How to create a website?

How to create a website?


The need for having a website...

If you are running a business, you MUST have a website. Why? You see, the world is growing, the Internet is growing, India is growing! There are more and more computers all over the place now. There are more and more Internet connections all over the place now. So, thinking about "Who is going to come visit my website?" is hardly a question anymore.

As you probably already know, the harder you make it for someone to do something, the lesser the possibility of them actually doing it! If something is hard for people to do, they will not do it. If something is easy for people to do, a large number of people will do it. The Internet is very important because of this! You see, it is very easy to find out information from the Internet. You just have to go to a search engine and type in what you are looking for.. You will find hundreds of answers.

If someone was looking for a "fiber optic cable manufacturer" in Pune for example, a few years ago, he would probably first start looking in the "Yellow pages". A few years ago, there were no other options that people had.

Now, since information can be found so easily on the Internet, people don't waste time with yellow pages. They will just go to Google and type in "fiber optic cable manufacturer pune" and find all the info they are looking for.
What if your competitors have websites and you don't? All the customers who look up information on the Internet will immediately go to them! You may have better products and services, but since no body can find you, you are loosing customers. You have to make it easy for people to find you.

Assuming that your competitors don't have websites, then YOU SHOULD be the first one to put up a website. Do it now! The customers who search for the products or services you are selling will know you before they know your competitors. If they visit your professional looking website before they visit you, they will already know that you are a company worth dealing with.

If you are running a business, a good professional looking website is a very important marketing tool. If your website shows up for every search for a product or service you are selling, it gives a very good impression to your customers who are online. So if you are running a business, there is no doubt that you MUST have a website!

If you belong to any "government organization" or service that the government of India provides, I especially urge you to have a website. There are many young Indians who use the Internet all the time as a source of information. They would love to see information that is provided by their Government supporting them. There is a lot the Indian govt. has to offer. However, few people know about these things. They are not marketed very well. So, if you belong to a Government organization or service, MAKE A WEBSITE! If you are not interested in making a website yourself, contact us we will make it for you.
If you belong to some organization that works towards a better India or for the people of the country, contact us, we will try to help you with everything we can.

Since you have read all this till here, you probably have a good reason for wanting to make a website, so let me not try to convince you any further. Let us get to it!
First of all, let us clear up the basics.
What is a website? & What is a web-page?
Since a large number of people are confused between these two, it would be a good idea to explain them first. A website is a whole group of web pages. Just like a whole group of "pages" make up a book, a whole group of web-pages make up a website. A web-page is an individual "page" or unit of a website.

For example: You are currently reading a "web page". This web page combined with all the other web pages linked to this page make up this website…indiahowto.com


Creating a website free of charge!
It is possible to create a website "free of charge" on the Internet. This is done though "free hosting". The problem is, that your website will not look very professional. This is because the companies that let you create a free website, will make you put their adds on your website.

Another problem that you will have is that, your website address will not be a ".com" like www.indiahowto.com. On the other hand, it will be some long name like "www.freehosting.coolsite.com"
Because of these reasons, it would be good to NOT create a free website if you are doing something serious, like making a website for your business etc.

On the other hand, if you are creating a website just for fun or just as a learning experience etc. if would be best to go in for a free hosting website.
Creating a Professional Website:
If you are interested in creating a professional looking website, you will have to go in for "paid hosting". Paid hosting has many advantages over free hosting. Firstly, since you "buy" space on the Internet, it's your space and so nobody will make you put any annoying adds on your site.

Also, you will have your own ".com" like www.mysite.com!

These are required if you intend to use your website for any serious purposes. In any case, paid hosting is not very costly. It is around Rs.450/- for buying the ".com" name and around Rs.800-Rs.1500 for a 50MB space for one year..

The process of creating a "free website" and the process of creating a "paid website" are a little different. In this article we will explain to you how to do both.


What is hosting?
We have used the word "hosting" many times in the last few paragraphs. You may be wondering, "What is hosting?"

Hosting is basically putting your website up on the Internet. Hosting is pretty much like buying some land or buying a shop, so that you can start a business. However, on the Internet, hosting is buying space. Space in terms of MB.

