Ibiza Web Design & SEO Companies

Many people heading out to Ibiza to start a new life find they really need a business web presence once here to enable them to jump-start their businesses, and many then fall foul of some of the local cowboys. 

In this hub I will share some observations, and some of the common errors and pitfalls for the unwary.

Actually, no, although to the uninitated this may appear to be true, once you look "under the hood" nothing could be further from the truth, there are many different technologies, and combinations of technologies that designers use to build websites, some good, some bad, and some just plain ugly, and unfortunately this also applies to the morals & ethics of the designers building them.

There are some really good web companies and freelancers on the island and there are some who will just take your money for a new website or a listing in their established "Ibiza" website, but not deliver enough business to pay their annual fee, never mind their exhorbitant cost for a new website.

If you need your website to attract new business, ie customers who didn't know your name already, it is crucial to think about search engines before you decide anything else.

Web technologies, like their designers range from "search-engine friendly" through to "search engine invisible" and everything inbetween.

Obviously "invisible" isn't going to help you much, and even "search engine difficulties" isn't ideal, so you need to opt for the proven seo-friendly technology to build it in to start with.

SEO friendly technology includes

• HTML (or static) websites
• PHP based dynamic websites, including drupal, joomla etc
  
• Wordpress SEO -based websites
  

SEO "difficult" includes things like outdated technologies such as asp, or the newer version aspx which for certain technical reasons can never be as well optimized as their PHP counterparts.

SEO "invisible" sites are nearly always made in Flash, avoid at all costs if you need good Google traffic.

It is usually fairly easy to see what a site is built in, just go to it, and go to any other page than the homepage, and look in the browser address bar, at the URL (or web address)

It will look something like this: www.webdesignibiza.com/about-us.html

The bolded letters on the end, "html" are the code used to build the site, so in most cases you will be able to see either

• .html - fine
  
• .php - fine
  
• .asp or .aspx - dubious
  

Some sites such as Flash dont let you see this way, but the giveaway with flash is that you cannot actually navigate to another page in your browser address bar, the screen display will change (usually in moving graphics) and look like its a different page, but the browser address bar will always say (example) www.webdesignibiza.com/

Many other systems will show just a page name with slash ie - about-us/ - this is probably going to be ok, but do check what they intend to build it in.

This has been a popular business model in Ibiza for the last decade or so with several very established players in the market, and every year more new ones start up with the same thing in mind.

There are drawbacks here aplenty.

1. Expense - at an average 6-800 Euros per year a page on one of these big sites is not cheap, calculate how many jobs or sales you need to make your 800 Euros back before making a penny profit for yourself

2. Non-targeted traffic - even though these sites may themselves see high traffic during the summer season anyway, most of it is not looking for your business offering.

3. Recurring costs - every year, if you stop paying they remove your page, often looking like you have gone out of business, or worse, they redirect it to your competitors.

4. Competition within the site - even if you stay with them these people have loyalty only to money, and will of course take on every new customer they can in your area, so you usually find yourself sliding down their listings too over time.

In general its usually a better idea to have your own Ibiza business website than rent space on somebody else's, to make sure your presence is not affected by their greed.

This Ibiza web design package for example is actually cheaper to buy than renting a page for one year on somebody else's website, and will reliably maintain your internet presence outside of the whims and needs of other people or businesses.

I have found a suitable firm or freelancer, and he's building my site in seo friendly technology, what else do I need to know?

This is the big one, you MUST have control of your own domain registration details.

Even if your designer is going to be hosting the site for you, (which is often unnecessary on smaller and static sites because their annual hosting charge will usually cost you multiples of what you could get your own hosting package for, but may be advisable if its a dynamic or database driven website) it is imperative that you have the domain registered to yourself to save being held to ransom for money or lose the site at some point down the line.

This is unfortunately all too common, web designers in Ibiza seem to be doing this constantly, shutting down a site due to a dispute and they have control of the client's domain and hosting.

Other companies here have even gone as far as building expensive sites for high-profile clients, but hidden links within them back to their own Ibiza directory sites to help them rank better, so as to be still able to sell them advertising space in it.

The last important thing you must have agreement on is that the designer will allow access to the server if you need to get further updating done to it or optimization work on a non-performing site. It is unfortunately all too common that they will build the site and then refuse to let anyone else have access, citing "external server access to be dangerous to them"

This is of course nonsense as any professional SEO company looks to work in cooperation with all web designers, and would only need access to the one site folder even if the site is on their own server, setting up a special FTP username takes 30 seconds.

So you are charged for something that doesn't work or needs more work done, and then unable to get SEO services in Ibiza from professional of your choice.

Ok, for your Ibiza business website you need:

1. A trustworthy and competent designer
2. Control of your own domain at bare minimum.
3. SEO friendly technology used
4. external server access assured (in writing) should it be required.
   

If you stick to these guidelines your new business venture should be off to a flying start with no nasty surprises further down the line.

Good luck.

If you want further advice you can read more from SEO Ibiza here