It’s 2011. Isn’t it time everyone learned to do this themselves?

Most web designers will sign their clients up for services. They do it for a number of reasons.

Some do it to be helpful.

“Well Client X is busy or is scared of this or confused by this, so I’ll help them out and do it for them.”

Some do it because they think you can’t.

“Well Client X is clearly an effing idiot, so I’ll do it myself.”

Some do it to save time.

“Look, it’s faster if I do it rather than walk Client X through it over the phone.”

Whether this is done for you out of a sense of helping you or because someone thinks you’re an idiot, it’s really time to stop having people do this for you.

I used to sign people up for stuff. A lot of web designers still do. Many are doing what I do now, and stepping back. For a number of reasons.

Ownership
As I explained in the post It’s Still YOUR website! Or Is It?, when someone signs you up for a service, if they don’t put it in your name, then you do not own it. This frequently happens. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had clients come to me and say they no longer have access to their domain registrar, or web host, or analytics account, or whatever, because “my web designer signed me up for it and he quit and I can’t get in touch with him anymore”.

As you can imagine, this is bad. Very bad.

Empowerment
Ok, let’s say I sign you up, and actually give you all the login information. Great, right? Well, kinda. You’re still in the dark about a basic component of site ownership. You have given all your power to the web designer rather than taken the initiative to do something (that is usually very simple) like go buy your own domain. You’re not stupid. You’re not helpless. You CAN sign yourself up for any web service you need. Most of it does not require massive technical knowledge. And if something confuses you, that’s what Google and other search engines are for. Or, just call your web designer.

Bet you never thought you’d see someone talk about empowering their clients, huh?

You’re Not Stupid
I hear it all the time: “but I’m stupid about technology”. I don’t know what it is about computers and the Internet that makes rational, intelligent people so intimidated. You don’t go to your doctor and say “I’m sorry doc, I’m stupid about my body” do you? Do you feel like a moron when you take your car in for an oil change? How about when you call the plumber to fix your sink?

Understandably, some people feel stupid because there are a lot of people in my industry that talk down to non-technical people. Look, the person who fixes your computer is a glorified mechanic. They can get over themselves. (And I speak as a former glorified mechanic.) They are no more geniuses than the person fixing your car (which, is usually run by a computer, I might add). Your mechanic doesn’t treat you like you’re an idiot either.

And while some doctors and lawyers treat their clients like addled-brained children, many of them know about this magic box where people can read up about them and have learned that if they don’t treat their patients with respect, they’ll lose them.

Eventually, the web design and technical support and all related industries will clue in there. Many have.

It’s 2011. The Internet has been around for a while now. And the general public has been a heavily involved part of it a for over a decade. It really is OK to manage your web services yourself.

I tell my clients I’ll walk them through it over the phone. It is easier and faster for me to do it myself. But I’d still rather help you help yourself. In the long run, you’ll thank me for it.

I bet you think you already know the answer to this. You would think the answer is very simple. But it’s not.

I run into this situation regularly: I’m talking about a website, while the client is talking about their domain or server or some other aspect of a website, other than the site itself.

This confusion especially pops up when clients want to transfer their hosting and domains to us.

You may think “I don’t need to know this”.

Trust me. You do.

It will save you a lot of headache when it’s time for you to renew web services, or transfer them, or sign up for new ones.

So how about we break this down so you can better understand what’s what?

Your website consists of several parts. These are all separate things, but they are connected.

You have:

• a domain
• a web host/server
• website

Domains
Your domain is your own dot com. For us, it is geekartist.com.

Your domain is purchased through your domain registrar. You may have bought it through your web host. Or, you may not have. Most web hosts, if they do sell domains or manage them, do so through another service. What you pay for your domain, is separate from what you pay for hosting.

Your domain, is just the address of your website. It is not the site itself, any more than your home address is your house. The address is assigned to the home you live in. It is how people find your house. But it is not your house.

