If you have a newer mac or even the new Mac OSX 10.4 or higher, ilife has everything you need. All you need is Domain name registration (as low as $9.99/yr at godaddy), a .mac account ($99/yr), and iWeb (included in Mac OSX Tiger/Leopard or iLife). Created my site in less than 2 hrs. Of course, it wasn't perfect, but it was up and running.
websites
- Thread starter Mobilejay
- Start date
imported_JoshVette
New member
Jason, it's looking real good. Looks nice and professional. Good job on it. :xyxthumbs
Nice, clean website. Good job. Not trying to be a spelling Nazi, but I think you meant "choose" instead of "chose" on your home page.
"Here you can see the different services offered and chose which one better suits you."
Not trying to make a big deal out of it, but it is on the first page that your potential customers might see, and since you are a detailer, you should pay attention to details. It could turn someone away unnecessarily. I hope the website gets you some increase in business.
"Here you can see the different services offered and chose which one better suits you."
Not trying to make a big deal out of it, but it is on the first page that your potential customers might see, and since you are a detailer, you should pay attention to details. It could turn someone away unnecessarily. I hope the website gets you some increase in business.
Jason and fellow Autopian pro-detailers... I'm an "Ex-pro" web site "builder" and will be more than happy to help any Autopian with some info on keywords and Google help. While I still build sites for pay, to "fill in the gaps" I also like helping those of like minds. I'll help for free on this forum.
First and foremost.... there is a basic formula that any of you guys can do. It takes work as well as care and feeding, but it's worth it. I've done sites that within in 2 to 3 weeks are top 10 and 20 on Google. Google is actually very generous to those that work for them, help them and have "relevence" in providing good honest true and usable search results.
1) Format your pages, especially the main home page, with a standard "Title" and site description. 160 words or so. This is the main link header that search results displays and the description is the 2 lines or so below that quickly tells the searcher about the site.
2) Keywords PLUS content. You can put a million keywords at the top of your page, but without content in the body of every page, Google and all bots will ignore your site. They'll think you're keyword dumping like circa 1995 web sites use to do and it will get you black listed and ignored. Trust me. Do keywords with content or don't do keywords at all. So, you need to balance your targeted keywords and content. I could actually write a book on keywords, but another focus is, don't assume you know what people are searching for. Don't bother with such keyword phrases as "great detailer", "detailer extrondinaire" or any generic "detailer/detailing" keyword. There are already enough "detailer/detailing" sites selling to gag a horse. Find your niche, region or specific set of phrases like, "detailer in colorado" or "colorado detailing service" or "auto detailing colorado"... most searched phrases are clipped and not necessarily straight forward.
Find out what people have searched for using Multiple Keyword research services wrapped in one for ultimate search engine placement and website traffic or Keyword services for professional search engine optimization or some search aggregate tool that looks at recent patterns. Find out the terms people use to find you in your region or area and Taylor your keywords to match. THIS WILL help!!!
3) Content. Open a word-processor and start writing 2 to 3 sentence paragraphs about your business and service focusing on what you do, your region and customer service etc... Then, incorporate the keywords in your heading to match. Check out the "density" on a keyword density site. Google it.
4) Important.... after doing the above, you're ready to submit your site to Google. Find a "site map" web site that will crawl your site and generate a properly formatted "sitemap" file and save it to your computer. Then, take the file and submit it to Google. Search their sitemap tools and follow the instructions. This helps them be efficient and they'll honor and reward you and your site for helping. Oh and if you want to really help, add a "robots.txt" file. This can be generated in notepad or any simple text editor. Put in the sub-directory paths that you want them to ignore.
5) Be patient. Sitemap and crawling takes a few weeks to "kick-in". Once they index your site and you're in, they'll send relevant results to searchers.
6) Don't put up a site and neglect it. Add a blog or a news page or something that has information that changes on a regular basis. Stale and dormant sites quickly go to the bottom of the search relevance indexes. Google algorithms are smart and figure it was a one time build and ignored site and they treat it as such.
7) Little extra... on all gallery shots and picture/graphics on your site, put "alt" tags everywhere with your keywords. Pictures are great for customers to see "before n afters", but do nothing for the bots and crawlers. They can't see pictures, but they do see text. Add text.
Okay... that's the 7 step program for getting your site going. Don't think that if you "build it, they will come" it's the biggest false hope on the web.
Good luck...
