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Why do I need a web site?
This question should be your first. Do you really need one? What would be its purpose? Is the expense of running a web site as a marketing tool viable for your business?
Web sites are used for information delivery to prospective clients, promotion of a business and/or products, or producing sales on line via e-commerce. An entrepreneur, whose main focus is to have an online store, obviously needs a web site up and running efficiently.
In today's computer savvy society the Internet can open doors to previously unattainable business markets from around the world. It has been estimated in the future, that the majority of business deals will be transacted on line, and any business that does not grab hold of this concept will be unable to compete.
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What is e-commerce?
Electronic Commerce creates the right environment to allow secure financial transactions on the Internet for both business-to-consumer and business-to- business sales. If this is required, we will be able to put you in touch with the appropriate people.
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Who do I get to host my site?
First of all, the best advice given is to stay away from the 'free host'. The reasoning behind this is as follows:
- A free host offers you limited space, which initially may be fine, but what happens if you grow considerably?
- Most free hosts will insist on their banners being displayed at the top and/or bottom of your web site pages. This makes it difficult for you to provide additional banners on your web pages if you plan on using sponsors to help keep your site up and running
- Your sites domain usually will appear inconveniently long, i.e. www.hostingcompany.com/users/yourdomain/, making it hard to locate and hard to remember
- If you realize you need more space and have to move it to a paying host site you usually will usually incur additional costs to have sites address redirected.
The most important aid for finding a good reliable hosting company is knowing the right questions to ask. Again, you want to determine your needs, how much space is allotted, bandwidth, CGI access, etc. We can assist you in finding the proper host for your needs should you require.
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How do people find my web site?
SEARCH ENGINES - These are sites on the Web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites by reading a Web page and indexing all of the words from the page. There are differences in the ways various search engines work, but they all keep generally work based on key word(s) and/or phrases submitted in the search.
To promote your site you need to submit your site to search engines. Search engines are usually quick to list your site, but there is no guarantee your site will be listed immediately, and you may even have to submit your site more than once before you are listed. (Make sure you read the rules of the site, they may advise that it takes up to three months, so check back after that time has passed.
There are many different search engines, such as, Alta Vista, Excite, Google, and Lycos, just to name a few.
LINK SITES - Link Sites categorize their links. One good example of a link site is Yahoo, but there are many more, such as Hot Links, Looksmart, and Northern Light.
In order to submit your site, you need to find the right category that your site should be in and use the 'Add URL' submission link and complete the information required. These types of sites take longer to list you as they usually will review your site prior to listing it.
META TAGS - Meta tags are useful tools especially on pages that do not contain any real text such as a splash page, and they can also be useful to control the summary of your page in some search engines. They alone are no guarantee that you will be listed in a search engine, and there are some search engines that do not support meta tags. Meta tags also do not ensure that your site will be listed / ranked high in a search engine.
The two most common meta tags that are helpful in a site are keywords and the description of the page.
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