Free hosting companies give you some space free. They give you this space free of charge in return for putting their adds on your website. Paid hosting companies charge you for the space that they give you.
The general process of creating a website:
· Make your website on your own computer
· Use hosting to put your website up on the Internet
· Promote your website

Basically making a website is all about these 3 things.

In this article we will show you how to do all these things so read on!
To make your website on your own computer, you need to know HTML. All the web pages on the Internet, are fundamentally made up of HTML. To understand what I mean, go to any page of any website and go to "View > Source" in Internet Explorer or "View > Page Source" in Mozilla Firefox. (You can find "View" along with "File" "Edit" and all those other options on the top of your browser window.) A new window will open and what you will see is a confusing combination of words and brackets and a whole lot of other stuff! This is the HTML of the page.

Now, HTML is basically a language. If you know programming languages like C, C++, VB etc. then HTML will be very very easy for you. HTML, is one of the easiest programming languages. In fact HTML is not even a programming language.

HTML is a very simple "markup" language. This means that HTML decides how the different parts of the web page will "look". HTML is all about how everything "looks". For example, if I want this text to look bold. Then I can control how this text looks with HTML.

If you want a particular image on a web page in a particular place and of a particular size, you can decide exactly how it will look on the web page. Controlling the look of the web page is what HTML is all about.

Nowadays, the Internet is changing. Websites are not made only of HTML anymore. Websites are made using HTML, XHTML, Dynamic HTML, CSS, Flash, ASP and a whole lot of other things. To make a decent website you must know at least HTML and CSS.

Note: There are many ways of making a website without knowing anything about HTML or CSS. We will tell you some of them here. However, we are saying that you should know HTML because if you don't, you will waste a lot of time and money doing something that is very simple. There are simpler ways of doing things if you know HTML.
If this does not make sense now, then just take our word for it. As you learn HTML, you will understand what we mean.

So since you are going to be learning HTML, let me give you the basics of HTML.


Basics of HTML
HTML is a very simple language. It's all about "tags".

What are tags?
Tags are the main part of HTML. Suppose you want to make some text look bold. You put the text between & tags. The "" & "" are the tags. is the starting tag. is the ending tag. The ending tag is exactly like the staring tag. The only difference is the "/".

Anything that comes between these two will appear in bold on the web page. So suppose I want to write "You must learn HTML!" on the web page in bold. I would write:

You must learn HTML!
This probably gives you a basic understanding of tags. Just like there are tags to make text look bold, there are also many many other tags. There are tags to make text look italic, of a particular color, make text blink, make text scroll across the screen, make images show up and a whole lot of other things.

Just to give you an example, to make text bilk, you use the tags. It's that simple!

These are the basics of HTML. There is a lot more to learn, and I am sure you have many questions in your mind. Don't worry, we will help you with all of them. Here are some excellent resources where you can learn all about HTML:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/
http://www.utexas.edu/learn/html/

Just for fun you can try to see the "View > Source" and see if you can understand anything now.

In any case, you can come back to this page and learn HTML through the links we have given above a little later. For now, let us assume that you know HTML and move forward towards making your website..
Once you have learnt HTML, the tools that we are going to show you in this section will make much more sense. These tools will help you to make your website at a much faster speed and much more easily.
A WYSIWYG Editor!
I know the wired name might have scared you. But do not worry. It's a very simple name.
WYSIWYG stands for "What You See Is What You Get!"
You probably find this a little weird, but that is exactly what it stands for. Computer geeks are a little cool. They give fun names to everything.
So what is a What You See Is What You Get Editor?

A WYSIWYG editor makes it very simple for you to make web pages. It makes it very easy to design websites without bothering too much about HTML. It's like word or some other simple program. To make the web page you just have to select the pictures you want to put, put the text you want to put in, decide how it looks and all that. You don't have to bother about writing the HTML for the website. You just decide the colors, fonts, sizes and all the looks, the program writes the HTML code for you. Cool isn't it!

Even though it is possible to make a website only using a WYSIWYG editor, you must still learn HTML. Many a times you want to "fine tune" your website or do certain things that the program cannot handle, then you need to use hard-core HTML.

