Cheap Professional Web Sites

Writing Your Content

Begin collecting information related to the topic of your site, and write some of your own, unique content. You can find PLR (private label rights) articles on just about any topic. Visit free giveaway sites to find some, or do a search for “PLR articles on (your topic)”.  Article directories can also be a source of info, but those articles normally come with restricted rights.  Still, you can get ideas from those articles to write your own unique content. Don’t plagiarize other people’s work!  Besides being simply wrong, it can get you in real legal trouble, plus the search engines will definitely recognize duplicate content.  With your PLR articles, you often have the right to edit and adapt them, and you should definitely do so.  Try to add your own unique perspective to each one you plan on using.

Keep the keyword list you generated next to you while you write, and try to include a good amount of those words in your content, without making it sound weird or strange.  It can help to try and create one article specifically geared towards each high KEI keyword you have. Don’t over do the “keyword density”.  You should keep it at about 2-4% at most.  This means that for every 100 words on the page, each keyword should be mentioned no more than 4 times.  These articles can be used as posts in a blog, or on your ADDITIONAL INFO pages.

Design your website on paper, and decide what content you’ll place where, and how the pages will link together. Basically, create a map of your site. A common design will include at least some of these pages.

• HOME (or WELCOME page) – Your main landing page (usually called index.html)
• ABOUT US (or OUR COMPANY)
• OUR PRODUCTS (& / or OUR SERVICES) (leads to your e-commerce shopping cart)
• ASK A QUESTION (or SUPPORT)
• ADDITIONAL INFO
• CONTACT US (address, email address or form, phone)
• OUR NEWSLETTER (leads to a sign-up page, linked to an autoresponder) 
• BUY NOW (leads to purchase page, if you’re selling a single item)
• YOUR SHOPPING CART (leads to check-out, if you”re selling multiple items)
• SIGN IN / SIGN UP (for membership sites or repeat customers) 

 
A main menu linking to these pages should appear on all of them, usually at the top, or on the left side, or both. You may also want to add special areas to your website, like a blog or a mailing list to send out your newsletter or sales flyers.  These areas may or may not be linked directly to your other pages.  Decide what you’re going to call these links.  The HOME page should be called index.html.  For the others, pick a descriptive name, all in lower case with no spaces, followed by .html.  For example, aboutus.html and product.html.  Depending on your web host, many of these features can be easily added in a few clicks from your back office, using pre-set up scripts.  A premium hosting company will give you a couple of different shopping cart scripts, an assortment of blogging platforms, an online form generator and more.

Create, edit and proof the written portion of your content, using a simple html editor, like Notepad. Almost every Windows computer has this simple editor. Simply type out, and/or use Copy/Paste, to build your pages. Make a separate file for each page (index.txt, aboutus.txt, etc.) and save them all in a file named “YourNiche” Website, or something similar. (HINT: don’t hit return when your text runs off the side of the page, until you’re ready to make a paragraph break).  Don’t worry too much about links and product listings yet, just get the basic written copy done. If you don’t have Notepad on your computer, you can use Microsoft Word or Works, or Writer in Open Office, which is a free software package available from http://www.openoffice.org .  Just don’t worry about formatting the content yet (bold, fonts, headers, bullet points, numbered lists, etc.), you’ll do that later.  One advantage to using Word or Writer is that they can both search and tell you how many words and how many keywords you have on a page.  Of course, the software I suggested will automatically do that for you.  Collect, or make any images you may want on your web site.  Your logo, for instance, or pictures of your offices, products, associates, etc.  Collect them in a folder named “images” or “img”, in your website folder.

This may sound confusing, and like a lot of work, but it gets easier as you go along.  Plus, up to this point, you would have had to do about 90% of this work, even if you had hired a web consultant to build your web site for you.  They might have used the software we suggested under “Keywords” to give you a list of good terms to use, and they might even edit your finished copy a bit to add more of them to the page, but you would still have to do your market research and give them all of the information they need to build your web site.  Take it one page at a time, starting with your main landing page, and don’t be overwhelmed by the idea of getting the whole site done.  Most pages should not take very long to do, and you can probably complete several in a day.  Some, like the Contact Us page, will only take a few minutes. 

One thing that you should consider doing as you design and add content to your page files, is to create a sales flow through out your web site.  One easy way to do this is to lead your customer from page to page using links at the bottom of your content.  Although it is used for a different reason on this web site, simply to make navigating from step to step easy and convenient, it can be effective in an e-commerce web site.  You can use it to lead your potential customer from your welcome message to information about your company to your product page or your sales specials for that month.  Put these links in parenthesis as you build your pages (i.e. {link to products.html}).  When you actually build your website, you’ll code all of those links in, the notation is just so you remember where you want to send your customer next.  On an e-commerce web site, you’ll also want to have a “Buy Now” or “Shop Now” link or button prominently displayed at the bottom of every page, as well as in your menu.  You can put this in the template for all of your pages (we’ll get to that in a minute).  Although it might be a good idea to gradually convince some people to buy from you by explaining how long your company has been in business, and how you treat your customers, and all about your guarantees and the quality of your products…but some people may already be convinced and just want to buy what you offer.  Make getting to your sales area easy for them.  

Once you’ve collected all of this information and your images in one place, it’s time to continue to Step 5…