Having recently set up as a self-employed handyman I want to create a website to show jobs I have done and hopefully attract some more work.

When I was working as a manager in engineering I built a couple of websites but only to the stage where the content, pictures etc were what we wanted at which point we paid a specialist company to host the site and add the necessary tags etc to ensure it got on the first or second page of Google.

As I can't afford to pay anyone else what's the best way to arrive at a site which can be found by the search engines.

Would I be better to use the Google website creater which appears to be free for the first 2 years?

Any advice would be appreciated.

John.

www.nb2bc.co.uk

my woman is a self employed marketing consultant specialising in e -commerce and recommends this website for you as its free. any further advice dont hesitate to ask and i'll give u her contact details.

regards

Creating a website is the easy bit, getting it on to page 1 of google can be the hard bit, but just depends on the search words that you think people are going to use in order to find what they are after.

What have you written the site in?

There is a lot of information of how to optimise a website out there, but a lot of I find useless.

For your business, I would imagine that people would search for a particular job within an area.

LINK

In google it shows you a map, and a list of relavant link to companies, in this instance (using the link above) 2.

Just get on this... it really easy, and you don't even need a website, all you have to do is to create a profile, use this link

LINK2

And that will get your noticed, and then look at doing the website at a later date, as you would be getting coverage from searches.

HTH

i built and maintain my dads website, plus handle the advertising. I'm no whiz at websites so used www.1and1.co.uk as host and used the built in website creator to create this:-

www.bellengineering.co.uk

Advertising is done through google adwords. Type in good "Freelander IRD" or "Freelander VCU" and bell engineering usually appears at the top in the sponsored links. you pay per click, even if it leads to nothing, but if you are careful with the way you set it up it can be very fruitful and effective. I have my dads site set at £50 a month max spend and it generates more than enough to keep him flat out.

Your other option is a blog style website which are dead easy to build and maintain

Thanks for your advice and help.

m8kwr - I've taken your advice and registered with Google Maps so at least that's a start.

John.