WebDev

The object of search engines is to give their visitors a list of web pages relevant to the search words, in the order of relevance to the search words. So what do they want from websites?

Relevance to a search:

• The frequency of the search word on a web page is an indicator of its relevance. If a web page contains the word ten times on the page, it is ten times more relevant than a page which contains the word only once.

• The position of the search word:
  • In the title tag.
    This appears in your browser at the very top of the screen, above File, Edit, View…

    This tag is important to search engines as it is visible to the visitor, and ostensibly sums up the purpose for the page. Other meta tags are largely ignored by search engines.

Many people hire professional web site designers for as much as a thousand plus USD! You can, and very easily, make a web site for almost one hundredth of that price, and probably in half the time. Here are 4 easy steps to get you started.

1. Find a quality Web Host

This will probably take longer than you imagine, so I always like to start here. Googling “web host” itself pops up over 70 million results and includes many, many advertisements. Ask around, find forums, and rely on your feelings to find a host that you feel has the best quality for price (bang for your buck). Normally around $10 to $15 a month is a reasonable price (with no perks added). In addition, you should make sure that they can handle your needs (do you need a MySQL database, PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, etc.) with no additional charges added for standard options.

If the host that you are using is a quality host, they should allow you to register a domain name on their site (or they will refer you to one of their partner sites). Which leads us into..

2. Create a Domain Name

If someone doesn’t know you personally, will they trust you enough to do business with you just by visiting your web site?

Most people view organizations - and web sites - they don’t know with great skepticism. Given all the identity theft and viruses running around, people are understandably cautious and somewhat skeptical when they go to a new web site.

What can you do?

Here are four tips on how to create a web site that builds trust:

1. Provide your contact information

You visitor wants to know that there is a real person somewhere behind your web site. Ideally, put a real person’s name, full postal address, e-mail, and telephone number. Some of your visitors will want to communicate with you. Make it easy for them to do so.

2. Post testimonials

You say: “Our web site is the greatest”.

Your customer says: "Yea, right."

Your business website tells a lot about your company. A poorly designed website will have your visitors questioning the quality of your business. A well thought out elegantly designed site would instill confidence in your visitors that you are a credible business to deal with. There is a saying in advertising, "It is better to not advertise than to advertise poorly". The same holds true for web design.

There are so many Web Design companies now. How do you make an educated decision on which one to choose? Like every market that is saturated, you always see ads that read, "Hire us we are the best". Well how do you know that statement is true? Wouldn’t it be great if you had a resource available to you that pre-screened Web Design Companies to narrow down your choices? To answer that question, yes there is, use a Web Design directory. Web Design directories are usually run by companies in the Web Design Industry. Using their knowledge to pre-screen the Web Design companies that submit their contact information to the directory insures that only quality Web Design Companies are listed.

Web design is a very competitive area and there is no longer any reason why people should pay large amounts for website design services.

This article describes and explains where to find very very cheap website design services.

The first place to try of course is the internet search engines themselves. The best place to try could be paid adverts on the right hand side of the search engine Google. These are called Google adwords and these companies are actively seeking business. The results on the left hand side are normally the more established companies who will probably try to charge a lot of money for their services.

I have heard a lot of people who have had great success on auction websites, like ebay. People or companies at times offer their services for a very cheap rate, normally to drum up some very much needed business.

Other areas to look are in places like the yellow pages, newspapers or by asking family or friends.

I myself know of many people offering expert website building skills who only charge between £50 and £100 per website. There are many great deals to be had out there for people who are willing to make lots of phone calls or send lots of e-mails and who are patient.

Do you have a website? If so, you need an ROR XMLNS code button which leads to a full ROR/RDF code page for your website. This code tells search engines all about the special details you input into the code about your website. For example, it tells them special details about each particular product (or certain special ones) that you sell on your site or sites, it tells the search engine bots your contact information such as your business address and phone number (without informing the entire universe, as the code is invisible to all but you and the search engine bots examining your website), it gives info on special other links you want the search engine bots to associate with your website, and it gives any other such major info that you want the big search engines to explore and know all about from your website.

Just because you are a small business with an even smaller website design budget, does not mean that you cannot have a professional looking website and presence on the web. All it means is you will have to do some of the work yourself instead of paying some design firm to do it for you. Amazingly enough, self designed pages from small business owners who did their research frequently end up being better and more focused than professionally designed pages. Consider the following suggestions when designing your own website.

Suggestion #1 - URL

First of all, your URL is very important and since it is the address to your website and what everyone will use to find your place on the web you need to put some careful consideration and thought into it. You don’t want to come up with a URL that already exists as a .com and register it as a .tv. If you do this, you will just lose customers to the com. Likewise, you don’t want to register a URL that has nothing to do with your website or content either. Be thoughtful and register a URL that pertains to your services or products, is as short as possible, and is spelled easily.

Designing your website means you have to be creative, plan out exactly what you want visitors to see, and then turn these ideas into a design or relay them to a design firm so they can do the job for you. However, the problem with this is you might be coming up with a lot of ideas that are not going to work for you when it comes to the design on your web page. Do some research first about what a good design includes and what a bad design includes. Then, you might be better able to design a great website. Consider the following suggestions before you start coming up with design ideas so you will be sure to leave this out.

Tip #1 - Don’t Distract

For some reason, many webmasters think it is a great idea to put a background picture of whatever their subject matter is and then put the text on top of it. All this does is create a very confusing mess because people cannot see the picture for the text and cannot read the text for the picture. Don’t let this problem arise on your website. If you want to include graphics do so separately from the text, simple as that. When it is separate, people are able to read what you have to say and see the photos you post.

Designing your website can be a difficult task especially if you decide to do it on your own and you have no experience. There are many websites and web hosts that provide tools to allow you to build your website, but if you have no knowledge of what works and what does not work in web design, you could be setting yourself up for a big fall. Review the following suggestions, implement them into your web design, and forget about being the guy with a badly designed web page.

Suggestion #1 - Not Providing Information

One of the biggest design flaws of many different websites is the lack of information. The best websites have tons of information as well as FAQ sections where you can have the majority of your questions answered immediately without having to worry about contacting anybody.

Suggestion #2 - No Advertisements

Web surfers avoid advertisements, blinking text, and banner ads, so if these exists on your pages they will simply ignore them and leave. The biggest problem is that often times websites do not have actual advertising, they do have a design flaw which makes certain text appear as advertising. You should avoid this at all costs because people will not look at this favorably.

Creating your own website is actually easy in today’s world of affordable and free web hosts and website building software. Fortunately, even if you have no Internet experience at all you can simply follow directions and build your own website in seven easy steps. Just follow the steps below and before you know it you will have your very own website online.

Step #1 - Make a Plan

The first thing you should do before starting on your website is make a plan. You want to know what your goals are for your website so you will be able to better plan and design it, not to mention finding a web host to support it. Decide on the focus of the site, what you will include, and who you will be marketing to. Then, when you know this information, you can move on to step #2, registering a URL.

Step #2 - Register URL