FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation; now that search engines in particular Google are used to find answers, products or business services, it is vital your site is listed at the top or close of the listings.

Let's pretend you have a business called Acme based in Canberra Australia, that designs and builds children's toys.

You generally have two types of potential clients that you would like to attract to your site and through your site encourage them to do business / engage with you :

People who know of your business and are looking for your contact details or want to do some homework before engaging with you. They will do a search based on your business name in this case: 'Acme' or 'Acme Canberra'.
People who are looking for a product or service or just information, without knowing your business or organisation exists, they will search for in this case: 'toy design Canberra' or 'toy manufacture'* or 'children's toy designer ACT'

We can build a website which conforms with the search engines standards for SEO and advise you on how to establish and maintain your position in the top of the listings for keywords and phrases such as the ones above that should list your website.

Thats SEO and building a website without it is pointless unless you have a truely unique selling position or a captive market or monopoly.

* Please note in the example above 'toy manufacturer' is most likely going to list toy manufacturers all over Australia and probably the world. Our experience is that for a large majority of products and services potential client are more comfortable dealing with someone local or at least in the same state or country as themselves, they will probably amend the search to: 'toy manufacturer ACT'.

Note There is a rather cool SEO Periodic Table I used in a SEO Hit's and Myths talk recently (thanks Search Engine Land for the use of this)

I get emails and phone calls from companies that offer SEO services all the time and their rates seem good, I could engage them?

Yes you could, and the catch is a majority of them are using SEO techniques which do not conform to the standards and rules and you either plummet from the rankings or get blacklisted.

How much does a website cost?

In order to answer that question we need to define what you mean by 'website'

What's involved in creating a website?

There are a logical series of steps and we can help you understand the process and the costs involved through our quotation process. Please contact us with your requirements and we can give you a ball park estimate over the phone, via our estimate form or a fixed price quote after 1 free meeting either in our office or yours

How long will it take to build a site?

Generally between 4-8 weeks

That's a long time, is there some way that build cycle can be shortened?

Certainly if you have all your words, pictures and forms organised, have a logo and branding established and can make decisions quickly we can reduce the cycle to 1-2 weeks

What are the ongoing costs of a website?

Domain name renewals and hosting, we detail these in our estimates

My requirements are very basic, I only need a couple of pages of words and some pictures

No job too small! Get in contact we could build and deploy your new site in a 2 day express service

We are just starting out we need a logo, some business cards printed, some other stationary and a website can you help us?

Certainly can and we can bundle those services and save you some startup cash straight away

So you can build a website for us and launch it on the internet, then what?

Then we monitor your traffic and send you plain english reports on whats happening and how we can improve your ranking on google and attract more potential clients to your site.

We are a not for profit organisation we just want to communicate with our members and supporters.

A website that you can update yourself is a very good place to start - we can help you get setup and support your content authors.

What is a CMS?

A Content Management System - it allows you to make changes to your site without any knowledge of HTML and is as easy to use as Microsoft word, - we specialise in building websites using a CMS called Plone.

Whats HTML?

Hyper Text Markup Language - the glue that sticks the words and pictures to the web (internet)

Can you help us with the choice and registration of a Domain Name?

Yes and with the hosting of the site as well as email addresses

Our current web developer or hosting company doesn't answer our calls or emails/takes too long to do things/ is charging far too much/ cannot add new features to our site, can we transfer our website to your services?

Yes - contact us

We have a Joomla! / Mambo / Drupal, site and it's difficult to maintain / been hacked / isn't getting found on the search engines, can you help?