Making Your Own Website

Every page should have at least one high quality picture, to visually describe what the page is about.  People are lazy on the internet and they get bored easily, don’t forget the Google results page is only one click of the back button away.  You have to make sure people realise instantly that they are on the correct page and you have the product or service that they are after.

 

Always use professional photos, there are plenty of free stock photo websites out there.  You could try:

www.freedigitalphotos.net

www.freephotosbank.com

www.freepixels.com

www.sxc.hu

 

If you do not have a program to edit these photos you could try:

www.picnik.com

or

http://www.pixlr.com/editor

 

Both free and easy to use online editors where you can re-size, crop and alter your picture.

When you insert the photo into your web page you will also be asked to enter an ‘Alternative Description’.  This is a text description for the photo.  In the UK the Disability Discrimination Act states that you have to fill this in, it’s a legal requirement.  A partially sighted or blind person might have a screen reader that will read the web page out to them, when it reaches a picture it can either say ‘Unknown Picture’ or read out the Alternative Description.  On an ordinary browser you will only see Alternative Description if you hover your mouse over a picture.

Don’t use a one word description, Google reads these Alternative Descriptions to glean even more information about your company.  Our fictitious Plumber would write something like:

Emergency 24 hour call out plumber repairing a leaky kitchen water pipe.

Wow, how many keywords did I manage to get into that!  Google will love that description.