Help - we need A WEB PAGE!

[brenda]

We live in Andalucia, Southern Spain. and let out our 2 downstairs rooms on a Bed + Breakfast basis. Get a lot of bookings - mostly repeats or personal recommendations - but realise that we need our own web page rather than relying on advert sites. Can anyone recommend a good web site builder in the Axarquia region of Andalucia?

[TravelPixel]

pm sent

[mpprh]

Hi

just worth saying that your web designer could be anywhere ?

Peter

[marcus]

we need our own web page rather than relying on advert sites

While I don't doubt that you need a website, if you look through this forum you will find that for most people a website is not instead of advertising, it is in addition. To get all or most of your bookings from your own website will be challenging to say the least. We get about 50% of our bookings from our website, but that has take 4 years and a lot of work, and is almost certainly a higher % than many of us here.

Unfortunately having a website and having a website that people will find on the internet are quite different things.

Still I do recommend you go ahead with getting a site, as medium-long term planning rather than a short-term goal.

Good luck with it
Marcus

[Bellywobble]

Brenda, among the many people who have offered good advice on here, I've had some from pja, and although he didn't mention what he did, I took a look at his website and It looked pretty good to me. It might be worth you taking a look.
If Richard and I hadn't just spent hours and hours putting a site together, we may well have used his services.

[TravelPixel]

marcus is correct here,

you need the SEO expertise to make the most of your site.

dave

[Garri]

marcus is correct here,

you need the SEO expertise to make the most of your site.

dave

But you don't need to hire an expert, just take some time to read through this:

http://www.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=357

And follow the leads from there.[/i][/b]

[craigkillick]

Nice tool to run your site through - shows you what words are picked up as top keywords.

http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/

[Garri]

Nice one Craig

[craigkillick]

Brenda

Who ever you get to do your site - make sure it is built to standards. It might (but shouldn't) cost more but it will be worth it.

Another one for any Mac users here. I tried iWeb the other day playing - wow, what a tool. Standards Compliant, Drag and Drop - DIY!

Not going to get you the best site in the world but for a DIY solution it is great.

[Alan Knighting]

Craig,

Did you ever look at http://www.bluevoda.com/ and if you did what do you think of it?

Alan

[Garri]

Craig, some blogging A-listers, most notably Mike Rundle, doesn't rate iWeb much: http://businesslogs.com/technology/iweb ... _awful.php

[Alan Knighting]

Garri,

I'll ask you as well. Have you taken a look at http://www.bluevoda.com/ and if you have what do you think of it?

Alan

PS. Since my new Mac hasn't arrived I assume you haven’t won the lottery yet.

[Garri]

Garri,

I'll ask you as well. Have you taken a look at http://www.bluevoda.com/ and if you have what do you think of it?

Alan, since you asked, I don't think much of it. Submit your email to get the download? Hmmm. I'll pass.

There's no examples of sites created using their software, so we can't run them through their paces standards-wise.

I haven't forgotten about your Mac, I'm still trying and feel I'm almost there but not quite

[craigkillick]

Craig, some blogging A-listers, most notably Mike Rundle, doesn't rate iWeb much: http://businesslogs.com/technology/iweb ... _awful.php

I appreciate exactly what they say and wouldn;t use it myself, but from a standards point of view, compared to some peoples sites I have seen on this forum (no disrespect to anyone intended), it's a cool tool and it's cheap.

For people who want to create their own web sites and it seems quite a few people on these boards do - compliancy is important - more and more along with SEO.

Article today on BBC:

People don't look past page 3 in Search Engines:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4900742.stm

My personal opinion is, and I may be putting myself on a stool to be shot down (like so many before me), is that people seem to be budgeting too little on their web sites (build, design, content, SEO) and expecting them to perform miracles. When it comes to SEO - you may be up against people spending big bucks.

That said, there are a lot of cowboys out there. No wonder eveyone is confused.

Alan - had a look at the software, not overly impressed as I am heavily into creating web sites around compliancy and SEO. I don't think this ticks the box.

I am lucky to have a couple of guys that hard-code for me and then I go in and mess with content. Getting good results at the moment, but the SEO is fairly new to me so I am trying to learn as much as possible - it's amazing what you can learn.

People may be interested (and I am not selling here) in the blog of my company. Often posting links, etc. to good tools - mainly around creating web sites that work:

http://theescape.typepad.com