Google sites platform is one of the most popular free website builders that offer great features for someone who is looking to build a simple but well functioning and designed website.
And if you want to know how to create a website with Google sites easy and fast, then this is the article.
I will be giving you a full walkthrough of setting up your website from zero to having a beautiful looking website that is running well and ready for your content.
You will also get tips on how you should keep building it and optimize it in the long term.
Without any delays, let’s dive right into it.
Table of Contents
Overview of Google Sites
Google Sites is a website builder by Google that you can use to create your website pretty fast. It offers a simple website process where you are able to add any of the features you want by selecting them and adding them.
Many people who want to build a simple personal blog or a website they want to share information with their visitors use this platform since it has really good resources for such intentions.
It is estimated that a little over 100,000 websites have been built by this website builder.
Some of the features many of the users love about it include:
– Beautiful site templates that allow you to easily and hastily create your site in high quality for easier use by your users
– Announcement banners that allow your users to see updates on your site immediately they are updated
– Ability to customize your website’s look by dropping and dragging items and content
– Ability to purchase a unique domain name and add it to your website
– Ability to add e-commerce capabilities, website performance analytics, and more.
So now let’s see how you build your free website with Google Sites.
A Step by Step Guide to How you Can Build Your Website with Google Sites
To create your website successfully with Google Sites, these are the steps you should follow
Step 1: Go to sites.google.com
Step 2: You will need to have a Google account in order to sign in and if you don’t have one, you can click on “create account” to create one and use it to sign up to Google sites.
After you fill in your details and want to continue with the next procedure click on the blue button labeled as ” Next”.
Step 3: You will then be directed to the Google sites page and now you can start creating your website!
Step 4: Now to create your website, in the top left corner you will see a colored + sign, click on that to get started with the process.
You can choose to start your website with the default look that offers a standard theme or choose one from the other available theme options that include help center, project, portfolio, event, and team. Just click on any of the themes you want to use and a website with that theme will be created for you immediately.
I am going to choose the default theme so that I can get the standard theme layout which I can change later on when I want to improve the look of the website.
Feel free to choose any of the other themes, although you should know that you are going to get a different look than the one I have.
Step 5: And your website is now built! You will be taken to a page that is almost empty where you now have to add the features you want to have and customize the website to be what you wanted.
Customizing And Getting Your Website to The Next Level
When your website has been built, the next step to take is to add more useful features to it that have the kind of look and functionality that you want.
You will need to customize a few things here and there to achieve what you have in mind for your website. So to do that, these are the steps to take:
1. Change your theme
If you want to keep using the theme that you chose, it is okay. And if you are using the basic theme I had chosen when creating the website, you will want to add a name to your website on the top left corner where you see the text “Untitled”.
After adding your website’s name, you will also go to the header, that is, below the place you added your website’s name, and add the same name to the header to make it stand out.
However, if you want to change to another one you feel could give your website a much better look, you change it to a much more fairly sophisticated one.
To do this, on your top right corner, there is a menu with “Insert”, “Pages”, and “themes”.
Click on “Themes” and from there you can start editing your theme as you wish based on color and font style, and it is applied automatically to your website once you click on it.
2. Update your homepage
The first page you want to focus on building is your homepage because it is the first page that your users get to see and hence you need to be very creative with it.
There are many layouts you can use for this page and going by your needs, you should make it be as you envisioned it when you decide to create the website.
A good guide to follow on this page to make sure you create a good layout is to ensure that the page represents a summary of what your website is.
That is, if you want it to be a personal blog, you should have sections that make it clear that is what it is and then a preview of your other pages and media.
Now to add these sections, check on the right side of your website and you will see an icon labeled as “insert”, click on that and below it, you will see “layouts”. You will see some of the layouts you can use on your home page sections. Choose any of the layouts there and add the text, images, or other features that you want for your homepage.
Here is what I have made my homepage to be.
3. Add more pages
To make your website more professional, there are some standard pages that you should that help your users know the website better and be able to interact with it better.
These pages include the about page, contact us page as well as privacy policy page. To add these pages, click on “pages” which is on your top right corner, and then you will be directed to a white page which at the very bottom has a + sign. Click on that and you can now start to add your pages as you label them.
