WordPress is undisputably the number-one content management system available online, with over 25% of all sites using WordPress. This makes it the obvious choice for your website. But how do you actually go about building your WordPress site?
When it comes to building your own website, it can be difficult to understand where to start. You’ve read about WordPress and want to understand how to master real estate web design, but you just don’t know how to begin.
We’re here to take all the worries away and help you understand why WordPress is for you, and how you can start a brand new WordPress site from scratch, in no time at all. Read on to learn more!
WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
When most people start to research real estate web design, they get stuck on the first hurdle. Woah, wait…there are two types of WordPress websites? Which do I choose?
Never fear, the difference between the two types of site is quite simple.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is the simple version of WordPress. It offers limited customization, doesn’t allow monetisation and offers a basic way to get started for the newbie blogger.
Here are some of the issues with WordPress.com:
- The templates are very similar looking, so you run the risk of blending in with your competition and not standing out.
- You can’t monetize the site without breaking WordPress.com’s terms and conditions.
- You never ‘OWN’ the site; WordPress.com can at any time decide to shut you down, if they feel you’re not following their rules.
- Your website URL can look clunky as it has to feature WordPress.com in its name. For example: instead of www.findabusinessthat.com it would be www.findabusinessthat.wordpress.com.
Overall, many consider WordPress.com to be great for people blogging as a hobby, but not a great start for a professional business’s website.
WordPress.org
WordPress.org is the grown-up version of WordPress and is the most popular choice for real estate web design. With users producing 69.5 million new posts on WordPress each month, it’s a very stable way to establish your website.
WordPress.org is a free to download, open-source CMS that you can install on any website. The only thing you need to get set up is cheap website hosting. Your website host acts as your online storage for your website, and it’s where you will install WordPress too. It’s also where you store all your website files.
WordPress.org is amazing for a number of reasons:
- They offer thousands of free and premium templates for fully customizable web pages.
- There are hundreds of free plugins to optimize your viewer’s experience.
- You own your site; you can do with it as you please and move it anywhere you like without outside involvement.
How to Build Your Real Estate Web Design Effectively
To build your real estate web design, the first thing you need to do is sign up for your website hosting. You usually pay upfront annually for hosting. It’s fairly low cost in comparison to setting up a brick-and-mortar business.
Some important things to consider when buying your website are what URL/domain name you will select for your site and how long you want to host your website for. The length of hosting is important for building great search engine optimization. The longer the hosting, the better it is for your SEO.
Install WordPress on Your New Website
Once you’ve purchased your domain and hosting, the next step is to install WordPress. WordPress has a reputation for being very user-friendly and most hosting providers will offer support, or a one-click install option to get your WordPress installed quickly and easily.
Once you install WordPress you can access it by going to your website URL followed by /login (e.g. www.yourwebsitename.com/login).
This will take you to the WordPress dashboard, which will be your hub for editing your website. This will allow you to add pages, posts, download plugins and install themes.
The Next Step Is a Theme
People are visual, and having a visually appealing website is crucial to retaining your customers. Many users will stop interacting with content that is unattractive in layout or imagery.
Selecting a theme for your website is essential to getting great engagement and the right feel for your blog. You can download lots of free themes direct from WordPress.org, but any real estate web design should incorporate a premium theme to make the brand stand out.
Understanding how to make your brand stand out is crucial to a successful site and you should try to incorporate that into your theme.
Optimize Your Site for SEO
You need to make sure you optimize your website for SEO to stand out from your competition. A real estate web design that you optimize for SEO will not only get more organic traffic, it’ll help to promote other posts throughout the site.
The key to great SEO is to find the best real estate keywords and then drive backlinks to those posts to help Google rank your website higher. The methods for great SEO can be complicated. Some of the best ways to improve SEO can be to utilize local SEO strategies.
When building your site’s SEO the key thing to understand is the more links pointing to your site (from quality sites), the higher Google will rank your website.
Create Amazing High-Quality Content
When you build your first real estate web design, you can sometimes get hung up on the design without creating any content. Always remember why the person is visiting your site in the first place.
Make sure to add huge value to your readers by writing interesting blog content that both educates and entertains them. Create free give-away content to bring your customers into a lead generation process so you can keep demonstrating amazing value and eventually turn those readers into leads.
Get Your Own Real Estate Website Started Today
In 2018, there really is no excuse for not being online with your own website. WordPress is the best way to get your business set up online easily, quickly and inexpensively.
Check out some of our other great tips on real estate now.