Okay, I have been very lazy with this site. Partly the reason for this is I wanted to get the site design right before anyone saw it. I’m not expecting to get many visitors if any at all other than from friends and family but I believe presentation is important. I’m a bit of a perfectionist at times and if you are going to do something then you must try to do it well.

Designing and building websites isn’t difficult. Doing it well takes real skill. Its easy to buy a ready made template on the web but I personally don’t like that idea. I would always worry about coming across another site that was using the same template much as a girl would be horrified to go to a party and see someone else wearing the same dress!

If you don’t have the necessary skills to do it yourself then it is worth paying someone to do it for you. There are plenty of web designers around and you even see them advertising on Ebay. Choosing one though can be tough. I’ve looked through many sites and their portfolios and am horrified to see broken pages, bad design and just general lack of attention to detail and that is on the web designers own sites. A tip to any web designer: Make sure your own site works and looks good before trying to sell your services.

The other thing that amazes me is the vast difference in rates that people charge. I have seen people charge as little as £10 for a single page up to £2000 for a 5 page website. Choosing the £10 page will likely be a waste of money and you will get what you pay for. Paying the £2000 for a 5 page website may seem a good idea for a naive company with a budget (who these deals are targeted at) but you are being ripped off.

I was lucky to stumble across Mike Anholm from Anholm.com. Mike has designed a few websites for me including this one. He did the original concept and then integrated into a customized Wordpress theme. Mike offers very affordable web design and produces very good results too. He is very conscientious and will work with you to get the results you want without breaking the bank. If you are looking for a good web designer then give him a go. You won’t be disappointed.

Anyway, back to setting myself a target. Now I have the site design completed I am going to make an effort to get the site ranked for my own name “Philip Nicosia”. Getting to number 1 should be achievable but because I have written quite a few articles that have been published on the internet there are some strong sites which are ranking for this. So my target for this week is to get into the Top 10 results in Google for “Philip Nicosia” within 7 days. I will check next Sunday, 30th July to see if I have achieved it.

Posted in Search Engines, My Websites