This is the part where we literally start building your website, so youʼll be doing a lot, but fear not, I explain it step-by-step.

Let’s carry on learning and building!

Learning Goals

• At the end of this module you should be able to:
• Choose and register a domain name
• Connect your domain name to your website hosting
• Install a WordPress theme
• Select and install plugins
• Install Google Analytics
• Know the differences between pages and posts
• Optimize the structure of your website Optimize your content

Building Goals

By the end of this module you will want to have:

• A domain name registered
• A website hosting account
• Your domain name connected to your website hosting
• A Premium WordPress theme installed on your website
• The recommended plugins installed on your website
• Google Analytics installed on your website Your website live

The first thing that I want to talk about is your site’s domain name and how it’s related to growth.

This part is VERY IMPORTANT and it’s something that most people don’t talk about enough when discussing blogging strategy. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody mention this.

Why is domain name so important? Because it tells visitors what your site is about. It’s the reason you don’t find car engine specifications on sites named HoopCentral (a sports website). It would throw off your visitors and just look weird.

Before we talk about choosing a domain name, I want to go over what role it plays in the structuring of your authority blog.

Answer this: What is the long-term vision for your blog?

Basically… How big is your niche? Can it be expanded into multiple categories and hundreds to thousands of pages?

If the answer is no: then your domain name SHOULDN’T be specific to that niche.

I’ll give you the perfect example

Remember the “bowling tips” keyword that we analyzed? The main keywords for that niche get about 50,000 searches per month IF we combine them together into a Pillar Keyword.

But honestly, it just isn’t possible to expand an authority blog to hundreds and thousands of pages in the bowling instruction niche.

There just aren’t enough keywords to make this a worthwhile endeavor.

THEREFORE, I would NOT name my site something like

“EliteBowling.com” because that pretty much limit s my site to ONLY talk about bowling.

Does that make sense?

Go one layer up in cases like this

Instead, I HAVE to find a way to go one layer up so that bowling becomes a category of the site rather than the main topic.

It’s the only way I’ll be able to target other related niches in the future.

So, I have to decide what category bowling fits into.

After doing some quick research, I decided on “recreational activities.” That’s a layer up from bowling.

Instead of making my blog about bowling, I’m going to make it about recreational activities.

In the future, that will allow me to expand the blog into other niches like:

• lawn tennis
• bird watching
• trail running
• chess
• table tennis
• badminton
• frisbee

So rather than something like “EliteBowling.com” I’ll go with something like “RecreationElite.com”.

Why is this so important?

I hope you know why already. If you don’t, I haven’t done a good enough job explaining why authority sites are so profitable.

When we start building links and gaining authority on our site, our site is going to slowly build up a LOT of momentum in the search engines.

We don’t want to limit the site’s growth by having a limited number of things we can talk about.

Ranking for keywords becomes SO MUCH easier at this stage. You’ll be able to target new niches as categories and rank page for them so much faster than if you were to start a new blog.

It’s this benefit that makes it possible for a site to go from $1000/month to $10,000/month.

We did all this work to build up authority to our site. We need to take advantage of its power. We need the ability to scale.

Remember the good old days when it was possible to spam a new site to death and have it ranking within days?

Spam is dead, quick rankings aren’t.

You can still rank for big keywords in days – IF you have the authority built up to your domain. We’ll get to the link building part in the next part of the course, but I just wanted to tell you WHY it’s so important to have a wide net of topics you can expand upon for your site.

What does that mean for our site if bowling turns into a category?

We’re still going to target only bowling at the beginning of the site.

However, because my site is now about recreational activities, the homepage will be titled around “recreational activities.”

We’ll also be able to target that as its own keyword, and it should rank itself naturally in the long-run

Then, bowling will be turned into a category, and I’ll have the option to add the other niches in as additional categories in the future.

I don’t need to add everything at once, and a new niche site certainly doesn’t need to stick to a strict publishing schedule. I can grow out the site at the pace I wish.

Where to buy domain?

I recommend you buy your domain on Namecheap https://www.namecheap.com/

They are user-friendly, cheap and offer free privacy protection for your domain – meaning no one will see your home address or phone numbers or email – so your personal data will be kept safe.

Once on their site, use the Search tool to search for “coupons” as they post fresh coupon codes every month and that will save you some coins.

If you have a bigger budget and would like to get a domain with that ‘premiumʼ feel, I highly recommend BrandBucket.

Now that you have a domain name, you need: