Cirencester Website Design

SEO proactive website monitoring

In the highly competitive Internet market place the need to pro actively monitor your website is essential.  Ensuring that your website is performing, means more qualified traffic and higher conversion rates.

Website analytics provides a lot of information but what do you do with it?  If your bounce rate is higher than 50% then your website is not meeting visitors expectations.  Left unattended this will damage your website position in search result placement relegating your business into the realms of obscurity.

Traffic profiles are your links working?  What proportion of your traffic are from referrals?  Are search engines generating enough traffic?  Is your advertising working?  How many direct hits did you achieve following an advertising campaign?  Are your PPC campaigns working?

The answer to all these questions are in the website analytics.  Our proactive monitoring services delivers a concise report of your website activity on a monthly basis in language you will understand.

We also monitor your current search result placement for specific keywords alerting you to promotion and demotion with probable reasons.

Further more we will pro actively ensure that any “search engine” issues are identified and corrected before any long term damage is caused.  This may be duplicated content, malware attacks or poor website performance statistics.  Plus we check for DNS issues and validation problems.

This service is provided by our professional SEO’s, not automated, we are able to interpret problems and the underlying issues and either take remedial action or advise you on the best course of action.  Your dedicated SEO is available to you to discuss issues and provide advice as and when needed.

This service is available from £99.00 per month.  If you need a full or part time SEO for larger projects visit our Online marketing | SEO management page for more information.

Mobile ready website.  Is yours?

The mobile device is poised to overtake the web browsing market.  The reason is simple and comes down to pure convenience i.e. when travelling it is far easier to use a mobile device rather than a lap top.  Every person , over the age of 10, has a mobile whereas only a small percentage have a dedicated PC or laptop available to them.

So what does this mean for business who rely on the Internet for business growth and revenues?  The answer is clear if your website does not render well (look good) on a mobile device then your website / business is going to suffer.

Most websites that conform to World wide We Consortium (W3C) standards are already “mobile ready”.  The W3c lays out the standards for web browsers and web designers.  If your website validates then it will look the same regardless of the technology or browser version.  This is true of older windows based machines use Internet 6 or earlier through to state the Apple I-Phone.

The current standards are based on a 2 tier architecture og HTML for structure and CSS for visual rendering.  HTML creates the architecture creating areas for pictures, text and everything else you see on screen.  CSS defines those areas for size and styling.  For example he HTML will define an area known as a division and CSS defines the size, colour, styling etc of that division.

Typically this means that a browser can interpret both the HTML and the CSS to make the website look the same regardless of say “screen size” as screen size is defined by the hardware and the browser will propotion the web page according to the available space.

Unfortunately for website’s built 3 or more years ago, and is still the case for some web designers, website were built using tables.  This means that the website dimensions are fixed by the table sizes.  For eaxmple the overall table would have been set to accommodate the smallest possible screen, typically 800 pixels wide, hence a table size of circa 780 pixels would be the standard website size.

The consequence of fixing the size of a table is that it remains fixed so on a mobile device it is not possible to be proportionally adjusted.  To the mobile user it will be like seeing a picture of an elephant 4 inches at a time.  The result of course is obvious the user will simply move to the next website that renders well on the device being used.

How do you know if your website if your website validates to W3C standards?  It is simple visit the W3C HTML validator and enter your website address.  You will get an immediate result.

What do you do if your website does not validate.  Call us and we will advise you further.  Telephone 01285 711699

Cirencester Civil Engineering are well known for their civil engineering projects including the prestigious memorial for Princes Diana.

Lesser known is their domestic driveway service providing everything from gravel to their hall mark resin bonded surfacing.

Having researched the market our advice was to create a new website specifically targeted at the domestic market.

Covering the UK the research indicated that most Internet searches are done on a local basis i.e. “driveways gloucestershire”. From an SEO point of view this is not great as the traffic volumes are low individually but added together is significant.

The answer was to integrate a blog that would allow CCE to add references for the work they have done nationally.

Once indexed by search engines they will appear in local searches based on the blog content.