So now probably the name WYSIWYG makes a little more sense. What you see on the screen as you make the website is what you will get in the final web page.

Here is a very good free of charge WYSIWYG editor. This is the editor that is used to make this website. It's called NVU. Check out their website for more info.. http://www.nvu.com/

Once you download it, and after learning HTML, this editor is very easy to use.


Website Templates
There are many websites on the Internet that will provide you with free website templates. These are basically completely designed blank templates that can be filled with your information and your content and your website. The cool thing about these templates is that they are very easy to use if you have a WYSIWYG Editor and know the basics of HTML.

Another great thing about these templates is that they look great and are professionally designed. So you do not have to design you website from scratch. This saves you a whole lot of time and money. There are thousands of templates available on the Internet of all shapes sizes colors etc. You can easily find one that looks cool and matches your business and theme.

In case you are still not clear about what templates are, check out these sites:
http://www.templatesbox.com/
http://freesitetemplates.com/
http://www.steves-templates.com/

After learning HTML, using WYSIWYG Editors and Free Website Templates, you should be able to make your website on your computer.
Get your-self a complete web-design "TOOL BOX"
You could also get your self a web-design "TOOL BOX"! The tool box will contain thousands and thousands of templates, WYSIWYG editors, HTML, flash, java codes and everything else you will probably need for making a website! The best thing is that this tool box is available quite cheap!
You can get yourself your own "tool box" from ebay.in: "4 CD Tool Box" OR "9 CD Tool Box"
The 4 CD Tool Box is good enough for you if you are just a beginner. The 9 CD Tool Box is just bigger than the 4 CD one. It contains more templates, more HTML scripts etc. Both are quite reasonably priced.
If you are new to ebay, do not worry, you can just sign up from here free and buy whatever you are interested in right now! It's quite easy!
Once you are signed up, search for "Logo Templates HTML Scrpts". You could then choose one of the results and buy the kit!
We recommend that you buy the tool box from Ebay.in since it is quite safe & secure. If you are not comfortable with Credit Card payments, there are always other options like DD, money order etc. that you can go in for. Besides that, it will be hard for you to find this kind of complete kit anywhere else.
After you have the tools, do not just make a website. When designing a website there are some things that you must do so that your website is easy for the users to use, for the search engines to find and still looks cool and professional.
In the next section we have provided certain guidelines that you must follow when you are making your website. Follow them…
Some of these guidelines are quite easy to understand and some you will understand only once you know a little about HTML. So save this page in your favorites and come back to it often while making your website often. Also make sure you read these guidelines before and after selecting your template for your website.

Design guidelines - Making your site user friendly (Very Important!)
Your main page is the "first impression you give" and should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you're offering.. If your potential customer or visitor can't find your product or service or information, they definitely will not waste a lot of time looking for it. They'll go to the next site and probably never return. They're visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers. Provide them with what they are are looking for!

Branding will play a major role in your success. Make sure you place your company or website logo and slogan in the top left corner of each page. This will help your visitors to remember your site. It will also give your pages the same look and feel.

It's much better to keep your main page containing the most essential elements only and link to the detailed informational pages.

A good rule of thumb is "less is more." In other words, keep your main page as small as possible and include your most important elements only. A main page that contains too much information will NOT get you good results.

Navigation
When you begin designing your pages, keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main page. Make sure you include good navigational links on every page.
Place your navigational links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links and maintain a nicely organized and uniform appearance throughout.

When someone requires to go from one page of your website to the other he should have to click a maximum of two links.
It should NOT BE under any circumstances confusing for your visitor to find out how to use your website. No body sits around on slow confusing websites. People leave!


Fonts
One of the most important parts of a web page is text. The way in which you display the text on your web page will have a great impact on your success. It can make your page look very professional or very unprofessional.

When placing text within your web page, always be consistent with your fonts. In other words, don't use different fonts throughout your pages. The standard fonts used on the Internet are Aerial and Verdana. The standard text size is 2. Aerial and Verdana are the standard simply because they are the easiest to read on a computer screen.

