new site

Hi everyone, 2nd day 1st post to forum.

I have paid someone to build a business web site.

It is a plumbing web site and I was wondering will i be ripped off.

can I ask questions on what should be in the code to help search engines find me ect ect ect

any help would be appriciated, is there any threads you can point me to , also a little help to navigate around forum would be nice

littlebilly

You mean ... someone stealing your content? or design?

Of course ... you might find some related post in Search Engines and SEO section. There's also a few Articles written on the subject that you might want to check out.

Don't be afraid to ask questions ... find the most appropriate spot on the forum and post. If it's not in the proper area a mod will move so don't worry about it

Sorry do you mean can you ask the people who are making your website question? If that's what you're asking then certainly. Ask them everything you want to, question everything. If they are doing a good, professional job then they won't have a problem. I always encourage clients to speak to me if there is anything they want clearing up.

Pete.

Karinne thank you,

Pete thank you, what sort of question should I be asking the people who are building site, I think people copy design don't they?

Sorry, I don't follow. When yous say people copy design what do you mean?

As for questions. Ask about their experience and make sure that they have the skills to complete this job. Ask them specifically what you are getting and how they are building the site. For a business site which will require good search engine rankings, make sure they are coding to modern standards using valid css and html and make sure they aren't using tables for layout. If they aren't handcoding then you shouldn't really be paying them for the work as you could create a nice site in dreamweaver with a little practice and guidance.

Hope that helps,

Pete.

Hi Pete,

your a gem, I have dreamweaver but i heard tables will not help me and as i can not programme I have had to go shopping for someone to build site for me , this guy, company seems genuine just need to put he write questions to him , them and thanx for you advise,

Question, domain name, if I chose a domain name like plumbing-drainage-place.com will search engines pick up plumbing or drainage or place or will it not see these words because of the hyphen ?

oh my name is steve really littlebilly is my username but there we go

Ha, Hi steve.

Hyphens are good as search engines interpret them as spaces so plumbing-drainage-place.comm is 'plumbing drainage place' to a search engine. Which is better than plumbindrainageplace. This is as far as I am aware. I'm no SEO guru but I've been told this is the case. We do have one or two pretty awesome SEO peeps and if you have any more SEO related question then start a new thread and if they don't see the questions I can point you over that way and they'll be sure to help you out.

Here is an article on some basic SEO stuff (a technical term ). It's like a list of some of the things you should be looking to get right before you even start with any SEO campaigns. It may be worth asking your web designer/team about these thing when you ask your questions, I'm sure he/she/they will be happy to fill you in on their methods.

Pete.

pete thanx again ,

ok nearly there, ok say i choose a domain name plumbing-drainage-southampton.com , however the company name is different, all clear plumbing is the company name, email is an issue, dont want this long set of characters for email can you advise what I can do please, post it to the board if your busy,

thanx again ,

steve

There is something you can do as I know Diego (an SEO dude of the forum) does it. He has something like a human friendly domain which redirects to a search engine friendly one. The search engines don't use the first one they take not of the one it redirects to. This means that you could have a nice search engine friendly url but also one that looks nice on business cards that you could use for email contact. I'll ask Diego to explain this better. I don't understand it all properly.

Pete.

pete, brill

sounds great to me what ever that is, i have read a few threds on hosts, think i will look at 5 alive , think i need to check that ,

catch up later , oh wher you from see if i can fix a few washers for you .

thanx again

Steve

Steve make sure this web person/company provides you with a contract. Don't pay anything until you see the contract. If you have questions about the contract post them here and we'll try to help.

Your designer should be able to hand code the site, be able to implement basic SEO techniques.

Make sure you see a portfolio of his work and that you like the work.

Best of luck!

Hi ya ,

Lchad.

sorry for the delay I have been typing up text for site ,

Thankyou for all you advise, payment through paypal alls well I think.

SEO ? I will read up on this , standards are there programming standards ?

I have sent a few emails regarding what i need within the text H1 , can you update me what H1 is .

Steve, a friendly plumber, honest and respectfull

Hi
Love that! LOL

I'm Diego, the one who's always going on about SEO and I've been called in to give my 2 cents on this thread.

Firstly, welcome to the forums. Secondly, I think you will do very well. You have the right attitude. You've found yourself a related forum and asked for advice instead of going through it blind. Now you have an arsenal of knowledge (a bit like "professional on-demand knowledge") that you can use to make sure...
a) you're not ripped off by some wanna-be all-talk no-action web-designer
b) your site achieves its full potential

Now let's get down to business...

DOMAIN
Pete was right, I do this on one of my site called 123Cleaners.
All advertising (flyers, the delivery vans, google ads, etc) use www.123cleaners.com. But as you can see www.123cleaners.co.uk, www.123cleaners.com and www.london-dry-cleaners.co.uk all redirect to www.london-dry-cleaners.com (including emails).

