1. Register your own Domain
2. Setup your own hosting account

Then find a web developer who can build your website.

Avoid The One Stop Web Development Disaster

One stop shopping is almost always a good idea. Hire one company to provide all related products and services so you can rely on them to keep everything working with no finger pointing. But for your business website this can lead to disaster.

I got a call last week from an attorney friend of mine who is helping a famous south Florida plastic surgeon reclaim his domain – the story goes like t his. A few years back this doctor hired a small web development company to build his website. Like many small web developers this company registered the domain name, setup the web hosting, and built the website. And everyone was happy.

A few years later the doctor lost interest in his website and told the web developer he was not going to maintain the site. Then one day the doctor gets a phone call from a patient who says they found his website but it was a advertisement for a Mexican Resort. Sure enough the web developer had re-purposed the domain, which includes the surgeons first initial and last name and was using it as an Internet marketing tool. To regain control of his own domain the web developer is charging the surgeon $1,200.

This scenario is actually not that bad. The doctor will get his domain back and the entire situation was his own doing. In many cases the web developer who registered the domain, built the website, and hosted the website, has gone out of business. In those cases the website is gone. Rebuilding the website can be done but what about the domain?

If the out of business web developer registered the domain in their own account then they own it. That means you have to track down the web developer and get the ownership transferred to you. If you can’t find the developer you will have to wait for the domain ownership to expire and hope that no one else buys the domain before you do.

The Bottom Line
Own your domain. Register it with a registrar such as www.GoDaddy.com
. And setup your own hosting account. Here are a few details…

Register Your Domain

Her is how it works on www.GoDaddy.com

1. Check if your desired domain name is available
Enter the domain name you want in the Domain Name Search box.

2. Purchase the domain name
IF the name you are interested in is available, purchase it. You pay an annual fee to own a domain. Each registrar sets their pricing and GoDaddy.com is very affordable. Consider registering your domain for a few years and paying in advance so you don’t have to worry about it expiring.

Pay for Privacy
Be aware that every registrar (including GoDaddy) will offer you a long list of things you don’t need or should not purchase from a registrar. The only exception is privacy.  When you purchase a domain name your information such as your name, phone number, address, and email address is all visible to the public. You can keep your identity private by paying a small fee - $6.99 in the case of GoDaddy.

Another web registrar worth considering is Network Solutions. They are one of the oldest registrars and very reliable. They cost a little more.

3. Setup Your Own Hosting Account
Once your web site is built it will need to be hosted somewhere. There are thousands of web hosting companies but like everything else only a few are worth considering. It is critical that you setup your own hosting account. If your web developer has a preference then you can take that into consideration but you setup the account.

Go with a Tier One Web Host
Many of the bigger web hosting companies make it easy for developers to be resellers of their hosting services. Taking this approach can put you at a disadvantage so work with your web developer to make sure the hosting platform (the server and all the technology installed on it) meets their requirements but you setup the account directly with a tier one web hosting company.

Selecting A Web Host
You select a web host based on three basic criteria – uptime, features, and support. 

Uptime
Does the web server where your web site will live stay up and running and does the web host connection to the Internet stay connected. A quality hosting company will guarantee a certain amount of uptime.

Uptime is typically stated in nines – meaning that two nines is 99 percent, three nines is 99.9 and so forth. The more nines the better. Five nines is as good as it gets but very difficult to achieve. If you want to sleep at night make sure the hosting company you select guarantees at least 99 percent up time.

Web Hosting Features
Features refer to the software installed on the web server.  For a basic web site every web host should meet your requirements. But if your developer wants to include specific technology you must make sure the web host you select supports those technologies.

Support
Regardless of how great a hosting company is there will be an occasional failure and that is when support comes in. Try out the support before you buy. See if you can find the phone number for support and give them a call. If you can get a person on the phone that can answer a basic question that is a good sign. Some hosts rely on email, which is also fine. Just send them an email and see how long it takes to get a response.

Examples of Tier One Web Hosting
There is a long list of web hosting companies that offer basic low cost hosting in the $7 to $10 a month range. These hosts are fine for a basic website. Here are a few:

• Bluehost
• Lunarpages
• 1and1
• DreamHost

For a more complex website that uses a database or is published with a web publishing tool these basic hosting companies may not cut it. In that case consider a full featured web host.

Here are a few:

• ServInt
• Spry
• RackForce

Publishing a Blog

If your website is intended to be a Blog or you want to make regular updates to your website there is a type of host that supplies you with the blog software and hosting as a combination.

A few examples of Blog and Hosting combination packages are:

• Squarespace.com
• Textpattern.com
• Wordpress.org
• Blogger.com

The biggest advantage of using a blog software to create your website is that it is very easy to get started and depending on the blog software you select there are many features you can use to make your website more dynamic.

Conclusion
Most important is that you register your domain name with your own account so you own it and you setup the hosting. That way you are in control and if your web developer disappears or you want to change web developers you are in control.

