Businesswomen of Arabia "BOA"

In order to "Give something back" we decided to include some pages with some tips on how to get started in business. This is just meant to be a general guide and the pages will be updated regularly. The first part of this "Series" explains how to set up a website.  We would like to dedicate this portion of our site to all the up and coming Saudi Businesswomen  who are trying to start their own businesses. However, the tips here are Universal. Best of Luck, April Tosch

Domain names:
We registered our name with www.godaddy.com. It was the most reasonable and had the best reputation. You don't need to have a website set up; you can simply "park" your domain name with them until your website is ready to be published.

Websites:
We bought the template to our website from www.allwebco.com. It cost roughly $80 (I can't remember exactly) and with a little HTML knowledge we were able to modify it to suit us using Microsoft Frontpage. In many cases you do not need to hire a web-designer to create your site. If you take the time to learn how to use Frontpage, you can do this yourself. In addition, having a company create the website for you means that they will probably charge you a fee every time you want to change or add something to your website in the future. 

Follow this link for information regarding HTML code. Take a few minutes and have a quick look.

****you cannot modify or publish your website without a web publishing program. So don't run out ahead of yourself and start buying a template until you have the software needed to make the modifications. If you do this you're going to feel really stupid.****

Hosting packages:

Allwebco has reasonably priced hosting packages as well.  We chose them to host our site but there are many other companies to choose from so it need not be them. 

Don't think that just because you are outside of the US that you can't buy a hosting package from a US company. It makes no difference. From what we have seen, the hosting packages and other web services are MUCH cheaper outside of the Kingdom.

Sitemaps:

Most website templates will have a "Site-map" for you to modify as per your pages. The site-map is a page where all the links within your site are listed. Visitors to your website can use it for quick navigation. If you did not create your website with a ready made template and preferred to do it on your own (Brave woman!) then you need to make sure you include a site-map page in the design. 

Aside from the site-map that you created which is visible to your visitors, you will need to create a hidden site-map for the "spiders" or "robots" to see. Spiders and robots, such as Googlebot, will "crawl" your website on a regular basis. The hidden site-map file will tell the Googlebot what pages are on your site and thus they will all be added to the search engine directories for people to see. It's critical that you create this kind of site-map. Not too many people know this though. If you want a more technical explanation, visit this link: Google Webmaster Tools. There is also a Google Webmaster forum to read through.

After your website is finished, go to this site: GSiteCrawler and download the free site-map tool. Follow the step by step instructions and the tool will generate the hidden site-map for you. Then you save the site-map file it made on your computer and copy and paste it as a file in your website's directory or "Folder List." 

If you are using FrontPage, open your website with it and look at the "Folder List " on the left hand side. You will see the names of each page in your site. This is where you have to copy and past your hidden site-map file to. Once you publish your website the file will be able to be accessed by the Googlebot. I will talk more about this later.

Publishing:

All publishing is, is uploading your finished website to the computers (servers) of the hosting company. The hosting company will provide you with instructions on how to do this. It's not hard. All you do is hit File/Publish web on Frontpage, fill in the information that the pop-up box asks you for and it will be finished uploading after a few minutes. 

When you choose your hosting package, there will usually be a check-box that will ask you if you want "Frontpage Extensions" installed. If you are using Frontpage to modify/create your website with, you need to click YES in this check-box in order for you to be able to publish your website later. If you didn't click YES, you will not be able to upload your site and will have to go back to the hosting company's website and modify your account. 

Getting noticed:

Mabrook, your website is online and you've just called all of your friends and relatives and asked them to check out your site. You've earned your bragging rights. I hate to mention this but your initial happiness will be a little short-lived because there is still much to do and you will have to modify your site several times until you get it right.

The problem is that no one else knows you exist. 

Search engines: Go here and tell Google about your website. Go ahead and add your URL (website address and info.) for free. Don't bother paying for the Expedited listing service unless you absolutely want to. In my humble opinion, it isn't necessary. 

Then go here and tell Google about your site-map. You will have to prove you are the owner of the site to get the full benefits of the Webmaster tools Google offers. It will ask you to "Verify" ownership. But if you have downloaded the GSiteCrawler, it has a built-in way to tell Google you are indeed the owner of the site. It can automatically create a hidden file for you that Google can read once you have it published online. 

If you don't have the GSiteCrawler then you will have to prove your ownership manually. It's not hard. Google will give you a "code" which is a string of numbers and letters and it will end in an .html extension. It looks something like this: "googlec187654321fhtml.html" Open Frontpage and create a new page. Right-click the new page and rename it using the "code" that Google sent you. So, you will have a blank page named "googlec187654321fhtml.html" or whatever the code is that they gave you.

Upload the page and tell Google to verify your site. They will send a spider to your site to make sure the blank webpage exists and that's how they verify you.

Here's how it is, you added your URL  ie: www.annmeredith.com but that's only one page in your site; the index or "home" page. Well, what about all the other pages? That's where the hidden site-map file comes in to play. Instead of letting the Googlebot find all the pages in your website by chance, your basically doing the work for it by giving it a ready-made list. 

Repeat these step for getting your site listed on Yahoo. They have similar tools to Google. Here's the link: Yahoo

Please follow this link for the next entry which talks about Search Engine Optimization "SEO."

More to come so check back often or feel free to email me.

Best of luck,

April Tosch