We automated Twitter so that every new blog past is sent to Twitter and we then integrated Twitter into the CCE Driveways website.

A simple SEO solution to a complex issue. The new website is monitored and tweaked by a Winning Inch Digital Marketing Manage on a fixed hours per month basis.

The website is fully editable by the client using the Winning Inch CMS system and the blog architecture is open source WordPress blogging platform fully customised to match the main website.

The Blog pro-actively “pings” search engines and other social networking sites automatically to maximise exposure.

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Christmas comes but once a year. Not true for the Christmas shop! They are open 7 days a week every day of the year.

Winning Inch was called in August 2009. The existing website was not performing at all with just 200 visits per month.

The bounce rate, the measure of content meeting expectations by visitors, was really bad at 92%. Meaning visitors opened the website and left again quickly.

Winning Inch redesigned the website, added a new e-commerce system and provided a Digital Marketing Manager on a three month contract.

The results speak for themselves. The bounce rate is now 30%, site visits peaked at 13,000 and even now, March 2010, is still at 8,000.

Main features of the new website:

Search engine friendly e-commerce

Optimised structure

E-mail sign up and CRM

Social networking integration

Keyword targeted

Search for:

“Christmas shop” page 1 position 1-2 on Google competing with 124million other websites.

“German Christmas decorations” page 1 position 1 on Google competing with 591,000 other websites.

The new website can accommodate new requirements such as “Easter” products easily and with a full CMS system content updates can be done by the client at any time.

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Pay Per Click (PPC) is not in itself a sustainable strategy and should therefore be used tactically.

Wining Inch SEO’s view PPC as a means to an end. It is a tool used to gauge the value of a set of keywords. Keyword research can only go so far in indicating traffic volumes and competition difficulty. Reality is very different. For example a given keyword i.e. “design” is very broad and although traffic stats may look good it will include a mass of benign visits. where as “designer” may have less volume but is far more likely to convert.

Obviously this is a simplified example to emphasise the point that someone searching for a “designer” is more likely to have a more immediate need over someone searching “design”. The moral being do not waste money on benign keywords and learn from the practical experience.

Using PPC to weed out unproductive keywords, those that do not convert, leaves productive keywords. Winning Inch SEO’s adopt the, proven, productive keywords into the client’s website and/or social media strategy.

We recommend using PPC tactically to optimise your website organically. Projects typically range from 1-3 months and spend is based on your budget. Call us on 01285 711699 for more information.

SEO Server optimisation is relatively quick and simple but can have a profound effect on your website performance in search placements.

The first consideration is the removal of any duplicate content risk. If you can access your website using http://yourwebsite.com as well as http://www.yourwebsite.com. The chances are that your website is not performing. The reason is search engines view the two possible variants as two entirely different websites. This is referred to as Canonical or canonicalisation. If you are familiar with your server’s .htaccess file you will find how to fix the problem in a couple of lines of code which you will find here..

However, those not familiar with your server environment Winning Inch will do it for you.  But there is more that needs to be done.

File compression.  Your server can be set to send compressed data to your local browser.  This significantly reduces the transaction time between the server and the local machine browser.  Since the introduction of Google Caffeine, December 2009, load speed is now an issue that will effect your search positions.  This is mainly due to the move away from PC’s and Lap top’s to more and more people using mobile devices.  Again as above this can be fixed using the .htaccess file.

Browser caching can also play a big role in performance.  By default it is unlikely that your server tells a local web browser to keep a cache of large files i.e. images.  So each time your website is loaded in a browser the server needs to send each image.  If browser caching is switched on, setting to cache the images for a month or more, the images are already available to repeat visitors.  The result is a super fast load time.

Google collects load speed from browsers using the Google bar so all aspect covered above are important now but more so in the next 12 months.

Another consideration, for dynamic website’s, i.e. e-commerce, is to make the server deliver search engine URL’s.  For example if you sell a range of clothes your product pages URL’s may look like:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/product/category.php?CategoryId=414367&ProductHead=24

When it should read:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/designer-name/mans/jumpers/blue/size34

The former is useless to a search engine whereas the latter will be highly effective in placing that item in search results.  This too can be corrected via the .htaccess file, however, it will depend on your existing architecture.

