Website Set Up

Here’s a quick step by step guide to turning your website idea into a live website on the net.

1. Choose a Domain Name
Think of a domain name that’s going to best reflect your company and create a great brand OR just think of a domain that you like the look of for your personal website / blog, etc. Go to who.is where you can check the availability of your chosen domain name but don’t purchase it yet!

2. Web Hosting
Now you have chosen a domain name, you need somewhere to host your website. The easiest way to purchase both the domain and hosting space is by getting them both through the same company. We would recommend using Fasthosts, Pickaweb or EUKhosts who are the top UK hosting suppliers. Depending on the size of the website that your going to create, choose the hosting package accordingly.

3. Design your Website
Whether your looking for a corporate or personal website, jot down your design ideas. Build your website on your local machine from start to completion. You may need a qualified web designer for this bit!

4. Uploading your Website
Now you need to grab the ftp (File Transfer Protocol) details from your web hosting set up email and upload your completed website.

5. Testing
Yes testing! It has to be done to ensure that your website is going to run smoothly and that it doesn’t contain any errors. Testing can be as simple as checking for spelling and grammatical errors, checking for broken or missing links, or checking to make sure that all the web pages have been correctly uploaded.

Finished! You can now tell the world about your website and start using it to promote your business.

Architecture for SEO

Setting up your website’s architecture whilst keeping SEO in mind can really help your optimisation in the long term. Search engines will be able to crawl your information easier, as well as segregate the data for your SERP’s (Search Engine Ranking Position’s). Let’s find the perfect layout template for the web pages, files and folders for your website.

How Does This SEO Architecture Work?

Ok, so we’re gonna build a small website with a view to having around 100 pages after the first year. A good website structure has multiple levels starting at level 1 and going down as far as required. Level 1 is always where the home page sits (index.html/php/htm, etc), the 2nd level should consist of the other main web pages (pages on the main navigation), the 3rd level holds your inner web pages (sub navigation pages), and so on. These levels can all be placed within the root of your website or they can be split up into different folders. Smaller websites are more suited to having all pages sat in the websites root, but larger websites should go for the folder option to split up the sections of the site. This is why I mentioned that after a year our aim is to have 100 pages because I wanted to show you that planning ahead is important. Having the full 100pages sat in the websites root wouldn’t be good for SEO!

Here’s an example for our small website’s architecture (accommodating for more pages to be gradually added):

SEO Architecture

Above you can see how I’ve segregated my pages so if you were looking for the ‘Corporate’ web design section, the URL would be:

www.domain.co.uk/faqs/how-to…

..instead of just….

www.domain.co.uk/how-to… which is useless for everybody.

Apologies if this may be a little unclear! If you want some advice about creating your SEO friendly website architecture then get in touch and I’ll straighten it out for you.

Banner Design

A good website requires great appeal and both static and flash banners help to achieve this. When visiting various day to day websites, you will probably notice that the majority of them have some form of banner which is either directing you to an inner page, highlighting offers and services, or displaying advertisements for an external source. A well designed banner can really make a difference to the look and feel of your web pages and attract your viewers attention.

Types of Banner Designs

If your going to pay for a descent banner for your web site then we would recommend going for a flash banner. A flash banner can display an arrangement of static, moving and animated graphics, offering appeal and interaction for your viewers. Flash banners don’t require excessive code so your website will stay clean and fast.

Alternative banner design options include static .jpg or .gif images, or JQuery. The easiest and cheapest option is of course the static image, which can be saved in many formats (jpg, gif, png, etc). JQuery offers very similar functionality to flash and has its own bonuses but may be more expensive and also requires more coding.

Take a look at some of our flash, static and jQuery banners in our Banner Design section.