websites want to exchange links

[prceramics]

i dont mind exchanging links i am page 1 for tiler milton keynes

 

[Dan]

do you have to have a links page specially set -up ?,istill have the mi-store site i got from here, who do you guys recommend now then ?

We don't really recommend anybody at the moment Dave. Hoping to find the right firm eventually but most just seem to want to take the money from the tradesmen and not actually care for their site. Or they're overcharging by the tune of 200% or something daft like that.

 

[tfs]

How would you go about choosing a firm Dan? what would you be looking for?

 

[Dan]

If I were a tiler you mean?

I'd be looking for a firm that already has tilers websites ranking highly, and one that doesn't charge more than about £600 for the website, fully optimised and ranking.

I'd not want to be charged monthly for anything, I'd not want to be charged for using X number of email addresses or whatever else they hide during the initial conversations, I'd not want to pay for updates, and I'd want full FTP access so the website is mine and not just hosted somewhere where I can't get hold of it and take it elsewhere as and when I pleased.

As a forum owner; I'd only advertise a company that could provide all the above but for about £400 due to the amount of business they could get from the forums in general, and so that it becomes a nice selling point for the forum as a whole "come with us and we'll get you business in and the phone ringing, by way of a discounted website, amongst other things". Type thing.

If I had the time, I'd start the web design side of my business up again and sort the members out. Though I don't have the time to be honest. It would take my time away from the forums which would have a knock-on effect long-term on them, so we'd risk ending up with nobody to sell the websites to after a couple of years of being too busy to care for them.

I've considered setting it up and getting staff in to do it, but them I'm spending time teaching people how to do it my way and that too takes my time away from the forums, so bit of a catch 22.

 

[tfs]

I think for some guys choosing a webdesigner etc can be difficult as many of us dont know what to look for in a designer untill we have made the mistake of paying x amount.

When I first looked into getting a website a few years back I was trying to get it for as close to free as possible. Obviously, we need to be willing to pay something to get value for money (and I understabd this better now). You do in many cases get what you pay for afterall.

Im glad you mentioned some prices as although I personally know what I would like to spend and what my limits would be, it makes you wonder what you should be spending sometimes when prices can vary so much. I have heard of some tradesmen paying closer to a grand for a website that appears to have some pretty standard features.

Personaly I have never paid more than £150 for a site (I have had to pay a little for changes a few times though). I have put in alot of hours advertising on directories and stuff though to try and get it noticed and ranking better and Im now paying for SEO on a monthly basis. I guess that if you can get the ranking and management for a reasonable fixed price then it may be wrth putting out a little more initialy.

 

[tfs]

Out of interest Dan, say we managed to get a designer who offered the service you mention at £400-600. How long should we expect to wait before the site needed an overhall to keep it performing well?

Can a site be designed and put together to last or is there a time when maintenance, improvement and seo etc are required?

 

[Dan]

I think for some guys choosing a webdesigner etc can be difficult as many of us dont know what to look for in a designer untill we have made the mistake of paying x amount.

When I first looked into getting a website a few years back I was trying to get it for as close to free as possible. Obviously, we need to be willing to pay something to get value for money (and I understabd this better now). You do in many cases get what you pay for afterall.

Im glad you mentioned some prices as although I personally know what I would like to spend and what my limits would be, it makes you wonder what you should be spending sometimes when prices can vary so much. I have heard of some tradesmen paying closer to a grand for a website that appears to have some pretty standard features.

Personaly I have never paid more than £150 for a site (I have had to pay a little for changes a few times though). I have put in alot of hours advertising on directories and stuff though to try and get it noticed and ranking better and Im now paying for SEO on a monthly basis. I guess that if you can get the ranking and management for a reasonable fixed price then it may be wrth putting out a little more initialy.

I used to charge £2,000 for a tradesmen type website that was optimised and I took the money up front, and got a lot of business in too. You get serious tradesmen when you charge such an amount. And you can spend time on making sure it ranks well. I used to charge £5,000 for an ecommerce site, and £10,000 for an optimised one. Did a few of those a year too. I charged the higher end of the scale to make sure I only ever got serious companies that did a lot of business offline but just never thought about a website.