Web Host
Your web host is a company that provides a computer, called a server, that your site will live on. Unless you are buying your own virtual private server, or some other situation where you get your own computer, you are likely getting what we call shared hosting. This means your website lives on a computer with hundreds of other websites. In terms of file size, websites are very small. Generally speaking, they don’t take up many computer resources. So we can stick a lot of sites on one computer.

When you sign up with your web host, they will tell you to go to your domain registrar (where you bought your dot com) and change the DNS (or nameservers). Your host will give you the nameservers you need. These are basically streetsigns to the house. They are unique to each web host. So when you change web hosts, you have to change this information. By changing nameservers for your domain, you are telling the world “hey my site lives over here now, not over there”. If you don’t change them or they are incorrect, your site will not pull up, and any email you send through your domain won’t route.

Website
The actual website is a collection of files. It is HTML files and jpg (a type of image) files and any other files you may have (pdfs, videos, and so on). When your web designer, and most other people in this business are talking about your website, this is what we’re referring to. We’re talking about all the files that make up the site.

Just remember that there’s a difference between domain, web host, and website. And your website is not your domain. Your domain registrar may not even be your web host.

Think of your website as a car. And your host as a garage the car is parked in. Your domain is the address the car lives at. And the nameservers are the signposts pointing to the garage.

Wasn’t that easy?

In the 10 years I’ve been designing websites, I’ve seen good, bad, and ugly situations when it comes to website ownership. Today, we’re going to talk about the ugly.

When I take on a new web design client, one of the first pieces of information I ask for are the logins to the client’s web host. The responses I frequently get range from “OK, here they are” to “I don’t have those, my last web designer/employee/my cousin has them and I don’t know what they are or how to reach them” to “what’s a web host?”.

Many of my clients do not have the basic information they need as a website owner. It does not matter who you hire to handle your website affairs, if you signed up for and pay for the hosting and domain, then it is still your hosting and domain. All account logins are yours and you should have a copy of them stored somewhere. If you have a website made for you, you should have your own copy of the website too. A copy stored on YOUR computer and/or a CD, DVD, or portable hard drive. You don’t want your only copy of your website to live on the web server. This is a handy backup in case there is a problem that causes you to lose your entire website. And that can and does happen on occasion.

One thing to bear in mind though is if you need a domain (your own .com), be mindful of whose name it is in when purchased. For example, if you hire someone else to get it for you, did they pay for it and put their name on it, or your name? Because if they put their name on it as account owner, they own it. Did you have them sign up for your web hosting? If so, when they signed up, did they put your name on the account or theirs? If theirs, then they own it.

It does not matter if you are paying for it regularly. The domain registrar and web host MUST assign the account to whoever’s name is on the account. If your name is not on there and your web designer disappears, it is possible you may not be able to regain access to that information.

So remember: any time you have anyone handle your website needs for you, make sure that
1. Everything is in your name
2. You have all logins for those accounts
3. You have backups of your website.

Even if you host with my business, GeekArtist Web Solutions, LLC, and have us handle everything for you, we’re still going to make sure you have this information. If you tell me you’ll never need it and don’t want it, I’m going to tell you, “I have to send this to you anyway.”

It is YOUR website. So you are entitled to all the account information and should always keep that data somewhere you can easily retrieve it.

SEO (search engine optimization) typically falls into two categories: black hat or white hat. If you think of bad guys and good guys in the old western movies, you’ve got the general idea.

As with any time someone chooses to put on a black hat in life, there is a lot of money to be made. Oh yes, black hat SEO is big money, and fast. But as with all bad guys, in the end, they often get caught. And they can kiss all that money good-bye.

Unfortunately, some people get sucked into black hat SEO without knowing it. Some may do it while doing their own SEO and not know better. Some may hire others to do the SEO, unaware that they are using black hat practices.

In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker asked how he’ll know the Dark Side of the Force when he sees it. Some website owners may ask the same question: how will I know if I’m doing black hat SEO?

For starters, Google gives a list of things you can do to improve rankings with them. At the end of that page is a list of things not to do. If you’re doing those things, you’re doing black hat SEO.

Keyword Stuffing
This is a request web designers frequently get from clients.

