Calgary Web Design Network Forum

You’ve probably heard the old saying “you get what you pay for” thrown around once or twice in your lifetime right? For whatever reason people seem to believe that their website is the exception to the rule, taking every shortcut imaginable in order to save a quick buck. If there is one area of your marketing that deserves the proper financial attention it’s your website. Try to avoid these common mistakes people make when trying to do things the easy way…

Getting My Friend Or Neighbor To Build My Website: Here we have the most common alternative to hiring a reputable web design company, pretty much guaranteeing that things won’t be done right the first time around. “My friend’s nephew Billy is a computer whiz…and he will only charge you a couple hundred dollars!” Sounds great at first but what Billy doesn’t know is there is a big difference between simply getting your website to work and having it actually DO SOMETHING to help your business. Remember a website is essentially a marketing tool so it’s important to hire someone who can not only build your site but understands the fundamentals of promoting it properly.

Building The Website Yourself: If you are seriously considering this option than this is the one time I’d recommend giving Billy a call instead. Many people fall in love with the “do it yourself option” because it is cheaper and they don’t have to trust their online future to somebody else. Once they get their site up and running they think they’ve saved a lot of money not realizing their new masterpiece may actually be sabotaging their business. Unfortunately most home made websites LOOK homemade and will often portray your company as low budget and unreliable. Remember first impressions are big when it comes to the web so make sure yours isn’t doing more harm than good.

Using A Pre-made Template: It can be tempting to use a template when building your website as they do offer certain advantages. You get to choose the design you want, you know what it will look like in advance, and it is can be up and running within hours. The problem with templates however is they are often generic multi-purpose designs used for all types of businesses, not yours specifically. A good website should give your company it’s own sense of identity and atmosphere, something more likely achieved through the help of a skilled designer. Templates are also search engines headaches as you often have less control over important SEO factors such as what you name your files and images.

Making Your Website An Online Billboard: There are many online services today that will actually pay you to put their banner ads on your website. If someone clicks on one of these ads you in turn receive a commission….sounds great right? Truth be told unless your website is a large scale e-zine or blog that generates large volumes of traffic any profits you make will be minimal at best. All these ads will do is clutter up your web page in an unattractive manner and take focus off the product or service YOU are trying to sell. Make your own business the center of attention, not your paid sponsors.

Using a Free Domain Or Hosting Service: Why pay for a domain name or hosting service when this cool new company you found online is offering one (or both) for free? Simply put any company offering anything “free” has an agenda which is the promote their own business first, even at your expense. Most free hosting services will plaster their company logo and banner ads all over your home page making your site look ugly and more importantly cheap. Your first goal is to establish trust with your audience, something that won’t be accomplished if you come off as an online telemarketer for your hosting service.

Low Brow Or Un-ethical  Search Engine Practices: Since most amateur web builders know very little about search engine optimization but still want high rankings their first instinct is to try and “fool” or “trick” the search engines. They do so by overstuffing their website with keywords, building backdoor or gateway pages, or finding shady online services that will provide them with an endless supply of backlinks. Little do they know that search engines have gotten wise to these tricks a long time ago and will penalize your site accordingly. There is no quick way to the top in Google or Yahoo so don’t go looking for one.

Frequently Submitting Your Website To Search Engines: There is a popular online scam that goes something like this. For a small fee a supposed “expert SEO company” will submit your website to literally thousands of search engines on a regular monthly basis .This leads people to believe that frequent submissions lead to higher rankings, a theory that is far from true. In reality you only need to submit your website once and doing so repeatedly will often hurt your long-term ranking. Shift your focus to constantly updating and optimizing your web pages instead as your rank is determined by the quality of your content, not the number of times you submit.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising: People often shy away from hiring an SEO company due to the often hefty price tag, prompting them to find a more affordable alternative. Many will turn to pay-per-click advertising, a service that lets you advertise on other company’s websites with similar or complimentary subject matter. You only pay a fee when and if someone clicks on one of your ads. Although appealing in theory where your ads appear are often very random and don’t often result in solid leads or sales conversions. PPC advertising can be an effective extension of a properly planned SEO campaign but should never be used as your only source of online advertising.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Web Design Articles, Tips and Info. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.