When I first started www.ThinkOnIt.org website, I really didn't know much about how to create a site. I definitely didn't know anything about html or java scripting! Guess what I still don't know! That's okay. With Microsoft's Office Live beta program you don't have to know. That's where I started after my 12 year son showed me Microsoft's site. Microsoft Office Live software is pretty easy to figure out. The best part is that it's FREE!!
Once I had a basic site created I needed to know how to make it visible on the web. Apparently, it doesn't just show up for everyone to see. The search engines won't display it in any search results because there's more that needs to happen. I didn't know anything about that either. After a few questions from some web savvy folks, I discovered you have to submit your site's URL to the search engines, so you're pages can be indexed. Oh! Armed with that new information I began searching for search engine submission sites! It was pretty easy to submit my site name & URL to variance search engines, it just takes a little time. It's worth it though.
Even then my site didn't start showing up in search results right away. I asked my web savvy friends again, they suggested I use meta tags embedded in my web pages. Meta what? I had never heard of such a thing. Well, I started looking in the Office Live software for Meta tags info and discovered a "Search Engine Optimization" page in the page editor tool. For every page I created, I also needed to add a meta tag or a phrase or keyword that the search engines would look for. I entered 20 or 30 words for each page. The words are relevant to the content stored on the specific web page. Hint: keywords or meta tags should be used on the web page more than once. The more times that word shows up the better (for some reason.)
Okay, I had submitted my site URL to the search engines and created Meta tags and keywords on each page, but still my site wasn't appearing in the search results. Another chat with my web savvy friends lead me down the path of blogs. Apparently, with blogs you can find "like-minded" people interested in the stuff you share on your website and when you find them you ask them to link to your site. So I searched for blogs and got a huge list of various blogs. I clicked on one blog system and found a curious posting that grabbed my heart so much so I had to reply, but lo and behold you have to have an account in order to respond to anyone's posting. I immediately set up an account (it was easy)! I responded to the curious posting. That's how I started with my first blog. From there I setup my own blog (thinkonit.blogstream.com) and began posting my daily devotions. This particular blog was fascinating in that people saw my posting and immediately starting posting comments. It was wonderful to read people's comments on my posting. Like instant feedback that what I offered was valued by someone I've never met! What a rush!! I started bookmarking favorite blogs and their blog link would appear on my blog. The blogs I marked as favorite would then add my blog to their favorite blogs list. It's kind of like, you tell two friends, who tell two friends and so on! How neat!! I've had close to 200 visitors already! That's great!
Next, while watching Rock Star Supernova that we vote using Microsoft Spaces Live. Huh, I wondered if that is anything like blogstream. Wow! It was another blog too. I set up an account and began posting my daily devotions there too. This blog was different and a little more challenging to get people to see your posting. I had to spent a few hours over several days, searching for people who were interested in the things of God. When I did find someone into God, I'd send them a comment inviting them to visit emarks19thinkonit.spaces.live.com blog. But it was and still is time consuming. Although, it has a nice feature that lets you email your posting to it, so I can post quicker. That's nice.
As I kept checking the search engines to see if my site would come up in the search results, I noticed that my comments in the blogs appeared first! The more comments I made on other people's blogs the more chances of someone finding my site in search engines. So I spent some time, reading / responding to people's blogs and inviting them to check out my site, always including my url in my comments. This helped get visibility in the search results big time!
Finally, after a few days my site name was found in the search engines. But the problem was my site name was not what people would be searching for. That's a problem. In fact, they'd be searching for daily devotions or Christian devotions or bible studies something like that, yet my first URL was too generic which didn't really tell anyone what it was about. So I bought another domain name www.ThinkOnItDevotions.com which is more clear. Thank goodness, Microsoft Office Live automatically redirects the new domain to my first site. (I would have hated to have to rebuild the site on the new domain name!) Now with the word "devotion" in my URL, it boosts my ranking with the search engines.
Another tip I picked up, from reading all that I can on the web, is to name any pictures you use on site with the keywords you think your viewers are likely to use. For example, I started naming my pictures with the word "devotion" in the name (ThinkOnIt Devotions - Family Photo.JPG). That's gives the search engines more to grab for the search results.
I also wanted to be able to recommend certain books that helped me along my spiritual journey. Someone told me about how to get html links to Amazon.com books. After investigating that, I found it very easy to get the html code, but not so easy getting it on my site. Microsoft Office Live Basics doesn't offer access to html code. So what was I going to do? I really wanted to offer specific books and have a click to buy now button on my site! Someone recommended I login to Microsoft's Community forum and ask a question. When I did, I found someone brilliant person had written the code and provided instructions on exactly how to do what I needed. After only a few minutes, I was now offering books on my site! Hurray!!!
You just have to love technology. Here I am a few weeks into this and already able to sell books off my site, in addition to providing encouragement to fellow Christians on a daily basis! All from someone who knew nothing about all this stuff. That's pretty amazing. After learning all this wonderful stuff, I'm sharing it here with you. Perhaps you might have an idea you want to share with others, but don't know where to start. Follow my path, you might be surprised where it takes you or by how much your horizon has expanded along the way.
In either case, thanks for letting share my story of how I setup a website. May it be helpful to you and I really hope you visit my site, knowing that if an ordinary wife, mother of two boys, soccer mom volunteer and full time employee could pull that together, then you could too!
Note about the author: Elizabeth Marks has a heart full of passion for encouraging and strengthening fellow believers through her words. Need some hope? Go to www.ThinkOnItDevotions.com for daily renewal from God’s Word.
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Elizabeth Marks has a heart for encouraging and equipping others with God's Word.Go to www.ThinkOnItDevotions.com for daily renewal from God’s Word.
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