In the first two articles on building a website for your home business, I covered web hosting, premium themes, and content. In this part, I will cover other elements to incorporate into the website.
Home Page Layout
You will need to figure out what layout works best in your niche. They could range from no columns, two column, or three column. Some websites can utilize a magazine style layout.
Balance the graphics and text on a page. It’s easy to get carried away with lots of images and animations, but they can make a page very hard to read.
Web pages are made up of five essential parts: headlines, content, images, navigation, and ads. Most Web pages contain at least three of these elements and many contain all five.
Headlines
Headlines or titles are one of the most prominent elements on your Web pages. They must grab the attention of your visitors and make them want to read more of your website.
Content
Body content is the text that makes up the majority of your Web page. Content is why people come to your web page and the layout of that content can help them read it more effectively.
Content is probably the most important element of the website. The home page should be mostly content, not just a bunch of ads and images. Google and the other major search engines are looking for content to rank websites.
For the home page, I suggest that you write 500 words minimum, up to 1,000 words maximum. You don’t want it too short or too long, you want it long enough to cover what your website is all about and what you have to offer.
That is why most of the second article covered content. It’s that important!
Images
Images are the visual elements of almost every Web page. They draw the eye and help direct readers to specific parts of the page. In fact, most high quality Web pages have several high quality images to both decorate and inform the page.
When you’re considering your layout, remember that images are a major part of the design, not just afterthoughts.
Navigation
Navigation plays a crucial role for most Web pages to keep customers on the site and reading other pages. But Web pages can also have internal navigation, especially long pages with lots of content. Navigation helps your readers stay oriented and make it possible for them to find their way around the page and the site as a whole.
Ads (Banners)
Right now Google is penalizing websites that have too many ads (banners) above the fold. So try to limit them to one or two ads above the fold. You can place more below the fold, just don’t over do it. I wouldn’t have more than 6 ads total for the page.
DO NOT over use your keywords or keyword phrases in the content of your website. I suggest using them only about 3-5% of the time. Also, DO Not just throw them into the content randomly. They must be incorporated in such a way as to look natural and flow with the topic.
Most search engines will penalize a website if they over-stuff the content with keywords.
Use a different keyword for each page of your website. Write the content of that page around that specific keyword.
Website Pages
As it stands today, subject to change at any time, your website should have multiple web pages. Google has penalized one-page websites, and I’m sure the other major search engines will follow suite.
You should have made a list of keywords or keyword phrase that you were going to use on your website. Build a page around each of those keywords.
I would suggest between 3-6 pages for your website.
Banners
Again, don’t over use banners. The search engines will penalize your website for being “spammy.” Also, keep them up to date. Companies will change them a few times a year. So you want to keep current.
Google Analytics
You will want to keep track of the information about your website visitors. You will want to know what keywords are being used by people to get to your website. You will want to know how many visitors return to your website. You can get all this information by using Google analytics.
Plugins
When using WordPress to build your website, don’t use many plugins for your website. There are literally thousands of plugins that can be downloaded. But, the fewer used the better. I would say no more than 10-12 plugins. Again, this is up to you.
Website Promotion
This use to be easy, but today it is getting harder and harder to get quality promotion for your website. Today, probably the best two ways to promote your website are writing content and social media. Like I said, there are many, many ways to promote your website, so you need to find what works best for you.
I hope that this series on building a website for your work from home business has been helpful. I know it seems like a lot of information, but it really isn’t. Each part is important to the overall success of your home business. The more websites you build, the easier all of this will get.
