The Different Ways of Finding A Good SEO Agency

When it comes to taking on the services of an SEO agency, there are lots of options out there!  Here is a guide to making sure you hire the right consultant for you and your business. Learn the Basics It is important to have an idea what SEO is before you start looking for an agency – try having a read online and getting an overall understanding before you start.  This will mean you are able to understand any jargon they throw at you and you will have an idea of the sort of steps which might be involved. Understand the Difference Between SEO and SEM Many agencies describe themselves as Digital Marketing agencies – they can do SEO, but they also do SEM, search engine marketing.  This is more to do with paid search adverts such as Pay Per Click (PPC).  SEO is the organic form of advertising.  You can have both, but SEO is not really to do with paid search. Have Key Information Available You will need to have accounts in order such as your Google analytics for the SEO team to use in their work.  Make sure you have these set up ready to go!

Create Good Content Which Is Search Engine Optimised

SEO relies heavily on good quality content – websites are often penalised if the pages do not have sufficient content, or content which is poor quality.  By optimising your content, you can be sure that your site will get ahead in the rankings. Your article should be really well written, engaging and informative.  Perhaps try presenting a topic from a fresh angle – a good hook in the start with useful information should make people want to read it!  Well written articles with good content attract more traffic, which means more visitors will come to your site.  This makes your article attractive to potential advertisers who may wish to advertise on your site.  Try to get your keyword within the title, as SEO robots will scan the article to find out what the keywords are. As well as the main keywords, it is worth featuring a range of additional words and phrases which are related to the main keyword.  These could be simply alternative phrases or similar phrases.  The Search Engine spiders will look for keywords and similar words, and see how often they are mentioned. Make sure your article is presented correctly – it needs a good title, to Continue

Web Design and Page Loading Speed

The page load speed is an important part of your website.  It is one of the things which can really influence the user experience and can either help you to retain customers or lose them entirely.  Did you know the majority of web users (according to research) prefer a site to load within 2 seconds?  Some sites can take as long as 10-20 seconds to load!  The longer the site takes to fully load, the more likely your web user is going to go off onto a different site. As web designers, there are lots of ways you can help speed up the loading time of a website.  The first is to reduce the size and resolution of images or photos used on the site.  Large scale images can take much longer to load and can make the site look a bit odd if they are not loading in time with everything else!  The same goes for video clips – as is the trend now, people like to have video clips within their headers to grab attention and explain about their brand – these video clips can be time consuming to load, so it is certainly worth compressing these down Continue

How to Get into Web Design

Website designers and developers are two really sought after professions!  It is not as hard as you might think to get into this industry either.  With a little bit of spare time, a good interest in the topic and LOTS of practice, you could find yourself making a nice income while making amazing websites! Here are some key points to help you make your first steps into web design. Learn from others – look at other websites and notice how they lay out the menus, the content area and the overall look of the page.  You can use these ideas in your own designs. Have the right tools – it is worth investing in a good graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator.  Making images using vector graphics is a good way to get the hang of graphic design, so this will be helpful. Get skilled!  There are a number of skills you will need to succeed:  These include HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, SQL and Bootstrap to name a few.  There are a number of good websites where you can learn the skills for free!  Check out Codecademy where you can take whole online courses in coding for beginners! Create Continue

Ideas for Getting the Right Website Made

Websites are a way for your audience to interact with your services and goods.  They are a portal into your brand and should represent your company in the way you want to be seen in public.  It is therefore important that your site is made correctly so that your audience enjoy using the site and finding out more about your products and services. Firstly, make sure that your links all work properly.  If you are linking to pages or products but the links are broken, it will cause problems for your users and they might be put off using your site again.  Ensure that when you insert links you have the URL correctly typed so that the link works every time. Look through your site for spelling errors – this can be a big turn off for customers and it actually can affect your SEO ranking too, as search engines prefer sites which show good English grammar and spelling.

The Steps to a Great PPC Campaign

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a great way to attract new visitors to a website, and hopefully convert them into buyers!  Here, an advertiser needs to pay for the ad based on the qualifying clicks.  Payments are made only when visitors click on the advert to visit the website or page.  What exactly is involved in developing a really good PPC campaign? Work out what you want to achieve: it might be that you want to get more subscribers, more sales or increased brand awareness.  You need to know what your goals are before starting, or you could end up running a campaign in the wrong direction! Have a clear budget: you must establish what you budget is before you start, as an advertiser you will need to make payments based on the number of qualifying clicks. List your keywords: This is very important!  The selection of the right keywords is essential to your campaign.  Only with the right keywords can a promotion work through PPC. Finalise your target keywords: you can select your keywords using a number of online tools such as Google Keywords Planner, or you could take on the expertise of a digital marketing agency to help Continue

All The Reasons You Should NOT Build Your Own Website!

Lots of people think it is easy to make a website – there are lots of web building tools online which allow you to drag and drop images and pop in a few words, but remember that these are highly generic tools and templates, not specifically designed for your business.  Here are the main reasons not to use a web builder to get your website running. Custom options: free website templates and builders do not have options to customise your site, and are not interactive.  Adding extra features simply isn’t possible!  Thousands of other people will be using the same templates and themes, so there will be lots of very similar looking sites out there… Working Ethic: it will be quicker and easier to let someone who knows what they are doing build your site, so you can spend time generating your business! Looking pro: a website built by a designer will always look professional. SEO: google tends to avoid ranking DIY sites, even if they do claim to be optimised.  Well designed sites will be optimised properly, allowing your site to flourish. Working with Google: DIY site builders cannot be verified in Webmaster Tools, so you won’t be able Continue

Finding a Great Website Designer

Web design might seem relatively easy, and something that anyone can learn – really it requires a deep level of knowledge and skills, and can take a long time to learn.  A great web designer is certainly worth taking on, as they can create the best website for your business needs.  How do you go about finding a good one? Search!  Look online for web designers, and find a few you like the look of.  You might want to search locally if you want to be able to meet in person, otherwise go ahead and search anywhere!  There will be a lot of results when you search for web designers, so have a good look at each of them. Get in touch! Contact a designer you like the look of and discuss with them what you are after.  They should be able to give you a rough estimate for pricing, along with some inital ideas to start off with.  They might need a few days to come back with an inital design proposal, so be prepared to wait. Check their portfolio!  A good web designer should have examples of their work available to see – they might have links on Continue