How to Build a Website Step 8: Website Content and SEO

When it comes to creating website pages, I think it’s always best to write your pages out in Word first. That way, you can check for spelling and grammatical errors, set up your paragraphs, and polish what you’re going to say. It just so happens that I’ve written a few web pages in Word, and I’m ready to start building those pages on the website.

Publishing Pages

Let’s work on the home page.

The first thing we’re going to do is to add a new page. In the WordPress dashboard, we’re going to go to the Pages menu, and we’re going to click “Add New.”

I like working in Classic Mode (as opposed to the Block Editor) when I’m building Pages or Posts (blogs).

Let’s give this page a name. We’ll call it the name of the site “Build My Digital Business”.

Let’s scroll down the page, and let’s look at the Yoast SEO section. This part controls the page title and the meta description part of your on-page search engine optimization. Let’s put in a keyphrase of “digital marketing”. Then, let’s clear the existing page title, and let’s write a new one:

“How to Build Your Own Digital Marketing Platform for Your Business”

Make sure that the little bar changes to green… that just means that the title is not too long nor too short.

Then, let’s fill in the meta description:

“Learn how you can create your own digital marketing ecosystem including a website, email marketing platform, social media, and ads just like I do.”

Notice, we reflected “digital marketing” in both sections.

Let’s also add an 800 X 600 px featured image in the right column by clicking on the link and uploading something.

Now, let’s publish the page.

Let’s now view the page.

Here’ we now see a blank and pretty plain web page. Let’s click on “Enable Visual Builder” in the top black bar of the screen.

Here, we’re presented with three choices:

1. Build from scratch
2. Build from a template
3. Clone an existing page.

Since we don’t have any existing pages, I’m going to actually build this from scratch.

The Divi Theme Builder lets you create web pages using drag-and-drop elements. The basic building blocks are:

1. Rows/Sections
2. Columns
3. Modules

Let’s create a row. Let’s make it a full-width section, and let’s add a full-width slider module.

Now, let’s format that section by clicking on the gear icon. Let’s copy and paste some content from the Word Document, give the section a background image of 1920 X 1080 px, and do a little styling.

At the bottom of the page, you’ll see a little purple circle. Click on that, and you’ll see some elements that appear. Let’s click the “Save” button to save our work. While there is an auto-save feature, saving your work is a good practice.

Now, let’s add a regular section under that full-width slider. Let’s make it two columns. In one column we’ll drag over an image module, and in the other we’ll drag in a text module. Now, let’s put an image in the image module area (make sure you use alt text to say what the image is all about), and let’s copy and paste some more text from our Word Document.

We can keep adding sections until our page is nicely filled out. We’re shooting for a minimum of 300 words, but we really want well over 500 words, if possible. We also want our keyphrase of “digital marketing” to show up a few times on the page.

Now, let’s add a call-to-action to have people sign up for my email list.

Finally, I want people to contact me, so let’s add a form at the bottom of the page. We’re going to use a third-party plugin called Gravity Forms. This is a premium plugin meaning you have to pay for it. But, Gravity integrates with other systems, and it’s very reliable. Other options are to use the Divi form section, WP Forms which is free but limited without the paid model, or Contact Form 7 which is super customizable… but, that’s just it, it has to be customized to look good on you web page.

Again, let’s keep saving our work manually. Once we have the page the way we want it, and we save it, let’s now click “Exit the Visual Builder” and the page will refresh, and you’ll see just what you created.

Pretty cool, huh?

Pretty much “rinse and repeat” the process on the other pages of the website until they are all built.

Publishing Blogs

I prefer to publish blogs using the default template. However, Divi does all you to customize blog posts nearly as much as static pages.

The main differences between a blog and a page are:

1. Blogs are time-ordered… the latest blog is the one that show up as the top-most post.
2. Blogs can be categorized.
3. Blogs are typically articles on a specific topic and can include tips, news, information, recipes, etc.

To publish a blog, go to “Posts” and choose “Add New”.

Enter the name of the post as the title. Start writing or copy-and-paste what you might have written in a Word document.

When you’ve written what you like, you can save the page as a draft in Classic Mode. Then, scroll down to the Yoast SEO section. Complete that area just like you would for a page.

Next, choose or create a category in the right column. You can also create or add existing tags to add further context to your story.

Let’s also set a featured image that illustrates your story. Alternatively, if you have a video from YouTube, you can select to use a video blog type, and you can publish the page where the video will be used in lieu of the featured image.

Once everything looks the way you want it, you can click the “Publish” button.

Now you’re a true online content creator. Let’s go get found online!