A domain name is the text that identified your website on the internet. Learn why this is important in this module. We start with an introduction on who we are and what we have done. At the end of this module you will be able to understand:

• What is a domain name?
• How to choose the right domain name using free online tools
• Implications of Domain name on SEO
• Checking your chosen domain name's history and why this can impact your website's performance
• How to register one and with which company?
• Optimizing your domain structure and using sub-domains effectively
• Domain name-server settings required to authenticate third party email marketing software and claim ownership of your domain with with major search engines such as Google and Bing
• What do all the technical terms like TTL, A Records, TXT Records, MX Records mean and which ones do you need to know about?
• The worst pitfalls and mistakes you could make and how to avoid them.
• Downloadable cheat sheet to keep that you can refer to in the future with links to articles and sources that will assist you in the future.

A domain name is the sign that points to your shop, your server is the shelf space and physical storage for your shop. It is crucial that your server is fast and is optimized the programming language your website will be based on. In this module you will get a step-by-step video guide that will enable you to understand:

• What are the important considerations in choosing a server?
• Why is the location of the server important?
• How to find out if a server is the best for your targeted territory/territories?
• What is the difference between Shared and Dedicated hosting?
• How can shared hosting affect your website's IP Reputation?
• How can you optimize your server for WordPress?
• Which server company do we recommend and why?
• What KIND of server is best suited for each type of business/website?

Now that you have your domain and server set up, we will look at how to link them together. This is a step-by-step guide to all the options and functions of your server's control panel (CPANEL) that you need to do to avoid pitfalls and mistakes that could include getting hacked, having your imagery hijacked by third party websites, draining your bandwidth and creating toxic backlinks to your website that massively damage your online reputation. By the end of this module you will be able to:

• Access your server securely
• Understand how and why to create Email addresses and mail forwarders
• Set up your email address on your personal devices
• Understand how all the functions of CPANEL work including SQL Databases, Email, DNS, SSL and more
• Use your CPANEL to edit DNS settings at the server level to enable things like DKIM authentication and prove domain ownership to third party sites
• Exploit massive advantages that can be unlocked with the right CPANEL settings to ensure high PageSpeed scores and enhance your search engine rankings
• Understand how, when and why you would use PHPAdmin to edit your SQL databases
• Understand how exactly WordPress works as a content management system, what are the exact moving parts and what you need to know in case things go wrong
• Set up a FREE SSL certificate for your domain that comes with your server hosting package
• Setup automated Chronjobs to handle functions like backing up your website regularly in case you get hacked or things go wrong

This is where things start to happen, it starts with installing WordPress and setting up a really cool looking 'coming soon' page with dynamic countdown and other awesome functions like background video overlay. This module is designed to give you a shortcut that bypasses hours of pain, frustration and distress that can be caused when you set up WordPress incorrectly, such as getting hacked by malware which often leads to your site being de-listed by search engines and your visitors getting a dreaded 'THIS SITE IS NOT SAFE' warning. This module gives you the best practice that we have developed ourselves after delivering more than 280 websites for clients all over the world. By the end of this module you will be able to:

• Ensure uniformity in your site address.
• Set up a holding page so visitors to your site while it is under construction can immediately start to get excited and engage with your brand.
• Install WordPress manually via FTP and automatically via your website server's CPANEL.
• Create user groups and customize permissions to enable you to provide access to blog writers without giving them the ability to access sensitive functions on the site.
• Install the WordPress theme we recommend for this course.
• Create a Google Analytics account and link correctly to your website.
• Use WordPress admin panel to claim ownership of your website on Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Pinterest, Yandex and other services.
• Use the WordPress admin panel to install Snapchat Pixel, LinkedIn Remarketing Tag, Facebook Pixel, Google Ads remarketing tags and more.
• Customize your WordPress installation's settings to optimize it for speed and rankings.
• Force SSL across your website in order to avoid being penalized by Google.
• Implement the best settings for your .htaccess and wp-config.php files in order to get the best PageSpeed score, minimize the risk of getting hacked and closing known vulnerabilities whilst also improving website speed and operability.

Starting with how to optimize your website's holding page, this module gives you the background on what types of pages your website should have, what and how to structure your internal linking strategy, creating a sitemap to optimize your time and effectiveness. The module will take you through a step-by-step guide as we create a LIVE EXAMPLE, teaching you different methods to create these various pages as well as providing you with the best practices in terms of SEO and user-interface design and functionality. By the end of this module you will be able to:

