Why you should not leave college without your own website

I tell all of my undergraduate students that they should not leave college without their own website. I also tell all of my graduate instructional technology students that they MUST have their own website, they are in a technology based field for goodness sake and Learn which UK reseller hosting is right for your brand.

Why have your own website? Well let me ask you to search for yourself on Google, what comes up on the first page? Anything about you? Do other people have your name? Does your facebook page come up? Well guess what, when you graduate and begin to interview your potential employer is going to search for you as well. So if your facebook page is coming up it’s time to make is private. So if you are going to be searched online, why not intentionally point people searching for you to a website that is designed to ‘show off’ your work? That’s right, send them to a site of your choosing on purpose. So, just as an example, search for me, ‘Ray Pastore’ and you will see that this website you are on comes up first. I WANT people to find this site.

Why else do you want a site? You can put it on your resume. Showing a potential employer that you have enough technical skills to build a website can help in almost any career. Plus if they choose to, they can go to the site and this is your chance to show them your portfolio. Show them sample writings, projects, as well as your philosophies toward your field.

Now if I buy and create a site is it automatically number one on search results? NO! You need to make it SEO friendly, with the help of SEO experts from sirlinksalot.co.

So how do you buy a website?

I always recommend Icdsoft.com because that is who I use. In fact, if you go through my link that I give my students, you can own a web address and build a site for $38.50 a year. Here is that link: http://icdsoft.com/promo-code/course359. And I do not get anything if you use that link, so don’t think I am trying to sell you something here. Another company I like is bluehost.com, however, they are more expensive, around $100 a year, which is usually out of a students price range. Godaddy tends to be another popular one however I have only had bad experiences with them, so I do not recommend them.

When you do buy a site, I recommend a .com address. You can choose from .net, .org, .info, etc.

How do I build my site?

Well that is also for another blog post. You can take classes, teach yourself online, etc. I would recommend hiring Shopify web developers though so that you are doing things correctly. Correctly means that your site will show up on all browsers, mobile phones, and be optimized to show up first in search engines.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions:)

Posted in Higher Ed, Instructional Design, Professional, technology and tagged .

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