On the flipside, I used to often do websites for free for companies who had an offline business but no online presence, and then take a cut of the website earnings. So it wasnt always about the direct cash.

Don't think I could charge that these days though.

I would never pay monthly for SEO though. You'd initially have a website built, it would rank, and then only from time to time would you need to pay the SEO guy to go over it and help with more key phrases or help get newer products and / or services ranked well.

Out of interest Dan, say we managed to get a designer who offered the service you mention at £400-600. How long should we expect to wait before the site needed an overhall to keep it performing well?

Can a site be designed and put together to last or is there a time when maintenance, improvement and seo etc are required?

This can be hard to gauge really. A tradesmen type website situation; you'd have the content sent to the web firm so it's a case of copy and pasting really, that would take an hour. The website depending on how it is being built should be anything between a few hours (for a content management system type website) to a week (for a website hand coded in html like this one - Staffordshire VW Specialist | Staffordshire's Volkswagen Specialist | BVR Automotive) - it's the optimising that you're waiting for and it is out of the web designers hands.

You launch a website, you link to it, you optimise it's pages, you write a few articles and post them on other websites. Takes a day tops. Then it'll take a week or two for Google to find it and index it. Then wherever the website ranks, will need improving on. So that's when you start needing so spend time changing things, improving things, adding more pages etc.

Ideally the customer should be given access to update it often as a website that hasn't been updated for some time will eventually not rank so well. Google likes fresh content, unique content, and content that's updated often. Hence why forums rank so well.

 

[tfs]

So are you saying that having the likes of CMS incorporated into your website will help you as you can log in an edit the text/ content yourself? Or do you mean the designer should be doing that as often as is required

 

[tfs]

sorry for picking your brain so much! lol

 

[Dan]

Yes mate the CMS is designed so that the customer can login to the website and make changes, add pages, etc etc. The designer should just initially set it up. Though a designer shouldn't really charge you then to help you login and change things with/for you.

If a website is buit using HTML or some other form of code, the customer probably wont be able to make changes so easily. So if the designer is doing it, it is fair to say he should charge something for that. Though such charges should be made very clear before starting anything. And you should never have to pay monthly for anything but your sky bills!!!!! lol

Neither are better than the other for ranking though. It's all personal preference.

Keep asking mate. It's about the only thing I can actually help with on the forums these days. haha

 

[Diamond Pool Finishers]

well my web-site cost about £ 200.00 and i do pay a rental every three months to my-store ,i have asked about hosting my web-site myselfe at pc world ,i think you have to have a pc that you use just for this ,but i does get on my pip paying rental ,as i have thought of having other web-sites but then it's more rental ,any idears on how i can host my own web-sites or is it to complicated ?

 

[tfs]

well my web-site cost about £ 200.00 and i do pay a rental every three months to my-store ,i have asked about hosting my web-site myselfe at pc world ,i think you have to have a pc that you use just for this ,but i does get on my pip paying rental ,as i have thought of having other web-sites but then it's more rental ,any idears on how i can host my own web-sites or is it to complicated ?

If you own the site mate, I thik you just need to request the ftp adress and give this to your new host. Sometimes you need upload the website yourself unless you have someone who can do this for you.

 

[Dan]

As above really Dave.

I wouldn't host a website with PC World. And I wouldn't host a website on a dedicated PC at home either. Your internet connection speed and bandwidth allowance wouldn't be good enough. A proper host will have proper connections to a teir of service providers to make sure your traffic doesn't lag the site.

You want to search google for "shared hosting package". As long as it isn't a windows based hosting service it should be about 60 quid for the year.

You would then download a copy of your website, upload it to the new hosting space, and then point your domain names to the new hosting space.

You may find with MiStore, as it uses their custom systems, they won't allow you to take a copy of it anywhere else. You'd have to check with them I think mate.