Leveraging the power and flexibility of WordPress, it’s lot easier to create your own websites/blog without hiring any designer. Fortunately, WordPress is not as much tough as people consider. Specially when you talk about a website for small business, it’s almost 4 step away from you.
In this tutorial, I will walk you step by step with the process on “How to create free website for small business “. This way you can create your own WP blog or website.
I personally answer questions in the comments section. So never hesitate to ask, if you have any question in mind.
Register/Setup Your Domain Name & Web Hosting
Domain registration and web hosting is a crucial part of a website. Selecting a good domain name and choosing a best web hosting will bring smile on your face rather tears. Here are few tips to find a good domain name for your small business website.
- Domain name is the same name; which people use to browse your website. Its like “http://YourWebsiteName.com”.
- Domain name should be easy to pronounce.
- Domain name should be easy to remember.
- Best domain names always include only alphabets and dictionary words.
A web hosting is a small space on a remote computer called “web servers”. You need to attach the domain name to the web hosting. Fortunately, some web hosts have made it really simple. I have written a detail post on “Register Domain + Web Hosting“.
PS. As you are reading this article on https://wpbloghelp.com, this website is also hosted by HostGator. We love its speed, flexibility, price and support.
Install WordPress on Your Server
Installing WordPress is really much simpler than thought. It depends on the web host, you select. I would prefer “HostGator“. They made it as much simple as clicking couple of times on an icon inside your web hosting control panel. An in-depth guide is published separately for you, to learn “How to install WordPress – Step-by-Step Guide“.
Install WordPress Theme & Appropriate Plugins
If you want to use WordPress for small business website tool, you will know that there are plenty of templates and plugins available for you. WordPress Themes are used to skin your website. In general, it’s like clothing a naked website. WordPress themes change the way; your website looks like.
On the other hand, WordPress Plugins are small piece of software, which can add more functions and capability to your website or blog. For example, if you want to create a Contact Form on your WP website or blog, you can use plugin. I am listing out some beautiful WordPress themes as well as the WordPress plugins needed for your small business website. I have a more detailed article on WordPress Plugins and Installation.
Best WordPress Themes for Small Business Website
I am putting some hand picked WP themes for small business website. These themes are ideal for designing your website for a small business. Beautiful color scheme, flexible structure and convenience of use, makes these templates distinguished. I have published a detailed article on “how to install WordPress theme – step-by-step guide“. So if you still want to know basics about WP themes, you can refer to the article.
Bodega - Small Businesses Theme
André - WP Theme for Small Business
Reneva - WP Theme For Small Business
Local Business - Small businesses theme
Installing Essential WordPress Plugins
When you setup a WP website for small business, you will surely need to install some plugins to add some new features in your website. For example, if you want to add a contact form to your website, you need to install Contact Form 7 Plugin. If you need to integrate google map for your contact us page, you can install a relevant plugin to add that feature to your small business website.
I have also written a detailed guide to install WP plugins. Here is a list of essential plugins and their uses.
Contact Form 7
Contact form 7 plugin is used to add a form to your WordPress page. This form can let users of your website to send emails to you without revealing your email address for spammers. This plugin is free to download and 5+ million WordPress websites are currently using this plugin. Here is the demo of the form generated with this plugin.
Sassy Social Share
This plugin integrates several social icons to your website. These social icons let users of your website to share your contents across different social website. WP Blog Help uses this plugin as well and you can see social icons before and after this blog post.
WP Super Charge
With the latest update from google, now websites with low PageSpeed does not rank well in search engines. Optimizing your WordPress website for PageSpeed is a tedious, technical and lengthy task. WP Super Charge makes it possible with a single click of a button called “Magic Optimizer”. You can access this button, when you have this plugin installed and you are logged in to your WP admin area.
Yoast SEO
This plugin allows you to optimize your WP website for search engines. This allows you to optimize your page title, meta description and many other things, which are loved by google, bing and many other search engines. If you want to get prospects from search engines for free, I would recommend you to use this plugin.
WP Google Maps
Google maps can be integrated to your web pages with this simple plugin. This plugin allows you to configure your business address and creates a shortcode. You can use this shortcode on any page of your website, where you want to show your location on google map.
Configure Your WordPress Website for Small Business
When you have all the things setup on your WordPress website like WP theme and essential WP Plugins; You can review your settings to make sure everything is working. Now you can head towards www.yoursite.com/wp-admin and go to the left side menu. Here you can find a tab labelled “Add new page”. This tab allows you to add new pages to your WP website.
If your company needs to publish blog posts as well, you can use “add new post” tab to create new blog posts.
