How to Build a Website (Start to Finish, With Walkthroughs)

With AI, you can bypass coding, hiring a developer, or staring at a blank page for hours. You can automate everything from writing content to choosing a professional layout and images.

This guide walks you through the entire process, step by step.

Imagine having a fully functional website up and running in a few hours. Whether you’re launching a business, portfolio, or personal project, here’s how to get started the simple way.

Before you click through templates or generate content with AI, it’s important to step back and get clear on what you're trying to build.

A bit of upfront planning goes a long way. Here are a few things to think through before jumping into design tools:

What’s the goal of your website? Are you trying to attract clients, sell products, showcase your work, or simply have a presence online?
Who are you trying to reach? Knowing your audience will shape everything from tone of voice to layout and features.
What makes your brand different? Even a one-line description of your unique selling points helps AI tools generate better content.
What are people actually searching for on Google? This is where keyword research comes in. It helps you speak the same language as your audience and appear in search results.

You don’t need a 20-page business plan, just a simple outline to guide your decisions.

Here’s an example website plan that I created to help my brother launch his local plumbing business:

You can create a similar one following my website planning process or by using AI to guide you. Here’s a prompt you can try in ChatGPT:

“Hi! I plan to build a website for my small business, but I’m unsure where to start.

Can you guide me through the planning process? I’d like help with:

Defining the main goals of my website
Identifying who my target audience is
Clarifying what makes my business unique
Figuring out what pages I should include
Suggesting what people might search for on Google to find a business like mine

Please ask me any questions you need to build a simple website brief I can follow.”

You can also remove some guesswork about what to feature on your website with other AI tools. ChatGPT is great at answering general questions, but it is not connected to the data of what people actually search for.

That’s where you can use something like Ahrefs’ AI keyword suggestions instead. It will show you the exact services people are already looking for on Google:

After you run the report, you’ll see a list of all the keywords people search for your services, along with some metrics to gauge the opportunity they offer your business:

For instance, Keyword Difficulty (KD) indicates how easy it would be for you to rank on Google when someone searches the keyword. Search Volume (SV) indicates how many people search the keywords every month.

You can group similar keywords together into a simple website plan like this:

Now you know exactly what you’re going to build and how people are going to find it on Google and other search platforms.

Now that you’ve planned your site, it’s time to lock in your business name online. Start by brainstorming a few brand name ideas—something clear, memorable, and relevant to what you do.

I’ll use Ace Plumbing Melbourne as our demo business for this guide.

Start by using BrandSnag to see if your name is available online:

Once you’ve found a good brand name with available social handles, buy the domain using a platform like NameCheap:

And then set up your accounts on all the social platforms you want your brand featured on.

If you run a local business, it’s also a good idea to claim your business on key map platforms like:

These are the digital building blocks of your brand, so get them set up early.

If you don’t have a logo or other brand essentials (and don’t want to hire a designer), you can create your own on platforms like Looka.

While there are many free logo generators online, Looka goes a step further and can help you create additional branded graphics for online and offline use:

For example, I created a decent-looking logo in under five minutes (including all the umming and ahhing around what colours and fonts to choose). Here’s an accelerated GIF of the process:

Now that you’ve got a plan, it’s time to pick the tool to build your website.

There are many options but these are the most popular according to Ahrefs’ search data:

The best choice depends on what you’re building and how much flexibility you want.

You’ll also need to pay a monthly fee (in most cases) to connect your domain name to your website builder, so I’ve included some low-cost options for you to consider below.

The most popular website builders

If you want a tried and true solution, a website builder that’s been around for years and has a solid support community, it’s worth considering:

Shopify – Perfect if you’re building an online store with built-in payment, inventory, and shipping features.
Wix – One of the easiest platforms for beginners. Great for small service businesses and creative portfolios.
Squarespace – Popular for personal brands and creative portfolios. Visually polished with easy drag-and-drop editing.
WordPress – Offers the most customizability and flexibility, especially for SEO, and can be paired with a drag-and-drop builder, like Elementor, to make it easier for beginners.

These platforms have a ton of helpful resources and libraries of pre-made templates, like Squarespace’s:

If you choose to use WordPress, it will have a few extra setup steps that other platforms handle automatically.

For instance, you’ll need to connect it to hosting, backups, and security.

I use SiteGround for my sites. Over the years, I’ve tested over 200 hosting platforms for speed, security, backup reliability, uptime, and ease of use. SiteGround consistently comes out as a top beginner-friendly option.

You’ll also need to add plugins to enhance WordPress’s base functionality. You can figure out what you need as you go, but some basic ones to consider include:

An SEO plugin like RankMath, or its AI-powered equivalent, Rocketship SEO
SeedProd, if you want to set up a Coming Soon page until you’re ready to launch
Site Kit by Google to connect your website to Google Search Console and more
WP Rocket for caching and improving your website’s loading speed and technical performance
Ahrefs SEO for easy content audits to check how each page is performing over time

Up-and-coming AI website builders

The biggest downside with traditional website builders is the learning curve. Without code or design skills, it can be challenging for non-technical folks to build a professional website quickly and with minimal frustration.

That’s where some newer AI-powered and “vibe coding” solutions may be up your alley. Some popular platforms include:

Looka — For AI-generated brand kits and assets, including simple websites.
Bolt — For creating an entire site (multi-page layouts, copy, and images) from a single prompt.
Lovable — For ultra-fast one-prompt, website prototypes with a strong design aesthetic.
Framer — For sleek, responsive websites with built-in animations and components.
Relume — For building wireframes, sitemaps, and page layouts fast.

