The Domain Name Control Panel

Once you've bought your domain name and received a confirmation email from Namesco you can get down to the useful stuff. On Namesco's home page, in the top right hand corner, you'll see a button marker "Control Panel" - click on that.

You'll then login in with the password that you chose when you set up your account, and either your email address or your Namesco account reference - this seems to vary a little but Namesco will have told you what to do here in their confirmation email.. You'll be presented with your account details but what we're interested in now is the button over on the left hand side called "Domain Names"

Click on that and you should then see your new domain name displayed. Click on that, and then click on "Email & Web Forwarding" - another button over on the left hand side -

There are a number of boxes that you can fill in and the first one you need to fill in is the one at the top - "URL to forward to" Type into the box the full address of your web site - so, if the address I've given you is https://sites.google.com/site/yoursitename then that's what you type in the box. By doing this you're ensuring that when someone types your domain name into a web bowser it's directed to your new site. Be very careful with your spelling here - every time I set up a domain name and find that the linking doesn't work it's because I've made a mistake in the spelling.

Select "Refresh to forwarding URL"

Now have a look at these boxes -

The example above comes from the control panel for the domain name for this site, and you'll see I've filled in a brief description of the site in the "Description" box and then entered a number of the words and phrases into the "Keywords" box which someone might use when looking for a site such as this. Once you have editing rights to your own site you'll find another "Description" box tucked away in the background (more/manage site/general) and you'll see that I will have put something in there already. If you've worked your way through this page before you get editing rights let me know how you've described your site and I'll put in the same thing there.

As far as my site is concerned the reason for doing all this is that it gives the search engines a better chance of understanding what the site is about, and this in turn gives me a better chance of appearing in the search results when a therapist decides that they might want a web site made for them. In the same way, you might give yourself a better chance of appearing in the search results when a potential client decides that they might want a therapist.

To be honest, this all hinges on the phrase "a better chance" - on it's own this is not going to do much to get my site to the top of Google's listing, but it will at least help to get it noticed. The business of "Search Engine Optimisation" (SEO) is a complex one and there are people out there charging lots of money to get people's sites high up on Google's ratings. I'm unlikely to get many of my customers as a direct result of a Google search, they're much more likely to visit the site as the result of an ad they've seen in a magazine - I'm using this site as a way of telling people more about the service I offer rather than expecting it to actually attract potential new customers for the first time.

It may well be the same for you. Potential clients will first see your name on a directory or a listing somewhere, and they'll visit your site because they want to find out more about you before they first make contact. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that there's no point in even filling in the boxes! When you do, make sure that you include your county or town amongst the keywords, along with the word "counsellor" and/or "psychotherapist" - think about what words people are likely to enter into Google, and make sure you include them too.

While you're at it, fill in that page title box. You won't see it filled in on this example but I've gone for "Simple Sites" - you might pick something like "Mary Smith Counselling". Having done all that now scroll down to the email forwarding section. This is incredibly useful.

If you just have one email address - bill232@hotmail.com, for example, then simply enter that address into the "catch-all" box and you're done. This means that you can give people your address as "info@yoursitename.co.uk", "bill@yoursitename.co.uk" or absolutely anything else @yoursitename.co.uk, and their emails will automatically be routed to your existing email account. If you ever change your real email address you don't have to worry about getting new business cards printed and so on - you just return to the control panel and type your new address into the box. Then the emails sent to the same domain name will be routed to your new email address.

If you're an agency, though, and have a number of different people who will want email addresses, then simply put their names in the first box of the alias section, and their real email address in the box beside it. So "Bill@yoursitename.co.uk" would go to bill232@hotmail.com, "mary@yoursitename.co.uk" would go to marysmith232@gmail.com and so on. Make sure that you still fill in that "Catch-all" box though, because then whatever people put before the "@" symbol, no email will get lost.

IMPORTANT - Just to reiterate, because it seems as if my instructions aren't quite as clear as they should be above. What you put into that "catch-all" box is the email address you've previously been using, the one you've probably been mailing me from - not the email address that will be based on your new domain name.

Having done that, click on the "Update" button, and you're done.

Or almost. Just above the Email forwarding section you'll find the option to display a banner - select "No", otherwise you'll find an ad for Namesco appearing on every page of your site!