Google Sites Tutorial - Basics and Beyond - David Utke (2024)

In this Google Sites tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use this user-friendly and intuitive platform to create a website. Whether you’re looking to showcase your portfolio or create a website for your small business. This complete tutorial will guide you through building a website using Google Sites.

To get started, you will need to have a Google account. Once you have logged in, navigate to Google Sites and follow along.

What is Google Sites?

Google Sites is a free website-building platform offered by Google. It aims to streamline the creation and sharing of websites with it’s drag and drop, unstructured page builder. Boasting a fun, user-friendly interface and seamless integration with other Google services, it is an excellent option for beginners and individuals seeking to establish an online presence.

I love Google Sites and I want to help you get more out of their website building experience. The tutorial covers everything you need to know for getting started with Google Sites. From setting up a custom domain, to site design and userful integrations.

How to create a Google Site – Step by Step

To get started head over to the Google Sites homepage and log in with any Gmail account. You will be presented with a blank dashboard (my Google Site is listed below). To create a Google Site just hit the “plus sign” in the lower right hand corner.

You can customize the design of your website by choosing from various templates available for different categories such as Business, Education, Entertainment, Events, and more. You can also choose to create a blank site if you prefer.

Once you got your Google Site loaded there are a few key things I want you to know how to do in order to get the most out of using the Google Site website builder.

• Setup a custom domain name.
• Design tips for creating your website.
• Pros and cons of Google Sites

Set a custom domain name for Google Sites

Before you design your website, you’ll want toset up a custom domain name. That means people can visit your Google Site by going toexample.cominstead ofsites.google.com/view/example.

Step 1: Register a domain name.

To set a custom domain for Google Sites you must first register a domain name. Google Sites will recommend Google Domains, but I use Namecheap because they have the best prices for domain registration.

Step 1:Search for your domain name using the search box on the Namecheap homepage. If the domain name you want is taken, you’ll need to think of a different combination of words or spelling.

Step 2:Once you find an available domain, add it to your cart and proceed to checkout. If you don’t have a Namecheap account you’ll be prompted to do so.

Step 3:Once you’ve finished creating an account, it’s time to confirm your order. Here you can choose how many years you want to register the domain name for. You can choose between 1-10 years:

Domain privacy, also known as WHOIS protection is included free of charge with Namecheap. You can also lock in this low domain price for up to 10 years in advance.

But because Google Sites is more geared toward personal websites, any extension you want to get is acceptable, but whenever possible get a dot com.

Step 2: Set a custom URL in Google Sites

Once you have registered your domain name of choice, the next step is to set it as the “custom domain name” in Google sites. To do that you simply need to go to settings in Googles Sites and put in the domain name you want to set. It’s that simple:

Please note that Google Sites does not support naked domain names. That means it must be www.example.com instead of example.com.

Verify ownership with Google Sites

Now you have to verify that you are in fact the owner of the domain name you are attempting to assign.

This process is easy and it begins by clicking “verify your ownership.” You’ll be taken to a page where you have to add in a txt. file to your DNS records. This takes a minute or so to do.

Please select your domain name registrar from the drop-down list. In this tutorial, we’re using Namecheap. This process is the same with any domain registrar.

Next, you have to add aTXT record to your DNS configuration. It’s a straightforward, simple copy-and-paste job you can do in under a minutes.

Log into your Domain Registrar and set the TXT and CNAME records

Log into your domain name registrar. We’re using Namecheap, but it’s the same process for all registrars. You want to set host records for your domain name.

For Namecheap, click on “manage” for the domain name you want to edit, then click on “advanced DNS” to access these settings:

Now take your TXT record and add it by clicking on “add new record” and selecting the TXT record option. The host value is www.

Next, add a CNAME record.

The CNAME record for all Google Sites is ghs.googlehosted.com. The host is www.

The TXT record verifies ownership; the CNAME record directs traffic to this domain name to your Google site.

Wait 30 minutes and then verify your domain

Once you have set up the CNAME and TXT records, you’ll have to wait30 minutes to 1 hourfor everything to propagate. Changes take a bit of time to take effect and are not instantaneous.

