Website Design, Hosting & Marketing
Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What are ALL the costs associated with creating a website?

The main costs are:

• Design
• Hosting
• Domain Name Registration
• Marketing and Promotion

It is not mandatory to spend money on marketing and promotion, but if you want your web site to be successful i.e. achieve the outcomes you require, you should budget for some marketing expenses. This may include paid submissions to search engines and directories, or a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign (see Search Engines for more info).

Q. Can I design my own site? Is this advisable?

It is not necessary to know the intricacies of HTML to construct a web site, but if you'd like to learn the basics I recommend:

This is an excellent book by Elisabeth Castro. Easy to follow, and a good reference source as well.

There are also plenty of good online resources to learn HTML.

If you purchase a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) site building package (such as Microsoft FrontPage) all the coding will be done for you. In fact, if you can use a word processor then you should be able to construct a web site.

But, there is a big difference between having a "web presence" and an effective website that generates traffic and converts visitors to sales. Sure, you can purchase a copy of FrontPage or Dreamweaver, organize a hosting account, register your domain name and "put up a site". If you do this you will be following the lead of millions of other small business owners around the world, only to discover that once your site is up it gets no traffic and contributes little or nothing to your bottom line.

Why? Just like those millions of other webmasters you didn't stop to consider how you were going to get traffic to your site or how you were going get visitors to buy your product or service!

Ken Evoy, founder of SiteSell.com, developed a mantra for his Site Build It online website creation service that is just so simple and logical that if you're one of those millions of disillusioned webmasters you'll smack your forehead and say...

"Now I get it!"

What is Site Build It's mantra?:

CONTENT - TRAFFIC - PREsell - MONITIZATION

Here's how Ken describes the concept:

CONTENT
Online, people search for information and solutions -- they are NOT looking for you. So give them what they want by turning what YOU know into high-quality, in-demand CONTENT.

TRAFFIC
Your theme-based topical content ranks high at the Search Engines, attracting free, targeted TRAFFIC... interested, motivated, targeted, "open-to-you" visitors.

PREsell
Develop trust, credibility and confidence ("PREsell") by OVERdelivering relevant, original, high-value information to these motivated, "open-to-you" pre-customers.

Then... and only then...

MONETIZATION
Convert your warm, willing-to-buy visitors into revenue, in various ways. Sell hard goods, e-goods, your personal or professional services... or all three. Or become a "pure infopreneur" and earn substantial income without selling at all, through Google Ads, affiliate fees, finder's fees, etc.

What do you think?

Makes sense doesn't it?

It sure does to me. As a web designer I'm well used to the things that my clients were most concerned about - design, colour's, graphics, photos, logos, payment processing systems, shopping carts etc.

But you know what? None of things matter at all if no one visits your site and is compelled to buy!

That is why I'm such an enthusiastic supporter of Site Build It. The concept works!

Read some real-life SBI case studies

Q. What is spam? Why have I started receiving it? Should I use it to promote my site?

Spam (also known as unsolicited commercial email) is basically advertising that is emailed to you without your consent. Frankly, it's the bane of the Internet. It uses up bandwidth and wastes your precious time. It works like this:

Because you have your email address on your website to allow your customers to contact you, spammers see that as an invitation to "harvest" your email address using special software, and send their message to thousands of addresses using "bulk email" software. They also see it as quite appropriate to put someone else's email address in the sender field so spam complaints are directed to some innocent webmaster whose domain then ends up on "black lists", thus preventing their legitimate mail from being delivered. How do I know this? It happens to me ALL the time. And frankly, it sucks!

The subjects of spam emails are usually get-rich-quick schemes, stock "recommendations", mortgage deals, various pills, scams and pornography, but can be any advertising material at all.

Spammers will attempt to conceal their identity by using false email headers, trick you into opening the email by putting Re: in the title (so you think they're replying to you) or make you believe you are an "opt-in" subscriber when you are not.

AND THEN...

they ask you to do business with them!

