Why Use Web Design UK Services That Offer SEO?
There are many different services offering web design in the UK and each has its own benefits and advantages. Looking for a web design UK service that includes SEO can prove highly advantageous because it will negate the need to make wholesale, costly, and potentially damaging changes to your website at a later date. By getting it right straight away you can help ensure website SEO success.
Incorrect Coding
The coding of a website is important in many respects. Primarily, of course, if the coding is wrong then some element of the website design will not work as intended. Images may not appear or the template may be out of line. Content may appear in the wrong section of the page or some visitors may not be able to view the page properly in their browser.
Bloated Code
Poor or incorrect code can also bloat a page. Bloated code will typically slow the page load time down quite significantly. The more code that a server has to cope with, the harder it will have to work. While many users are broadband enabled, many are not and you should aim to alienate as few people as possible. Remove unnecessary code and clean up what’s left.
Page Load Times And Website SEO
Good code is also important to website SEO. Page load time is one of the algorithmic factors that search engines consider when ranking a site. If two sites are identical in every single way except that one has pages that load quicker then this one will appear higher in the search engine results pages.
Good Navigation
Clean looking sites that are easy to navigate benefit everybody from the search engines to the end user. Navigation is critical to your website and as well as the beautiful flash navigation system on the sidebar or header you should also consider adding static text links in the footer, or at least a text link to a sitemap which then lists every single page.
Web Design UK
Web design UK services can offer some exceptional looking, high quality designs, and using such a service that incorporates website SEO into its work means that at the very least you won’t have to go back and correct mistakes at a later date. Even if you aren’t consider an SEO campaign immediately, the chances are very high that you will in the future and if you have bloated pages, navigation that can’t be spidered, and media that is not optimised then you will find it expensive and time consuming to have it put right.
Dancing The Google SEO Dance
When it comes to search engine traffic and SEO, most people speak about Google first and foremost. This is because they possess a majority of the market share when it comes to searches conducted on the Internet. No other search engine comes close in terms of the sheer volume of people that use the site or the number of searches that are done. Google arguably offers the best search experience to users and this not only means better results for searchers but it means more stringent guidelines for webmasters.
Google Algorithms
Like all search engines, Google relies on the use of algorithms to help it create search engine results pages. These algorithms consider hundreds of factors regarding a web page and they help determine whether that page is relevant for a specific search and, if it is, then how much value it provides users compared to other relevant web pages.
A Google Evolutionary Tale
The Google algorithms change and evolve regularly. What might be considered a useful search engine optimisation technique today may basically be outlawed tomorrow. Reciprocal link building is one example. Links are considered a vote of popularity and a sign of quality by Google so webmasters have always been on the look out for ways to build links quickly and easily. Reciprocal linking means one page linking to another in exchange for a link back to the original page.
The Death Of Reciprocal Linking
Google perceived that there needn’t be any value in a page for it to receive a reciprocal link and so any value that was once given to a two way link has all but been removed. And so search engine optimisation changed and one way links became even more important.
The Google Dance
Sometimes, Google will introduce minor changes and these may not effect a site or its position in the search ranking. On other occasions, major algorithmic changes may be introduced and these can cause massive differences from one day to the next. The Google Dance has caused controversy, argument, and probably a few failed websites in its time but Google will continue to do this as long as they attempt to offer value to their users.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation needs to be ethical and it needs to be effective. Building links can be done naturally and pages should be optimised not just for the benefit of search engines but for the benefit of human visitors too – receiving tends of thousands of visitors a day is useless if they find no value in a website. Do your website seo / search engine optimisation right and you can build traffic and improve conversion rates.
Improving Your Search Engine Optimisation Link Profile
Your link profile is one of, if not the most important aspects of a search engine optimisation campaign. Links are used to determine the value of a website so each link is considered an indication of your website’s quality. However, not all links are equal. Those links that come from better quality sites that are more authoritative themselves are worth more than links that come from low quality sites or from sites that are in bad neighbourhoods.
Link Exchanges
Link exchanges are once considered the ultimate in link building tools but as search engines have advanced their algorithms this is one practice that has lost favour. This is also true of link triangles and similarly related methods. Sites with low quality or irrelevant content can persuade other sites to link to them simply by putting a reciprocal link up and this devalues the linking process in the eyes of search engines.
Paid Linking
Paid links can prove extremely expensive for good quality links from authoritative sites. What’s more, if the search engines find out that a link is a paid one then they may well devalue it. Paid links can still be used on your site and may drive enough direct traffic to make them worthwhile but they shouldn’t be considered a viable search engine optimisation link building technique.