After you have waited the appropriate time:

• Go back to Google Sites.
• Click onsettings.
• Again add your URL as a custom domain.

Following the instructions correctly, your domain name will be accepted as a custom domain.

Congrats, you’ve just set up your first Google Site!

Design your Google Site

Now I suggest following along with the video (found at the beginning of this post) to design your website. You have a few different options to be aware of.

Set a header image or a gif

You can set a header image or a gif for your Google Site, which looks fantastic. If you decide to use a photo, ensure it’s around 2000×2000 pixels so it fits correctly and is not blown out.

You can create a logo with a wide variety of tools and services. My favorite is using Canva for symbols, as you can produce high-quality graphics in .png or .svg format.

Body Content

To add text, and images, embed social media posts or videos to any page,double-clickany white space canvas of your website, and you’ll have a popup dial where you can select to add an image, video, or text.

With the text editor you can add links, heading, and stylize font as you like. You can also add content from your own Google Drive account.

Edit Google Sites Themes

A Google Site’s “look and feel” can be adjusted slightly via the themes feature. You can not edit themes directly themselves to look a specific way, you can only change colors and font choices that are unique to each theme with the right hand sidebar.

Overall, each theme has a professional, modern design, and the different “theme” styles and colors allow for enough creativity. The biggest drawback, though, is there isn’t a wide variety of templates and themes. But for personal use, it’s good enough.

Pages for your website

Unlike Blogger and WordPress, Google Sites only has a page function. That means you can’t create categorized blog posts. Instead, you can create pages and child pages. Which is fine if you’re using Google Sites as intended.

Pages are added automatically to the menu, but each page can delete, hide it from navigation, given a custom URL path, duplicated, or made the homepage.

Overall I like the ease of adding content to a Google Site. It’s simple and intuitive, and you can custom-design every page to your liking.

Google Site Integrations

Google Sites offers seamless integration with other Google services, enhancing the functionality of your website and making for a more dynamic user experience Here are my favorites:

• Google Drive: Now you can embed sheets, documents, and presentations directly on your website to share with others.
• Google Calendar: Need a way to show upcoming events or schedule? Now you can embed your calendar
• Google Maps: Add a map to your site for directions to your business or an event.

You can also integrate social media platforms easily like Twitter, Facebook, or your YouTube account to your website to share content and updates directly from your site.

Google Drive as I mentioned is easily integrated into Google Sites. With Drive, this specifically includes documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly from Google Drive into your website. This makes sharing files with other users or embedding them on the page quite easy for all involved.

Google Maps is a useful integration for clubs or businesses and can be added to any website created using Google Sites with the click of a button. Embedding a map lets visitors quickly view an area without leaving the page. You can even customize the type of included map and display directions and other important information.

Google Sites SEO

Google Sites have poor SEO, unfortunately. You can’t customize the metadata for your pages which is the little paragraph you see when you read a search result in Google. In fact, Google Sites has no “SEO” option to actually optimize your website for SEO like other website builders.

Google Sites does not redirect naked URLS properly or the Google Sites version of your website to your custom domain. So users can access both your custom domain and the Google Sites domain of your site, which is terrible on-page SEO.

Page titles

However, if you’re creating a Google Site for a brand like a location-based business will rank fine for that singular term. Like “David’s Cookie Company.” Just make sure to give each page a relevant, SEO friendly page title as that is what will be indexed by Google:

So if you’re trying to create and rank a page for “best cafes in xyz town” then you’ll have give the page that full name. If you click on “advanced” that allows you to create a custom path for that page which is the permalink structure for that page.

You would want to change the custom path if you want the URL to be shorter than the page title. Like my post on the best website builders has a long page title but a short URL (best-website-builders).

In short, if you want to build a high-traffic website, Google Sites is not a great option.

Google Sites Tutorial Conclusion

Creating a simple website for education, small business, or personal use using Google Sites is easy and fun. It’s fast and straightforward to use, supports multiple users for collaboration purposes, and so much potential for creativity is available with the different themes and features.

Whether you’re an individual creating your portfolio or a business wanting to establish an online presence, Google Sites has something to offer if you’re looking to create a simple, but professional website.