Freelance websites: Are they still relevant, and how should you create one?

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Websites are a major source of stress, for beginning and experienced freelancers alike. Do you absolutely need a website? Is there a way to get a nice-looking website for a reasonable price? What’s the best platform? Additionally, tons of freelancers hate their websites. I’m really not sure why; it’s just kind of a “thing” that freelancers often say, “Ugh! I hate my website!” Hating your website is already unpleasant, but then it gets worse: hating your website often leads to avoiding marketing, especially to direct clients, because you don’t want them to see your website. What’s going on here?

Is a website still necessary?

In my opinion, a website is part of establishing yourself as a serious professional translator or interpreter. Can you just use LinkedIn? Sure. But think of yourself looking for a professional service provider: would you be enthusiastic about an accountant who has only a LinkedIn profile instead of their own website? Don’t you at least want a website so that clients can check up on who you are, even if that’s not how they found you?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has gotten a lot more complex lately. If you have the impression that Google search results have gotten worse, it’s not just you, according to various articles such as this really interesting piece in The Week. A team of German researchers found that Google is relatively poor at identifying spam websites, the web has been flooded with low-quality content, and Google tends to prioritize affiliate marketing sites. Yet, all is not lost, for highly targeted search terms. About six months ago, I took the HubSpot Academy SEO class (free, decent quality), partially just for my own edification, and partially to try to improve the ranking of the Training for Translators site for the search term, “classes for translators.” Apparently, at least some of what I learned was effective, because (after some Google-inserted ads and videos), T4T is now the fourth result, after Metro State University in Denver (perhaps because I’m located nearby?), Coursera, and ATA. You’re unlikely to hit it big on a search term like “legal translator,” but for more specialized terms, I still think SEO is worthwhile.

What’s the best way to create or improve your website?

A website created and maintained by a web designer is always going to be your best option; for the Training for Translators website, I hired a designer to create it (in WordPress), and I have a website manager who runs all of the updates and monitors the traffic. But for my professional website, this isn’t really in my budget. That site is kind of patched-together (I don’t hate it, but I’m getting close), and could really use an upgrade. My thoughts on this:

• If your budget is lower than around US $1,500, I wouldn’t expect to get something much better than what you can create yourself with reasonable computer skills. In my experience, it’s not until you spend in the vicinity of US $2,000-$3,000 that you’re going to get a website that’s really unique-looking, has custom graphics, and doesn’t look like 10,000 other websites designed on the same platform. I would argue that this expense is worthwhile as part of your professional image, but it’s also a big chunk of change, particularly for a beginning freelancer.
• That being said, I think that basic and professional is fine. A colleague recently turned me onto the website creation platform Carrd. Important: because Carrd creates only one-page websites, they are, as far as I can tell, not indexed by search engines. Don’t use Carrd if you’re looking for SEO! However: It’s really inexpensive (like $19 a year), you can use your own domain name, it’s easy to use, and you can make a halfway decent website in a couple of hours. Just for kicks, I made this website for my conference interpreting services, using a domain name (frenchconferenceinterpreter.com) that I bought a while ago and never did anything with! I’d argue that this type of site is better than nothing, because you can put the URL in your e-mail signature, on LinkedIn, etc. and direct potential clients to it.
• If you’d like to make your own site, the big players in DIY website creation are Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, and maybe Weebly. I’m a WordPress girl, but I know that some people find WordPress confusing to use and prefer Squarespace (I feel the opposite; I don’t really get Squarespace!). If you go with a custom domain and domain name e-mail, these services aren’t free; you’re probably looking at around US $300 a year, and it will take you a chunk of time to create something nice-looking, then if it’s on WordPress and you use an external hosting provider, you’ll need to run updates on it yourself.

If you don’t currently have a website

If you don’t currently have a website, or if your site is from 2002 and you can’t stand the sight of it, here’s what I’d do: put up something basic and professional, while saving up money for a professional designer. Pick a website creation platform, allocate maybe 10 hours to the project, and just get something up there. Meanwhile, put away maybe $100 a month, with the goal of hiring a designer when you can afford it.

Wherever you are in the website process, I hope these tips are helpful!

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!