Google is Good Choice for the Novice Webmaster

So what does Google offer the novice webmaster and/or blogger? Plenty, as I've discovered.

Google's site hosting seems to be very user friendly. I know basically nothing about running or maintaining a website, yet through Google I've had two sites up and running for some time now. The sites are easy to set up - a few clicks, a little typing, and you're ready to go. Once the sites are up, there is pretty much no work on my part, which is a plus. And it's free, another big plus.

Submitting your site to Google's index is easy also. It does take a while for your pages to show up in the index, however. One nice feature is being able to see your page rank for top searches applicable to your site. This way you can try to improve your site to get more hits.

Google's AdSense is a great feature too. This is another free feature which has the possibility of making you money. If anything, having a few ads on your site may make it look more professional and put together. AdSense is somewhat easy to add to your Google webpage, by editing the html. It is easier to add to your Google blog (blogger). If you log-in to your AdSense account, you can see how well your pages are doing in terms of page impressions and ad clicks.

Google's Blogger is easy to use, too. I am completely new to blogging, and have been able to start a blog with no trouble. As with the site hosting, Blogger is easy for the novice to figure out. It's even easy to add html code, which you need to do to add things like AdSense.

Once you have a website or blog set up through Google, you need to do a little marketing if you want to get hits. Submitting your site to Google's index, as mentioned above, is one way to do that. Another method is to use AdWords, which is essentially buying internet advertising. I haven't tried this method yet, since it costs money, but I have heard it works well and isn't complicated to use.

Overall, Google is a good place to turn to if you are new to webhosting or blogging. Someday you may want a more technical setup, or your own domain name, in which case you'll need to go elsewhere. But for those who want something low maintenance that's easy to use, Google's a good bet.