Seo uk

You have analysed your business website, printed out your leaflets, had your business website designed and you are now ready for the next step Seo (search engine optimisation) or website optimisation. What is this? I hear you ask. search engine placement is crucial to getting your business websites seen. If your website is buried 2 pages or more in the search engines your information will never be found by your customers.

A search engine services company will improve your business website’s search engine ranking, making your business internet friendly and more visible to your audience, therefore providing you laser targeted visitors looking for your business website information.

Seo Services uk are Search engine optimisation services. Search engine promotion takes time, you could go the other way, go solo, submitting your site URLS (all separate pages) to the hundreds of search engines, major indexes, and specialty indexes…if you have a few hundred hours to spare. But if, like most of us, you are busy beyond recognition of what it means to sit down, take time, read, research, and submit to all these search engines, directories and indexes, the ideal way to go is professional search engine services.

Here’s what that search engine optimisation company, the RIGHT one, will do for your business websites. Seo uk will analyse your website, research the relevant keywords, build website optimisation, submit your business website to major search engines and improve your website’s search engine ranking. Keep in mind that this would take you months, likely, and it will still take even more time to get you listed by the search engines (a few weeks to a few months), but your site will appear on most if not all of the popular search engines:A good search engine submission service is hard to find and should be revered!

www.excavationcontractorssydney.com

My New Website

Introduction

When I decided I needed a website for my business I had no idea of the planning involved. Like most people, I thought web design meant deciding on the graphics and the look of the pages and then by some magic it would all happen.I simply hadn’t had any exposure to the planning and build process which I now know to be extensive!

I have a friend who is in the business of SEO web design and web content management systems so I approached him for a quote. As a complete novice who is computer literate up to a point, I was amazed at the depth of initial questioning required to find out exactly what I wanted to achieve.

I had no idea about the various elements and the structure of the site and I found it mind blowing when I learnt about the amount of work involved. So I thought other people would be interested to know more about this complicated process particularly if you consider yourself a non computer person and have to get a website built. I have asked my SEO friend to supply the technical information for this article.

Stages in the Process 

Target Audience

Before building a website there are important questions to consider. I was asked who would be my target audience. Who are my customers likely to be? Would they be children, businesses, home owners, sales people, parents or teenagers and so on? If you are not clear on your target audience then you are not going to be able to set the tone of the site correctly so this is a very important consideration.

The Objective of the Website

Then I was asked, what was the purpose of my website? Did I want to sell products on line or use it to market my business and get more leads for potential customers? Maybe I would want to use the site as an online brochure to showcase my services. Another possibility was to use the website to foster a community so that I was in contact with other like-minded people, with chat rooms, online discussions and being supported by advertising on the site.

I hadn’t quite realised the scope of a website but as I was asked these questions it became clear that a lot of careful planning went into the preparation before building a website. I realised it is like any project, the majority of the work is in the preparation, a bit like decorating really!

Creating a Site Map

The importance of creating a site map is to get it clear in your mind of all the pages you will have on your website so you can prepare the content for each page and begin to design the flow through the website, such as when a user adds a product to their basket, then enters their delivery and billing address and makes the credit card payment in the correct order.

My friend who specialises in SEO UK services, says that all the best websites they have built have been where the client has planned the site out with a sitemap even before they have contacted him.

The aim is to make the site as simple to use as possible so that there are no barriers to getting into the website or making a purchase. For that reason often user name and passwords are set for the customer so that they are not put off making a purchase by having to register. How many times have you gone to buy something online and then been faced with having to choose a user name and password to create an account, and fill out all of your address details and decided not to bother in the end? Well they just lost a sale!

For a non e-commerce site things are simpler with a contact form which allows you to receive enquiries by email without publishing your email address on the website, thus avoiding spam.Web forms can also validate the information before you receive it, so ensuring that the phone number provided does not contain words, and that the email address is in the correct format, for example. These things may sound very technical to us lay-folk but I assure you everything has to be decided on before starting on the construction of the site.

