Building DIY Websites For Dummies

Create an attractive website that draws in visitors – no coding required!

There’s more to building a website than just picking a theme and dropping in text and images. Creating a site that attracts visitors and turns those visitors into customers requires some professional insight and a few tips and tricks. Building DIY Websites For Dummies guides non-designers through the steps of creating an attractive and effective website using today’s top web-based tools. This book helps you launch or improve your website designed to boost your entrepreneurial endeavors, small business, or personal passion. With this easy-to-follow Dummies guide, you can skip learning the complicated coding that runs a site and focus on the parts that attract visitors (and search engines). Grab this book and get expert insight on how to craft a usable design, create site content, improve site findability, and convert browsers into buyers.

• Discover how to select hosting services, email providers, and beginner-friendly website creators
• Build your own website without needing to learn any code
• Learn how to create an attractive design, develop content, and present it all in a way that will appeal to your target audience
• Improve your site’s search engine findability and resonate with your target customer

This Dummies guide is an excellent choice for non-designers who want to create a website without hiring someone to do it for them. Learn the ropes, follow the best practices, and launch your site!

Introduction 1

Part 1: Getting Started with DIY Websites 7

Chapter 1: From Groundbreaking to Grand Opening: Constructing Your Website Step by Step 9

Chapter 2: Laying Your Website’s Foundation 21

Part 2: Creating a Site That People Will Visit 47

Chapter 3: Resonating with Visitors 49

Chapter 4: Nailing SEO Basics: Search Engine Optimization 101 71

Chapter 5: Killing It with Keywords 97

Part 3: Architecting Plans for Your Website 109

Chapter 6: A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place 111

Chapter 7: Content Scaffold: Supporting Your Website’s Information 129

Chapter 8: Preparing Your Site’s Content 171

Part 4: Designing and Laying Out Your Website 201

Chapter 9: Deconstructing the Anatomy of Web Pages 203

Chapter 10: Unfurling the Canvas of Design Options 223

Chapter 11: Generating Leads from Your Website 251

Part 5: Going Live and Measuring Results 271

Chapter 12: Optimizing Each Page for Search (On-Page Optimization) 273

Chapter 13: Ribbon-Cutting in Cyberspace: Your Website’s Grand Opening 285

Chapter 14: Securing Your Website 299

Chapter 15: Keeping Up with the Joneses: Measuring What You Built and Making It Better 309

Part 6: The Part of Tens 329

Chapter 16: The Ten Commandments of Building a Successful Website 331

Chapter 17: Ten Rookie Mistakes to Avoid 341

Index 351

Jennifer DeRosa is the founder of Toto Coaching, which walks the DIY website builder through the process of building a website from start to finish. Jennifer has been building websites since 1994. She formed her web development agency in 2001, growing it into a successful website development agency over two decades.

Build a site that stands out from the crowd

Every business needs a website, but not everyone can afford to hire a web designer. This book offers budget-friendly strategies to creating a pro-level site without a pro-level budget. Discover how to create a user-friendly, functional website that attacts visitors—without having to learn HTML or other coding languages. Get straightforward instructions on using web-building best practices to design an attractive layout, create search-engine-optimized content, measure your site’s performance, and turn your web presence into a lucrative business-building tool.

Inside…

• Applying design fundamentals
• Appealing to customers
• Making your site findable
• Choosing eye-catching layouts
• Developing web-ready content
• Boosting your search engine ranking
• Avoiding common mistakes