The 'proper' way to do this is to...

1. create the 'real domain' (ie.: plumbing-drainage-place.com) and emails addresses, etc
2. add the 'human domains' as aliases (ie.: niceplumbers.com or whatever)
3. enforce one domain via scripting so when someone lands on niceplumbers.com/services they are automatically sent to plumbing-drainage-place.com/services. This is a very simple script which we could even write for you, but you need to have ASP or PHP available on your server.

If you can't have aliases, you can work around it by actually setting up separate websites...

1. create the 'real domain' (ie.: plumbing-drainage-place.com)
   no email addresses
2. create the 'human domains' (ie.: niceplumbers.com) and set up your email addresses here
3. add a script to the 'human domain' that will permanently redirect all requests to the 'real domain' so when someone lands on niceplumbers.com/services they are automatically sent to plumbing-drainage-place.com/services.

BUT, before I leave this issue, I should also present the other side of the argument, which is, having a super great full of keywords URLs is not the most important thing in SEO. It helps you get started - in my experience, keyword rich domains start climbing the SERPs a bit quicker than otherwise - but this novelty won't last unless the SEO within the website is up to scratch.

A perfect example of the above is my other website, www.pinesandneedles.com. Top rankings for 'christmas trees delivered'(1st & 2nd), 'christmas trees london'(1st & 2nd), 'christmas trees online'(2nd), 'buy christmas trees'(2nd), 'real christmas trees'(1st) and the only one of all major competitors that doesn't have the words 'buy', 'christmas', 'xmas' or 'tree' in the domain name. It was hard work, and it's taken 2 years for it to get there, but if like this case, the company name is important to you and your business, you may want to re-think the friendly domain idea...
------------

SEO
In my opinion, SEO is as important as having a website. There's no point in your clients finding a poor website just like there's no point having a great website your clients can't find. You have the luxury of doing this from scratch, so you can get things right now rather than modifying or completelly rebuilding the website at a later stage (which I have been doing for some peeps - painful job).

If you're worried about SEO, I think you should ask your designer what he knows about SEO and what his plans are. You can work out whether he knows his stuff by the type of answer he gives you. I wrote an article on "What to look for in a SEO" a while ago that will help you do just that.

If his SEO skills are weak, then you should simply make sure he meets basic standards (valid code, friendly URLs, appropriate link texts and headings) then have a SEO expert do some work at a later stage.
------------

I think that's it, let me know if I missed anything or if there's anything you're unclear about.

I know it's a lot of info to take in, but do as we do - save this stuff somewhere and build yourself up a little stash of techie goodies you can use when you need help with anything.

Cheers,
Diego

__________________
Diego - Web-Developer & London SEO Expert
jQuery Plugins: Multiple File Upload, Star Rating, FCKEditor | NEW: XML to JSON

Diego Hi,

Fab stuff, I will indeed tick off what Mr pro web designer knows and take it from there, I already have a site, lol www.allclearltd.com, so if i set up another site on a different host I can collect the mail from the origanal site, so i would have 2 or 3 live sites and all the mail will go to my main site which is allclearltd, the url's with plumber ect will have script to open up my main site ?, so i only need to purchase domain name's and have a host thats cheapest ??

IT was a hobby for me and I have MS certs pc and server but this web design stuff way above my league.

I look forward to your help and I will indeed set these other domains up so I will need help

Thanx Diego

Steve

I disagree. I think it's a different league and you'll get the hang of it...

No. The opposite. You'll advertise 'www.allclearltd.com' which will automatically redirect to 'www.plumbing-drainage-place.com'. All emails stay as they are, under allclearltd.com so you don't need to 'redirect' anything there...

The only 'redirecting' you will need be a script on the 'nice domain' (www.allclearltd.com) to the SE friendly domain....

__________________
Diego - Web-Developer & London SEO Expert
jQuery Plugins: Multiple File Upload, Star Rating, FCKEditor | NEW: XML to JSON

Where do you provide your services?
* edited *
DUH! Southampton, Salisbury, The New Forest, Romsey and Totton...
Never mind...

__________________
Diego - Web-Developer & London SEO Expert
jQuery Plugins: Multiple File Upload, Star Rating, FCKEditor | NEW: XML to JSON

not clear with redirection. ect ? sorry mate.

New site built will be hosted as allclear ? other sites hosted will point to allclear?

can you lay it out ?, like step 1 , step 2 Diego , leave email as it is,

where you from ?

Steve

I'm in London... The locality of your business is also important and you should probably dedicate a page (or a section of a page) to each different are you serve...

There's no point having the website under allclearltd.com and having a domain like plumbing-drainage-place.com redirect to allclearltd.com. Because

1. plumbing-drainage-place.com will be ignored (it's just a redirect)
2. plumbing-drainage-place.com is too ugly to advertise

It makes sense doing it the other way around because

1. plumbing-drainage-place.com is SE friendly
2. allc