A personal website is your own space on the internet, like your own online brochure. It’s different from your social media profiles as you have more control over content and design. You also own your website and its content, unlike with what you post on social media.
Personal websites are great for freelancers, artists, students or anyone who wants to build an online presence either to share their thoughts, or promote their business.
Why create a personal website?
There’s only so much a CV can communicate about you. One page is not a lot when you want to convey your experience and what you can do. 56% of employers are more impressed by a strong personal website than any other aspect of a job candidate’s profile, yet very few have one. You place yourself in a unique position when you create a personal website and showcase your work. It helps you build your personal brand, establishing you as an expert in your field.
After you create your website using personal website templates, it’s important to update it regularly with new content. Make sure you’re not displaying old work from 10 years ago, but giving people a good understanding of the work you do now. That said, it’s also important to highlight your best work to demonstrate your abilities. If you’ve worked on some impressive projects, be sure to feature them on your website. This will show potential clients or employers that you have the experience they’re looking for.
Find a new job
You may already use a tool like LinkedIn to make your work history accessible to potential employers. However, depending on your privacy settings, employers without LinkedIn may not be able to view you — and your profile may not be the best way of showing off your experience and full array of skills. As useful as LinkedIn is, it creates a one-size-fits-all page appearance that you must then populate with content.
According to Forbes, 56% of employers are more impressed by a strong personal website than any other aspect of a job candidate’s profile. Yet only 7% of job seekers have one. Put yourself in that 7% and impress more than half of employers with a resume website.
To show off your creativity and personality, or to go into more depth about the way you accomplished a specific project, your personal website is your best friend. Consider the power of the following three elements:
- Design – If your creativity is one of the many assets you offer potential employers, show off with an attractive custom webpage that demonstrates your keen visual sense.
- Customizable pages – Reading through text and numbers that relay the effectiveness of your projects and initiatives can be a difficult task for potential employers. Help them visualize the effects of your projects by placing graphics and charts directly on your page, along with any relevant plans, models, or photographs.
- Collect your links in one place – If you want potential employers to have access to your LinkedIn, some social media accounts, or other relevant work, collect those links in one place with your website.
Build your brand
Whether you’re an up-and-coming graphic designer or an aspiring influencer, you may be working on your personal brand. Your website is a great opportunity to:
- Round up your social media links for easy access
- Create a personal blog and start cementing your authority
- Create a newsletter, or connect new subscribers to an existing newsletter
The more ways you have to connect with potential fans, the stronger your personal brand becomes.
Show off your work
If you’re a photographer, designer, or another type of visual artist, creating a portfolio website has several advantages. While platforms like Pinterest, Flickr, and Instagram are easy ways to share your work, they also lack customizability. If you want your panoramas and your videos to hang out on the same page, side-by-side, you need to know how to make an online profile with a website so that you can customize the way your portfolio images appear.
Your personal website allows you to:
- Avoid making potential clients scroll through your Instagram feed
- Put a “Contact Me” form right next to your portfolio
- Customize the way your images look — individually and together
Sell your wares
If you create and sell goods or services, your personal website is an important way to connect with new customers. Whether you’ve knit a few too many hats one winter, you offer Thai massages a couple of times a month, or you’re a ceramicist looking to sell your full product line, your personal website is a great place to set up an online store.
What to put on your new website
You can keep your personal website as bare-bones as you want it, or build it out with a portfolio, blog, online resume, and your own online store. Whatever your approach, you’ll want to include these three essential pages:
- Homepage
- Bio
- Your best work
- Blog Page
- About page
- Contact page
Be sure to include the appropriate content for each one, as well as optimize them for search engines. How? Read on to find out.
Homepage
Once you’ve chosen your header image and designed your logo, consider what else belongs on your homepage. The goal is to create a page that looks good on both mobile devices and computers. In addition, to make sure your homepage is the first thing that comes up in search results, you’ll want to use what marketers call Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools.
For best results with your homepage on the web, on mobile phones, and in search engines:
- Include a navigational menu – While continuous scroll pages look great on phones, you may want to provide web users an easy way to get to the content they’re looking for.
- Incorporate text – If the main purpose of your website is job searching or finding new clients, take the opportunity to introduce yourself. At the same time:
- Make sure the text appears before a visitor has to scroll
- Keep the word count under 200
- Include a “call to action (CTA)”: a button or link to indicate where users should go next to learn about your services, view your portfolio, etc.
Bio
Your bio can take the form of a short personal introduction on your homepage, or you can create a dedicated ‘About’ page. Your bio should highlight your professional career, but don’t be afraid to also express your unique personality by sharing additional hobbies and interests. If you’re creating a resume website, consider adding a downloadable version of your CV.
Your best work
Your personal website can serve as an online portfolio that showcases your scope of work. Alternatively, you can include samples of your work and link to external pages. Make sure to curate your portfolio so that you’re only sharing the pieces you’re proudest of.
Blog
Creating a blog is a great way to share your knowledge and provide valuable insights about your field. It will also demonstrate your level of expertise and writing abilities to potential employers. You can write about anything from industry updates to an obstacle you personally experienced in your career and more. If you’re going for an even more personal route, a blog can be an amazing addition to a fan website or even a memorial website.
About page
Use your About page to introduce your unique bio and story. This can be one sentence or a personal essay. However, for the best SEO results:
- Write at least 300 words
- Include common misspellings of your name or other keywords your potential audience might search. For example, if you’re a copywriter, you’ll want to include this in your content, as hiring managers may search for this term.
Contact page
You want everyone from childhood friends to potential employers to have the information they need to get in touch. Okay, maybe you don’t — but that’s where customization comes in. Considering including:
- Social media links
- Your email
- A contact form if you want to keep your email off-limits
Make sure you’re mobile-friendly
With more and more internet traffic coming from mobile phones, the best websites should look pixel-perfect on every device. In addition, since Google introduced mobile-first indexing, websites are ranked on search engine results predominantly according to their mobile versions.
When creating a website with Zero Bugsbd , the mobile editor will automatically optimize your design for both desktop and mobile. If you want to make any further changes, you can tweak the design, making sure that your text is still highly legible and that visitors can easily navigate through your personal website.
If you’re creating your website with Zero BugsBD , an advanced creation platform from Zero BugsBD, you’ll have complete control over breakpoints. This means that you can see and design your site at any viewport size, using intuitive drag-and-drop on a flexible new canvas.
Once you’ve designed your site for mobile, be sure to manage it from a mobile app also, for greater convenience and control while on the go.
Is a personal website still relevant in 2024
While social media and online platforms have become increasingly popular as spaces for personal brand building, personal websites remain relevant in 2024, offering several significant advantages over other platforms:
- Ownership: A personal website gives you complete control over your online presence, content, and branding, unlike social media platforms where terms and algorithms can change unexpectedly leaving you cut off from your audience.
- Professionalism: A well-designed personal website can showcase your skills, experience, and accomplishments. It’s a highly effective to showcase your professionalism and credibility to potential employers, clients or collaborators.
- Control: You have full control over the content displayed on your website, allowing you to curate and present your work, ideas, and interests in a way that aligns with your personal brand. This is less true on social media platforms for example.