Have you ever wondered how you can create a free website for your business?
Google has an answer for that: Google Sites.
The Google Sites is a collection of website templates designed to simplify creating and managing content online that works across devices.
With these free tools, anyone can start with a powerful brand identity, go mobile-first, produce high-quality videos with ease, or focus on their core competencies to build professional knowledge platforms—all without spending any money.
Understand that you do not have to purchase any of the hosting services nor a domain name.
The only thing you need is a Gmail account and you can manage your blog, business, and marketing sites (and all other types of websites) for FREE by using it.
All you have to do is head over to https://sites.google.com/and log in with the same username and password you use on your Google account.
Or for the ease of management, create a new Google account for your business alone.
Tutorial for Google Sites – Step by Step Guide
And now, we are going to show how you can create your very own free website in 6 steps using the Google Sites free service.
Follow these simple instructions and you will have your website up in a matter of minutes.
For the purpose of this tutorial, we’d even created our very own JustRank free Google Sites.
Step 1:
Once you are in Google Sites. By clicking on the ‘New Site’ button, you can create a new site, and choose from several templates that are designed to support your specific needs.
If you click on to expand the “Template Gallery”. There are only 4 categories of templates that you can choose from.
- Personal – 1 template
- Work – 4 templates
- Small Business – 5 templates
- Education – 3 templates
While it’s very limited (13 templates in total), mind that these are totally free and very easy to customize according to your own liking.
This is one of the most beautiful site templates you can create with Google Sites. It is perfect for displaying your products, services, and knowledge about your business.
You can also add images and videos to make it more appealing.
You can create or import your own logo design too or use one of their sample logos.
Step 2:
After choosing the template you like, you can either start building from scratch or importing your existing material.
Fill in all the necessary content and voice out your branding message.
This is the part where you can start creating or importing your own content to your free website.
For this tutorial, we are cross referencing from our own website with new wording to it.
You may want to do it on your branding tone or style.
Step 3:
This is how your Google site will look like once you have created it.
It’s up to you how to customize it according to your own liking and needs.
Our example comes with a sidebar where you can place your navigation links for easier access by adding labels on the left-hand side of the sidebar so that it is easy to see what button goes with what website (webpage).
You can fully customized those according to how you need your user journey to be.
Step 4:
Once you are happy with your Google Site’s new design, you should learn how you can add new pages and with your own content.
You can use the plain text editor if you have to write some articles or pages.
You can also use the Presentation Editor if you would like to use it in publishing and creating an online slide show of your presentation.
It was drag & drop for most of the part.
Play around and spend some time with it so you can get used to the interface and you’ll be great in no time.
Tips: You can even insert your own favicon. Go to Settings -> Brand Images -> Favicon. Upload your branding favicon and logo there.
Step 5:
After you are satisfied with your website, go hit the button “Publish”.
From there, you need to enter your web address and follow the instruction on the screen.
For a free domain, you are only allowed https://sites.google.com/view/yourselectedwebaddress.
Or you could create your own custom domain either from a third party or purchase new with Google Domains which normally costs around $12/year (MYR 50 per year).
I’ve made some comparisons on the domain name prices with few other alternatives. I would suggest you avoid Godaddy and still go with Google Domains due to its simplicity.
If you are comfortable in transferring domain name and technical stuffs, do go ahead with your preferred provider.
| No. | Providers | Pricing (USD) | Pricing (MYR) |
| 1 | Google Domains | $12/year | RM 49.44 |
| 2 | GoDaddy | $18/year* | RM 74.74/year* |
| 3 | internet.bs | $ 8.49/year | RM 35/year |
| 4 | Exabytes | $15/year | RM 62.90/year |
| 5 | Namecheap | $ 8.88/year | RM 36.50/year |
*This is the renewal fee after first year discounted price from GoDaddy.
Step 6:
There is no step 6.
If everything went well, you should be able to view your newly designed free website.
We had our example here [https://sites.google.com/view/justrankmalaysia/].
Make sure you check those out.
Update and Put More Useful Content
Once you have published the site, it’s imperative to keep adding and updating your website with useful content because it is your primary source of visibility on the web.
Now, this is where most people fail because they think that once they create their website it’s up to Google to rank them in search.
That’s not the case. Google wants to promote sites that have content that is useful and worthwhile.
So, it is important to constantly update your website with relevant content from a variety of areas.
It can be about your business, products, services, or at least some personal information.
Limitations of Google Sites
While Google Sites is a great place to start with building your website, it has limitations:
The site’s design features are limited to those provided by Google, such as the icons, navigation bar, and colors.
However, the site editor supplies a host of functions that will allow you to create your own custom templates and styles.
The site does not support dynamic pages, such as comments or forums.
You cannot import your existing website, but instead have to manually create each page within the Google Site.
The time it takes to build a website is directly proportional to its complexity.
The flexibility is just not there yet. You can’t control how your Title or headings works when you really should optimize them to gain an upper hand in your SEO effort.
SEO is not a guessing game and you just can’t blatantly work your way out.
Those are just a few examples of how limiting Google Sites are, but there are many more. What you should be aware of before starting aside from the economic cost of using Google Sites.
Conclusion – A Totally Free Website on Your Own
There you have it.
A workable self-designed website that needs no hosting, domain name, and literally no maintenance cost involved.
You have your own free website.
So what are you waiting for?
Get out there and get your business rolling with a brand new website.
Utilize these free Google tools for tracking, analyzing, and further optimization of your marketing effort.
This could be one of the best things that happened to any micro-businesses that are tight on budget and want to learn things on their own.
Learn more tips and tricks with JustRank.
While we are good at what we are doing, the SEO industry is ever-evolving and we try to keep up with the community, educate ourselves as well as everyone who wants to learn from it.
We aim to become a knowledge-sharing SEO company in Malaysia.
Put Learning Into Practice
Grab our actionable local SEO checklist (with progress tracking) to gain an upper hand over your competitor now for FREE!
Resources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Sites
- https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9314941?hl=en
- https://sites.google.com/view/justrankmalaysia/
