[STEVE71163]

Just out of interest those of us with websites. Do you get much work from your sites? I put mine together a few months ago and submited the site to most major search engines but have not had much back from it yet

Steve Lowe

[Terry_Burrows]

;)Steve I have had mine for 15 months not had a bean out of it,but I think after next week that could very well change!

[STEVE71163]

I had my original site put together by Jim Moran the same guy who done yours but one of my hobbies is computers and after building my pc i decided to give web design a go but its harder than i thought. But after spending hours building my site i think i need to advertise a bit more to get the use out of it.

Steve Lowe

[Terry_Burrows]

I dont know much on web building,but I thought jim
did a good job on my site,cant complain!

[Majestic]

I have had mine about 3 years ,had a enquiry from
another window cleaner who lives in the USA asking me if I could clean his mums windows she lives about 60 miles away  :-/gave it a miss.
I think it is just another option  I have my web address on my van and I have had a  few enquiries .I have done better with Yellow Pages

[STEVE71163]

Terry. I think Jim does an excellent job on the sites he builds and would recommend him to anyone who is looking for someone to build them a site. I have not got his number to hand but if anyone wants it i could dig it out.

Steve Lowe

[Terry_Burrows]

now heres a story! I have had my yell .com bill squashed,they put my add up wrong for 7 months,I never checked to see if it was correct,they put wrong number!they put my web site on some one else in kent!
so 7 months of adds,down the pan!
so they are now going to give me a free year!

I dont think I will be paying £300 for the next one

[STEVE71163]

I had something simular a few years ago and i wondered why i was not getting the calls

Steve Lowe

[Majestic]

Did they not send you a copy for you to check to see if all the details were correct before they printed it ,I have just had my bill for next years book £140 ,mine has gone down from last years price  

[Terry_Burrows]

no they did not send me anything to confirm! :-/

[Mike_Boxall]

As Steve mentioned, one of the key things is search engines and, although they can cost a lot of money, there are a number of things you can do to get the most out of them at very little cost.
The biggest and most popular search engine is Google and one of the most important factors they consider is 'link popularity'. Generally speaking the more webistes that link to yours, the more important they consider your site to be.
Every member here has the opportunity to list their website in the profile section once they have logged in. This also ensures that your site doesnt get missed when they 'crawl' the web indexing new sites.
It helps and it's free

[STEVE71163]

Hi Mike,
          Its also quite important to fill in the meta tags on your site with the discription and keywords for your business so that the search engines know what they are looking at I dont think it matters as much these days but its worth doing anyway.  

Steve Lowe

[karlosdaze]

I concur, the replies you get are virtually nil. But when I went to my web-site to update it, I found I had above 2000 clicks. I think the customer wants to check you out before taking you up.

[STEVE71163]

I think that is probably the case  What package do you use to maintain your website? I use Frontpage 2002.

Steve Lowe

[karlosdaze]

M/S publisher, I update using "FTP Cute pro".

[STEVE71163]

I did'nt know that you could use publisher. I should have saved my money and used it myself.

Steve Lowe

[The_Fed_Man]

Karl, doesn't MS Publisher have a built in FTP facility or is it no good?

[karlosdaze]

Publisher is great for making your own, it is easy to use and gives you loads of options to personalise it. However the FTP upload wasn't all that good, I used the globalscape, it was easy to use and fast.
I've heard good things about "Serif" publisher.

[STEVE71163]

I think its a fair bit cheaper than microsoft products as well

Steve Lowe

[Majestic]

For my web site I used M/S Publisher and Terrapin  ftp.Terrapin is free for 30 days then it costs about £25/£30