Once you’ve settled on a good web hosting provider and you’ve chosen your relevant domain name, now comes the task of actually building your site. Software for website development is everywhere – just do a Google search and you’ll see what I mean! So, where do you start? Personally, I wouldn’t get too caught up in all the choices available. If you do, you will probably throw in the towel out of pure frustration! Well, I hope not, anyway.

I have a few choices you could try out. Actually, only two, one of which I use exclusively. Remember the phrase, “KISS?” It stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. Yes, it applies here, too. I use Wordpress whenever I build a blog, and Site Rubix when I build a niche site. The other option is to use Blogger. Both services are free, but I think Wordpress is a better choice only because it provides more options in the way of customization and plugins.

Another great feature of Wordpress is that you won’t have to worry about using code of any sort to build your site. You are provided themes that literally take that out of the equation. However, you are allowed to code your site if you are so inclined. The themes that are available on the free side are good enough for most situations, but you can also purchase themes for just about any idea or topic you can imagine.

There is one thing for sure about Wordpress themes. The writers of these themes are top notch and are some of the most creative people I’ve ever seen. You will definitely want to learn how to use Wordpress and all of its features. More and more features are being added on a regular basis so you would be well advised to stay on top of the changes.

As I’ve mentioned in my other articles, once you have your site finished and your masterpiece is ready for the world to see, be sure you use the Google Analytics Wordpress plugin so you can start tracking your site’s statistics. Google Analytics will provide, free of charge, detailed information about your site and its performance as far as visitors are concerned.

A good thing to do is to learn about the nomenclature that Google uses to identify and classify certain aspects of your site. For example, you will see where your visitors are coming from, and how often they stayed on your site. One quick check you can use to see if your site is keeping your visitor is interested enough to keep reading, is the “average time on site” statistic. If this stat is very low, as stated in actual time, then a review of your site’s content is in order. Included with the statistics is another area. That is the “bounce rate.” That number is expressed as a percentage. The higher this number is, the more visitors are leaving your site sooner without giving it a glance because your landing page (the first page your visitor sees) is not relevant enough or isn’t related to what they thought they were going to see. As you can tell from this, relevancy is key.