Winning Inch provides a full server side SEO package from just £99.00 which is a time exercise.  Call us on 01285 711699 for more details.

Our server side SEO package is also available from our complete SEO package.  You can save £295 on a complete SEO solution over buying individual items.

Social networking is an essential element to positioning your business via the Intenet.

A social networking strategy is very individual to what your business has to offer.  It is about two things the first is “authority” and the second is “engagement”

Authority

Maybe authority it too strong a word.  It should read “authoritative” in your business sector.  This is mainly gained via your own website content and blog.  A practical authoritative measure may be the number of people that link to your content.  This has long been established as Page Rank via back links.  This is a dying requirement in relation  to search search result placement and is giving way to relevancy.  Bing for example places far more emphasis on relevancy than the number links you have.  Google has recognised this and is, due to the grey industry built up around back links, moving toward relevancy and performance.

Engagement

However, there is authority to be gained via other methods.  Participation and even hosting an industry forum.  This connects directly to your potential customers.  We have seen this work very successfully at money saving expert where people go to find answers and ask advice on all kinds of financial matters.  Personal referrals really work.  For the younger market this is a given they ask for advice from their online friends and the popular votes wins.  This has not escaped the eyes of the search engines who are all involved / own leading social networking websites.

As a business you will be an expert in your chosen field.  So spread the word, demonstrate your expertise and although you cannot be too blatant about it sell your company.  Your participation and profile authority will not be missed by search engine’s.  Remember that “no follow” or link redirects can still be followed by search engines.

Creating your own forum is clearly a good thing to do.  It increases relevant traffic to your domain which builds trust and loyalty.  Within our business SEOmoz, they provide free and premium SEO tools, have a very active forum.  Members can post questions and receive answers from SEOmoz SEO’s and other SEO’s like Winning Inch.  Of course this not a great model as you need to pay to ask a question but never the less it is an effective marketing platform.

Google too has a very active webmaster forum.  This helps webmaster’s with problems to ask questions and receive answers.  Questions are primarily answered by more experienced SEO’s /Webmasters who give their time voluntarily.  Winning Inch SEO’s must participate in this forum and required to maintain a level 7 plus authority ranking.  This is the forum we use to build our own authority, is a great source of new business and maintains our knowledge base as changes in Google’s search algorithms can be identified early.

Hosting your own blog is another way to engage / extend your keyword base / exposure to a larger audience.  Winning Inch provides a blog customisation service so that your blog matches your website.  We recommend WordPress as it is very well supported, is mature and is packed with relevant helpful features such as pro-actively “pinging” search engines and social networking website every time you create a new post.

We add a Twitter feed, much like the “ping” service, your blog is tightly integrated with Twitter.  We also recommend adding a Twitter widget to your website home page.  This creates maximum exposure of blog both at a Twitter level and website.

The Winning Inch social networking service is available to identify the right social networking sites for your business.  Call us for more details on 01286 711699.

The other option is to engage one of our Digital marketing managers to manage the entire process, and much more, for you.

Winning Inch launched a new free SEO advice group on Facebook.

The new service will offer free SEO advice to website owners.  To use the service visit free seo advice and ask a question.

We look forward to seeing you there.

SEO tips – Page titles

Good page title tags are essential. We often find that title tags are neglected creating an “untitled page” or that the same page title is used for all pages.

Search engines use title tags to display page info in search results.

As such title tags are essential and must reflect the content of each page and use appropriate keywords.

Title tags go into your <head> section of the web page between <title></title>. i.e. <title>your page title goes here</title>

Title tags should be a short summary of the pages content and include your keyword.  When you see a list of results from a search engine the first line on each result is based on the title tag.

Title tag length should be limited to around 65 characters, including spaces, this is not a definite number but is the maximum that will be displayed so to get your message across concisely do it in 65 characters.

See also meta descripton