Your Domain Name

Choosing a domain name is often quite a challenge because every name you initially come up with will almost certainly have been taken. Domain names ending in .com are by far the most popular and internationally recognised; the snag is that it’s very popularity means that the majority of the shorter names have probably already been registered. However, you can usually think of some domain name that is available, which is much less time consuming than trying to purchase a previously registered domain name from its existing owner, most of the time just contacting them, and getting a reply is a challenge.

So looking at names with endings such as .net; .org .co.uk or .info may be able to provide you with the domain name you want. When choosing your domain name it is very important to include one or more of your keywords if possible as this can apparently help with search engine rankings. So although the name of your business is the obvious choice for a domain name, it is not necessarily the only option. You will no doubt have heard the Hoover/vacuum cleaner story, where Hoover is actually a brand name of a certain type of vacuum cleaner, but these days most people still say they are doing the ‘hoovering’ ! This is an important concept to bear in mind when choosing your domain name as hoovers4u.com might be a much better domain name than discountvaccuumcleaners.com, also vacuum is a tricky word to spell so think about things like that too. Also how easy is it to give out your domain name over the telephone for example? Classic examples of this are paydotcom.com and Slashdot.org confusing or what?

Copy

The next stage is preparing the copy. This is not the design of your website – just the words and visuals you want to have one each of the pages. A good idea before writing the copy is to have created your site map and decided on your SEO keywords, see below sections.

Having gathered all the above information you will need to decide what imagery you want to use within the website content. As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words. It is a popular concept that people don’t read, and is even more true on the web today, so use as many images, diagrams, cartoons and illustrations as possible.

For each image you could also have a caption, as the caption of an image is the next ‘most read’ words on the page after the page title. Images and their captions need to be clickable. When you click on a picture it should take you to the next stage of the process such as the sale page or placing an enquiry if your website is for lead generation. All images should also have alternative text or alt tags. Alt tags will display the hover text when you position your mouse over the picture, but also they are used by screen readers to assist visually impaired users know what the image is about.

Website Design

Finally we come to the design of your website.

Creative web design can be one of the most difficult stages in the site build because unlike something technical, it is not a simple case of black and white, it is determined by how the person, or people, viewing the designs feel about it.

There are a number of ways to approach website design but ultimately you need to create a design brief for the designer(s) to work from. Look at other websites and your competitor’s websites to find out what you like or dislike. The design brief should give reference to the logo, any existing brand guidelines or schemes and fonts and colour schemes, and should also detail which pages of the website that the designer is being tasked with creating visuals for. See the Sitemap section below.

The very best results will be achieved by using a graphic designer, and beware – not all graphic designers are the same. A graphic designer who designs specifically for print is working in a different discipline than a graphic designer who designs for screen and specifically the web. So choose your designer carefully, look at other work that person has done and determine whether or not you like their style. It is also worth remembering that design is a personal thing, just because you have used a company before and liked their work, do you know the same person will be doing the work if you use that company again?

If you are working in the big time and budget allows, use multiple graphic designers who have all been given the same design brief and request three concept designs from each designer. If the client themselves also do a graphic design, even if it’s a back of the envelope scribble, you will then have 10 concept designs. The next step is to get them all together and select the preferred elements from each design. Then give the work to the preferred graphic designer to work up as the final artwork. Once you have reviewed the final visuals the artwork files will then be provided to the developer, usually in layered Photoshop files.

The artwork should be finalised and agreed on by everybody before construction of the site begins. Otherwise it can lead to costly and time consuming changes and frustration for both the developer and the client.

Navigation

Another important consideration when building a website is how you want your navigation to work. You can have links within the content of your website, in the text, so there are not just links from the menu. You will need to decide whether the links will open into a new window, retaining your original page open or just change the page to the one clicked on. Next time you go online, you will realise how much thought has gone into the way in which a website works.

Production

Finally the preparation has been done and the site is ready to be built. Now for the more technical stuff! You will need to have decided which programming language to use to build the website. There are two main types for developing a website, one is Unix based, and the other is Windows based. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. If you are starting from scratch then it probably won’t matter, so you can go with the preference of your professional doing the work. My website is built on the Unix platform (apparently!) which is the same as many of the more well known websites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Also your website hosting must be compatible with the development language with which your website is built in.