Link Baiting
The provision of high quality content for all of your web pages will help you develop links naturally. Other webmasters will be more inclined to link to your pages without being asked if you provide unique, informative, or emotive content. However, you still need to ensure that webmasters see your content and this means you need traffic in the first place.
Social Media
Social networking and social bookmarking have become popular link building techniques since the advance of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Search engines are giving such sites greater credence now too and as they incorporate the social Internet into their search results this means that search engine optimisation campaigns that use social media in some way are likely to benefit.
Article Marketing For Search Engine Optimisation
Article marketing remains one of the most popular forms of ethical and effective link building for search engine optimisation. You can write a handful of articles, submit them to search engine friendly directories and dozens of websites will publish those articles in full, including links to your site, on their own pages. The links are relevant because you control the anchor text and even the page content is relevant to your own because you wrote it. The use of an SEO Copywriter can also prove to be extremely worthwhile.
Drive Organic Traffic With Search Engine Optimisation
The Internet offers numerous ways in which to drive traffic to a website. Paid marketing, including methods like Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing can deliver traffic instantly but does require a sizeable outlay and requires very close management to ensure that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits provided. Organic search engine optimisation, on the other hand, may take some time to deliver results but it typically has a lower ROI and can deliver masses of traffic for comparatively little in the way of effort and resources.
PPC
PPC is the most common form of paid marketing. You create a brief ad and then display this ad on Google search results pages as well as relevant websites. You also determine the amount you’re willing to pay for each click that your ad generates and whenever a searcher or website visitor clicks on your ad you pay this amount.
Managing Your Advertising
PPC requires that you take care in creating your ad. Ensuring that traffic is targeted means that you will enjoy greater conversion rates from the traffic that finds its way on to your website. Daily management means that you can be sure you’re getting the best results without paying too much money.
Other Forms Of Paid Marketing
While Pay Per Click advertising is the most common form of paid marketing there are other methods. Banner advertising, paid links, and paid reviews may also prove effective assuming you have good content, great banners, and are willing to invest the time to ensure success.
Organic Search Engine Optimisation
Organic search engine optimisation, or SEO as it is known, means optimising your page content and developing links to your website so that it appears high in the organic search engine results. By getting your web pages to the front page of search results for the most relevant keywords it’s possible to create a large amount of organic traffic from website SEO. Good keyword research will ensure that the traffic is well targeted to your content and products while some monthly effort in continuing to build links will mean that the traffic keeps coming.
Eggs And Baskets
Relying on a single method of online marketing is not the advised route to take. If your Google ranking drops and you only use search engine optimisation then you will suffer a potentially catastrophic drop in traffic numbers. Similarly, if you concentrate all of your efforts on PPC and your ads fail to generate sales then you will quickly run out of resources to plough into driving further traffic.
Choosing Keywords For Search Engine Optimisation
Keywords are a critical facet of search engine optimisation. A keyword is the word or phrase that we type into Google when we are searching for information, products, or services. With billions of searches conducted around the world every single day, it is obvious that search engine traffic is critical to a site’s success and choosing the most appropriate keywords, and subsequently using them in the most advantageous positions can be the difference between a successful site and one that bombs.
Web Page Keywords
Every page of a website should be assigned its own keywords. While some sites may use a single keyword per page, it is more reasonable to use a list of several keywords. Search engines not only look at the specific keyword you target but they also consider whether any inflections, stems, or related alternatives exist on the page so adding three or four related keywords on one page can really pay dividends.
Starting Your Keyword List
Guessing at search engine optimisation keywords is not advised but you will need some educated estimates to start with. Think of the main keywords related to your pages. If you were searching for the information you provide or the products you sell then what would you type into the search engines. Furthermore, what keywords do your main competitors use for their websites?
Further Keyword Research
Once you have a basic list of keywords you can begin doing more thorough keyword research. There is a plethora of keyword research tools available for SEO, some of them free and some commercial. Add your main keywords and then let the software deliver a list of more specific and less generic keywords. Typically, those visitors that are inclined to take action while on your website will arrive using two, three, or four word key phrases rather than single words.
Long Tail Keywords Vs Generic Keywords
While the long tail search phrases tend to generate fewer regular searches they are easier to rank highly for because fewer sites compete for them. In contrast, you may need to compete with tens of millions of websites for some of the most competitive and most generic keywords and phrases.