Finding New Customers

The real power of Internet Marketing is having a customer who has never heard of your business find you. Let’s clarify. Say the name of your company is “Florida Business Blue” and you make blue widgets. You hire a web developer to build you a web site, you struggle over the colors, the words in the top navigation, and of course your logo. A few weeks later you have a website. Now the magic is suppose to happen, new customers start calling. But the phone never rings.

Website Building versus Search Engines Optimization
Here’s the rub, most web developers don’t know anything about search engines. Building a website and getting it found by searchers on Google, Yahoo, or MSN are two different skill sets. Even many people who try to sell you “Search Engine Optimization” as a service don’t really know what they are doing.

Website Rescue – 3 Easy Fixes

Here are three common mistakes you can find on most small business websites and how to fix them.

1. Page Titles

Mistake: All the web pages are titled with your Company Name.

As you browse a website take a look at the page title. The title appears in the top of your web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox). 

The page title is generated by html and looks like this:

<title>Florida Business Blue</title>

On many websites you will see that the title is the company’s name and that it appears on almost every page of the website.  This is great if you only want people who are searching on “Florida Business Blue” to find you. But if you want to get found by people searching on the phrase “Blue Widgets” you’d better change that page title to “Blue Widgets”

The Fix:
Each page on your site should have a unique title and description. The title should contain only one key phrase and should be a maximum of about 5 to 7 words.

Avoid the temptation to add extra words or your company name to the title. Our company name is “Net Builders” but if you go to http://www.netbuilders.com you will see that our home page is titled “Florida Internet Marketing”. And if you search on that phrase on Google you should see netbuilders.com on page 1 of the results.

In HTML:
A title looks like this:

<title>Blue Widgets</title>

A description looks likes this

<meta name=”description” content=”Quality blue widgets made in America for use in flux capacitors, and warp drives” />

Descriptions should be a maximum of 2 sentences. Note that the description is what most search engines will display below the page title. For that reason it should be concise so that a user can instantly know what the page is about.

2. Graphics and Images

Mistake: The information about your product, service, or company is contained in an image (e.g. jpg, gif, png files).

About a year ago Net Builders was asked to evaluate a website about learning to speak Chinese. The site owners wanted to know what they could do to show up in search results.

In 10 seconds we knew the problem. Almost every word on the page was contained in images. Search engines cannot read words in images. To a search engine an image is a blank slate.

The Fix:
Use images sparingly. Content (words) should be text.

Notes: If your use of images is an attempt to create a certain look on the page consider using a colored background or background image. A skilled web developer can give you the look you want and make your pages readable by search engines.

3. Links

Mistake: The links to pages on your site contain multiple segments with specials characters such as “?, &, =”.

Note: this problem normally only appears on websites that are dynamic. Meaning that the content is stored in a database. These sites are built with either a custom built tool or a web publishing tool.

Here is an example of a problem Link (AKA a URL)

‘www.someboatstore.com/product.asp?
urll=Marine_Antennas_AM_FM&categoryid=Electronics
&subcat1=Antennas&subcat2=AM%20/%20FM’

In most cases search engines will not follow links like this. Meaning that the search engine will not record the page or any of the information on it.  This type of Link is “not search engine friendly”.

The Specific Problem: The link contains multiple segments that include special characters.  Search engines will typically follow a link that includes one (maybe two) segments that include strings like “&categoryid=electronics” but in most cases the search engine will give up after one of these segments.

The Fix:
Generate Links that do not include special characters. Here is an example of a search engine friendly URL.

‘www.someboatstore.com/products/marine_antennas/
electronics/am_fm’

These days most web publishing tools will automatically generate search engine friendly links but it is critical that you confirm this before you commit to a tool. In some cases you have to select the option “Generate Search Engine Friendly URLs”.

The Wrap Up
Avoiding these three simple mistakes can put you on the road to getting found in natural search results. That’s the goal, people search for the product or service you provide, they find you, and you get a new customer.

If you’ve spent any time building web sites as your profession you know about the quest. The quest to find a web publishing tool that will allow your customers to update their site on their own. Many companies have tried to solve this challenge but until recently no one had succeeded.

Soon after the first web sites starting appearing in 1995 and 1996 products started sprouting up to make it easy to publish a web site.  I was there and tested and used many of the products. Some notables include Fusion from Net Objects, Home Site, Front Page on the low end of the price range and products too numerous to list from IBM, Microsoft ATG, Vignette, Broadvision, and Interwoven on the high end. By high end I mean expensive, not necessarily effective.

Needless to say today’s website is dramatically different from the static brochure web sites we built 10 years ago but one of the biggest challenges has been consistent.

How do we make it possible for non techies to change and update a website on their own, with no help from the techies?

