Making a Homeschool Website
There are thousands of homeschooling websites on the net, but it isn’t too late for you to create one. The secret is to fill a gap in the range of sites available. If you build a website that is different from all the others, web surfers will flock to your doors.
When I began my website long, long ago, back on Geocities, most homeschool sites were little more than a list of educational sites and a description of how wonderful the homeschool mom who made the site was as a teacher. I decided to create a site that would teach people how to homeschool. I chose something not commonly available at that time.
Today, there are still gaps, particularly in terms of sites for specific academic subjects. I’d love to see more sites on homeschool science, for example. The first step in creating your site is to choose a narrow focus, rather than the all-encompassing one I have because it was started so long ago. Create unique content for it that can’t be found anywhere else. Remember, strangers won’t flock to your site to find out how great you are or how cute your kids are. They're looking for advice and tools to use in their own homeschools.
While you’re building the content, decide where to host your site. There are many free sites, but if you’re hoping to earn money from your site at some point, avoid those. Not only do you have to cope with their ads and pop-ups, but most restrict the money you can earn. The free sites mark you as an amateur, which is fine if you’re doing it for fun. If you’re starting a business, invest in a site that costs. It’s hard to move later and you lose traffic. Look for a provider that has good uptime—a site that is always down isn’t very useful. Choose one that has great reporting stats, so you can monitor how many people you have and where they come from. This helps you build your site. You normally pay by the year, and presume it may take a few years for the site to begin paying for itself. You can reduce the wait time, though, by studying more in-depth resources on how to promote your site. Be careful—many sites teach unethical methods that will hurt you in the long run. Check out a site’s credentials before listening to them. If a site advises you to do something in order to rank well in a search engine, decide if you would be willing to do it anyway, even if it wouldn’t help with search engine ranking. If you wouldn’t, it’s probably not ethical and you should find another site to follow.
Before promoting your site, have at least 10 to 20 valuable pages on the site. This means ten pages that teach people something important, something they can use in their own homeschools. Try to add at least a page a week, and more if possible. The larger it is, the more traffic you’ll get and the more money you’ll earn if you have ads. Always build your site with your audience in mind. Picture a mom—give her a name and find a photo even, if it helps. Write a little bio of her and keep her in mind as you build your site with her needs in mind. The site should match your values and your passions, but always remember that if the reader doesn’t leave with something she came for, she won’t return.
Be passionate about your topic. Don’t choose something just because it’s popular. After the novelty wears off, it’s hard to keep going if you aren’t passionate about your topic.
Choose a title that makes the subject of your site clear. Suzi’s Corner is cute, but it gives no clue as to the content. Search engines give higher rank to the closest match, so keep that in mind as you choose a topic. If my website weren’t meant to help promote my books, it would likely have a name like, “Homeschooling for Beginners” or “Homeschooling for the Timid.” Then the URL might be timidhomeschoolers.com, or something similar.
If your site might become a business, choose a design that is professional and simple. Don’t attack your readers with things that move or make noise. Let your site be great because of content, not because you showed off all the fun things you learned how to do. The first page should immediately tell a visitor what to expect. Save the doorways for your house—don’t put up a page that just says, “Click here to enter site.” That wastes a visitor’s time.
Study popular professional sites to see what they do and what irritates you. Picture your visitor coming in while children nap—so no noise. She’s in a hurry—homeschool moms are busy. The site must be easy and logical to navigate. It’s easier to do it right the first time, so take time to think it through. I didn’t, and it’s been no end of headache trying to get it fixed!
Once your page is perfect—and grammar, punctuation, and spelling do count---ask a friend or two to put a link to it on their website in exchange for a link to their site on yours. This will help the search engines find you. Make sure you’ve given them a site worth linking to.
There is far more to building a popular site than I can list here. Research further and study the sites you admire for ideas. You’ll soon recognize a difference between sites built with a business in mind and those built for fun. If you do your research, you’ll be able to build a site that exactly meets your goals.
Here are some resources to help you get started. (Signing up through my link helps to fund this site, just to make full disclosure that these are affilate links--but products I use myself.
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