve shared so far, your content is already optimized for search engines.

You will start ranking for your target keywords in the top 30-50 results in a few weeks.

But that’s not good enough,

To get to the first page of Google Search, you’ll need to wait for a few months because your site is brand new, and Google generally prefers ranking older pages in the top ten.

According to a research study by Ahrefs, on average, less than 3% of all the first result pages in Google Search are less than one year old.

Source

To rank for your target keywords faster, you need to do a couple of things.

Create great content + Get backlinks from relevant high-authority sites that are considered experts in your niche.

You’ve already created great content.

Now you need to get more backlinks (both in terms of quality and quantity) than your competitors.

According to a study by SEMRush, there’s a direct relationship between the number of unique backlinks pointing to a page and its search rankings.

How do you get more backlinks?

By creating great content and then reaching out to the relevant sites in your niche and other closely related niches via email and telling them about the unique value your content offers (indirectly asking them for a backlink).

It’s a painful and slow process that requires hard work and thick skin because you’re going to be ignored and rejected a lot of the time, even if your content is excellent.

The other helpful method for building backlinks is guest blogging.

Guest blogging is the process of writing for other sites in your niche free of cost.

What’s in it for you?

You’ll sneak in a couple of relevant links back to the content on your site.

I’ve written a detailed guest blogging guide that covers the topic in much more detail.

Are You Ready To Make A Website For Your Business?

To be honest, I’ve told you everything I knew about starting a website, choosing the right web hosting company, configuring WordPress, and creating a long-term content strategy for your business.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelance writer, a small business owner, an entrepreneur, or a consultant, if you follow this guide, you’ll be able to make a world-class website and put it on track for massive growth in the months and years to come.

But will you take action?

Will you implement what you’ve learned?

That’s the million-dollar question!

Success isn’t far away from you if you’re determined to apply the knowledge you have.

Trust me, taking the first step looks complicated, but once you start moving, everything falls into place.

Let me know if you have any questions about starting a website or any other aspect of this guide.

I’m here to respond to your questions.

Creating A Website From Scratch | Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are some of the most common questions people have about building a website from scratch.

How do you create a website for free?

You can create a website for free, along with a free domain name, on WordPress.com or by using a free website builder like Wix or Weebly.

How can I build my own website in 2024?

Anyone can create a website in 2024 using WordPress. Simply sign up for a BlueHost web hosting account, choose a domain name, install WordPress, choose a responsive website theme, and build your website using Elementor, a free drag & drop website builder for WordPress.

How much does it cost to make a website?

You only need to pay for your BlueHost web hosting account, which comes at $3.95/month if you sign up for a 3-year plan (which I strongly recommend). WordPress and all the necessary plugins you need are free. Plus, you can start with a free WordPress theme (although you can get a really good premium theme for around $50)

Is it easy to create a website?

Yes, with WordPress and Elementor, it’s really simple to create a website.

What things do I need to start a website?

You need three things to start a website – A web hosting service, a domain name, and WordPress (the world’s best Content Management System)

What Top-Level Domain (TLD) is the best?

You can get a domain name for your site with different TLDs, such as .COM, .INFO, .NET, .WEBSITE etc. However, .COM domains are the most common easily recognizable, which is why you should go for a .COM domain.

How do I get a .COM domain for my website?

You can get a .COM domain free for 1 year with a Bluehost web hosting account.

What is a web hosting service?

A web hosting service is an online website storage company that securely hosts your website files, registers your website domain, and serves your website to visitors.

What is the best web hosting service for beginners?

Bluehost is the best web hosting company for beginners and intermediate bloggers and small businesses because of its friendly pricing structure and world-class web hosting features.

What is the best WordPress web hosting service?

Again, Bluehost is an ideal web hosting service for WordPress websites because of its ease of use, one-click WordPress installation,  and many other features. This is why it is one of the few web hosting services officially endorsed by WordPress.

Is it better to pay monthly or annually for web hosting?

Paying annually or for multiple years together significantly lowers your overall web hosting costs and helps you save money. Since BlueHost is a reliable company, I strongly recommend signing up for their Basic Plan for 3 years together.

Do I need to learn coding to create a website?

Not anymore. You can easily create a website even if you don’t know anything about coding or website development by using Elementor for building your WordPress website.

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A Content Management System (CMS) is an online software application that allows users to host, share, manage, and modify content on a website.

What are the best Content Management Systems (CMS)?

WordPress is the world’s best CMS. However, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Squarespace, and Shopify are the other popular CMS.

What is a website builder?

A website builder is a drag & drop application that allows you to easily create a website without learning to code.

What are the best website builders?

Elementor is the best website builder for WordPress. Outside WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace are also pretty useful website builders.

Why is WordPress the best CMS for beginners?

WordPress is the most popular CMS globally because of its ease of use, a huge variety of plugins, a global support community, and highly customizable themes.

What is the best free SEO plugin for a WordPress website?

There are several helpful WordPress SEO plugins like All-In-One SEO, SEOPress, Rank Math, etc. Still, in my experience, Yoast SEO offers the best free SEO plugin for beginner bloggers and website owners because of its simplicity and features.

What is the best anti-spam plugin for WordPress websites to reduce comment spam?

In my experience, adding Google Captcha to your site’s login page, comment form, and contact page almost completely eradicates spam comments and messages. You can configure Google Captcha on your site using the plugin “reCaptcha by BestWebSoft.”