Headlines, which require a larger font size, are a bit different. A popular headline font used is Georgia , as it displays nicely in the slightly larger font size.


Background and Text Colors
Use caution when selecting your background and text colors. Some backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site.

Select your colors very carefully, as colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well.

Bright colors, such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy. Colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors, such as brown and black, have a depressing effect.

A good rule of thumb is to use colors based on the type of effect you're trying to achieve. However, it's always best for your text areas to have a white background with black text.
What is the meaning of search engine friendly?
Search engines are funny creatures. They like certain sites and they do not like other websites. They are a little like women. They are hard to please and it takes time and effort to figure out why exactly they don't like you. (Sorry all the women who are reading this.)

If Google for example, likes your site, your site will show up in the Google search results then you will start getting many visitors from Google. This always a good way for a site to get it's first visitors. You want Google and other search engines to like your website. So you have to design it in a particular way so that you make it easier for the search engine to like you..
What do you mean?
You see, when a search engine first finds your site, it wants to know what your website is about. If they know what your website is about then they can display it when someone is searching for the information your website provides. So, to figure out what your website is about, they look at certain pars of your web page…like your title, heading etc. On seeing these things they know what your site is about so they can show your site when something related to your site is searched for.

So, when you design your website, make sure that you make it as easy as possible for the search engines to know what your website is about. This is called "SEO", Search Engine Optimization.

There are whole companies who are dedicated to SEO and pleasing the search engines. SEO is a art and people are studying it all over the world. It's like a business and a game to get your website to show up in the first page of the search results at Google.

There are some very important things you must do SEO wise while designing your website. But before we go into them, let us go into the concept of a "keyword"

What is a "keyword"?
When you have a website about "caps" for example, you want your website to be the website that shows up when some one goes to Google and types "caps". If you have a website about health and a web page about "cancer" then you want this web page of your website to show up when someone goes to Google and searches for "cancer". This is basically a keyword.

A keyword is the word that you want your website or web page to show up in the search results for. Search Engine Optimization is all about putting the "keywords" in the right paces when designing your site.
So when making your web pages, fists decide, "What is the key word for this web page? For what keyword should this page show up in the search results?"

Once you decide this follow the SEO guidelines:

The SEO web design guidelines:
Put the keyword once in the "title" tag of the page.

Put the keyword once or twice in the "description" tag of the web page. (By the way, you must unique title and description tags for all your pages.)

For all your pages, the heading of the page must be done though the "H1" tag. The keyword must be there in the H1 tag.

The file name of the web page must contain the keyword. For example, the keyword of a page is "lung cancer" then the file name must be "lung-cancer.html"

These are the basics of SEO. You should try and follow these rules. There is mush more to learn and I will tell you about it as we go along. For now, from the design point of view this is enough.

In some cases, it may be so that your visitors may get confused if you use a particular "keyword" in the heading etc. then DO NOT use the keyword just for SEO.

The VISITOR is more important. The VISITOR IS MOST IMPORTANT! DON'T CONFUSE THE VISITOR.

SEO is important, but don't confuse the visitor. The visitor is more important.

(If you don't know HTML, some of the above things might not be understood by you. Once you know HTML, this will make more sense. So go learn HTML)

Okay, once you follow all this, your pages should be ready and your website should be ready to go. So in the next section we will show you how to put your website on the Internet though free as well as paid hosting.
There are a few places on the Internet that allow you to put your website on the Internet, free of charge, and without adds. One of them is http://www.awardspace.com/free_web_hosting.html
However, these hosting service providers change their plans constantly. So, if you are reading this information a few years after this web page was made, then AwardSpace might have changed their plans or closed down etc.

However, you must look at the free-hosting site properly before signing up. There could be some hidden catch somewhere. However, it is definitely possible to put your website on the Internet free of charge and without any adds. Here is a whole list of sites that do this http://www.free-webhosts.com/no-forced-ads.php Check it out and choose some free service.

How do these free hosting and no-adds guys make money?
Most of these free-hosting and no-adds people hope that you will use their free hosing service and after some time will go in for their paid service that offers many more benefits. So they provide free-hosting as a "demo" or for marketing.

