Business website advice (domain names, SEO, links, etc)

To help you create a successful business website and promote it successfully so that it gets a good ranking and listing with Google and the other search engines here are a few pieces of advice. Click on the topics below to move down the page to the advice.

Domain names

Which domain name should you choose? One issue here is whether or not to choose a domain name that includes one or two keywords. This is a contentious issue and although the search engine algorithms are continually changing there does seem to be an advantage in having one or two keywords in a domain name. So if you have a self-catering cottage called "Green Gables" near Leeds, a good domain name might be green-gables-cottage-leeds.co.uk The extra length shouldn't matter too much unless you are trying to create a high-profile brand, in which case you will want a leaner and snappier domain name (but you will also have a bigger marketing budget that will more than compensate for having a domain name with less immediate SEO value).

Why is there a benefit to having keywords in the domain name? The search engine algorithms may well favour those domain names, but a more important benefit certainly comes from backlinks. People who link to your site often just use your domain name as the anchor text for the link (the anchor text being the text that is highlighted as a link on the page). Backlinks are much more valuable if you have keyword-rich anchor text, and you will automatically get that kind of backlink if you have keywords in your domain name. (For more on keywords, backlinks and anchor text wee our page with info and advice to help you promote your website.)

If your preferred domain name has already been purchased, try adding a small and easy to remember word. So if frinton-bnb.co.uk has already been taken, try go-frinton-bnb.co.uk or stay-frinton-bnb.co.uk.

Are hyphens in the name a good idea? Hyphens can make a name easier to read (but slightly trickier to type and dictate). If the name will look confusing without hyphens, you should go for hyphens. If the name remains easy to read, some would advise dropping the hyphens. Won't the search engines get confused and fail to distinguish the words in an unhyphenated domain name? No. Do a little test yourself. Put a single word like "villa" or "age" in the Google search box and then look down the listed domain names to see the word being highlighted even in unhypenated domain names.

Who should I buy a domain name from? First of all, you should buy a domain name directly from a reputable registrar, not through a middle-person. The domain name is the linchpin of the whole operation, so you need to make sure it is registered in your name, with your details, and you have the access details for the account.

Handcrafted Websites is not a domain name registrar but we can recommend reliable registrars in the UK. Contact us and we'll advise you.

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

The techniques known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) aim to move your website or web page closer to the top of the lists created by search engines like Google and Yahoo. In recent years SEO has become big business and a number of those offering SEO services are not necessarily particularly scrupulous. Once your business website goes live you will start to get spammy emails from "businesses" offering SEO services. Be careful! If someone promises to get you to the top of page one, he is - to put it bluntly - lying. He will take your money, your website will stay where it is, and he will disappear.

The advice here is intended both to help you avoid getting ripped off and to show you how you can do lots to help your site to rise in the listings with little or no financial outlay.

Like football, search engine optimisation is basically a game of two halves: one part being what is called on-site SEO and the other being off-site SEO.

On-Site SEO

To decide where a page should come in a search list, the search engine makes a note of a particular set of features on the web page. The first SEO task is to make sure all those features are present on your key web pages and are set up to highlight the most relevant key words and phrases. Because this involves working with the code for the web pages it is usually something only the designer can do. At Handcrafted Websites this on-site optimisation is something included as standard in every website design package.

A few words about key words because this is the most important part of on-site SEO for you.

Key words: To be given a good listing the page needs to highlight the relevant key words. If, for instance, you provide bed and breakfast in Keswick and you know that most people searching on the web will type "keswick bed and breakfast" in the search box in Google, Yahoo or Bing, then these will be the key words for your website's home page.

These need to appear in different parts of the page. For instance, each page has two titles: one visible on the browser screen and another in the invisible head section of the web page. The most important key words must appear in these titles. In the invisible head section there is also a description of the content of the page (a kind of summary that each page carries with it). This must also highlight the key words.

It is also a good idea to have a fair amount of text on the page that repeats the various key words and phrases. Here a balance needs to be struck between writing text that seems natural and pleasant for human readers while also achieving the density of key words that will score enough points with the search engines.

In the normal process of designing web pages we will make sure that they are constructed in the right way so that they can work well with the search engines. This we do as a matter of course; it is not something we charge for separately.

What you should do at the outset is spend some time researching the best keywords for the key pages of your website. Choosing the best key words is absolutely crucial. With our full SEO and website promotion service we can help you do this, or you can do it yourself.

Off-Site SEO

Once the web pages have been constructed correctly the big issue is incoming links from other sites on the web. The search engines need to judge how popular a page is, and they do this by looking for other websites that link to it - incoming links that are sometimes refered to as backlinks. Building up a rich network of high quality incoming links from other websites is what off-site SEO is all about.

It doesn't matter how well-designed the page is, if there are no links to it from established pages on the web, the search engines will never find it and it simply won't be listed.

For more information and advice about how you can promote your website effectively for little or no financial cost, send us an email and we will point you in the right direction to begin an effective website promotion campaign.

