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My son has recently set up as an electrician.
I am looking to help him set up a website but have no idea how to do it. Thinking of using 1&1 which looks as if they may have a simple way of doing this.
Any advice appreciated.
surely he (or you) has a mate who can create a simple landing page with contact info etc for nothing more than a few beers in return?
Ahh here we hit the first problem...
What is a landing page?
Does he advertise in the Yellow Pages?
If he does, they will do a webiste as part of package with his advert at the moment (up to the 2nd March) - from a £1 build cost & £20 month inc. all hosting, domain name, amends and SEO.
This is for a 5 pages and fully optimised (which is usually the bit missing from other providers).
A landing page is like the cover of a book (or rather the rear cover with all the info about what's inside). you could knock up one with minimal HTML and CSS knowledge and then buy a domain name such as Eyepicssonswebsite.co.uk and then find a hosting site (you can usually pay for both at the same time).
While it is a job you can do yourself, if you get a proper qualified person in to do the job it won't cost more than £150, and the results will be better than if you try to do it yourself.
Bit like DIY electrics vs work of a Time served electrician.
Things like quality editorial copy (content) are king, but the mechanics of these things is critical - else your efforts will be lost in the jungle that is the www.
Look into your local Federation of Small Business, and the other government agencies - while they may on some levels suck - truth is a lot of it is who you know and not so much what unfortunately. So a few free one day courses may lead to lucky connections (removes mystic meg hat).
Good Luck!
P.S. A real Pro will not try to blind you will BS!
go careful. a bad homebrew site is considerably worse than having no site at all. as is a cheap website with rubbish copy, design etc
if it was me, i'd firstly work on how the business is presented. everything from stationary to branded van to uniform.
i also would not discount old school techniques such as postcard ads in newsagents etc
website though, do a search yourself as if you were looking for an electrician locally. see what comes up and what people are doing.
oh, and i would'nt waste money on yellow pages.
£20 month inc. all hosting, domain name, amends and SEO.
So what SEO do they do? I bet it just means they wil submit the URL to Google.
What your son needs is his OWN domain and NOT a sub-domain from Yell. It should be (assuming he is a local domestic sparky) a name that includes the town (ie 'York Electrical Services') so it will organically come up in searches when someone types in something like 'electrician in York' into Google. And he'll get a domain name and hosting for MUCH less than £20 a month - and I am pretty certain an URL like above will work well enough without neededing specialist SEO services.
Weebly is free, easy to use and make a website. £6 for a domain name for 2 years at most domain registers .
Job done, a few evenings work. 😀 😀
go careful. a bad homebrew site is considerably worse than having no site at all. as is a cheap website with rubbish copy, design etcif it was me, i'd firstly work on how the business is presented. everything from stationary to branded van to uniform.
If you're not that concerned about the branding - which to my mind is a bit overkill for a one-man operation that's just starting out - just stick to a neat text logo, and simple text.
Random googling (I chose "Dundee electricians" as a search) turns up [url= http://www.dannymacmillan.co.uk/ ]this site[/url] which to my mind is pretty reasonable as a starting point - the images used as links are a bit crap, and as mastiles points out "www.dundee-electrician.com" would be a better URL, but the text and the information are exactly what I'd be looking for on the web, and text based logo is a lot better than a cheesy image knocked up by an amateur.
I wouldn't get too hung up on how it looks. I wouldn't expect an electrician to have a flash website, just a few basic details (scope of work undertaken, contact details, qualifications, a few pics, etc). Mine is hosted at one.com, costs £10 for the first year then £20/yr after that for hosting and registration. The live help is pretty good and they have templates if you want it easy.
Maybe look at using a wordpress template. They can look pretty good quite easily and should be easy to keep up to date.
Think of some good keywords and use them. Probably location and type of work stuff.
How about Mr Site think we paid £25 for ours for a year,got it off ebay,its really easy to use,not mega advanced but if you want a quick easy site then its fine ours is here www.originals-art.com
www.jbmtbmedia.co.uk
with 1 &1, cheap and good support! I use iWeb
mastiles_fanylion - MemberSo what SEO do they do? I bet it just means they wil submit the URL to Google.
The 'onsite' SEO is made up primarily from the site construction and as I assume you are aware of how SEO works, you'll understand what I mean when I say that the site is constructed with careful use of: Key Words, Key Word densities, H1, H2 & H3 headings, Alt Text for images, Meta Data & domain selection (and yes as part of it Yell do submit an XML site map to the major search engines). Ongoing 'onsite' SEO is achieved through amends to the site at any point free of charge and resubmitted to achieve the most up to date information being served up (which should be a big consideration to keep it fresh for the search engines).
However, as you will also be aware a great deal of SEO comes from 'Offsite' SEO which unfortunately is down the the individual who owns the site to perform (this is the same for any site you buy). 'Offsite' SEO can be achieved through good use of Social Media, Non Reciprocal links, blogs, pictures & video content (amongst other things). Things like Google Places will also help get clicks to the site, especially when targeting a smaller geographical area and this is free
What your son needs is his OWN domain and NOT a sub-domain from Yell.
It is his own domain and NOT a sub domain and it is focused towards the geographical target market, just as you point out.
So 'mastiles_fanylion' you are right - Yell do exactly what you recommend, but also a lot more to ensure the site is as successful as possible in what is the huge lottery of getting your website found once it has been produced and set live.
[b]OP:[/b] Obviously Yell is not the only choice for a website and I am only speaking from experience of how well it has worked for many people I know. Careful consideration has to be given to your choice (there are many) for the reasons I (and others) have given above.
ltheisinger speaks the truth about SEO.
ltheisinger speaks the truth about SEO.
He does - I couldn't be bothered writing a rambling post form my phone.
What I was trying to say is that a good URL will do *much* more than any £20 a month 'SEO' campaign could (unless of course the £20 a month was used in conjunction with a good URL in the first place).
As I have no experience of the Yell offering I couldn't say whether their product is any better than their competition but I don't for a minute believe that they are the only people (in that marketplace) building to current best practice.