Keywords And Search Engine Optimisation
By narrowing your keyword list down and using those that relate to your business or your website you can ensure that you only try competing for those that will give you the greatest benefit. If you can combine some niche keywords with more competitive keywords on each page then you should be able to generate some short term traffic as well as provide a stable basis for long term search engine optimisation traffic and Website SEO.
Adding Search Engine Optimisation To Your Online Marketing Mix
Search engine optimisation is a cost effective way to drive organic traffic to your website, and as web users conduct billions of searches every single day using sites like Google and Yahoo, it is clear that SEO should be considered a part of every website’s online marketing mix. The best marketers know that diversification is key to success so combining search engine optimisation with paid linking and PPC can provide a stable basis of traffic and should your search rankings drop you will have other advertising to pick up some of the slack.
Search Engine Optimisation
The use of the most suitable keywords and ongoing link building efforts can help to drive literally thousands of visitors to your website every single day. While some of the more competitive keywords will take months to start performing and generating traffic, niche and long tail keywords can deliver results in a matter of weeks as long as you approach your search engine optimisation properly.
Pay Per Click Marketing
During the early days of your SEO campaign, while you are still developing traffic and identifying link sources, you can use paid marketing techniques to pick up the slack. PPC, or Pay Per Click advertising, for example can deliver traffic to web pages instantly. Register with a PPC UK network, write your ad, place your bids, and watch your ads appear on relevant websites.
Other Forms Of Paid Marketing
You can also use banner advertising, affiliate advertising, paid links, paid reviews, and other paid marketing techniques too. All of these techniques offer varying degrees of success to different websites. While some pages will benefit from banner advertising others will not and while one site may generate a lot of interest through paid reviews, other sites may not carry the right type of product to enjoy success down this marketing avenue.
Continued Marketing
Once your search engine optimisation efforts begin to bear fruit you can begin to wind down your paid marketing efforts, although if any are showing great success and a positive Return on Investment then you should seriously consider keeping them going.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search engine optimisation is generally considered a long term method for generating website seo traffic but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to wait years to start reaping the rewards. Start early in the lifecycle of your website, create good quality and well optimised page content, and start building beneficial and relevant links and you’ll soon start to see your organic search engine traffic levels rise.
Natural SEO vs. Pay-per-Click (also known as SEM).
The majority of web surfers; around 70 per cent, click the optimised natural listings on the first page of a search engine as opposed to sponsored links.
Natural listings are more trusted than paid ads and, unlike pay-per-click traffic – which typically dries up once you stop spending –SEO is the gift that keeps on giving.
But the basic pitch – put the effort into building your natural listings in the search engines and customers will keep coming – proves a hard sell for marketing departments under pressure to produce fast results.
In a sector still in its infancy and devoid of a dedicated industry body or minimum professional standards lack of expertise among practitioners has also harmed SEO’s reputation.
The increasingly complex nature of SEO has led to a shakeout of inexperienced operators.
Companies have been burnt. A lot of our companies have previously worked with two or three companies before settling with their current providers.
We at SEO-Tips believe a mix of media including SEO and paid search works best.
Key Points
• Search engine optimisation is a cost-effective marketing strategy
• Search marketing spend reached $900 million in 2009
• Many businesses are grasping the potential of this new marketing avenue
Is instant messaging is a dead duck?
Instant messaging was once tipped to replace e-mail, but recent figures suggest that it has lost ground sharply. Why?
OMG. Instant messaging (IM), once the mainstay of teenage gossips, techie know-it-alls and office time-wasters everywhere, looks as though it is in trouble.
Just a few years ago, it was meant to be the future.
Yahoo
More immediate than e-mail, less fiddly than texting, sending an IM was widely expected by many technology pundits to become our preferred mode of online communication, whether socially or in the office – or socially in the office, for that matter.
WHAT IS INSTANT MESSAGING?
Lets users send notes back and forth in real time while online
Displays which friends and contacts are online
Most popular providers include AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger)
But how times change.
In 2007, 14% of Britons’ online time was spent on IM, according to the UK Online Measurement company – but that has fallen to just 5%, the firm says, basing its findings on the habits of a panel of 40,000 computer users.
The study was released shortly after AOL sold its ICQ instant messaging service $187.5m (£124m) – less than half what the company paid for it in 1998.
And in September 2009, a survey of internet use by the New York-based Online Publishers Association found that the amount of time spent by surfers on traditional communications tools, including IM and e-mail, had declined by 8% since 2003.
It is a far cry from the early days of the decade when this very website anticipated that IM would overtake e-mail by 2004 [see internet links].
