WEBSITE DESIGN AND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Website design and search engine optimisation are essential elements to prevent poor performing websites with low rankings a traffic levels

A professional web developer will also need to be involved in any website that uses a database. Database-driven websites are used for things like: property for sale websites, holiday/travel booking sites, e-commerce websites, auction sites, dating sites, social networking websites, and pretty much any other kind of interactive website.

It is very rare to find someone who is an expert in both web design and web programming. In fact I have never come across anyone who was highly skilled in both fields. This means that if your website requirements stretch to anything more than a brochure site then you are not going to be able to get what you need from a one-man-band website designer (because he will be good at either the design or the programming, but not both).

WEBSITE DESIGN

So, you must make sure that whatever web design company you choose to work with has a team of people - some specialising in graphic design and some specialising in web development. Without that, your project is pretty much doomed to failure from the start.

Search Engine Optimisation

Paul knows more about search engine optimisation than anyone I have ever met and he has written a whole chapter on SEO that appears elsewhere in this book.

So, I won't say very much about SEO here other than that you need to have your website optimised if you are serious about doing business on the internet and you need to make sure that your website designer does not feed you a load of cock and bull about SEO.

I said just now that it is rare (or impossible) to find someone who is brilliant at graphic design for websites and also brilliant at web programming and development. Well, the same applies, but to an even greater extent, when it comes to finding someone who is good at website design and development and yet also properly understands SEO. Such people just do not exist.

POOR PERFORMING WEBSITES

I often use an analogy from Formula 1 when I am trying to make this point to people. Lewis Hamilton is without doubt a fantastic and very talented Formula 1 driver, but that doesn't mean you'd trust him to strip down and rebuild the engine on your Ford Mondeo. Likewise I wouldn't want to see one of the guys who work in the pit lane try their hand at driving a few laps in the middle of the British Grand Prix.

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Being a Formula 1 racing driver and being a Formula 1 mechanic are very closely related jobs and yet a person who is good at one of those jobs can't expect to be good at the other as well. And it's the same with web design and SEO. Just ask Paul to design you a website and see what kind of response you get!

The problem is that so many web designers will tell you they can optimise your website to get it to the top of the search engines when in actual fact they can't. In most cases, it is not that they are deliberately lying to you. The majority of these guys genuinely do think they know all there is to know, or at least a hell of a lot, about search engine optimisation.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

And whilst it's true that they may have spent hours, weeks, days, or years reading and learning about SEO, the problem is that most of what they have read has come from articles and forums on the internet and most of the SEO information that you find on the web is complete nonsense.

Why? Because the people who really know about SEO (guys like Paul) do not go round publishing their knowledge and secrets on the web for all and sundry to help themselves to.

So, if your website designer tells you they can optimise your website, be on your guard. Make sure that the work is done on a no-win/no-fee basis (the best SEO companies will be happy to offer this) and make sure that the site is optimised for the search terms that you want and not just those that your website designer thinks he has the best chance of succeeding with.

Website Hosting

Once you have selected a website design company for your project, you will need to decide what to do about hosting it.

When you buy web hosting, you are arranging for your website to be loaded onto a web server so that it is available to everyone across the world wide web. It's the online equivalent of buying a plot of land prior to building a house - with the land being the web server and the house being the website.

LOW RANKINGS A TRAFFIC LEVELS

Watch out for any web design company that tells you that you have to use their own hosting service. This will often mean that their websites are not built to industry standards and require special web server add-ons in order to work properly, or it might mean that they want to force you to use an overpriced hosting service.

A reputable web designer will give you the freedom to choose your own host if you want.

Where you host your site can have an impact on its success. Although web hosting in USA tends to be cheaper than in UK, you will be better off hosting in UK if your site is aimed at a predominately British audience. This is because Google will then favour your site when it comes to providing people with UK-specific search results....

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The Golden Web - The Internet Entrepreneur's Definitive Guide to Making Money Online

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Website design and search engine optimisation are essential elements to prevent poor performing websites with low rankings a traffic levels