Frequently Asked Questions About WEB DESIGN

What is web design?

Web design is the creation and arrangement of items that make up a web site; body, domain, HTML, JPG (images), hosting, server, to name a few.

XHTML stands for extensible mark-up language. It is a language of tags ( <p>, </p>) used to mark-up & style text to build a web page. This is just a simple explanation. It takes months to learn all the values & rules to XHTML.

A Web site is a collection of Web files that includes a beginning file called a home page. This home page is accessed from a address like, www.DownToEarthDesigning.com. From the home page, you can get to all the other pages on the site by links.

There is not enough room here to explain web design to enable you to build your own site. Send us your text documents & images and allow Down To Earth Web Design to build you a complete web site.
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What is Hosting?

Hosting is like purchasing rental space to store your web site. A remote server stores your web site files, to be accessed at all times by site visitors. This is the safest method so that your own computer is not subject to harm.

Web sites must be placed on a computer server that is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is to your best interest to purchase quality hosting services to ensure that your web site can be accessed without technical problems. Cheap hosting services often have slow downloading speeds as well as annoying ads.

Down To Earth Web Design provides complete web maintenance. My monthly service charge includes all hosting, domain registration & maintenance. View my affordable web design prices.

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What are Domains?

Domains are the identity of your web site, www.YourWebSite.com. The only way to register and start using a domain name is to use the services of a Domain Name register.

URL is the exact address, for example, www.YourBusiness.com/homePage.html Obviously this is the home page, of the domain name, www.YourBusiness.com.

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What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is the process of building a web site so that it ranks well for particular keywords within search results of the major search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Hundreds of millions of people use search engines every day to scour the Internet for information. In order for your web site to appear above that of competitors, in search results, your Web site must be search-engine friendly. Besides that, in order to maintain ranking along with similar web sites, you must convince search engines that your website contains valuable information that is relevant for particular keywords related to your site.

The commercial search engines (most common are google.com and yahoo.com) use computer "crawlers" to locate and routinely update their databases with the ever changing internet. For that reason, NO SEO Professional can guarantee a ranking in the top ten spots, or any ranking at all! The process of SEO requires skill and patience and time! Below are a few of the key concepts for building a search engine visible web site.

The alternative to SEO is to pay for top positions, or start a pay-per-click campaign. These alternatives can be very expensive.

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How to ensure a web site is optimized for Search Engines?

There are some great books published about SEO. The following are a few of the steps to starting a search-engine optimization campaign.

  • Analyzing your Competition ~ Is your target audience local or world-wide? If local, how many similar companies are online? Is it realistic to expect higher rankings if your competitors are large and highly respected?
  • Determine keywords ~ Research the keywords related to your web site topic. Try to concentrate on one main topic. Some keywords are more original than others. Broadly used keywords are highly competitive and should represent a small portion of your SEO efforts.
  • Build your Web Pages ~ This is the most IMPORTANT step! In order for the search engine crawlers to crawl your website; HTML code must be used properly, keep content fresh & relevant. Develop a user-friendly navigation system, linking all your web pages together.
  • Build Links ~ Quality versus Quantity, is the rule. One quality back link is better than 100 poor quality links. Quality links come from popular Web Sites that are trusted sources. Join online communities related to your web site. Contact business partners and ask to swap links.
  • Continually edit content ~ Fresh content will help maintain your search engine ranking. Consider attaching a blog to your website. Anyone can maintain a blog on their own. It is also a great way for potential customers to ask questions & for you to get feedback.
  • Patience & Time ~ Gaining search engine ranking will not happen overnight. It may take months for the search engines to build confidence & trust your website. It is to your best interest not resort to spam methods. The engineers behind search engine ranking work hard to prevent spam filled websites from gaining recognition.

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JavaScript

At this time www.DownToEarthDesigning.com has chosen not to offer JavaScript technology in site designs. There are many situations in which computer users may have JavaScript disabled; security, pop-up blockers to name a few. Corporate environments especially are concerned & demand that JavaScript be disabled.
JavaScript also greatly decreases "crawl ability" in search engine spiders, The same is true for Flash. Besides that, there is very little useful information in JavaScript & Flash coding for search engines to index.
JavaScript & Flash should be used carefully. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the preferred styling method. CSS allows for quicker download time & keeps maintenance costs down for our clients. However, if you have a special request, www.DownToEarthDesigning.com is always eager to please the customer!

Proper Web Code:The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main organization for determining the current & future standards for the Web.The W3C recommended that layout-specific features in HTML be phased out and replaced by style sheets, creating a simpler and more structural World Wide Web. Down To Earth web design guarantees that all our code is XHTML compliant. This means your web site will look great in all major browsers and your chances of gaining search engine visibility is greater.
Visit www.webstandards.org to learn more.

"Complying with web standards can give your web pages greater visibility in web searches. The structural information present in compliant documents makes it easy for search engines to access and evaluate the information in those documents, and they get indexed more accurately." Courtesy of www.webstandards.org

View available designs, ready to be customized to suit your business!

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