Site Sell: Page Rank

I am impressed.

I just put up my site early Feb and I started to create web pages and submit webpages gradually in the month. Now I am ranked No 2 for one of my pages. What is so excited and impressive about it is that I am ranked above other popular websites that have a lot more traffic.

In this aspect, it is good. One point up for SiteSell.

Site Sell: Creating Contact Us Forms

I created a contact us form in Site Sell 2 days ago. I never find it that easy to create a form. As one who create web pages using plain html code, I find creating form in Site Sell is a breeze. They even give you options to create a thank you page, sending notification back to the sender and also the option to notify you through your personal email address. The last option is good for those who do not how to manage multiple accounts in email programs like Microsoft Outlook, etc.

BTW, contact us form is just an example. The module allows you to create many types of form with a 4 steps process.

SiteSell: Is it suitable for everybody from novice to expert

By now, I have created 4 pages with Sitesell. I have used the tools provided by sitesell to create a web page. It is very cumbersome but as you get the hang of it, it works pretty smoothly. I attraibute this as normal as you start to learn every tool. It has an analysis tool to check your web page to make sure that the keywords is optimally included, not too many or too few. One pain which is good is that it will check the entire webpage you have created to make sure that it is optimal for the search engine.

I tried to upload a webpage which I have created myself. It is a bit painful. Maybe I have not study the template properly. Unlike what we normally do is to upload the webpage and the supporting files into the web folder, sitesell requires you to upload the web page first into the system. Then they will ask you for the image files and the supporting file. I had a problem with that because some of the files I need is not presented in the html page. I was trying to upload a flash file to the website and some of the supporting files required was coded in a config file which is a supporting file. But the way the process works did not detect the subsequent file and therefore the supporting file was not uploaded.

On top of that, the files needs to be coded with the full url instead of the normal html codes where the file name needs to be presented only if they are in the same folder.

Site Sell: Building Pages

I spend quite a number of hours yesterday trying to figure out how to upload a web page with flash into my website managed by sitesell. I thought it was easy like what I usually do with my other website. It is not. They have a system to upload the web pages. The information are all stored in a hughe database. You cannot see the folders like a normal ftp website.

I have to upload a web page in one step and then they will ask me for the support files as required for the webpage. supporting files as in images and in this case, flash video for me. On top of that, you have to provide the full url (e.g. my url is http://www.advanced-excel.com/find_blank_cells.html) to the page. It is not like in any html editor where you the way to do it is to provide the file name since they reside in the same location. A painful experience. The advantage about this though is that you do not need to worry about organising your web folder. They are managed by the database. If you are a web designer, you know things can get really messy if you do not plan properly.

I also read through the warning they have provide if I were to upload my own webpages. They warn that if I were to use methods trick the search engine, I not only get banned by them but I will also affect their other customer websites. Because of this, I tend to think that there is more to it on how to achieve ranking in the search engine then just those they have mentioned. My suspicion is that there are some sort of internal linking that helps to move the page rank of websites hosted by them.

Building the home page

I have finally set up the home page. It was not easy even though I have gone through the process of brainstorming in thw first 5 days. Does that mean I have wasted the first 5 days of brainstorming? Definitely not. It was very useful. In fact, site sell was very useful. It has also helped to analyze the home page content so that it can satisfy the basic criteria for search engine. It is not a professional tool that a SEO will use. It does assist a novice in getting the home page up with the right content. Good news is my home page is up. If you are interested, you can take a look here. Another sample for you reference is this honey website.

Site Sell

I have finally completed SiteSell Day 1 to 5. A good experience. The way the guide is organised allows you to have a blue print ready to build that dream site. It is very similar to business planning. It is easier though because all the information are given. The concept is there and to make it work depends on whether you follow thru the plan. It has been made easier with the blue print. Before the website is built, I know the structure of the website.

Before I go futher, I would like to put this down as content for my existing website.

Introduce a newbie what is a webpage and how to build one. This is not about the content. It is about the structure it must have. Of course how to make sure that you have the necessary tools in place to make it work. Things a newbie needs to know are:

a) Domain Name. Having the name is simple. How to register for one and how much does it cost?

b) Web host. This is the place where you store your webpages. Some consideration of web host include laguage that the web host supports, bandwidth meaning how many people can access the webpage at any one time, the customer support the web hosting company provides, does it come with email facilities (it can be managed by another company).

c) Connectivity. THis is not necessary for web site but there has been some confusion as I spoke to a newbie about this.

d) Structure of the web page. THis includes title, description, keywords, body/content

Setting my home page

So far so good. I was setting up my home page in site sell. It was a good expereince. They have the tools available to create the page that is optimised for the search engine. With the tool, more time may be needed to come up with a good webpage, but it is going to worth the tme spent. At lease, they show yo how to do the things right from the start. A tool that will be helpful to those who really want traffic to come into their websites.