Why does it not make sense to put up the site you have ready, work
on a better one when you have time, and substitute it for the old
one? Isn't this possible? I need to get a site up, and my husband
is encouraging me to just get *something* up and improve it later.
Anyone-- is there some reason not to do this?
You can do it, but depending on how, you may have to create
redirects from the temporary site to the permanent site. I don’t yet
know enough about it to give you a more specific answer than that. If
you take that online class I mentioned, you’ll get a better
understanding of the issues.
I have a temporary page up myself at www.bethrosengard.com, but it’s
just one page with contact info and a couple of graphics. I decided
to hold off on the “real” site until I have the time to revise it,
but most people do it the other way round.
This is my first post on this list. I have been a list member for a
couple of years now. I own a small (miniscule actually) jewellery
making supply business in rural Ontario, Canada. I took Beth’s
suggestion and checked out a link about this subject. I wanted to
share my results with the list.
Here is a snippet of her post:
I highly recommend that anyone who hopes to sell via the Internet
take this free online class. Of course if we all take the same
class and implement the recommended procedures, we'll be competing
with each other for the top of the search results, but may the best
man/woman win :-) Here's the link:
http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/seo-optimization.htm
We have been developing our website for three years. Between doing
business in a small bricks and mortar studio, we have had little to
no success in the SEO races! Yes, we got our site out there and got
started - thinking we could massage and tweak - later. The link Beth
provided has helped me more in the space of a day or so, then any
other single thing I have begged, borrowed or bought. (And yes, I did
almost everything wrong up until now!) Now I am taking the free
lessons offered on the link. Yes FYI, you do have to make a small
purchase, certainly not major purchase though. Already, may I say, my
priorities have changed mightily. I have unsubbed from everything,
except that which is totally necessary to keep my business going.
(Naturally, I won’t be unsubbing from Orchid) (smiles).
Beth’s suggestion was excellent and if you need internet development
and don’t have a staff of 30 - 100, I urge you to look into it. You
will save a tremendous amount of time, earn more money, and get an
added bonus of not walking around, eyes glazed looking completely
puzzled. I am not technically savvy in the least, however I am
getting better all the time thanks to Beth’s suggestion.
To suggest that you should wait until a site is perfect to put it on
the web is a novel idea to me. It will never be finished. A website
needs constant refreshing and refurbishing. The longer your site is
up (in theory) the more chances the web crawlers have to pick it up,
the more chances your customers have to find you, the more time you
have to learn about how to make it better, and to learn how to
optimize it for the search engines, etc. It’s easier to learn when
you have something to learn on.
The search engines robots can take months to find your new site - I
think it was about 6-8 months or so before my site got 'crawled' by
them.
I’ve often wondered about this and after having put up a few sites
and seen the results I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not so
much a matter of how soon you get crawled but rather how well you
feed the spiders when they arrive. Almost every site I’ve ever put up
or worked on was crawled within a few weeks, assuming there were
public links to it somewhere out there in the wild wonderful web.
You’ll probably have to check your site stats to see that they’ve
been through. What happens after they see you is something else
entirely. Generally speaking the spiders ain’t stupid: if there’s
nothing there then the results of their early visit(s) won’t be too
impressive.
By way of an example I’ve had at least one site that went from
nothing to being reasonably well ranked within a few weeks. I think
it was #3 in Google before the three week anniversary of the site.
Needless to say we were ecstatic! And then it dropped to page 10 or
worse within a few days. We managed to climb it back up over the next
month or so but that required pretty constant care and tweaking.
Anyway I guess my point is that if the spiders don’t see you for
months then there’s something wrong. It shouldn’t take that long to
get seen, even without submitting to them directly.
Of course another big issue here is content. If your site simply says
“I do silver” and is just a flyer page without anything on it or
backing it up then yes, you can expect to be pretty invisible as far
as the search engines are concerned. Think of all the kabillions of
pages out there just like that and it’s no wonder that the spiders
have been trained to ignore them. And so they should really.
I’m no expert on this subject by any stretch of the imagination but
from what I’ve seen it’s good, accessible content that is frequently
updated that gets you satisfying search engine results. Being unique
is some way helps a lot too (imagine tossing your hat into a ring of
2 billion other hats. I’d want mine to be a sombrero, at the very
least.) Unfortunately that all adds up to an ongoing, indeed
never-ending, job but there you go.
Trevor makes a very good point about people not returning. Although
as a web developer I should know better, I never deliberately return
to sites that have ‘Under Construction’ pages. I surveyed some once,
and found that they were still ‘under construction’ up to 9 months
later. It’s a waste of my time and if the promise given by the search
engine results isn’t fulfilled by the web site, then I am left with
the impression that the business is likely to perform in the same
way.
I am currently developing a new UK website to supply users of
precious metal clay with hard-to-source tools, accessories etc., but
much as I want to upload it, I will not do so until it is fully
functional, which is taking more time than I have available at
present.
Now I am taking the free lessons offered on the link. Yes FYI, you
do have to make a small purchase, certainly not major purchase
though.
There was no mandatory purchase at all when I took the class a few
months ago. I know Cricket pushes her book, but you don’t have to
buy it (I didn’t). Was it something else? If so, it must be new.
I’m really glad you’re finding the classes so useful. They
completely turned my head around as well, which is why I put my site
on hold until I can do it right.
Cheers,
Beth
P.S. To all of you folks who put your sites in your signatures
(including you, Rachel): You really need to use a complete URL
(including the http://). That way the URL becomes an active link (at
least in my email application and I’m sure in many others). Just www.DomainName.com doesn’t do it!
As I’ve been reading the thread on web based businesses I’ve noticed
that many of us have signature lines with our web addresses. This is
a good way to keep our name and website up front and available. I
have had people check my site out from that even though our
correspondence had nothing to do with my jewelry.
I would like to point out the difference though of two most common
ways of listing an address in your tag line : www.sumiche.com or http://www.sumiche.com. With the full address it becomes a clickable
link in your email - one less step that a potential visitor needs to
take to get to your site. I include my sig as a matter of course even
on all my emails.
I agree as a former pro in the field (as in I actually was a govt
consultant on online marketing and web security pre the internet and
a very very long time ago eek! Then branched out in civilian trade
specializing in online auctions in 1995 )I am donating my services to
my best friend and building her internet only commerce website. It
will be launched(I define this as listed in search engines and
advertised via press releases and virtual and read ad campaigns) when
it is fully functional and not before. I do not use construction
pages I have the full fledged page up if someone goes to see it it’s
there but only 2 pages are functioning as I am relearning shopping
cart installion via asp javascript and my brain injury is winning
right now…but I am stubborn Hopefully it will launch within 7
days
then watch out cause cameoartist.com will be revamped refreshed and
a commerce site lol
If you do just get something up make sure it is complete. You have
to hold the customers attention when they log on to your site and the
best way to do this is fast loading graphics.
There are many graphics programs out there, but you can find a
program under graphics or utility to take an existing photo and
reduce its byte size dramatically for faster loading.
Do not use building or coming soon pages the statistics as I
understand still say there is to high a percentage of people who will
never come back.
Hopefully it will launch within 7