You will create content for those pages and then save them so that they are added to your website.
These customizations are enough to get you running a basic but well-functioning website as a beginner.
So hit “Publish” on the top right corner and, voila! Your website is now live!
Even Deeper Customizations
If you want to have a much more advanced Google Sites website, there are some more technical elements you can add to make the website become even more professional.
Here are some of the things you can add:
– Adding a domain name
When you create a free website, you are given the ability to use a free domain name that acts as the website’s address. People will search that to be directed to your website.
Since you get a free domain, there are a lot of limitations you get since you don’t have all the rights to the website.
You can choose to buy a new domain name that has the name of your website. For instance, you can have “www.magicspree.com” as your custom domain name.
And to do this, you will first have to buy a domain name and then add it to your website. You can buy a domain name in Google Domains easily.
Just head there, search for your preferred domain name and check if it’s available, and then go ahead and register it.
When you are done with the registration, you can now connect it to your website by going to Google sites, then to “Settings” above the “Insert”: button on your top right corner, and then to “Custom URLs”.
You will add the domain name you just got and verify it to show it is yours so that it can be linked to your website.
– Adding other website extensions.
You can also add some other website extensions to your site such as plugins to extend the functionality of your website or widgets to display different things on your sidebar or an online store, among others.
However, to get these abilities you are going to want to use tools such as Powr, EcWid, and Elfsight.
For instance, if you want to add a widget, which is an on-screen tool that makes it easy for users to access other areas of your website, you go to Powr and then choose the widget you want to add and then copy the URL for that widget.
Then you go to your Google Sites website and click “Insert” on the top right and then choose “Embed” and enter the URL of the widget you intend to use. After that, you hit “Insert”, and the widget will now be added to your website.
NOTE: It is also important to note that there are many other things you can do to your website in terms of customizations and resource additions.
The ones I have offered here are the general ones.
If you want to add more specific ones, I encourage you to use Google Sites support to help you know the other options you have and how to add them.
You can also spare some time to look around the backend area of your Google Site account and see what else you can do on your website.
You can also consider using YouTube or Google search to look up a particular how to manage a certain aspect of your website in Google Sites.
These do come in handy in uncovering other website capabilities.
Tips to Help Your Website Succeed
As much as coming up with a website is important to any blogger, online business owner, or brand, knowing how to run it is equally important so that it’s successful.
Here are some top tips to use to grow your website and make it become what you have planned for it and even better.
* Keep updating your website
If you want your website to constantly evolve into the visions you have for it, you have to keep working on it. You have to add a bit of value every day.
So the first thing I would recommend you do is to create a list of the things you want to do with the website and the tasks required to get there.
Then commit yourself to carry out each of the tasks when you are free.
This will help you achieve a lot with your site in a span of a month.
Now imagine what you can achieve if you do the same for a whole year.
* Update your schedule
You also have to set time aside for working on your website. You are not going to do the tasks we talked about in the previous tip if you don’t set time aside for the website.
A good idea would to take a look at your daily schedule and look at a period of time that you can dedicate to developing your website.
And then register the new addition in your mind and get started applying it. This is really going to help you make constant progress.
* Keep learning about websites
Now that you have a website in place, you need to learn how to manage it properly.
This could mean you take a quick online course on creating awesome websites or use Google or YouTube tutorials to make different improvements to the site.
The more you learn, the better you get at it and the more interesting the journey gets for you.
You can also consider taking influence from other websites that are doing the same thing you are to help give you insight into the things you can add and how to go about certain demanding areas.
But make sure you don’t copy their work because this will get your website penalized by search engines. Just learn from them how you do a given task and then do it in your own unique way.
* Join forums on social media pages on website development
If you want to interact with like-minded people who will encourage you with your website growth and give you more creative ideas on how to go about various things, you should really consider joining forums and pages on social media about website development or Google sites (if you want to get people who use Google sites only).
I hope this guide has given you insight on how to get started with a Google Sites website and how to make it work for you.
I now hand you the fire to keep it burning by taking action on the information you have gotten here.
And if you need help with executing any area, feel free to let me know in the comments and I will be more than glad to give you a hand. 🙂
Cheers to your upcoming awesome website!