Cast your mind back to the early noughties – a time when dial-up was still widespread and the Apple G3s looked futuristic – and it becomes easier to recall why IM looked like it was about to conquer the world.
It was, after all, instant. It let users see if their friends and contacts were online and, if so, communicate with them in real time.
Tech-savvy office staff could chase up a query and expect an answer straight away, without having to pick up the phone. Teenagers in their bedrooms could exchange schoolyard tittle-tattle without the encumbrance of having to press “refresh” on the browser screen to their web-based e-mail account.
It also offered workers a handy means of circumventing their employers’ e-mail usage policies.
Chat’s all folks
Chris Green, a technology journalist turned industry analyst, recalls the heady days of IM’s ascendency.
“That was the way it was going,” he remembers. “E-mail had peaked. And IM offered additional value over e-mail.”
There were niggles, however. Initially, IM systems were “proprietary” and non-compatible, so those using Microsoft’s MSN Messenger were unable to reach friends on Aim, ICQ, or Yahoo! Messenger.
The firms would subsequently allow cross-pollenation of their systems, but, says Mr Green, the delay in “finding something that was ubiquitous across all platforms” – in the same way that sending an e-mail from a Yahoo! to a Hotmail account was seamless – cost the format dearly.
Google Talk
Google Talk was supposed to revive IM. It didn’t
Into the vacuum stepped social networking sites.
Paul Armstrong, director of social media with the PR agency Kindred, believes that the rise of the likes of Facebook and Twitter – which allow users to do much more than just send messages – simply had more to offer.
“With instant messaging you have to stay at your computer,” he says. “With social networking, you can use your phone’s web browser or SMS.
“Rather than shifting away from instant messaging, people are using the functions of instant messaging on different platforms.”
Even though Facebook’s own instant messaging system – not covered in the UK Online Measurement habits – was widely-regarded as inferior to those provided by the established IM networks, users were tied into a one-stop shop for sharing thoughts, photos, and being re-introduced to long-forgotten former colleagues and classmates.
Return to sender
The effect on IM, says Chris Green, has been catastrophic.
Windows Live Messenger – formerly MSN Messenger – was no longer “bundled” with Vista and Windows 7, becoming instead an optional extra, he says. Google may be bullish about Google Talk, the search engine’s attempt to blend IM with e-mail, insisting that millions of its users “love the convenience and simplicity” of the service.
But Mr Green says its modest success represents a “flop” when put alongside the company’s dominance elsewhere on the web.
We’ve gone from instant messaging to something that’s more like conference calls
LJ Rich
Technology journalist
“People have moved on,” he says. “The novelty value has worn off. If you look at teenagers today, they are using Twitter on their mobiles.”
But has IM died out altogether? The figures would suggest that although its market share has fallen, its raw numbers have not.
California-based IT research firm The Radicati Group estimates that there are 2.4 billion IM accounts worldwide, rising to 3.5 billion by 2014.
Plenty of browers, it seems, still value the speed and simplicity of IM.
Technology journalist and BBC Click presenter LJ Rich notes that, in many countries where internet use is censored, BlackBerry Messenger is used to bypass state-sponsored snoops.
And she believes that the principles of IM survive – it is just that sites such as Facebook and Twitter let us talk to a wider audience via a wider range of platforms, including mobiles.
“With social networks, we’ve gone from instant messaging to something that’s more like conference calls,” she says.
Maybe IM will have the last laugh after all. Or, rather, the last LOL.
Source: BBC News
Reviews gain new prominence on Google
Shoppers using Google to look for products will now find star ratings and reviews in their search results to help them to decide whether to buy. The development comes courtesy of a new partnership between social media technology company Bazaarvoice and Google.
It means reviews that previously appeared on companies’ websites, through the Bazaarvoice service will now also be visible when consumers search on Google for products or manufacturers sold through Bazaarvoice client websites.
Retailers will also now be able to insert product star ratings into their Google advertising. Ads will display the number of users to review a products as well as the average star-rating they gave under a 5-star system.
Sameer Samat, Director of Product Management at Google said: “Consumer Reviews have become such a driving force for online purchasing. If we look back five years ago, it was editorial reviews by experts. Now the internet has allowed ordinary people to have a voice, and that voice is very influential. With this program, we are reaching out to retailers and manufacturers and to use more of this content.”
John Rudoe, Head of Retail at Occado, a Bizaarevoice Ratings and Reviews client, welcomed the move. “Google’s decision to integrate such review content is a smart one and highly welcome,” he said. “For us it should mean more people viewing online food shopping with an even greater amount of confidence”.