This is the second article in the thread called "Building a Professional Web site without spending a lot of money". The primary article had you acquiring your domain name. What's the next step? Probably not what you think.

I know you want to get right into it, setting up your internet site, adding graphics, registering for AdSense and turning a profit. If you jump in head first, i guarantee that you will waste time and money.

Here's what you should do first, think about the lookup phrases you think people will use to find your web site. Your internet site is your foreword to the internet.

You've already thought about keywords (search phrases), now what? I would like you to relax with your personal favourite text editor and write a five hundred to seven hundred word entry to your internet site. Make sure you make use of your search phrases and keywords liberally in the foreword. This is paramount in driving traffic to your pages, the earlier you do it, the better the results.

I've done my best, now what? Well, wasn't that quick? Now have a friend go over it, is it appealing? Keyword abuse sometimes makes writing seem awkward. It takes a while to have good writing which is still search engine friendly. I still don't have the hang of it and I have 14 full fledged internet sites with a total of more than 4000 pages (I have help). Of course, at this point you're not reading this for my writing style, but for my experience.

Your home page is a go, now what? Aren't you impatient? Well, ideally you need to get that page up on your web site. I am not going to go through this step by step, but I am going to recommend a few open source (no cost) products which will make your web life much easier. There are guides around the internet to installing these on your world wide web host. If you've chosen godaddy (as indicated in my initial essay), then I've actually installed each of these quite easily.

Is a blog site what you want? If you're planning on having blogs on your internet site, then I suggest Serendipity (you can find out how to download this from my web page, listed in the author resource box below). I've tried three different blog engines and Serendipity is my favourite. It is the easiest to make use of, easy to install and changing templates is quite easy.

That's it for this essay, I threw in the blog just to whet your appetite. My next report will mention what software I make use of to set up more complex internet sites with full menu systems. Don't miss that one, or better still, visit my internet site Open Source Depot to find out how to aquirethis great free software.

John is a software engineer and editor at Open Source Depot, you can read about open source software and building web sites on

http://www.open-source-depot.com

If you'd like to find out the easy way to build multiple websites with very little work,visit

http://whypark.gocurious.com