Posted by Geraint on Jul 8, 2009 in
Challenges of an SME,
Websites Today I want to discuss the importance of using a professional website developer, I have encountered many businesses who either use a family member or friend, someone they know (maybe a student studying IT or Website development), attempt to build the website themselves or use what we call an ‘off the shelf’ package. None of these methods will produce a website that will be technically or visually as good as one made by a professional website developer.
1. The first and most obvious reason is Expertise – A good web developer should build a cleanly coded website and include a minimum amount of essential SEO on the website. As they work in the industry they will have knowledge of and understand the latest technologies and trends that are happening (i.e. Twitter, Blogs etc) and be able to advise you on how they could benefit your business.
2. The next reason is that a professionally designed website is virtually always much better visually than a non professionally designed website (though obviously some people do have a good creative eye and will be able to design a beautiful website). It is important to remember that your website is a window on your business, many people will visit your website and form an opinion of your business based on your website: amature website = amature business. No matter how good an impression you make when you meet this person they will review your website and this will partly form their opinion of your business.
3. As mentioned, some people will opt for an off the shelf/Out of a box packages which will require the website to conform to set features or a set frame work that has been pre-built into the package, no matter how much freedom these packages claim to offer the user you will still have to work within some form of frame work, where as using a website developer means complete freedom of design and functionality.
4. Another issue faced when not using a professional website developer is that little or no support is available. If a friend or someone you know has built your website in their spare time, then when something needs updating or maintenance is required it will be done when this person has the time. A professional website developer has an invested interest in making sure your website is live and up-to-date as it reflects their work and will probably be in their portfolio so potential clients could be looking at any one of the websites they have built. Worse still, if you have bought an ‘off the shelf’ solution there will certainly be no invested interest in you or your business as you are just another anonymous user, through using a professional website developer you can develop a personal relationship with them and a good developer will inform you of any business opportunities they see for you and other clients, either through networking and collaboration or through adding additional or the newest, latest features to your website.
5. The final reason is it will ultimately be cheaper, amature a website can cost your business money through missing out on business. If you are lucky enough to have the ability to build your own website, your time would surely be better invested in running your own business and potentially earning money. Also if you have an off the shelf package, although it may be cheaper in the 1st year, over 2 or more years it likely to cost more: Off the shelf packages usually range from £10 – £30 a month or more.
A final thought, imagine someone informing you that they were going to do what your business offers themselves, do you believe that they would be able to do the work to the same standard that a company specialising in that industry would be able to offer?
Tags: getting higher in Google, improve website ranking, Improving Google rankings, website, website design, website development, Websites
Generating Links in the Blogging World
I’ve spoken about linking in previous posts, it’s in my top 5 SEO tips and I’ve spoken about the annoyance of spam, but the Internet is made up of links and it is essential. We all now that generating links to our website or blog will have a huge influence on traffic and search engine results and usually with my Web developer hat on I would recommend contacting customers and suppliers and anyone else you know with a business to see if you can get a link, though it is important that the website linking to yours is relevant (hence customers and suppliers) or you can look for businesses working in the same industry which can link to you, my ideal example is the wedding industry, it’s made up of so many different parts which don’t necessarily compete with each other. So assuming you’ve exhausted this route and have all the links your going to generate you turn to your blog and it can be a powerful tool.
One of the excellent things about a blog is the way in which it is structured means that it creates loads of internal links when you post, and it helps to create pages quickly almost everything you create on your blog, be it a post or category, or using the archive or calendar feature, they all help create unique pages so if you had enough material to blog daily you could create 365 posts, if these went into 30 categories was part of your monthly archive and you had a tag cloud active on your site well I’m sure it would generate nearly 500 pages! All of which will have an effect on your search engine rankings.
Having hundreds of internal links is great but how do you use the blog to generate incoming links? Well you need to get into the world of blogging, research bloggers in your industry or field, or even just blogs your interested in, take the time to read them and then comment on them, but only if you have something to say, I’m sure they will be interested in who commented on their blog and visit your blog, but by leaving a comment you have left a link back to your site. Hopefully by writing good relevant comments you will generate interest in your blog and bring readers in, but better still if they read your blog and like it they will recommend your blog to others and then the world of word of mouth marketing takes over. Think about it, if you could comment on a blog a week, that’s 52 blogs a year, now imagine they have a strong readership of say 100 each that’s 5200 people who will see your comment, not say only 10% of those people take an interest in your blog it’s 520 visitors, now what if half of those visitors went away and recommended your blog via their blog – that 260 in bound links plus your original 52 which is 312 links, not I know this is a lot of what ifs – but by being a proactive member of the blog community you can reap the benefits and contribute some value to it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to read some of my favourite blogs and hopefully be able to make some comments on them
Tags: blogging for beginners, getting higher in Google, Improving Google rankings, Number 1 in Google, SEO
Posted by Geraint on May 27, 2009 in
SEO,
e-Marketing Today I’d like to talk a little about keyword research, it’s an important part of not only Search Engine Optimisation, but also in my opinion of developing a website, though those lazy web developers do help create work for our company. There are a few free and paid for tools available as listed below and all of these can be used for keyword research.
- Yahoo Panama Keyword Tool
- Google Keyword Tool, traffic estimator, Webmaster Tools; Google Suggest and Google Trends
- MSN Keyword Forecast
- Hitwise
- WordTracker
- Keyword Discovery
- WordStream
One of the mistakes people make when conducting keyword research is targeting highly competitive keywords, I’m not saying that these keywords shouldn’t be used but when considering the size of your website and business and the competition in your industry there maybe better keywords to target. It is also worth noting that it is generally believed that when someone searches online if the keyword is a broad keyword, say, compact digital cameras, then they are browsing or researching the market, they are not looking to buy, but if the keyword is more precise, say Sony T77 compact camera, then the searcher is looking for a specific product and is more likely to have intentions of buying.
Some businesses or industries may also benefit from including their geographical location with their keywords, ‘homes for rent’ isn’t going to get you as many conversions as ‘homes for rent in Cardiff’ but this depends on your business, if you can trade internationally then you may be loosing out on business by including your location, but if your goods or services are generally location dependent then include it in your keywords.
When it comes to keywords, the one with the highest search volume isn’t necessarily going to be the one that lands you top spot in Google or gets you the highest conversions and it might be worth targetting a handful of keywords with a lower search volume but are more likely to be converted into sales.
Tags: getting higher in Google, Improving Google rankings, Keyword, keyword research, search engine optimisation, SEO
Posted by Geraint on May 22, 2009 in
Challenges of an SME,
SEO Following on from my earlier blog on SEO I wanted to draw this little gem to your attention. An excellent way of getting yourself instantly into top spot – well kind of is to register on Googles Local Business Centre. If someone searches for your service in your area then quite often Google will produce a map with a list of businesses and this helps you get found.
So what you waiting for, head over to:
https://www.google.com/local/add/
it will take you 5 minutes and may get you number one results instantly!
Tags: advertising online, Improving Google rankings, Number 1 in Google, SEO
