xod Media
PO Box 32542
RPO Village Gate
Richmond Hill, Ontario CANADA
L4C 0A2
http://www.xodmedia.com
How Do I Build a Web Site?
Any one can build a web site; building a good web site takes talent.
There are certain steps that are needed for your web site, which we'll talk about below:
- topic / idea
- web site name / business name / domain name
- logo / identity / branding
- blue print / structure build from keywords / content
- web site design
- coding / build the back end programming following World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards
- publishing / marketing to search engines
Topic / Idea
The basis of any good site starts with your topic, something to talk about. This is typically why we have a web site in the first place.
Web site name / Business name / Domain Name
Once we have our topic, or idea for a web site, we need a name.
Now you could choose any name that doesn't relate to your topic, or you can be more strategic and use a keyword.
So if your site is about creating web sites for health practitioners than a name like healthyWebDesigns.com would be good choice. We say that because the domain contains the words health web and designs. All keywords, which when searched on can possibly increase your page rank because the words in the domain name.
Logo / Identity / Branding
Great! We have a name...next step, creating your identity.
Having an identity means some sort of brand recognition; usually this is in a form of a logo and variations of that logo.
Now you don't need to have a logo, but if you're serious about your business, you have a logo.
When your logo is being created, you'll be asked many questions, liket look, feeling, message, etc. If you are not being asked these questions, you need to find another company; like xod Media.
If you don't want a logo, then you'll want to jazz up your web site name. You'll see healthWebDesigns.com doesn't have a logo; they've just made their name colourful and visually appealing.
Blue Print / Structure Build from Keywords / Content
While the logo is in progress, you should begin working of the layout of your site, also called blue printing.
This is where you would need the services of xod Media. Base on your topic xod Media will run the keywords on your topic.
A keyword is a single word, or phrase people enter in the search engines to describe what they are looking for. As an example, if I was looking for web site design, I would enter "web site design" in the search engine. That would be my keyword.
We will research your topic and find the keyword words and phrases people are searching for.
We then take these keyword phrases and run three things against them.
- How many times people search for the word or phrase - Also known as the supply
- how many pages are serving those keywords. - Known as the demand
- We also run a third algorithm based what is the hot topics. An example would be weight loss, while it's always a big topic, but the different types of weight loss, like Atkins, is hot today and gone tomorrow.
We then take these keywords and rank them from the hottest to weakest.
From that list, we can then begin building the blue print...hot topics are links directly off the main page and others become 2nd and third pages.
Have a well blue printed site is pretty big for search engine optimization gaining you higher ranks on the search engine pages, like Google and Yahoo.
While we design the site you can start working of writing content based on the keywords we've supplied.
Web Site Design
Now with our blue printing structured, we can design the site. The most important part when it comes to the audience, but not the most important step.
The web site will be designed around the logo and also based on many questions, usually asked at the time of logo creation. Question like your message you want to share, the feeling you want people to walk away with, who your target audience is, the tone and manner and also budget.
Outside of the base design, you could add a lot of flash and fancy components, which we caution people from doing. What looks great today, becomes and annoyance tomorrow.
The site also needs to flow. When we view a web page, people do not read from left to right, they scan and skim for content.
We are also trained to have certain components of the page, like the navigation, to be in similar places.
Coding / Build the Back End Programming and how to Follow World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Standards
This is the part of the site people don't see, the back end coding; strangely enough this is the most important component of a good web site and usually the most neglected part.
The back end holds the structure of the site, it also has special features for people with disabilities and it's where compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will want you to comply with its standards.
Good back end coding also means a site built in CSS and minimizing the use of tables.
Many people build sites in tables, which require tons of code. When this code is read by people with disabilities who use a page reader (a device that reads the page from top to bottom and speaks out the words and components), this huge amount of code generated by tables overloads the reader and forces it to go to the top of the page and start reading again, resulting in an endless loop.
With 51 million people in North America with disabilities, isn't it worth having a page built for people with disabilities? xod Media only builds pages in properly coded, 100 % CSS and 100% W3C compliancy.
Publishing / Marketing to Search Engines
The final step in web site creation, letting the search engines know you have a site up. It takes the search engine months to discover you have a web site. That's a lot of time, even when you submit your pages to the search engines, it could still take months for them to come and visit you.
xod Media has relationships with the search engines, getting your site recognized in hours, not months.