Work In Progress

The best way to build a website and be able to monitor work in progress is on the web server where the site is ultimately going to live. This way, those involved in reviewing the work can see work in progress and provide feedback throughout the development.

Going live

The moment of excitement comes when your site finally goes live and you see the results of all the thought that has gone into the whole process.

When the demolition company website for my firm eventually went live I was really pleased, but also relieved that it was eventually done!

As soon as the site has gone live there is no substitute for real world testing though, so ask as many of your friends and colleagues to view the website from their own offices and give you their thoughts.

Accessibility and Compliance

The website has to meet the current standards for website coding and doing so insures that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access the entire website if they are using a Braille web browser. It is also a good idea to also discuss conformance moving forward, particularly if you have a web content management system, because and accessible of compliant site may become un-accessible after six months of being edited by you if you do not add or edit the website content in an accessible manner.

Unforeseen Items

There are always things that arise in any project which you suddenly realise you have forgotten, so no matter how well the website designer prepares and asks the right questions, there is bound to be a last minute change of mind or addition to the site. The main aim is to minimise the number of glitches that might arise because they aren’t calculated in at the start and they could cause extra costs and delays on the date of the website going live.As a general rule it is always a good idea to get he site live to the original plans and then look at an update after it has gone live, unless it is a very small deviation from the initial plans.

Reporting and Monitoring

Once your website is up and running, you might like to know how many people visit your website and from that number how many actually buy the products or place an enquiry. From these statistics you can work out the ratio of hits to sales and gradually make changes to improve the ratios. There are some reliable statistics packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com which allow you to collect and review website visitor data in near real time. All you need to do this is to have a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site.

Another useful service that Web-stat.com provides is to monitor the website and warn you by email or text message if the site goes down.

Marketing

Once the website is live there are lots of things you can do to market your product or service. The first step is to submit it to the search engines and at the same time write articles, and press releases. Getting links to the site from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces are other options. For more on this subject ask your designer about SEO, remember that’s search engine optimisation.

How to be Found on the Web

One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘Do you want it to be found by Google the main search engine?’ If I did then there was a whole process of establishing Keywords. So finding the best keywords are vital if you want to be found in Google. He says there are two main types of keywords. The first is the trophy, or generic, keyword for the industry which in my industry is simply ‘demolition’. The second kind of keyword is the long tail keyword. These are not searched for as frequently but if you can get a match then they are much more likely to convert into customers. A good example of this in my industry is ‘factory demolition company Derby’. So it is very important to do a lot of research on keywords to find both those that are the most popular and the most specific. Generally most users only look at the top ten results so you will want to get your website promoted so as to get on this page for your chosen keywords. By using a keyword research tool such as the keyword lookup in the Google Web Master Tools kit you can find the single most popular keyword for your industry.

Conclusion

Wheww. What an amazing amount of work! I hadn’t realised when I started the process of getting a website up and running, how complicated it all is and how many factors you have to consider before even designing the website. The word web design is really a misnomer, as people often think it’s just about the graphic design on the home page, and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer whizz, most people have no idea how much goes into designing and building a website and the systems that support the work you want it to do. I hope that this article gives you an understanding and insight into the whole process of website development from start to finish.Next time you type in a web address or click on a link to a website, remember all the above work that has probably gone into it!

 

Why should I put a sitemap on my website?

For many folks, a sitemap is frequently thought to be unnecessary in the process of assembling a domain, and that is basically true if the only reason you make one is for the sake of it.  Employing a well designed sitemap on your website is basically terribly useful and to my mind, vital.  Especially re search engine optimisation.  There are a few reasons why building a sitemap for your site can be a massive advantage. 

Navigation

As the name says, the sitemap actually does act as a map of your internet site, if you build it that way.  This may be useful to visitors to your website if they are on the lookout for something in particular that may not be manifestly available on the default page, or on the page which they entered your internet site on.  Also, if your internet site is very large, many folks find having an outline of how it all fits together will help them know how to find everything they are looking for on your internet site. 

Overall image of the site’s ‘theme’. 

As soon as your visitors to your website study the sitemap, they are going to get the final idea of what your internet site is all about awfully swiftly.  This can save time, for your visitor, as they do not need to troll thru plenty of pages to get an understanding of what it is you try to achieve. 

