what now ive got a web page

[merit]

finally got round to getting a web page sorted,and im ready to go live[web designer talk]lol
i understand that i need to buy a domain,but what else do i need ?, whats the procedure?
total novice with this area of advertising ,all help greatly appreciated

[Dan]

You need to:-

• Choose the right domain name: Make sure that if you're picking on that matches your company name, that your name IS actually available first. Check with Companies House (Click Here) for the name you want to use (if you already haven't done so) Then check for the domain name, use somebody like www.ukreg.com or www.123reg.co.uk - either are sound. Others may seem cheaper, but often don't end up being.
• Register it: Make sure you always register your own domain name. If a company registers it and they go bump, you can sometimes struggle to get it back quick enough to protect your rankings and traffic. If it goes offline for too long, you loose all the hard work you've done to it. So you always want to make sure that A) you have a copy of the website and B) the actual domain name is in your control.

Then at this stage you either need a web designer, or you need to know a fair bit about what you're doing. Clearly you want to get traffic to the website naturally and not just by paying to advertise the web address (or domain name) everywhere you can. You want to naturally get hits from the places people search for tilers, and the first page they open will most likely be Google.co.uk (statistically 90 odd percent of all UK searches are Google.co.uk - 2011 - can't remember the source - bbc I think) and not some 'rate this tiler' type website. So you want to rank for search terms typically used by your customers, in your area.

So a customer looking for a tiler in shropshire, will probably search for that 'tiler in shropshire'.

Now this isn't the role of a person or company that does just web design, this is the role of a person or company that carries out 'Search Engine Optimisation', or SEO. And if they don't or can't do that, it's probably worth looking for somebody else. As one person can't always work on anther persons website as easily (and often as cheaply) as just one person doing the lot.

It isn't too difficult to get a website ranking for local search terms providing the term you're looking for isn't competitive. If it is, you need to find more similar search terms that you can rank for. A good SEO firm will be able to sort of guestimate how many lesser popular search terms will equal the very popular search term in number of hits to your website. So in theory you can still get as much traffic short-term, and then the SEO firm can spend time on competing for the popular search term to eventually rank well for that too.

If you're doing it yourself, we have a few threads on this knocking around but mainly in the 'TilersForums Arms' - so try to get yourself in there.
If you're looking for somebody and can hold on for a few weeks; we will be announcing our new web design sponsor (that does SEO too ) and they're doing the lot for £249 one-off fee to set the site up etc, and the hosting fee every year after is about 60 quid. It'll be optimised and you'll be able to edit pages, add more pictures to your gallery, make new pages if you end up doing more technical tiling and want a new page so your customers know. And comes with email addresses and all the usual stuff. Though like I said, it'll be in a few weeks time.

[merit]

thanks for the in depth explanation dan ,ive had a web design finished by students from the local uni,as part of there course,
which i thought would be ok for customers to visit when im pricing for work to show the standard ect.
its only cost peanuts,so its no great loss if i dont run with it and just hang fire for the new web design sponser and see if thats the route to take,seems logical to get everything from one company
once again thanks

[Dan]

Nah no worries mate. If you have a website, make sure you checkout the threads in the 'Arms' as quite a few have shared advice on here and got theirs ranking quite fine. It just takes a bit of time and effort as with anything that's all.

[Dave]

You will of course need access to the Arms.

Where's the door to the Tilers Forums Arms?

[merit]

the design ive had done is pretty basic,and i was going to go with that ,to see what response i got,obviously its been done by students as part of a design course, so i think its generic to all clients that go in and ask for "a web design"
the info you passed on dan, seems the way to go ,ill wait till somethings posted about new sponsers and go with that,
more specialized for tiling company ,time really isnt an issue

thanks