Budget websites for small businesses: About us and the services we provide.

Your first web site

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.

A domain name [+/-] (click title to expand or contract)

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 web host [+/-]

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

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
For your convenience we have compiled a number of feeds (updated hourly) related to search engines, website development and virus warnings on our news page.

Compiling your content [+/-] Some basics to consider

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.

Linking to or from others [+/-] (aka link exchange) Some basics

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.

Some interesting reading and info [+/-]

Budget websites for small businesses: About us and the services we provide.

TASMAN web-design

Budget websites for small businesses