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CMS sites that you can update yourself

To be able to update (and perhaps extend) your website without having to delve deeply into the code used to actually build web pages, you need a site with a content management system (CMS). The latter gives you a simple-to-use interface enabling you to alter the key content areas of your site.

Should you choose a site with a CMS? If you only need a simple brochure site where no more than a few things need altering perhaps once a season, you don't really need a CMS. You can opt for a static brochure site. We will then handle any alterations to existing material and the cost of those will be covered by our annual hosting fee.

If you are going to want to make more frequent alterations to the site and add further pages as your business grows and diversifies, you really need a site with a CMS.

Is a CMS tricky to use? We will set up the simplest possible CMS for your needs. There will be a learning curve and a few peculiarities to get used to. But it should be easy for anyone with a little patience who has a basic familiarity with handling text and image files on their computer.

Will you need anything installed on your computer? The CMS will operate on the server, not on your computer. However, to handle images you will need some software to resize and compress your digital photos. Something like Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo would be an excellent choice. There are some free image editing programmes available on the internet (GIMP is a popular one), but you need to take care with free software.

Will the CMS impact the search engine optimisation of the site? With many content management systems there is a concern that they might make the site less search engine friendly. However, our preferred CMS has excellent SEO features and has been chosen precisely because sites maintained with it can have excellent search engine optimisation. We will ensure that the CMS is configured correctly to work well with the search engines.

If you have further questions about sites with content management systems, don't hesitate to contact us.

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Responsive designs

You may want to make sure that your website looks good on smaller mobile devices (iPods, iPhones, etc). Often the best solution for larger sites with bigger budgets is to make a second site designed with the limitations of those devices in mind. In other cases, a good solution is to use a responsive design that will automatically adapt to different browser widths. We use a responsive design for our site. Pull in one side of your browser window to see what happens to the design when displayed in a smaller area.

There are two aspects to a responsive design. Firstly, the design is fluid, meaning that the widths of elements on the page are set as percentages of the browser window width (instead of giving them a fixed width in pixels, which is still the most common design technique). As a result, the columns in the design get narrower as the window width is reduced. Secondly, the layout of the columns changes completely if the width of the browser window falls below a certain threshold. Instead of trying to squash columns in a row on a very narrow screen they all line up vertically as sections of a single column, allowing more width for the contents of the columns.

Not all designs can be made responsive. The main issue is that text and pictures don't respond in the same way when the browser width is reduced. The text continues to occupy the same area but the photos shrink. If you want a design where blocks of text need to line up perfectly with adjacent photos, it will have to be a fixed-width design and not a fluid or responsive one.

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Text

The text is important. Firstly, people will pay attention to how well you describe your products or services. Secondly, the text is far more important than the photos if you need to move up the search engine rankings. Search engines only really pay attention to the text on a page. We will help to improve the text that you send us, not only to make sure it makes the best possible impression on human readers, but also to make sure it ticks the right boxes with the search engines. The latter are looking out for certain key words and phrases repeated in the text. We will make sure that the most important key words and phrases are repeated without this sounding artificial to human readers.

One tip regarding the text is: Don't just write only about what you are selling (the beds and breakfast in your guest house, for instance). Instead, describe other details that will interest and attract potential customers. If you have a guest house in a beautiful resort, include information about the resort and find a few links to sites with further details that visitors might appreciate. Note that it is an advantage to have a few links like this on your page, even though you are giving free promotion to the sites you link to. Do some research and find the best links.

Although we rely on you to provide the initial textual input, we will carefully edit and possibly extend the material you send us. Of course, any changes we make are subject to your approval.

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Taking your own photos for your website

Your site will need photos. Occasionally you will need one or two commercial photos. We can source those for you, usually at little cost. As for the photos of the products or services you are selling, why not take the photos yourself (at least initially)? Here we have some practical advice to help you do it well.

Equipment
UseIf you are going to photograph interiors, use a digital camera that has a wide angle lens. A lens that will be wide enough for most purposes is 28mm. The camera with a 28mm lens that we use is the the relatively inexpensive Canon IXUS 86015. (Note that cameras like this advertise their lenses as 28mm, but the actual figure written on the rim of the camera lens will be 4.6. This is a bit confusing, but the figure of 28mm is borrowed from the larger format non-digital cameras which many people are still more familiar with.)

Set the size of the photo. If you are taking photos specifically for use on the web, the smallest size setting on your camera (640 pixels by 480) is usually large enough (unless you are taking a photo that is intended to fill the screen, then it needs to be about 1,500 pixels wide). Setting the size first saves time editing later and makes it easier to attach the photos to an email when sending them to us.

Use a tripod. To get pin-sharp photos you need to hold the camera perfectly still. Either you do a course in transcendental meditation to gain perfect control of your body's involuntary movements, or you use a tripod. The tripod also makes it easier to leave the camera in one place while you think more about how you compose the objects in the field of view.

When choosing a camera it is worth looking for one that gives you some degree of manual control over the settings. The most important settings to be able to control are the following (in this order): the white balance, the focus, the aperture, and the ISO rating. For more details see the appendix at the bottom of this page.