• Create and customize a 'coming soon' holding page with built-in contact form to collect leads whilst your site is under construction.
• Create a sitemap for your website and understand the importance of sitemaps in determining your website's structure.
• Research and create an internal linking strategy, understanding the importance of pillar pages (also called cornerstone content) and how to link to them effectively.
• Understand the implications of Google Algorithm changes and the expected trends in the future, as well as which blogs and email newsletters to sign up to be kept 'in the loop' on future changes that could impact your website's search engine rankings.
• Research your competitors' websites to discover their keyword and internal linking strategies, allowing you to determine easily what is working for them, and how to adopt and optimize these strategies for yourself.
• Create content according to the best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), with a full understanding of how to check your work against these best practices using free tools available online.
• Get the most out of Enfold, the theme that we recommend for this course, creating and saving your own templates for page layouts so you can create new pages with one click (such as staff bios when you get new members of staff, or location details when you expand to a new location).
• Create a backup of your website once it is completed and ensuring that regular automatic backups are created of your site on a frequency that you choose so that if any unauthorised changes or conflicts occur, restoring your website's operability will be a 3 click process.
• Understand the online threats to your website and secure your website with daily malware and virus scans and reports on brute force hacking attempts.
• Ensure your website complies with the GDPR and other online legislative regulations in less than 5 minutes.

Initially, this module was going to be part of Module 5, but as you will know, no matter how big or small your business is, leads are the lifeblood of your business. Whether you are a B2B or B2C business, this module will teach you everything you need to know about managing the lead generation process both ON and OFF your website. Now this module might go slightly out of the scope of a course that teaches you how to create a website, but we think it is crucial that your efforts do not stop a the website. This module will take you through landing page creation, looking at premium plugins (ie. paid for) and free plugins that you can use to optimize your landing page design, creating and using conditional logic for your contact forms and using free and third party email marketing platforms to create and optimize an effective automated email journey for leads that helps to enhance conversion rates. Are your READY? By the end of this module you will be able to:

• Create lead generating landing pages that adopt the best practices in terms of design and layout, avoiding the pitfalls that we see every day in many websites.
• Integrate and use free tools that help you optimize your landing page design. You will understand key concepts such as Behavioural Flow and our golden rules of conversion rate optimization, tools that you will understand and integrate in order to achieve this will be free and include visitor screen-recording and Google Analytics.
• Create conditional logic contact forms that are automatically integrated with your email marketing and CRM platforms.
• Create conditional logic contact forms that enhance lead quality.
• Link lead generating forms to automated email journeys on third party email marketing software, such as our recommended platform, Campaign Monitor, that actively enhance your lead conversion rates.
• Long-term sales funnel strategy using automated email customer journeys, how to effectively integrate this with content you will create on your website.
• Integrating multiple contact options to make it easy for potential leads to contact you, including links that will generate pre-populated messages to your business' Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger accounts.
• Linking downloadable PDFs to contact form submissions to automate the sending of your company profile or product brochure to people who fill out a contact form.
• Taking payments with Stripe and Paypal using contact forms.
• Creating a primary and secondary database of your captured leads so that you never lose them in the event your website is compromised or your server suffers a catastrophic loss of data.

Once your website design is completed, it is time to optimize your website. After this module you will be able to do this for any other website also, the concepts are universal. Using free tools to appraise your design, you will learn how to implement small tweaks and changes that will massively optimize your website's technical SEO, loading times and Google's PageSpeed score. By the end of this module you will be able to:

• Understand the concepts around website optimization and why they are crucial to your competitiveness online.
• Use free tools to scan your website for issues that are impairing your load time.
• Understand how Caching works both at the server level and from within WordPress.
• Implement Caching of your WordPress site without disrupting or impairing any plugins and/or performance.
• Understand and use 'lazyload' to improve the load times for crucial landing pages.
• Optimize your customer journey using our step-by-step guide and checklist with live examples of real websites.
• Enable the advanced functionality of Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Snapchat pixel and LinkedIn Marketing Tag.
• Create the ideal .htaccess file that will help your website load faster and perform better whilst also securing your website's backend from hackers.
• Implement IP address blocking for subnets and addresses that are known to be compromised.
• Disable access to your website from countries primarily used by hackers that you are not targeting to help minimize risk of hacking.
• Check and optimize your indexing status on Google and Bing search engines.
• Using Open Graphs effectively to enhance your links when they are shared on social media.
• Track conversions using Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics.
• Use free screen-recording tools to monitor your website users' journeys and optimize your landing pages accordingly.
• Get some FREE Google Sheets that integrate with your Google Analytics to create awesome heatmaps of user interactions that will help to guide your digital strategy.
• Get some awesome free custom dashboards for Google Analytics that will help you understand exactly what is happening on your website at a glance.
• Set up our recommended Google Analytics custom dashboard on your smartphone via the Google Analytics IOS/Android app.

You log into your website. Nothing happens. The screen is blank. You get an error saying Database Connection cannot be established or a 5XX error. Worse, you get an email from Google Search Console informing you hacked content has been found on your website. What do you do? Panic. No. This module is a bonus designed to help you avoid the frustration and stress that comes with issues like this. This module will help to minimize these risks by:

• Defining threat types and how each one can affect your website.
• Implementing small steps in your website to minimize these threats.
• Providing you with a step-by-step downloadable workflow to deal with each threat once it has occurred.