Getting a website and promoting it, explained in plain English for human beings.
Problem: You need to get a website, maybe sell some stuff online but the whole process is shrouded in buzzwords, geek talk and unhelpful advice.
Solution: These jargon-busting tips will certainly help you understand what’s what and give you some clues as to what your next move should be.
Ok here we go, don’t be afraid, I’m a professional…
What on earth is a domain name ?
A domain name is a phone number.
It’s a what ?
Ok, it’s not a phone number as such, but that’s a good way to think about it. Just as your phone number is a unique code to locate your telephone, a domain name is simply a unique code to locate your web site. Here’s an example: billybobsbanjos.com
Warning! Jargon alert: Domain names are also known as URLs (Unique Resource Locators) and URIs (Unique Resource Identifiers). Just so’s you know.
Domain names are registered on a yearly or two yearly basis, some have restrictions on who can register what. Here’s a guide that explains the restrictions: Domain eligibility criteria
Ok I’ve registered my Domain name, why do I need Hosting too ?
You need your website to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, right ?
Your hosting is simply the space you need to rent on someone else’s computer which is on all day and all night.
That’s it really, but hosting accounts also provide lots of other useful stuff too.
Here’s a short list of some of them:
o Email addresses. If your site is called billybobsbanjos.com you might like to have some email addresses like ‘
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
’, ‘
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
’ etc.
o Count of visitors to your site. Better than that, many hosting accounts offer full statistics about your visitors, their location, how long they stayed on your site etc.
o File Management. A basic way to move your website files and photos from your computer, up to the hosting computer, so that they can be displayed on the web.
There are many providers of hosting. Some are free (but hampered by advertising) and there are various types and flavours of paid hosting available.
Be careful to read the small print as some great deals have a few hidden costs. For more see Hosting - Buyer Beware
Great ! We’ve registered our domain and bought a hosting plan. So why don’t we appear in Google or Yahoo ?
Ah, the Big Question: “How can we appear higher-up in the search engine’s results ?”
Hold on, what’s a Search Engine, and does it run on unleaded ?
A search engine is a very clever bit of software that reads what’s on the internet and offers you a list of relevant websites, when you search for something.
The most common search engines are called Google and Yahoo.
Right, so we need to be right up high on the search results so we get noticed, how do we do that ?
Well, the process of making your site appear high up in the search results is called Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, which is easier to spell.
I could tell you that there are many books and thousands of websites devoted entirely to SEO. But that would be understating it, in fact there is a whole new multi-million dollar industry flourishing with the simple purpose of improving your results in the search engines.
Sooner or later, you will meet someone at a dinner party who tells you “I’m in SEO”, it’s inevitable.
So do I need SEO for my site ?
If you are hoping to gain lots of new visitors, for example if you have an online shop, then yes. If it’s a personal or family or club site that doesn’t rely on high numbers of new visitors then no.
So, SEO can help your site be more ‘visible’ to searches, it is relatively expensive but can quickly pay for itself if it drives lots of paying customers to your site.
Ok I’m ready, give me another three letter acronym (TLA)
Right, how about ‘S.E.A.’ ?
Didn’t we just do that ?
No, that was SEO…pay attention at the back please.
SEA is Search Engine Advertising.
Simply, paying for small ads to appear on the Google or Yahoo pages when someone does a search. They are clever enough so that they’ll only appear when someone has done a search which is relevant to your website.
The way they work is on an auction system. So for example you might ‘bid’ 20 cents for your ad for billybobsbanjos.com. Another banjo website might have bid 30c for it’s ad.
Nb: If that sounds expensive, note that this is Pay Per Click advertising, so although your ad may appear thousands of times, you only pay your 20c for each time the ad is clicked.
So when someone searches for ‘banjos’, alongside the ‘proper’ search results (also known as Organic search results), will be the paid-for ads.
In our example, the other banjo website’s ad will appear first and your ad second.
They are both relevant to the search, but one bid was higher so it’s ad is placed highest.
In reality, there are likely to be enough paid-for ads to run over several pages, so being in the top 8 or 10 is crucial as most people never get past the first page of search results and hence would never see your ad.
As you might expect, there is a little more complexity to it than that, but it’s not too hard to setup a Pay-per-click ad for yourself and see what happens.
For a more serious marketing approach it’s worth using a specialist company to handle the campaign for you: Click for more info..
Someone mentioned Frontpage, what’s that ?
There are many tools that can help you to make your website without knowing all the fiddly gobbledy-gook programming stuff. Leave it to the computer geeks, we like it !
Frontpage is the Microsoft version of a website building tool.
It helps you to build your site on your own computer and then move it up to your hosting computer so that it will appear on the web.
My hairdresser said that he likes to Joomla, should I report him to the authorities ?
Joomla is in fact a very clever system of making websites known as a Content Management System (CMS). There are also other CMS’s available, for example Drupal.
Once your website has been built using the Joomla system, you will be able to make changes to it easily and securely from within your web browser itself. No need for any extra software like Frontpage.
Joomla sites are incredibly versatile and powerful but they do a take a little bit of setting-up. If you are a bit of a closet techie you should be ok, otherwise it’s worthwhile getting a web design firm who specialise in Joomla sites to build your site for you and teach you how to update it.
Declaration of interest: The author works for Australian Internet Solutions, who specialise in Joomla websites. He likes to answer questions about setting up websites, so feel free to ask a question