Here’s an accelerated snapshot of how I used Lovable to vibe code a landing page. It took less than two minutes to generate a pretty decent first draft:

I loved the attention to detail, like how it automatically included an Australian phone number and suburbs in Melbourne despite my bare-bones prompt. It also automatically creates content for key sections.

However, this platform was found to have some major SEO issues, making its websites invisible to people searching on Google.

Generally, the less you can control and customize within a website builder (especially with the technical elements and code that search engines need to see), the more likely it is to have SEO issues.

Many of these new AI website builders fall into this category, and their SEO capabilities do not (yet) match those of classic platforms like WordPress.

This might be ok for your needs, at least as you’re starting out.

But at some point, you’ll need to consider hiring a professional developer or learning some technical skills, so your business can be found in Google and LLM searches.

Most website builders will require that you select a theme for your website. This is the design template your website will be built on.

They often have pre-built themes (some free, some paid) you can load instantly, like this theme available from Framer:

You can also buy themes from marketplaces like Envato:

The hardest part is finding a theme you like since so many options are available. Once you have that, it’s usually a matter of selecting it inside the website builder or uploading the file (if you purchased it externally).

For example, here’s an accelerated walkthrough of how I set up a basic theme and customized it in Looka. Editing this GIF took longer than building the home page (I wish I were kidding):

And here’s the final home page. Not bad considering it included finding images, generating content, and fiddling with all the font and colour settings.

Most themes usually come with 3–5 pages already set up (like a home page, contact page, and about page), so you’re not starting from scratch.

You’ll need to spend some time tinkering with the settings to adapt the theme to your brand’s look and feel:

Edit your brand elements: Add your logo, favicon, website title, and tagline.
Swap out the colors: If you don’t have a color palette yet, check out Coolors.co.
Add your preferred fonts: You can find a range of free fonts on DaFont or FontSpace.
Update the content: If your website builder doesn’t already have AI for this, try Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper.
Add or generate images: If you don’t have brand photos to add, try sourcing stock images from sites like Unsplash, creating images in Canva, or generating them in MidJourney.

For instance, here’s how I generated SEO-friendly content for a landing page on the plumbing website:

You can also generate background videos using Veo 3 for some extra pizazz. For example, I stitched four clips it generated into a short video that could be used as a background on the home page.

When generating images or videos with AI, try to avoid asking it to show words, logos, or other distinct symbols, as it jumbles them up (as you can see above).

While most themes are a great place to start, you must go beyond the pages that come with them if you want your website to appear in search engines and LLMs.

To speed things up and stay consistent, create a few reusable templates for common page types, such as service and location pages.

You could also create templates for key sections you’d like to use across many pages. If your website builder already has some pre-built templates, it’s worth going through and customizing your favorites for:

Testimonials
Calls to action
Benefit statements
Your process
Contact forms

These can be duplicated and tweaked as needed, saving you time later.

Once you have these elements in place, it’s just a matter of using them to build the SEO pages you planned out earlier. For instance, for my brother’s plumbing site, I could build out:

Core pages in addition to the home, about and contact pages, like testimonials and his portfolio of work.
Service pages for each of the core plumbing and gas services that have search potential.
Local landing pages to show the areas his team services and custom emergency contact details for each suburb.

I like seeing things laid out visually, so here’s what the structure would look like:

AI tools can help you write page content, generate layouts, and even select stock images for any pages that don’t come pre-built in your theme.

You can also check out competitor websites to get an idea of what designs Google is already rewarding.

For example, you can find the top websites in your industry using Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer. Enter your main service, product category or topic, and then check out the Traffic share by domain report:

You can get a lot of design inspiration by looking at the top websites in your industry.

Your website’s navigation helps people find what they’re looking for. It needs to be simple and clear.

Start by setting up your main navigation menu, usually found at the top of every page.

Include your most important pages like Home, Services, About, and Contact. Also have at least one call to action (like a phone number or a “book now” button).

If you have multiple locations or services, consider using drop-down menus to group them.

Next, design your footer. This is a good place to add:

Contact info
Social media links
Legal pages (Privacy Policy, Terms of Use)
Newsletter signup (if relevant)
A small Google map (if relevant)

If you’re building a blog, think about adding a sidebar with a table of contents to help readers navigate longer posts.

Internal links (like linking from your homepage to a service page) also help visitors and search engines understand your site better. Most website builders make it easy to connect pages with just a few clicks.

Just think about how you want people to move from one page to the next on your website and add links, buttons, and navigation elements to make that journey easier for them.

Final thoughts

There’s no such thing as a perfect website, especially not at launch.

What matters most is that your site exists, reflects your business, and gives people a way to find and trust you online. Don’t wait until it’s flawless. You can always improve things later.

As your business grows, so will your site. When updates or fixes become too time-consuming, that’s when it makes sense to bring in a developer to help.

For now? Focus on building something useful, publish it proudly, and start sharing it with the world.

Done is better than perfect, especially when your next customer is already out there searching for your product or service.

Post byDespina Gavoyannis

Despina Gavoyannis is a Senior SEO Specialist at Ahrefs, a leading marketing platform for search, AI, and beyond.

She has worked in SEO for over 10 years, specializing in revenue-driven strategies and collaborating closely with cross-functional teams, including UX designers, developers, and marketers.

Before joining Ahrefs, Despina worked as an SEO consultant, providing strategic guidance and education to in-house and agency teams. Her work has helped generate more than $125 million in additional annual organic revenue for the brands she’s partnered with.

Despina is the author of one book, two SEO courses, and has been featured in publications such as Search Engine Journal, Wix, Crazy Egg, and Learning SEO.

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