SEO

What takes place when you build a good sitemap, is that you are in reality making a single page on your website which links to each other page on your website.  This makes it way easier for the search engines to look into your site and it helps to have all the pages on your site indexed ( listed ) by the search engines.  It’s important for SEO, that the sitemap is able to be navigated to from your homepage, so take care there’s a link to the sitemap on the homepage of your website. 

A well organized site. 

By creating a sitemap, it lets you have a very good outline of how your website is put together.  That means that when you add new pages to your site, it can be reasonably easy to see the best place to put it, just by having a look at your sitemap. 

Building a sitemap for particularly large sites is important for all the reasons I’ve discussed here.  It is definitely worth making the effort. 

For more help with SEO services including search engine friendly site design either from scratch or as a redesign. 

Good search engine optimisation will get you plenty of qualified targeted consumers to your internet site.

Do You Need an SEO Expert?

A website needs traffic and that traffic needs to convert into leads, sales, opt-ins or downloads if it is to be considered a worthwhile business asset. Unless your target customers can find you within the top 2 or 3 search engine results pages you may as well be sticking a post-it note on a tree somewhere in the Brazilian rain forest. 

If you are already aware that your website isn’t all that it could be, you might be considering employing a SEO Expert. Search engine optimisation, sometimes referred to as SEO, is a process that improves the visibility of your website by improving rankings on search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo!  for keyword phrases related to your business. This in turn will generate more traffic to your website, but good SEO doesn’t stop there.

Why Most Small Businesses Say No to the SEO Expert

One of the most common reasons that small companies give for failing to take advantage of expert SEO help and advice is price. Yet most are losing more than the cost of SEO in missed sales and profitability over and over again. That’s profit which ultimately improves your competitor’s balance sheet.

Good SEO might is not cheap and usually requires a substantial deposit even though results may take months to achieve.  Add to this the fact that no Professional SEO will ever guarantee positions to a client and you can see why most small business owners view Search Engine Optimisation as a risky investment.

Pay For Performance SEO

The basis for Pay For Performance SEO is simple, at the beginning of any campaign the objectives are clearly defined and marked out and no payment is required until those objectives have been met.  This could represent front page rankings for your most important keyword phrases or to secure a predefined number of opt-ins to your newsletter.

Pay for Performance SEO won’t make SEO any cheaper or offer any guarantee but it does remove much of the risk element from the client’s perspective and places it fairly and squarely at the feet of the optimiser.  Where it should be!

Wealthmanifest

Search Engine Optimisation Scotland

Choosing a Search Engine Optimisation company to partner with is one of the most important business decisions that companies throughout Scotland are facing today. Effective SEO can raise the visibility of your products or services globally and create new revenue streams for your business that were previously unavailable.

Unfortunately, choosing an SEO company to manage the optimisation and marketing of your web site can be a difficult process. Many Search Engine Optimisation Companies will make unrealistic promises of number one positions in order to secure your business. Others lack transparency and remain secretive about the techniques they use. With this in mind we have created the following 5 point guide to help Scottish businesses choose a search engine optimisation firm.

 

1. Insist on references from previous clients. Contact those clients and find out if they were satisfied with the service they received, if their SEO campaign achieved its objectives and if they would recommend the company to others.
2. Do not get tied into a long contract. If their services are good you will probably stay with them anyway, however, you don’t want to be tied to a company that cannot deliver.
3. Do not work with any SEO company that contacts you out of the blue. The services of top performing SEO’s are in constant demand they simply don’t have the time or the necessity to cold call.
4. How well does the SEO Company’s own website rank. You would expect a top SEO in Scotland to rank for a wide range of geographic terms as well as others. ‘SEO Scotland’, ‘Search Engine Optimisation Scotland’ and ‘SEO Company Scotland’ for example.
5. Choose a SEO company that practises a strict no-spam policy.  To avoid your website being penalised or completely removed from search engine indices make sure you are dealing with an ethical ‘white hat’ company.

Do due diligence – don’t get suckered by a fly-by-night SEO company, insist they substantiate their claims and can present client testimonials as proof