Get a free website, Get Hub traffic

When most people think about making a website there is a lot of thought that goes into it. Such as expensive web design, hosting, naming, copyright and a lot of learning about code. Sure this is sometimes the case if you want a personal or business front. I myself have made several for companies and others for myself. So why would I want to make one for free? Well apart from the obvious reason that is is free, these simple services which I will be going into in detail not only help your web exposure for your articles acting as your own front page website, you can earn with Google adsense on them and they are a crafty way of avoiding popular traffic website's spam and user blocks. Such as those found on Reddit and Stumbleupon. Which I will be explaining in detail a little further down.

But first, although there are many types of these websites I spent a while looking for four, the best ones with the best interface and ease of use. The reason for using these services above all else is simply. You do not need to know how to code, script or really design to get a finished product. Which is great for those just starting out.

Note: If you are wondering how this will help your traffic to your Hubpages, scroll down and read that part

The first and my personal favourite is www.yola.com.

This website is a joint project with Google, offering the not so well known GBBO service. Which is for United Kingdom residents only. Offering a free .co.uk domain for one year. But don't think the whole service is reserved only for those from that nation. You can create a very professional looking website, with a domain for free.

I will only be going into detail on Yola and as you read you will see me making my own website in the images, which will play a key role in the increasing traffic part of this article which can be found further down. For the other three services, it is the same sort of thing. The basic step by step design, simple click and drag creation panels and so on.

So now you need to get started, click on the red “Get started now” button and fill in the boxes that appear, this will include your real name, email and all the usual information a website will request when you register. Note, they will send you an email to activate your account. Although it seems to be random as to who they send those to as not all new users get one.

Once you are done the page will redirect you to the starting out page, remember this is all free so don't worry about a billing page. The next step is to name and pick the type of website as we will be using this for Hub traffic you will want something related to that. For example I have gone with a name “R9139 Articles” and picked personal as my website type. When you are happy with that, click built it!

You now have a very basic website in the making, the first thing you will want to do, under the top left drop down menu “Styles” is to change the style to one you like best. Keep note, some are premium.

Now as mine is going to be about articles, I chose one that looks like a notepad. That's the fun part done, now you just need to edit it and make it your own. On the front page, the home page of your new website there will be boxes you can edit, which is simply to do just by clicking on the existing text and replacing it with your own.

To change any images, click on edit in the top left of their box. This will bring up a control box which you can choose to upload a new one. You can also add images from the right side menu.

I rushed my website for the sake of making it quickly for this article, but if you spend more than the ten minutes I did you can actually make a very nice professional looking website. But having read this far I am sure you want to know how you can use this to help you get traffic and money. Well that is simple.

First, delete any extra pages the website generated for you upon creation. To do this, copy as I do below. Do NOT, delete the "index" page, that is your home page.

Now before we continue making our website we are going to think about the main reason we would be doing this and that is traffic, each page can have keywords like any other article and be found on Google by users. So there is one source of traffic right there but the main reason for posting your articles on a website like this. Note: It is not duplication, you are doing nothing more than linking back to them like you would on any social network. If you have use d websites such as Reddit, Stumbleupon or even Pinterest you will notice after a while of posting links it will block you from posting to that url. To make sure you are not an advertisement bot.

For example, if you were to link to a url more than ten times on Stumbleupon you would likely be met by this image.

This error shows itself on may of the front page and social networks, it simply means you have been adding too much from one area. On Stumbleupon you can solve it by going about and linking to several other websites and getting involved in the community. But I feel you can link more and still get the traffic. That is where the website we have been making comes in. You are going to create a new page for each type of topic you want to post about. For example, I am going to be using my poetry. So I am going to be creating a new page on my website, called “Poetry” I will then post the first picture and the link to my Hubpages poem on that page. Followed by posting that url to Stumbleupon. Think of it like a second middle man. You can even add things like Google adsense to your website's pages to earn a little extra.

The same thing applies to Reddit, although they also have a broken spam filter which will happily block most users post. By making a website and linking through that you will have a better chance of getting accepted. Once you have reached yet another “url failed” message posting your new website links, return to posting directly with your url to your hub and keep swapping back as you can. It's not spamming as you are not advertising a product for sale, or a company. You are just posting up different articles.

Making the new page!

As you saw in the above video, you can now use your new pages URL to add to sites like Reddit, Stumbleupon and other front page websites once you have reached a daily or post based limit. Keeping your traffic flowing without having to link away from your own content. Adding things like Google adsense and so on to your Yola website will allow you to earn at the same time. I advise you to read the tutorials on Yola and make your website much better than the one I made in the article.

Once you have published, take the url you are given. Which will be the free one, at the bottom of the pop up window. Enter it in a search bar and it will take you to your website. Then click on your next page, for me it was "poetry" then copy the url of the poetry or new page into the website you wish to link from. Such as Stumbleupon.

There are three other great free web services which allow you to create a website and do just this for free.

Due to HubPages, "overly promotional" flags if you include more than three links to the same domain in an article. I put my main image sources at the end of my Hub's as in some cases there may be many images used in these tutorials.

1. Images used in the tutorial throughout are from www.yola.com, screenshots taken by R9139