Some of them just like to promote web development and are charity organizations. If you support us then maybe indiahowto.com will soon start this kind of no-adds, free-hosting service to promote web hosting in India .

How to use these free web-hosting services?
Well, its pretty simple, just go to the free web hosting site and sign up for their free web hosting account. They will set-your account up instantly. You will have a "user-name" and "password"

Choose your "username" wisely. Generally, your username becomes your website address. For example, if you choose your username as "goat" then your website address will probably be something like www.hostingsite.com/goat
It would be wise to make your username or website address you biggest keyword. For example, if your website is all about "making cakes". Then choose your username as "make-cakes". That way your website address becomes something like www.hostingsite.com/make-cakes.

You want to have this kind of "keyword" website address for two reasons: Firstly, if the search engines see this website address, they know that the site is about making cakes. Secondly, since your site is about making cakes, the website address will be a little easier to remember.

Actually, this website address is a little to long for anyone to remember. So you might want to shorten the website address to something like www.make-cakes.cn.com This kind of thing is possible and we will look at how to do this a little later.
But first...
Putting up your website is pretty simple, use your username and password to get into your account that your hosting website has given you and upload your website on the Internet.

There are generally two kinds of upload methods. These are:
· FTP Uploads
· Browser Uploads
Browser Uploads
Most people who are new to website development, find the browser upload method far more easy to do. Once you sign into your account with the username and password, you will have to find "Upload Files" or "Upload Website" or something like that. Click on this. If they allow you to "browser upload" your website, they will ask you to select the files that make up the website on your computer and upload them. You select the files using the "Browse.." button and then click "Upload".
This is quite easy to do I am sure you will figure it out. The whole process is very similar to uploading an attachment, when you are sending and e-mail.

FTP Upload
In some cases however, you have to FTP upload the files of your website. To do this you will need an "FTP client". You can find one on some "Digit" or "PC Quest" kind of CD's. If you can't find one there, go to www.download.com and search for "Cute FTP" and download it.

Once you download and install the FTP client, the FTP client will ask you for some information.
Generally the:
· Host/IP/URL
· Username
· Password
· (And sometimes port!)

It should be easy to find out this information from the hosting website. After you sign in, this info should be available in the "Upload files" type section.

In case you cant find this info. anywhere, just send the hosting website a message though their "Contact Us" page saying that you want to upload files and so you want the following information:
· Host/IP/URL
· Username
· Password
· (And sometimes port!)

If the hosting site does not have a "Contact Us" type of page. Forget that hosting service. It is most likely some kind of fraud.

Once you obtain this information, you can feed it into the FTP client program that you have. It will connect you your website and you can upload the web pages.

If all this sounds scary don't worry. This is easy. When you do it will happen.

Once you put your website up its on the Internet for the whole world to see.. Congrats!

But you probably have a very long website address still. Let us try to solve that problem now....
There is a way in which you can reduce the size of your web site address. This is done though a process called URL-redirection. There are a few websites on the Internet who will do this for you free of charge.
The best service to make your "free-hosting" long website address sort is http://www.freedomain.co.nr/

They will give you a "almost" professional website address. For example: You website address could be a short www.make-cakes.co.nr or www.goats.co.nr! It will not be some long www.hostingsite.com/goat.html etc..

However, some times this service may not allow you to make any new accounts because they already have too many accounts. The will have a message on the site saying that they are temporarily closed so you should come back another time.

In that case you could go to Google search for "free url redirection"

The only catch that these http://www.freedomain.co.nr/ people have is that they require you to put a small button on your website to use the service. Besides that the service is great.

Using the service is not very difficult also. Just go to the site, sign-up, they will ask you what website address you want, if its available you get it. Then they will ask you where should your new website address point, so you say that it should point to your old website address (the long one at the free-hosting place) That's it! Your done!

Now having done this, you are officially set. You have your website on the Internet, you have a short website address…you are finished. The next step is to make people come to your site and promote your site. We shall come to that in sometime, but first let us look at the process of buying a ".com" and setting up a paid hosting account.
The first step to setting up a ".com" is to buy a ".com" name for yourself. Sometimes, this can be a very big problem. For common topics, it is very hard to find the "domain name" you are looking for.
(In case you don't know, "domain name" is another way of saying website address.)
But before you make any choices about the domain name, it would be good if you take a look at these basic domain name selection guidelines. Sometimes a bad domain name can be very bad for your website.
Here are the basic guidelines:
· Make it relevant to your company, product, or project so it's easier to remember.
· Keep your name short and simple if possible-around 5 characters
· Include keywords in the name
· Remember the Internet is global in nature. Try to choose a name that people all over the world can understand.
· Avoid tying your name to a calendar year, unless its for a product launch.
· Avoid Trademarked Names. Like coca-cola.
· If your company has a strong brand or is trying to get a strong brand then forget all about keywords, make you domain name your brand name.
These are just general guidelines. Keep them in mind when selecting a domain name. But if something makes more sense, or the name that you were going for is already taken then you might have to improvise and compromise.
Also, there are many possible domain names other than ".com" There are ".org", ".tv", ".biz" and all sorts of other names. Choose these only if really required. For example suppose you want the domain name www.cake.com and unfortunately the name is taken, and you cannot go for any other name then and then only go in for something like www.cake.org
Generally try to buy a ".com" name only. People know about ".coms" people don't know about anything else.
So, using all the above given guidelines you have selected your domain name. Now what? How do you buy it?
How to buy a domain name?
This is pretty simple. There are thousands of people who are selling domain names. You could go to Rediff, Indiatimes, Net4India and a whole lot of other companies. I cannot suggest any one company in particular for buying a domain name. All the companies I have stated above are pretty big companies that are as good or as bad as each other, so whichever one you go for things will be fine!
All the companies have random prices. Some are high. Some are low. Some are in schemes and offers! (As if they are selling soaps!) They seem to be based on nothing in particular. Select which ever company from the above list you trust and is cheapest and go for it.
It is generally a good idea to buy the domain name from the same company, you want to host your website at. So if you buy the domain name from Net4India then host your website also at Net4India.
I have selected Net4India mainly because it has an office in Pune (where I am located) and I can go sit on their heads if these is any problem! Besides that, Net4India is pretty cheap also and it's servers are located in Noida, Delhi .
This is good from the SEO point of view. If your website on servers located in India , the search engines think that the website is Indian and your website shows up in the "pages from India " results. Net4India does have a few minor problems from time to time though. In any case, you too might want to go for Net4India.)

Buying the domain name:
To buy the domain name you just have to go to the hosting site (Rediff, Net4India, Indiatimes etc.) check availability for the domain name and book it. As soon any you pay the money the domain name is yours. It's not very hard to do.
However, it would be good to do this swiftly. Decide your domain name offline and then just go online and book it. If you check the availability of a domain name two or three times, before booking it, there is a possibility that it will be gone. There are people out there who make money from buying domain names people are interested in and selling it at a much higher price. So basically do the whole domain name buying process quickly.
Buying hosting space:

If would be a good idea to buy hosting place from the same people you bought the domain name from. Here also there are many people offer this service. The service is offered at a whole range of prices. We recommend that you go in for an offers like, book web space and get a domain name free. They will link the web space to domain name you select and everything will be fine. Try to get a good offer with one of the big companies stated above and take it.

The process of buying web space is also pretty simple. Just go to the hosting website, book the plan, pay the money and you are set. They will handle everything for you.

Finally you will have to put your website up on the Internet. You can do this using FTP or browser upload methods that were talked about previously. Once your website is uploaded, you are set. Congrats!

When you have visitors coming to your site, those visitors are called "traffic" in Internet terms.

The cool thing about traffic is that the rich get richer! High traffic leads to even more higher traffic.
Once you get a decent amount of traffic, your traffic will grow each day. It will grow and grow and grow. But when you are just starting a site, getting high traffic is a difficult.

So, the question is:

How to have high traffic levels if you're starting from rock bottom?
You have to have great content on your site. You have to have great content on your site. You have to have great content on your site! We have repeated this 3 times because this is the key to success. This is the key to traffic.

