Tasman web design: tips for aspiring website owners

Tasman Webdesign
Budget websites for small businesses

Your first web site:		Requisites
Basically you need three things in order to have a web site running on the Internet. Each of which can be obtained separately and from different sources. Requisites: A domain name A web host Web pages		A domain name. Your www.myidentity.com, the common extensions (.com, .net, .org, .info, .la, or .md ) can be obtained from an accredited registrar or if you wish to use a different extension (for instance .cl for Chile) from the country NIC´s. You can use our Global whois services to find available domain names. You will need the DNS names pointing to your web host in order to show up on the Internet (usually something in the lines of: ns1.myisp.com & ns2.myisp.com), ask your web host. A Webhost Some person or company that has a server permanently connected to the Internet and is willing to "host" your web pages for you. Use common sense when selecting one, check out other´s opinions, see how long they exist and if they are really cheap, find out how they make their money. For if your host goes down so does your web site Web pages The documents that contain the code, instructions and information to be displayed by a web browser.

Content and search engines:		More details
Lets start with some basic truths. Both the protocol used to transfer the information from a server to your computer (http) and the main language used by web browsers to display this information (html) contain the word "text" and yes as you already guessed this means that the world wide web is predominantly text based. Now what does this mean in practical terms? Search engines are in the business of providing the most relevant content based on the search terms entered by their clients. They gather this information by crawling the content (mainly the text) of your web site and classify it according to a wide number of criteria (mostly secret and continuously changing). The basic criteria are the relevance of the content of your pages, the words used to describe it and how many other (relevant!) sites think your information is worthwhile linking to. We have created a basic "botview" page analyser which gives you a look at how the search engines see your pages More Info: Compiling your content Linking to or from others Search engine submissions Some interesting reading and info A little about titles & metata tags		Compiling your content Whatever message you want to convey, say it with text and illustrate it with a graphic if you like, not the other way around. Make sure your content is relevant (very important!) Use graphics and animations (flash) to illustrate or clarify a point, do not base your site and the connection between its pages on it. Unless you are in the entertainment business the amusement value of an irrelevant animation tends to disperse on subsequent visits, again relevance is the keyword here.. Avoid self-glorifying sites as nobody but you is really interested. Add physical contact info like address, telephone and fax number as it inspires a little confidence when your client knows he can give you a ring when there is an urgent question. And don't forget you are on the "world wide web" once you get on the net, so add your country and country code for telephone numbers in order to avoid confusion (lots of American sites seem to forget this). Try and avoid a "click here to enter" home page, due to the fact that these pages in general contain little useful info they tend to do badly in the search engines. If your site is in two languages say English and Spanish present people with the English page first (as it is the predominant language on the Internet) and provide a clear link to the Spanish version of that same page. Some interesting reading and info Ingredients of a search engine friendly site ( A "must read" for the future site owner) A case study with some good tips. Search engine watch (everything you might want to know about search engines) Linking to or from others Make sure the other sites have an audience similar to yours. Link to other sites because you want your visitors to know about them If you are thinking about paying for advertising your site on another´s web site, make sure to consider carefully whether or not it will justify the cost ie. are customers coming directly from the other site likely to use your services or products. Search engine submissions First of all, if you don't submit your site actively, the chances are high that you will still start appearing in the major search engines after a while, as they actively crawl the web looking for info to present to their users. Active submission however will speed up this process. Most search engines still allow you to submit a link for free and there are still sites out there that will submit to a whole bunch of search engine for you for free (see links below) An important one to do by hand is DMOZ as it is used directly or indirectly by a large number of others (aol, google etc.) to complement their content and don't forget the business directories if you are a business. Be wary of commercial companies that give you a guarantee, nobody can guarantee you a high search position for popular keywords. Make sure to check them out, a general search in one of the bigger search engine will generally give you plenty to read on them (obviously avoiding info given clearly by themselves about themselves). Be wary of anybody that has a "secret formula", "insider info" or "great trick", even if they do, the search engines will invariably find out and simply ban you from their directory. Have patience, in some cases it can take up to three months before you might see any results at all. About titles and meta tags Title tag: suggested length 50~80 characters or around 6~10 words Description meta tag: An ideal description should be within 150~200 characters, which correctly describes the content of the page. Make sure to use a few keyword phrases. Keywords meta tag: suggested length between 500~750 characters. They have lost in importance but seem not to be completely ignored, which makes them a perfect place to put common spelling mistakes for your keywords (or different spellings for the same words in American or English English, like : color and colour). Bold texts and URL descriptions (anchor texts): the general consenses is that bold texts and URL descriptions have added importance.