I am starting a custom oil portrait business and would like to find someone who I could hire to help me set up a web business site.  The site would be on the same side.  I am able to do a lot of the design work myself, I know what I want it to look like etc.,  but I am slow and I know very little about SEO and attracting potential customers to my sight.  I think it would a rather rudimentary job for a person with the right skills and I am easy to work with.  Do you know anyone you would recommend around town.  I am eager to get going.

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If you don’t mind dedicating a little time to learning just a little bit, you could really do the site yourself. You don’t need to spend lots of money to accomplish this when there are so many tools out there that will help you put together what you are looking for. You need a site that displays samples of your work, contact info, and possibly an ecommerse section. But frankly I would think that anyone who would be interested in purchasing personal art work would want to see it first. Nonetheless, there are systems out there that can help you to do this.

First, you need a domain name. Simple. Save up around $10 then go to either Godaddy.com or Hover.com and search for a name you have in mind then if it’s available, register it for around $10 a year. Hover is a couple dollars more but the interface is great.

Next use a web design tool like SquareSpace.com. You can set one up for free to start to see if you like it. They have many tools that will allow you to add payment options, galleries etc... You don’t need to know code. If you like it, then you buy the space from them for around $50 a year. I have my site hosted through GoDaddy. They do a good job but the upsale on the site is crazy. They like to promote other addons to what you’re trying to buy. But their cheap and reliable. Their support is good as well.

With a company like Square Space, they host your site and you point your domain name to that url. It’s really not too hard. The templates that Square Space have as starting points are very good and you will most likely find that you don’t need much more than what’s already there. You could use iWeb if you have a mobileme account but I’ve abondoned recommending iWeb. It’s on your computer now but Apple’s not done anything with it in a couple of years. So I’ve lost hope in it. The nice thing about it however, is that if you have a mobileme account you already have the space. And publishing up to the mobileme server is very easy.

FreeWay is another simple to use web design tool. If you look at their templates you’ll see similar pages to what you want to do.

I use a program that’s a major step up from iWeb called Rapid Weaver. It’s a little harder to use that iWeb but not terribly. I think you should strongly consider playing around with the idea of building your own page.

There are, of course, much more demanding programs like DreamWeaver but those are way over both our heads.

Yes, you can rely another person as your web designer but you will also need to keep in mind that they’ll be your only way to update your site if you don’t take the time to learn yourself. And you wouldn’t be their only client.

I think if you spend an evening at home in front of Square Space, which allows you to design your own page from within a web browser like Safari, you might be surprised at what you can do.

SEO...Just say NO!

As far as SEO (search engine optimization) don’t pay anyone a dime. The only way you are going to become recognized in search is if a: you have good content on your site and b: other people link to you. Google is smarter than anyone who tries to game the system. You have to network your site as much as possible just as I’m doing right this second. When it comes to getting rising up the search engine results, the more good content you have on your page, the better chance you have of showing up in the top 100 results of a given query. The other factor that weighs heavily in google’s determination of the quality or relevance to your site is how many people link to your own site. The main reason I answer as many questions every night like this one and post them to my site is because I’m trying to build content. And as I continue I watch my search results rise. It’s a very slow process. But if you stay at it, you’ll move up. I use a free tool google provides called analytics. It tells me every night how many people visited my site, where they went, how long they stayed, what they clicked on, what browser they were using, what page they existed on, etc... That’s all you need. Don’t trust anyone who wants to take your money stating that they can get your site listed higher in search results. It’s snake oil. Build good content. Get others to link to you. And that’s a better start than anything.