Do you do business with people who try to deceive you? No, neither do I. To say these clowns have no idea is an understatement. Problem is, it only takes one person in a million to buy or fall for whatever product or scam they are pushing, and it become profitable. And the reason for that is they transfer ALL the costs associated with their activities to someone else - ISPs, webmasters and everyday Internet users.

Never buy or join anything you have received via spam.

Never click through to a banking or other financial site to "update your details". Banks don't send emails like this. They are fraudulent attempts to capture your personal details and clear out your bank account. This scam is known as "phishing".

Never believe that you have won some lottery from randomly selected email addresses (doesn't happen), or that some accountant in Nigeria wants to transfer huge sums of money to you from a deceased estate.

And never, ever, consider marketing your own business using spam. Your reputation will be shot to pieces and you will die a brutal cyber-death. Spammers are the bottom-feeders of the online world. You don't want be associated with them.

Unfortunately, if you have a website with your email address on it, or post your email in discussion groups or classified ads, or even just register a domain, you will receive spam.

Learn more about spam, spam filtering and its effect on small business

Q. My website isn't getting any traffic. What can I do?

You don't need to pay an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company several thousand dollars to fix the problem. That's not to say that there aren't reputable companies who do good work. But you need to be careful. The wrong SEO work on your site will either:

• not work at all
• only work on non-competitive keywords - hey, we got you a #1 listing for "zebras with stripes that go side to side and not up and down"
• get your site banned from Google

You can take action to correct the problem yourself. Despite what a lot of people may tell you, it's not rocket science. In a nutshell, here is what you need to do:

Research the keywords you are targeting. The amount of competition will determine how much work you need to do get good rankings. By competition, I mean how many other sites are trying to rank well for those keywords. If you are targeting "MP3" you are going to have a very tough time!

A keyword research tool such as Keywords Analyzer will help you find related search terms and the degree of competition that exists for them. With a bit of research you'll come up with hundreds of alternative keywords that you can target and achieve good rankings for. Other recommended tools:

• Search It (free)
• Wordtracker

Search engines like content. They'll read your text, but not look at your pictures. If your site is all graphics and little text you'll have an uphill battle. Add new content to your site whenever you can. The more you add, the more frequently the search engines will come back for a look.

Cover the basic on-page SEO techniques. Put your keywords in the page title, headings, links, meta tags and throughout your readable text. See my search engines page for more info.

Cover the off-page SEO techniques. This basically means getting good quality inbound links to your site. Links are just as important as content, particularly at Google. Here's some good ways to get links:

Submit your site to directories, both paid and unpaid. Aim for directories where an editor must review your site before it is accepted. This helps establish creditability and trust. A listing in Yahoo's directory isn't cheap these days, but definitely worth it for the long term. Here's a few others to get you started:

• BlueFind
• JoeAnt
• GoGuides
• Zeal

Use Directory Submitter (free) to submit your site to hundreds of free directories.

Write articles and submit them to article resources such as EzineArticles. Include a link back to your site in the resource box at the end of your article. Webmasters and ezine publishers search sites like theses looking for free content they can use. If they use your article you will get traffic and links.

Post responsibly to forums and blogs where you are permitted to post a link back to your site.

Explore the world of Web 2.0 and gain links through social media, social bookmarking, tagging, RSS, video distribution and more. Jack Humphrey's free Web 2.0 Authority Blackbook will get you started and give you tons of resources. These tactics not only get you links but direct traffic as well.

Exchange links with good quality, relevant sites. Some people say that "reciprocal" linking is dead, or no longer effective. That may or may not be true, but you do have to be super-selective and go about it the right way. The wrong way will get you nowhere and waste lots of time.

I do recommend you concentrate on the other tactics first, but don't discount reciprocal linking as part of your overall strategy. Tread carefully though because over-use of inappropriate reciprocal linking can result your site being penalised in the search engines. Keep it relevant and "real". Add value for your human visitors. Try to exchange content rather than just links.

Read my article on how to get links for more info on reciprocal linking.

Website Designer Blue Mountains

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