Listing keywords and phrases on your site for no apparent reason other than to boost rankings. For example, I can put this on a page:
“We provide the following services:

• Custom web design
• Template websites
• Blog design
• Content Management design and layout”

That is a perfectly “legal” use of placing keywords and phrases on a site. However, it is bad if I start placing a list of words on a page or every page, that looks like this: web design, website, web designer, web design, blog, blogging, template, custom, custom website, CMS, content management system, website creation.

Making these list of words and phrases the same color as the background of your site to camouflage the words is also bad.

Other examples of keyword stuffing involve text that goes with images on your site. For every image, there should be text describing that image. So if there is a button that says “Order Now” the corresponding text should say “Order Now”. You could push it a little and say (for example) “order web design services”. Personally, that would be as far as I care to go and that’s pushing things a bit. However, a black hat practice is to put “order web design seo blog cms template Dallas, TX, Texas”.

Link Schemes
Also, Google discusses how they don’t like link schemes.

Remember: what Google does, other search engines do too. Most of them try to duplicate Google’s success by copying Google’s practices.

On that article about link schemes, Google says:
“Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank”

That’s a pretty clear list of what is a bad idea. But maybe you’re not sure what some of this means?

So what are links intended to manipulate PageRank?
Are you having lots of sites that link to you that really have nothing to do with your industry or what you do? Well, there you go.

A website that specializes in listing businesses in a specific industry and/or location can be relevant. These types of sites are helpful for not just for search engine rankings, but for providing yet another avenue potential customers can find your site.

Running software that posts in every forum and blog it runs across, that is in no way related to your industry, is linking to manipulate PageRank.

If your SEO person’s primary (or only) method of site promotion is linking you to websites they have personally created, you may be involved in a black hat situation. This practice is also manipulating PageRank.

If you have a web host and/or designer and/or SEO person/group who tell you your rankings are tied to their websites/system and your rankings will go down if you leave them, you may be working with black hatters.

Think you’ll never get caught? Google has a search engine spam reporting tool. What do you think your competitors may do to get you out of their way?

What is PageRank?
Well, Google has a brief explanation of PageRank here. In a nutshell: it is your score from Google that helps determine your site’s popularity and ranking. This score is ranked from 0 to 10.

One method you can use to determine PageRank is to go to Google and type in: What is my PageRank. There are many sites out there that will show you. These are not 100% accurate, but most of them tend to spit out fairly consistent results. A site even a year or so old should have some kind of rank. Three is tolerable. Four or 5 is good. Even Amazon, at the time of this writing, is showing as an 8 or 9. So far, the only 10s I’ve ever seen are…ta da!…Google and Facebook. That’s right, a 10 or even a 7 is more traffic than most sites will ever see in their lifetimes.

There is a lot of debate about the usefulness of PageRank. Personally, I have seen a PageRank zero show up in the first position on search results. But that zero tells me they probably used some shady tricks to get there and odds are good they won’t be there for long. If you have a PR of 0, you should review how your site is promoted.

One definite use of PageRank: for those of you that want advertising on your site, some advertisers look at your PageRank to determine if they want to advertise with you.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: creating good content for your site is the single best thing you can do for your traffic. One other great method: getting reviews from your customers on various review sites like Citysearch, YP, InsiderPages, Local, and more.

Make sure you check out some of the past articles I’ve written on SEO

• Search Engine Basics: Three Things All Site Owners Should Know
• 10 Steps for Improving Google Ranking
• The Realities of Making Money on the Web
• You Must Be Joking: The Malicious Cookie Myth

In his blog post, Paying Not To Be First, Jonathan Fields discusses why paying more for a service is better.

He makes a fair point: you’re paying more for a service because you are paying for the individual’s experience.

Reading this reminds me of a few things I should share about web designers and other freelancers. Remember, I base this on working in the field for 10 years; I’ve seen my colleagues do a lot of interesting things.

In his post, Jonathan has the “you get what you pay for” mentality. Bear in mind that this is often true. However, it can be equally false.

(more…)