Website Design Building Blocks

Website Design Building Blocks. Website design  has become very accessible, both in price and DIY, it is now possible for almost anyone to own a website. The key however is to own a great website. There are a few factors that you can not necessarily see that can make or break your website. A website can be an important sales tool in your company or it could just be an online business card, the choice is yours really.

Here are the main 4 Website Design Building Blocks :

1. Domain Name

The domain name of a website is the name you type into your browser. Many people go for domain names that have their product or service either exactly or partly in the domain name. Unless this is your company name it is a mistake. Google is moving away from ranking websites for keywords in their domain names and you can actually get penalized by something called the EMD Update (Exact Match Domain)

So what should your domain name be? Well, firstly, your domain name should be your brand. Your brand will always be a good name to share with the domain. You can grow the strength of this over time and you will never be penalised for using an exact match domain.

Secondly, your TLD (Top Level Domain) eg .com should coincide with the country that you are targeting. If you have a website design business in South Africa your domain should contain the .co.za TLD. In Australia the .com.au TLD and so on. This allows search engines to see where you are based and therefore rank you higher in that country.

2. CMS (Content Management System)

A content management system or CMS is a platform or software you use to build your website, examples of CMS are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. The CMS is important as some CMS platforms are more user-friendly and search engine friendly than others .We love WordPress, it ticks all the boxes and there is no reason you should go anywhere else.

3. Hosting Server

Not all hosting servers or providers are made equal. A host can affect many things such as loading speed, uptime and SEO. It is generally accepted that it is better to host your website on a server close to your target audience. Our preference for hosting is Amazon Web Services. We have tried many other large hosting providers and have found Amazon to be number 1 in all areas of hosting. Get more info. You need a server as one of the Website Design Building Blocks, this could be provided directly to you or potentially by the CMS provider.

4. Content Creation

Make sure the platform you use enables easy content creation. You should be able to structure the content easily and be able to set titles descriptions and urls quickly and easily. The best is to use a platform that automatically optimizes this. Again we suggest using WordPress, it is free and can be mastered quickly. WordPress also has a lot of very useful plugins which you can access for free most of the time. You can build very complex, high performance websites with WordPress, there is really no need to use anything else.

If you have all these website design building blocks you are ready to get going. Start designing websites as soon as you can, practice makes perfect !