I've set up my website... so what next?!

sopoor

Hi,
I have set up a website for my life coaching business using easy space.
It's very simple, only one page as I'm really only wanting it for people to get more information and my contact details. I set it up using the free months trial from easysite, but i'm now wondering what will happen once the free trial is up. I haven't purchased hosting, but when i bought the domain name I got a free one page website. As I built it using easysite, i'm wondering if it'll stay one the free trial is over?
I did try asking easyspace, however they were talking using lots of jargon which I didn't understand!
Sadly I have absolutely no idea how all this works.
Also, now I've got a website, how do i get people to visit it or even find it when they look online?

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks

BritBrat

Also, now I've got a website, how do i get people to visit it or even find it when they look online?

You need to enter the details on various search engines, but it don't happen straight away unless you pay I think. Look for something like "submit url" been a while since I have done it.

You can also make use of meta tags and enter key words that would match your site, Use google and search for "meta tags". Another trick is to put loads and loads of keywords in very small text on an empty part of your page and make the text the same colour as the background so its hidden, then search engines will pick it up but no one will see it unless they scroll mouse over the blank areas.

Finding the add URL pages are not always that easy or it was when I did it a few years ago but I just found Google easy.

Add your URL to Google

Meta tags - what, where, when, why?

As for the free months trial from easysite I have no clue, but make sure you have a backup of the whole site then you can always put it back onto some other hosting service if they delete it.

sopoor

Thank you - I love the idea of adding the text in the background colour, I'm off to try it out right away.

elite_2

Ask some related sites to link to you in return for a link to them

Submit to search engines (google is a must)

I don't recommend the "Another trick is to put loads and loads of keywords in very small teax on an empty part of your page" as this would be spamming the search engine, if the content on your page is relevant it will be indexed

You should also validate the html here

Make sure you have acurate and specific page titles, keywords and description

Make sure your images have the alt attribute set

sopoor

Thank you for your post elite - forgive me for being dim, but what is spamming? I assume it's not a good thing?

BritBrat

No its not a good thing to do hiding the text but it works.

Good words that get hits are !!!!!!, pron and I can guess you could think of more but it may not be the people you want on the site.

I would also advise not having your Email address as text as you may get lots of spam, try making an image with it in and located on the page, you can make the image so that when clicked to open Outlook and your address already filled in.

elite_2

sopoor wrote: »

Thank you for your post elite - forgive me for being dim, but what is spamming? I assume it's not a good thing?

It is when you try and deceive a search engine by supplying a lot of keywords that may not be relevant to the page - this probably explains better

You just need good html, relevent text on the page which includes any "keywords", use the alt attribute of images to describe them (include words that are relevent)

If you want to use a list of keywords use the keywords meta tag, and put a description in the description tag

A major infulence on how you are ranked stems from how many people link to you

sopoor

Cheers, now i get it. Well I don't want to do anything dodgy - and britbrat you are right, I probably wont want to attract that sort of customer to my sight! I have already added my email address, but not my telephone number, but i think I have protection about what emails i get

Farway

Hiding words is not a good idea, if you get found out your site may well never appear

see here near the bottom
http://www.webreference.com/content/search/how.html

Also has some relevany info on searches

loucroft

sopoor wrote: »

Hi,
Also, now I've got a website, how do i get people to visit it or even find it when they look online?

Hi

If you're just starting out, don't spend anymore on marketing your site. If you do it properly, your site will get 'organically' more visitors by simply submitting to directories.

I'm happy to provide a list that you can submit your site to if you pm me, they should all be free but if any get through the net that want you to pay, basically just delete it and move on to the next one.

By updating your site regularly - I do mine every 2 days, but so long as search engines can see that your site is 'active' and not dormant, they will keep returning to index it - and that's exactly what you want.

Can you expand to another page with more details of interest? If so, this is the page that you can update (I'm talking very slight updates to content, that perhaps people reading wouldn't even notice), or adding an image and changing it every couple of weeks etc. Any little change can be significant.

If you want any more little ideas, then feel free to ask. I've done mine organically and built on it, now I have plenty of visitors - and am getting greedy for more !! - but it's all been done using methods that the search engines are happy with.

Rgds
Lou