Web Site-Where To Start?

SES Constructio

After reading and searching on here i would like to start a web site for my company. Now the question-Where do i even start for this sort of thing? First off i don't have a ton of money to stick into it. I have to find someone to "host" it right? Then i will need someone to design it. Can anyone recoomend a decent place for either of those and a ballpark figure at what i am looking at spending? Also is there any parts of this i can do myself, I don't want to just make a mess of it myself but if there is anything i can do for it? Any tips or advice on where to start to get things roller or things to look into or consider please share. Thanks for your help, Scott

kevjob

try www.footbridgemedia.com they did mine and have had excellent results.

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Kevin
Basement Finishing Highlands Ranch Colorado
Littleton Colorado, Basement Remodeling
Kitchen Remodeling Denver

BKFranks

Mine is hosted on Yahoo. I did the website myself with Photoshop and MS Frontpage. I pay $11.95 a month. The domain name is $9.99 a year.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/

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EPSFOAMCENTER

you can try weebly dot com its a free website creater. You can do it yourself too. Very user friendly. Later if you decide to purchase a domain you can do it through them. If you need more info let me know.

SethHoldren

SES,

Like I said in my PM, just make sure - if you hire a web designer - you find someone who knows how to design a business site optimized for search engines and designed to get you appointments and sales.

Oh yeah, and stay away from spending money on Flash based design. It costs a lot, and you don't get anything that will help your bottom line. Plus, search engines don't read Flash content, so it can actually hurt your rankings. Your site can look really good without having to use Flash.

Best of luck to you.

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SethHoldren

Also, here's a great tool for easily and inexpensively building an automatically SEO optimized site. Use your own hosting, or they'll host it for you.

Wordpress Direct site/blog builder

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Website Critiques

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dougchips

That's cheating and stealing in some cases.

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To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

SethHoldren

Yeah, I understand what you mean by that.

There aren't many tools out there that couldn't be used in an unethical way. It's our responsibility as individuals to stay "above board" in business, and in life.

And, if someone out there decided to use the tool unethically, eventually it would catch up. With site visitors, and with Google.

Good observation.

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dougchips

It's the part about them promoting using RSS feeds as content. Granted most of the original content owners want the links but some don't want their competition to use their content.

Google traffic will be 0 once they see that all of the content is duplicate. In some cases Google will black ball the site and not even index it. I bought a site earlier this year just for the domain name and it is set up like this (ads and RSS).

Wordpress is a good idea, a few hours on a blogging forum will provide most people with an understanding of selecting themes, plug-ins and a little about blog SEO.

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To get the best replacement windows, or sun rooms contact the replacement windows experts at FHI Vinyl Window Company.

poolcageman

I did my own under www.doodlekit.com you build it yourself. But it has RSS a blog neat templates easy to use. Costs me about $22.00 a month that includes site and hosting.

www.kbremodelers.com

rbsremodeling

Second vote for footbride media.

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Saviane

If you choose to go with a web designer, you can get simple, decent designs for around $300-$600. Most contractors' sites don't have to have elaborate programming or Flash, as SethHoldren pointed out. Many good designers also factor into their pricing the fact you may have updates or want to run specials from time to time. Finally, choose a designer who will actually listen to what you want on your site, and who will communicate YOUR unique brand. Lots of web design companies who churn out small business sites tend to focus on speed and volume, rather than quality.

All the SEO stuff has been hashed out already here & elsewhere on the forum


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Kadria
Building D, (a division of Saviane Graphix) Atlanta, GA

SethHoldren

Yeah, for many contractors a blog would work great.

It's easy to make changes, and, more importantly, it's easy to add more content.

Increasing your "web footprint" is a great way to get ranked over time. (Or "Owning More of the Internet," as they say.)

Post homeowner tips and other content whenever you have time. Offer valuable information targeted toward your customers.

If you can talk knowledgeably about your trade, that's all you need. Hire a transcription service for next to nothing if you don't like to type.

Cut and paste. Boom. Internet real estate.

Put your offer and call to action on every page, so however they find your site you can convert them to an appointment.

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kirbymurphy

I use LunarPages: http://www.lunarpages.com/id/kirbymurphy
(If you like what you see, sign up through the above link, I get a little spiff)

Been with them for 8 years and have had no problems and they helped me with some technical issues I couldn't grasp.

Unlimited E-mail accounts and unlimited add-on domains.
That means you can have a regular account of like www.builder.com and then you can buy more domain names and use the same account to host them, no extra fee. I have a couple of AdSence accounts I want to build and maybe a local lead generator. I can add them and still only pay the same $6.95 one time a month.

They have several free templates you can choose from. I checked and they have one for construction and five for general business. All you do is replace their text and images with yours.

They use Fantastico which is one of the best behind the scenes installers of scripts like blogs, E-Commerce, or many other options.

The are thousands of free templates you can find on Google. Some are easy to install and others require a good bit of PhotoShop knowledge about Slices. Too tough for me.

They have PHP, CGI, Pearl, Python, and Ruby capability as well as compatibility with the new Silverlight plug-in. Something you may not care about, but if you hire a designer, they can use those languages for some dazzling sites.

They also have blogs: WordPress, b2evolution, Nucleus

Buy your domain name NOW before it gets taken. I've searching for a domain name with Green in it such as greenbuilding.com or greeninfo.com or solarsomething.com. Almost every conceivable name has been taken.

If you have MS Office you already have FrontPage, but you may have to install it. It's very easy to use, almost like Word. I want to take a DreamWeaver course when I get the time. Buy a book like Idiot's Guide to Frontpage and it will get you started. Like I said, the templates will get you started and look pretty good, but there may be others out there with the same look, but I doubt that would be a major problem.

P.S.
Like your site BKFRANKS, very clean and elegant.

Bryan C

While I agree with the above statements about the use of Flash, it can be incorporated and still produce excellent rankings - if you have good keyword content in the first place.

Blogs are huge - make sure that you have somewhere on your site that you can post short articles related to your business that include links to your site.

You can build a cool looking, eye-appealing site, but if you know nothing about SEO, no one will find it anyway.

What is the point of having a website anyway? Why not use it to attract and land potential customers?

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Bryan Corns
Owner, Hydroblast Pressure Cleaning Inc.
Indianapolis Power Washing Contractor
YouTube Video

cadanywhere

Its easy enough to do your own website that is fully optimised, you can use MS Frontpage or Trellian or a similar HTML editor with wysiwyg and set your own URL's etc.

Webspace is cheap from someone like 1and1 and once it is built you can use all the Google tools, xml sitemap generator, analytics etc etc to optimise it more and get the ball rolling with google. It takes time, but for a general construction site, it shouldn't be that hard, you don;t need to know coding anymore, there are loads of free tools out there to help you.