Ideally, your business website has to be ready and in place. If you have not created it yet, then this is the vital part around which your content marketing hinges.
This Is My First Business website
If you have not created a website before, don’t panic. It can be built quick and easy without you getting your hands dirty with code. You can turn the site around in record quick time.
Two Ways To Build Your Business Website
There are free hosting options but you are best off not using them for your business website. It reflects poorly on your audience who could perceive free hosting (reflected in the site’s web address) to be associated with an unprofessional business attitude.
Website Builder That Comes With Hosting
You can use a website builder that is available with any web hosting plan. 9 times out of 10, it will be a paid hosting. But web hosting is so cheap and with excess competition, they are getting cheaper and affordable.
Self Hosted WordPress Site
Today, WordPress is the fastest growing CMS (Content Management System) in cyber-sphere and accounts for nearly 30% of the total sites built and active. It is so easy and user friendly for anyone to build a website in no time. If at all you are stuck, there are tons of resources that can help you each and every step along the way.
Free hosting
The two most popular free platforms are Blogger (owned by Google) and WordPress free version. Blogger has the URL mysmallbusiness.blogspot.com. WordPress has the URL mysmallbusiness.wordpress.com. The URLs are sub-domains of either blogspot.com or wordpress.com.
NOTE:
You can register a .com domain for $10 a year and sign up for blogspot.com or wordpress.com site. Then you can link either of them to the purchased domain through the domain interface. A detailed article that explains it well can be found here.
WARNING:
IMHO, I would not do this. Although you own the domain, the content still resides on Google server. There is a good chance that Google can penalize you for violating their TOS (terms of service) and shut the site down. You own the domain but not the content. Think about this deeply before going down this route. Self hosting your own website is a better option.
From my personal experience, I found a great domain registration company in Porkbun. Their prices are reasonable. They offer hosting at reasonable costs. There is an opinion that it is not good to have the same company for both domain registration and hosting. I have done this in the past and have had no issues.
WARNING:
You can get a free .com domain when you buy hosting from Godaddy or Hostgator. But, read the fine print. Although you get the domain for free in the first year, the domain registration costs are often steep the next year when it is time for renewal. Do your research before jumping into it.
Go With WordPress
If you have decided to go in for a self hosted WordPress site, you have made a good choice. Setting up your own WordPress site is easy. There are tons of themes and plugins both free and paid available. There are umpteen tutorials on the web that teach you how to set up a WordPress site from scratch and then customizing it to your heart’s content to make it look and feel the way you want.
WordPress Themes
Every WordPress installation comes with a default theme. It is not very attractive. You should change the theme to one of your liking. Going in for a premium theme (read paid) offers you features which standard themes do not offer.
WordPress Plugins
As your blog is focused on content marketing, it is important the right plugins are installed to support your business strategy. Below are a few recommended plugins that will help you start the correct way.
1. Yoast SEO Plugin
Search engine optimization is a big deal. Your content has to be indexed properly by the search engines before it can be considered for ranking. The Yoast SEO plugin is a stable and well established plugin that optimizes the content for search engines very effectively. It will offer suggestions showing where optimization can be improved. There is also a paid premium version with more advanced features.
2. Akismet Anti-Spam Plugin
Spam is a huge problem on the web and not just confined to emails. As your content starts getting popular and invites more eye balls and gets passed around, you are bound to invite comment spam. These are worthless comments with affiliate links or links promoting the site of the poster. This is where Akismet comes into play as a huge spam slayer, as you cannot waste your time trying to weed out the good comments from spam comments.
3. Google Analytics For WordPress Plugin
From day 1, it is your most onerous task to ensure that Google Analytics is set up on your website to track visits, content usage, time spent, bounce rate and tons of other metrics which will give you a fantastic view of what is working and what is not. Your best friend in this act is Google Analytics for WordPress. Make sure it is set up and tracking right off the bat.
4. WP Super Cache Plugin
A slow website affects you, the business owner, in two big ways. Firstly, if you have a slow loading site, no one is willing to wait until the content loads. Users’ attention span is so small that they will flee your site if there is a delay perceived.
Secondly, page load speed is the most crucial metric for ranking on search engines, especially Google. A slow loading site can drive the Google bots away without caring to index your site’s content. This is a very serious problem.
To avoid these, the WP Super Cache plugin does a great job of enhancing the load times of your website.
5. Social Media Share Buttons Plugin
This is a free and top-rated social media sharing plugin for WordPress. It is easy to use and highly customizable as well. There are many designs available and you can select a design that matches well with your site’s background and looks, thus making them stand out. This will encourage users to share your “awesome quality” content.
6. UpdraftPlus Plugin
UpraftPlus is a crucial plugin that helps in the backing up of your site content, in the absence of automatic backup service provided by your web host.
You don’t want to lose all your hard work due to a server crash or other unforeseen circumstances. It is important to use this plugin to backup your content on a regular basis.
7. WordFence Security Plugin
It is a fact that hackers are waiting to hack your web site. In the past Wordress has had security vulnerabilities. But they have been patched up in successive upgrades.
You can save yourself a lot of headache by using WordFence security plugin . Even the free basic version offers lot of security. The paid version is much superior. You can protect your site reasonably well with the free version, provided you implement the following, more a commonsensical approach.
Inside WordFence, you can set up a 2FA or two factor authentication. Use Google Authenticator app on your phone to insert the 6 digit code that keeps changing every minute. This will keep hackers at bay
WARNING:
Make sure you do not use admin for username and password for password. Set a really strong password (there are several password generators online that can set a sequence of alphanumeric characters)
Cons of WordFence:
If you forget your login, you will be locked out by WordFence This is nagging problem you want to avoid at all costs. Make sure you remember your difficult login details that you have set for beefed up secure account.
8. MailChimp for WordPress Plugin
Save the best for last, they say! When you start content marketing from your site, you want to start building a mailing list where you get users to exchange their email addresses for juicy freebie that you offer. It has to be really attractive for them to bite the bait.
Use the MailChimp plugin for attractive, simple no-brainer optimized signup forms that invite the user to put in her/his email address. Once you successfully capture leads this way, you can market to your email list for the lifetime value of the users in that list.
NOTE: MailChimp offers free account for up to maximum of 2,000 subscribers. This is a great way to start email marketing operations and upgrade as the subscriber base increases.
As a small business owner, dealing with your business clients is a far more important job than setting up your website. At Traffic Alignment, we are experts in building self hosted WordPress small business websites at a budget that is suitable to you. Give us a go!
Related Posts
Leave a Reply