So you want to build a website? - Part 2
August 11, 2008 | Filed Under Websites for beginners. | 5 CommentsIf at any time during reading these chapters you get lost with the Internet jargon, please contact us and we will assist you in the planning and execution of your website.
Click here if you missed “Part 1″
Getting started.
So you have decided that you want a site or you want to improve your site. These are the steps that you should follow:
- Decide the purpose of the site.
- Decide on the functions that you want on your site: (See Appendix 1)
- Contract an SEO.
- Contract a webmaster.
What does “contracting” mean?
There are the before” and “after” stages in building and designing a website. (This is similar to hiring a painter for your house.) If you do not have an iron clad contract, you might find yourself paying for the painting of the house but not for the window panes and doors. These are the “little extras” that you find out about and pay for way down the line.
Contracting an SEO.
The reason we advise to contract an SEO before actually contracting a webmaster is that the SEO is providing a service as apposed to a webmaster that provides a product. Whether creating a new site or revamping an old site, the SEO will assist you in defining the best site design which will also fit a following Search Engine Strategical marketing plan. The SEO is not only about optimization, it also about being creative. This creativity comes from thinking “Outside the Box” both in your site design, Keywords and Advertising campaigns.
Your SEO’s job is to assist you and your webmaster to improve your SE rankings.
If you consider that 80% of your traffic comes from generic searches terms on Search Engines, you can not afford to be without an SEO to assist you in the process of getting the highest placing possible. Unlike signing a contract with a webmaster the terms of the contract with an SEO depends entirely on the quotation that he gives you. No self respecting SEO will guarantee quick results but if you reached him/her, and if you & your webmaster work in sync according to the SEO’s suggestions, you will begin to see results sooner than you think.
Contracting a web designer/webmaster.
- Write down your requirements in a numbered table format. These requirements might cover hosting and what exactly falls under their web management clause. (This might be an hourly rate or per call basis. (This is only for when the site is up and when all “Contracted” items work flawlessly).
- Get recommendations or go into websites that meet your fancy and look for the designer’s details. (This will generally be at the bottom section.)
- Speak to the sales person of the companies you choose explaining in exact detail what you need.
- Make sure to see their website. They will normally have examples of sites they designed.
- After your telecon, send them the page that dictates your requirements and wait for a quotation. (Repeat this stage with at least 3 companies.)
- Make sure that the contractor understands the source code is your sole property and that you take possession of it when the site goes up.
- Sign a contract and good luck.
Choosing and registering a domain name.
Unless you are aiming at creating a company brand name, choose a domain name as close to your main market keywords as possible. Register the domain name yourself. (Do not allow the contracted webmaster to do this). Have all correspondence regarding the domain name registration come to you.
DO NOT LOSE THE PASSWORD TO YOUR REGISTRATION SITE OR YOU WILL LOSE THE ABILITY TO CHANGE SUPPLIERS OR WORSE YOU WILL LOSE THE ABILITY TO RENEW THE DOMAIN NAME.
Working with the SEO.
When you start working with the SEO, you enter an entire world of facts, theories and numbers that you did not know prior to starting your website project. The SEO becomes your partner in business in a sense that he/she has to feel breath and know the company and its goals in order to do the best job possible. The SEO will give you suggestions for your website according to your business aims and markets that you works in. The SEO also makes suggestions for website marketing. These suggestions you are free to accept and implement however you will be wise to listen to the SEO’s reasoning behind every suggestion that you get.
A short insight to “Keywords” and their usage.
What is a Keyword? (www.wikipedia.com) “A keyword in an Internet search is one of the words used to find matching web pages. It was popularized during the early days of search engine development, as it was not possible to ask natural language questions and find the desired sites. Searches gave the best results if only a few keywords were chosen and searched for. These “keywords” captured the essence of the topic in question and were likely to be present on all sites listed by the search engine.”
“Keywords are still used today. Many modern search engines have methods for determining which words in a search string are important and are ought to be treated as keywords. Common words like articles (a, an, the) and conjunctions (and, or, but) are not treated as keywords because it is inefficient to do so. Almost every English-language site on the Internet has the article “the“, and so it makes no sense to search for it. The most popular search engine, Google removed words such as “the” and “a” from its indexes for several years, but then re-introduced them, making certain types of precise search possible again.”
The Myth of the Keyword. - “Your best bet is to use the main keywords that relate to your market and fight for the top position with those”
The truth about the Keyword. – “Choosing a list of good keywords is a science. Along with choosing the keywords, the correct “landing pages” need to be created for them or decide to which web page you will send the browser. (This is the “Landing page”). You need to decide which title is best to use for each keyword and you have to decide which description you will use with the Keyword and the landing page.”
Write “Search Engine friendly” content together with “user friendly content”, then join the 2 together to make a “user friendly page”.
Once your SEO has your list of keywords, he/she will investigate deeper and make a list of 100-500 related keywords. The SEO comes up with titles and descriptions for each page. (These your webmaster will turn into Meta tags.)
Next your SEO will work with you on creating relevant content pages. THE MORE UNIQUE RELEVANT CONTENT YOU HAVE THE BETTER. The important thing is to not create “DUPLICATE CONTENT” pages. Search Engines are very wary of duplicate content, it is seen as cheating the SE and you will likely be penalized.
The best places to get content are from RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) FEEDS. RSS has become a popular technology for bloggers and podcasters to distribute their content. Your SEO will know where to find these.
Next the SEO will submit your site to all relative directories (Not Search Engines.). If you have a good sitemap the SE’s will find you.
You will need approximately 100 pages or more to be counted by the SE’s as a serious site. (There are some exceptions to this rule, but it is better to as aim high as possible).
The next most important item on the SEO “to do” list is to get as many relative links to your site as possible. Linking assists the SE’s in seeing importance and relevancy to your business. DO NOT TRY TO DO THIS YOURSELF as you could find your site being penalized for spamming. (Yes, a website can spam.) If you link to or get an incoming link from a site that has been blacklisted, you could get blacklisted too.
THE MORE RELEVANT LINKS YOU HAVE, THE HIGHER YOUR SITE IS GOING TO RANK. (This includes individual page ranking.)
To start getting noticed, write articles and get them published in authoritive sites. Make sure that at the bottom of the article, you put a link to your site by stating your name and connection to the industry. Most publishers like articles of between 800-1200 words. Your SEO can assist with getting your articles into the correct industry sites.
As fancy and tempting as it is, DO NOT USE FLASH ON YOUR HOME PAGE. SE’s can not read flash and they could ignore your site until they find an inbound link to an internal page of your site. If you are adamant about it, there is a work around this problem and your SEO or webmaster should know it.
If you got lost in all this jargon, contact us; we will assist you In planning and overseeing your website.
For more information:
Return soon to see PART 3 of this paper.