PS... Jason, I'd have installed Joomla as was suggested earlier. It's an AWESOME tool and if you carefully followed their instructions, it's not that hard. Frankly, t's much easier to manage a site with dynamic content than to hand-code and/or use existing templates. Been there done that....
Shane... fellow Autopian, car lover and detailer... web site builder etc.... Oh, and one of my sites can be found googling my biz names in my sig.
Good luck and PM me if you have any specific questions.
First and foremost.... there is a basic formula that any of you guys can do. It takes work as well as care and feeding, but it's worth it. I've done sites that within in 2 to 3 weeks are top 10 and 20 on Google. Google is actually very generous to those that work for them, help them and have "relevence" in providing good honest true and usable search results.
1) Format your pages, especially the main home page, with a standard "Title" and site description. 160 words or so. This is the main link header that search results displays and the description is the 2 lines or so below that quickly tells the searcher about the site.
2) Keywords PLUS content. You can put a million keywords at the top of your page, but without content in the body of every page, Google and all bots will ignore your site. They'll think you're keyword dumping like circa 1995 web sites use to do and it will get you black listed and ignored. Trust me. Do keywords with content or don't do keywords at all. So, you need to balance your targeted keywords and content. I could actually write a book on keywords, but another focus is, don't assume you know what people are searching for. Don't bother with such keyword phrases as "great detailer", "detailer extrondinaire" or any generic "detailer/detailing" keyword. There are already enough "detailer/detailing" sites selling to gag a horse. Find your niche, region or specific set of phrases like, "detailer in colorado" or "colorado detailing service" or "auto detailing colorado"... most searched phrases are clipped and not necessarily straight forward.
Find out what people have searched for using Multiple Keyword research services wrapped in one for ultimate search engine placement and website traffic or Keyword services for professional search engine optimization or some search aggregate tool that looks at recent patterns. Find out the terms people use to find you in your region or area and Taylor your keywords to match. THIS WILL help!!!
3) Content. Open a word-processor and start writing 2 to 3 sentence paragraphs about your business and service focusing on what you do, your region and customer service etc... Then, incorporate the keywords in your heading to match. Check out the "density" on a keyword density site. Google it.
4) Important.... after doing the above, you're ready to submit your site to Google. Find a "site map" web site that will crawl your site and generate a properly formatted "sitemap" file and save it to your computer. Then, take the file and submit it to Google. Search their sitemap tools and follow the instructions. This helps them be efficient and they'll honor and reward you and your site for helping. Oh and if you want to really help, add a "robots.txt" file. This can be generated in notepad or any simple text editor. Put in the sub-directory paths that you want them to ignore.
5) Be patient. Sitemap and crawling takes a few weeks to "kick-in". Once they index your site and you're in, they'll send relevant results to searchers.
6) Don't put up a site and neglect it. Add a blog or a news page or something that has information that changes on a regular basis. Stale and dormant sites quickly go to the bottom of the search relevance indexes. Google algorithms are smart and figure it was a one time build and ignored site and they treat it as such.
7) Little extra... on all gallery shots and picture/graphics on your site, put "alt" tags everywhere with your keywords. Pictures are great for customers to see "before n afters", but do nothing for the bots and crawlers. They can't see pictures, but they do see text. Add text.
Okay... that's the 7 step program for getting your site going. Don't think that if you "build it, they will come" it's the biggest false hope on the web.
Good luck...
PS... Jason, I'd have installed Joomla as was suggested earlier. It's an AWESOME tool and if you carefully followed their instructions, it's not that hard. Frankly, t's much easier to manage a site with dynamic content than to hand-code and/or use existing templates. Been there done that....
Shane... fellow Autopian, car lover and detailer... web site builder etc.... Oh, and one of my sites can be found googling my biz names in my sig.
Good luck and PM me if you have any specific questions.
imported_mirrorfinishman
New member
todd@bsaw said:
Shane,
Thanks for taking the time to share that valuable information. You have certainly answered Todd's question. What is truely amazing is the fact that you can go to almost any pro detailers web site, view their page source and see absolutely no keywords listed. Makes you wonder how anyone would ever find them. Thanks again for helping.
mirrorfinishman said:
No problem guys... glad to help... hopefully you can incorporate 1 or 2 things to help. If anyone needs "specific" help, just PM me. I'll try and answer best I can.
mirrorfinishman - keywords and content are the MOST neglected thing on the web. However, some sites that are older sometimes work "okay" with search engines when searchers hit their exact name or URL. Beyond that, with little to no info, what's a search engine to do?
Shane