If you have good information on your site, the popularity of your site will grow. It will grow slowly, but it will grow! As mentioned earlier, if you just keep adding good content to your site day-after-day for a year, you will have a very successful, very popular site.

Initially, forget about everything. Think only about making you site popular. Concentrate on writing great content. Don't even bother putting up something if you feel it's quality is not good. If you are able to create good quality content, consistently, people will start to recognize your site as the place to go when they want quality information. Over time your traffic will gradually increase. You will see your traffic increase every month.
"Links"

Initially, you will have to try to get as many links as you can from other sites. Links are the best way to get traffic when you are just starting out a new site. You need to get other sites to link to your site. This is the way in which you are going to get your first readers..

If a popular site or site with a large amount of traffic, links to your site, then many people from that high-traffic site will click on the link and come to your site. Generally speaking, you want to get links from sites that get a large amount of traffic.

Basically, you want to advertise your site on other sites. This is how you will get your initial traffic.

Why would other sites and sites link to you?

If you have a site that is about real estate and how to buy land, then a property site will probably be interested in linking to you because the information on your site will be useful to the property site's readers. For this too, you need to make sure that you have good content that is worth reading.

Getting other people to link to you is generally a pretty difficult. People will not just link to you for no reason. You will have to show people a good reason why they should link to you. You will have to be creative here. Also do not be disappointed, when people do not shown any interest in linking to your site.
You just have to keep trying. Two out of ten people might agree to link to you initially, but don't be afraid of asking.

If you find a site on the Internet, whose users would be benefited and interested in the information on your site, then that would be a site that will probably be interested in linking to you. Obviously, if you are in the exact same field as that site and both yours and the other site are offering the users, the exact same information, you will not get a link from that site because you will be that site's "competition".

In any case, assuming you find a site you like and you want a link from it, all you have to do is go to the "contact us" page of the site, find the e-mail id of the owner or webmaster of the site and send him an e-mail saying that you would like a link. Try to write a good letter convincing him that he/she should link to you because it will also benefit him. However, keep the letter short and sweet.

Most webmasters and site owners will only link to you if you give them a link back. If they are going to send you some of their traffic, then they want some traffic in return. If you don't mind giving them a link, then they probably won't mind giving you a link so long as your site is moderately decent.

This is called "reciprocal linking" or "link exchange". Generally, people have a "Favorite Links" or "Useful Links" or just "Links" page on their website. They use this page for reciprocal linking. They give other people links in this page and in return they get links in other website's "Links" page.

Unfortunately, links from the "Links" page will get you very little traffic. If you want to get decent traffic from a link, you need to get a link from a page that gets a lot of traffic.

"Cheap" way to get links when you are just starting out:

Find forums, message boards, chat room's etc. where people would be interested in reading what you have to say. For example if your site is about your experiences in the stock market, find a forum about the stock markets. When you find someone looking for information or asking questions whose answers are available on your site, send them a link telling them this is a good place to find the answer they are looking for.

Check out Yahoo Answers! If you are not familiar with the concept, on Yahoo Answers, there a thousands of people asking questions each day and thousands of people giving them answers. If you find a few people asking questions whose answers you know and are on your site, give them an answer and a link to your site.

One more reason why links are important!

Search engines, decide the worth of a site by looking at the number and quality of the pages that link to it. From the point of view of the search engines, if you have more links pointing to your site, you must be a good site because no one will link to a stupid site.

They use this basic thinking to run their search engines. So if you have a number of links pointing to your site, you will be considered as a good site by the search engines. You will show up in their search results. However, don't get links for search engines, get links for getting traffic.

Maybe all these concepts are new to you now, but you will start to understand them better once you get into the game. An excellent resource to really get into the game of website design is WebmasterWorld. Webmasters, and site owners from all over the world meet at this forum and discuss various topics. You must definitely join this forum. I am there too, my nic. On WebmasterWorld is "must_learn_more"
So now you know all the basics of web development. Congrats, if you read this huge article. It covers all the basic skills that are required. I hope you have benefited from it.
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