Composition and Lighting
There are two things that make good photos: composition and lighting. However good the subject of the photo is, you need to think a little about how to position it in the frame relative to the other objects that can be seen. One tip regarding composition is to have something interesting in both the foreground and the background of the photo.

Lighting is the other factor to pay particular attention to. Your subject needs to be lit well. Our big tip for people photographing interiors is: Don't bother with the flash. Photos illuminated by a flash built into the camera almost always look bad, so you certainly want a camera which lets you deactivate the flash in low light. Instead, for indoor shots choose to photograph on a moderately sunny day when the room is nicely lit by sunshine coming through the windows. Then switch all the lights on. Take a series of photos from the same position with different settings (altering, in particular, the white balance to compensate for the artificial light). Note that if you have a tripod, you can take good, sharp photos indoors in relatively low light, relying more on the room's lights instead of resorting to that nasty flash.


Let's compare these two photos:

samplephotworse samplephotobetter

The photo on the left is not so good. Firstly, it is too dark. To avoid this, it is a good idea to take two or three photos from each angle using a slightly different shutter speed for each one. Most digital cameras will let you know what the shutter speed is if you adjust the details shown on the screen. Secondly, the white balance setting is not quite right - the camera is still set for sunlight and the picture has turned out too orange. These complaints apart, the really big problem is the composition. It is flat, and we have a large white area with electrical sockets, which is not very flattering. Having the corner of the table in the frame also doesn't do us any favours. By comparison, the photo on the right has a better composition, with something interesting in the foreground. The photo is brighter, as it should be. It's much better.


The size of photos
Many visitors to your site will have slow connection speeds and will not be impressed if they have to sit waiting a long time for your photos to download. With this in mind we will limit the number of photos on the page. We will also resize and compress the photos without sacrificing the quality of the images as they appear on the screen. If you have some very good photos and want larger versions to appear in a new window if people click the photos on your page, we can do this.

Because the web pages will only accommodate relatively small photographs, we would recommend you set your camera to take photos of only 640 by 480 pixels (this will usually be the smallest of the picture size settings on your camera). To make the smaller versions to go onto your main web page we will then resize them.

Image software
One of the big advantages of digital photos is that you can retouch and tweak them yourself quite easily using photo editing software. If you want to get the best out of your photos, you will want to use this software. A good and relatively affordable programme is Paint Shop Pro Photo (by Corel). If the expense seems too much, and you'd like to try something for free, you could download the Faststone Image Viewer from faststone.org (although particular care needs to be taken with free software downloads).

Unless you insist that we use your photos exactly as you send them to us, we may retouch them or crop them or make other slight alterations to improve the way the photographs appear on the web page. You will be free to disagree with our editing and can instruct us to revert to the original photographs if you are not completely happy with the result.

Commercial photos
If you have a guest house beside a lake, you might want to include a photo of that beautiful expanse of water on your web site. If you haven't yet managed to take a really good photo yourself, you might consider using a commercial photo that can be bought over the web. As part of our design service we will source the commercial photos you need. Usually there will be no extra charge for this.




Photography Appendix

Here are the slightly technical details about the white balance, the focus, the aperture, and the ISO rating.

White balance
If you have to take photos indoors, it is vital you can alter the settings on the camera to take into account that the scene is lit (if only partially) by artificial light. If you don't regulate the setting appropriately, the photos will either come out far too blue or far too orange. (To a great extent, this can be changed on the computer afterwards, but why not avoid having to correct the mistake?)

Focus
Most cameras let you point at an object, half depress the shutter button to focus on the object, and then recompose the shot with your finger still half depressing the shutter button to keep the focus where it was. We would say this is essential.

Aperture
The aperture is the hole behind the lens that lets the light through. The diameter is expressed as an F number - the smaller the number, the wider the aperture. Here is why having some control over the aperture matters: Sometimes you will want to take a photo where there is something close to the camera and something in the distance, and you want them both to be in focus. This is only possible if you can set the aperture so that it is smaller (i.e. with an F number of 5.6 or greater). A narrow aperture gives you what is called greater depth of field (i.e. a wider range from the foreground to the background that will be in focus).

ISO Rating
In the old days of film, we bought film with a particular speed, and the speed was expressed as an ISO number ranging perhaps from 50 to 1,600. Films with a speed of 50 were great for really sunny days when we wanted the crispest possible photos, while films of 1,600 were great for taking photos indoors with poor lighting (although the photos with fast films were never as sharp). Digital cameras have the same system and it is good to be able to manually set the ISO number. Here are two situations. If you have the camera on a tripod indoors with low light, you will want your photo to be as sharp as possible (the point of having a tripod is to take better quality photos). To get a photo of the best possible quality, you need a low ISO rating (50 or 100); but on automatic in low light your camera will push the number up much higher. Ideally you want to keep the ISO number as low as possible. Alternatively, if you want to take a photo standing on a chair, for instance, (and interior shots sometimes look better from higher up, even though we generally prefer to use our tripod), the shot will be hand-held and it will be an advantage to make sure that the ISO number is quite high (say 400 or 800) so that camera shake will not cause the photo to come out too blurred.



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