Web Empowered for $250

I’m happy to report that we have arrived. If you know nothing about HTML, XHTML, CSS, FTP, SSH, or any of the other alphabet soup technology or tools you can publish a great website.  You will need help in the initial design and creation of your website. But once you’re up and running you will be empowered. The Secret is Expression Engine. A Web Publishing Tool from Pmachine.

The Search for Web Publishing Power

My search for the ultimate web publishing tool became really important in 2000 when I headed up the team that built Visa USA. Visa is a big organization with a lot of talented people. Most of the Visa team were not techies but rather marketing and business experts who knew exactly what they wanted to put on Visa.com. The challenge was empowering them to do it.

The Million Dollar System

Before my team took over the Visa site, Visa had settled on a content management System called TeamSite made by Interwoven. The base product cost about $250,000. But to make TeamSite work they way the Visa team wanted took a lot of custom development to the tune of another $750,000. So we had a million dollar content management system. Here’s the rub. The Visa team still couldn’t post new articles or edit existing articles on their own.

Still Not Empowering

The history of content management tools is ugly. Lots of big dollar software that in the end is used by the developers who don’t need it. In the case of Visa, my team of skilled developers created all new content (articles, etc) and made changes to existing content. The Visa team used TeamSite to view changes and approve them – workflow.

This is not a criticism of the Visa project, Expression Engine did not exist in 2000. If I could go back in time and take Expression Engine with me I would.

Back to Expression Engine

One of the keys to the effectiveness of Expression Engine is its focus. Expression Engine makes it easy to:

• Publish new web pages
• Edit existing web pages
• Register users
• Allow user Login
• Allow users to create a profile
• Allow users to submit comments
• Control when pages are published
• Create private areas and control access
• Upload photos
• Add Photos to web pages

This is just a fraction of the functionality in Expression Engine. Pmachine provides a comprehensive list.

Nothing is Perfect

A large part of my high tech experience has been testing and reviewing software (and hardware) products. I did this for many years at PC Computing and as a consultant for big companies like NEC, Net Objects, LoanCity.com, Pottery Barn, Lycos, and others. I’m really impressed with Expression Engine but every product can be improved.

Normally this is the part of the story where I would list the things I’d like to see improved or added. In this case I won’t. Pmachine is constantly adding new features and functionality and you get the upgrades at no charge as long as your license is active. That’s the beauty of software – it’s never done - as long as the software maker keeps improving and Pmachine is working hard. I almost forgot to mention – you get source code. So if you are a PHP developer you can dig in and customize Expression Engine.

This web site Netbuilders.com is built with Expression Engine.
Two other sites we recently completed WorkoutAmerica.com and KeymoradaFishing.com are also built with Expression Engine – and we have many more in the works.

We Have a website but:

• We can’t update it
• The search engines don’t know it exists
• Our web developer disappeared and we have to start over

Before you start to build or rebuild your website you must understand how to build a business website that works. Our focus is to help you build a website that will show up in search results, not just an online brochure.

For your site to be effective it must:

• Include the information your potential customers are looking for
• Be optimized for search engines
• Be easy for you to update

The Goal is to Get Found
Our ultimate goal with your small business website is very simple. When a consumer goes to a search engine and searches for the products and services you offer we want your website to show up in the search results.

Information on Your Website
The foundation of an effective website is information, content. And the content that search engines read and use to evaluate a webpage is text. Here’s a simplified explanation of how a search engine finds a website and determines what the site is about.

Search Engines Finding Sites
Search engines have two sides to them. The side you see is the website where you type in what you are searching for and see a list of web pages to choose from. But did you ever wonder how a search engine finds all those web pages? Every search engine has automated programs commonly called robots that seek out new websites.

There are two basic ways a search engines finds a new site. Following a link from another site or having a link submitted to the search engine directly. The most common and most beneficial way for a search engine to find your site is for the search engine to find a link on an existing site and follow that link.

Imagine a search engine robot is reading through this site netbuilders.com and there is an article about another site Workout America.  The search engine robot makes a note of the link (Technically called a URL). Later that search engine robot visits Workout America and starts reading through its pages. This is where the phrase crawling the web came from.

Search Engines Crawl Before You Search
Let’s assume that a search engine robot found a link to your site and followed it there. We call them robots mainly because the process is automatic – these search engine robots automatically discover new website and then crawl through the pages reading and indexing the content.

As the search engine robot is reading through your site it makes a record of each page and the content on the page. As the process of indexing a page occurs the search engine keeps track of the important words it finds. Words that indicate what the page is about are tracked while common words like “if”, “the”, “is”, “and” are generally ignored.

Finding Relevant Information
The primary goal of any good search should be to deliver the most relevant results in response to your searches. The first step for you to make sure your website is displayed to your potential customers is making sure that your small business website is packed with pages that describe exactly what your customers are looking for.

Writing for the Internet
Now that you understand how a search engine will find your website and how it determines what your website is about the next step is to learn how to write content that clearly communicates what your website is about. Step 2 of our Site Building series will walk you through how to write effectively for the Internet.