We turned this one page web site around same day for Luke from the Community Education Awards, and we were delighted to receive such a glowing endorsement.

Single page websites are ideal for short-term marketing campaigns, and are perfect replacements for ‘website coming soon’ parking pages.

We are a highly creative Chester web design company – not an agency who subcontract – and we turn single-page websites around in-house very quickly and inexpensively. For further details or to brief us, please call 01244 566286 or visit our contact page.

Uncategorized, Website News Awards, Chester, Community, one page website, single page web design, Web Design

This is the newly launched web site for a Chester-based business offering Varicose Vein Treatment services.

This is a web re-design project that see’s a completely new skin added to the site, the addition of a full content management system, and Search Engine Optimisation. Visit the website.

Graphic Design and Illustration

We were also able to show off our illustration skills with a series of original (hand) drawn graphics that feature throughout the site.

Want a website re-design?

We can take content from an existing website and give it a new lease of life. We love website makeovers just as much as we love starting from scratch with a new webdesign project. Our office is in Chester, and we accept projects from businesses and individuals based across the North West of England and North Wales – and sometimes beyond!

Ask us for a quote on 01244 566286.

Website News Chester, makeover, medical web design, Redesign

Just in time for the new season, a brand new website for Chester’s football teams and a vast army of supporters is now live.

We are delighted to launch Chester And District Football League’s brand new website, featuring the very latest football news for Chester, fixtures, rules, even maps and directions to the clubs that make up the league. The website features a full content management system and is administered by multiple users.

The web design is based on a detailed brief we received from our client, and incorporates the League’s existing logo. For usability and functionality we looked at many web sites, ranging from Premier league to local league. The site was sketched out on paper first before being drawn out in Photoshop and then hand coded.

The turnaround for this web site design and build project was extremely rapid. The time from commissioning to testing and final publication was a little over three weeks.

Sponsorship

We are also delighted to be one of CDFL’s sponsors for the 2010/2011 season and look forward to joining the thousands of supporters who will be using the website in Chester and surrounding areas.

Web Design Chester

If you would like us to makeover your existing website, or start from scratch with a brand new web design, check out our portfolio or visit us at our office, based in Chester. Please call 01244 566286 for a no-obligation quotation.

Community, Website News cdfl, Chester, content management, Football, Web Design, web design Chester, web site, webdesign Chester, website

Roodee web design in Chester has been chosen to design the new website for the Chester & District Football League, and we are delighted to announce our sponsorship deal for the 2010/2011 season.

If you are a player, referee, coach or are one of the thousands of supporters of the league, you will be seeing a lot of Roodee this season, proud to support our local footballing community.

The new website for CDFL’s new season has a brand new address, and brand new concept, lots of essential information and will be a main resource for football teams throughout Chester and surrounding areas.

Want a makeover for your web site?

This is a specialist area, and we enjoy the challenge of giving an existing website a new look with a redesign. Our office is in Chester and we have clients in the city and surrounding areas. Contact us for a free appraisal of your web site by calling us on 01244 566286.

Uncategorized cdfl, Chester, chester and district football league, Web Design, website

We are more than happy to take a look at websites that have been developed elsewhere when it comes to giving Chester businesses a helping hand.

One of our newest clients wanted a helping hand with moving domains and webhosting for the website for a guesthouse in Chester. The original design from another web designer has been left intact, although we have recoded the site in html.

We were also asked to cover the basics of Search Engine Optimisation, so the site could be found easily. The result is a website that is now climbing very steadily on Google for a number of other searches including ‘B&B Chester‘. Reaching page one of Google for very competitive terms can take time, but with sensible targets, measurement of achievements, an eye on competitor activity and a regular schedule it is certainly possible.

Search Engine Optimisation can be carried out by our in-house team for you (we don’t subcontract or farm any work out), or we are happy to pass on what we know with our SEO tutorials.

Got a problem with your website? Contact us today on 01244 566286 – we’ll be happy to take a look for you. Our office is in Chester and we have many clients in the city and surrounding areas.

Search Engines Chester, hotel, search engine optimisation, SEO, Web Design

Google Analytics

As we’ve previously discussed, Search Engine Optimisation on page and Search Engine Marketing off page are two very different techniques, that when combined can bring greater numbers of visitors, and more importantly, better qualified visitors to your web site.

Before making a start with on page and off page optimisation, it’s a good idea to know where you are today so you can set realistic goals and see how well you are doing further down the road. This means you need some traffic analytics so you know your position and more information about your performance today. You’re looking for information on the numbers of visitors, where your visitors came from, how they found your site, the keywords they use and where they enter and navigate to in your site. There are lots of tools available some free, some not. Perhaps the best known of the free ones is Google Analytics, which is pretty straight forward to set up. You’ll need a Google account, an email address and access to your websites files so you can add a little bit of tracking code.

When you’re setting goals for your website, it’s best not to think in terms of setting a vague target such as getting to number one on Google, which is very difficult in most cases and not in your control. But if you have a realistic goal, such as see an increase in enquiries or an increase in sales by 30% over 4 months, you will be able to see how your on page and off page efforts are performing by comparing your analytical data.

Domain Names

Your domain name at the time of writing this is important, with Google Caffeine giving extra weight to websites with keywords in the domain. Whether this will always be the case, who knows, as this is a technique that is being widely used now to influence search engine results.

If you offer multiple services or lots of different products this may not be an approach you want to take.

However keywords really should be in the structure of each page name. Ideally about three keywords is good and five is the maximum. Any more and the search engines don’t give your page any more weight.

Choosing Keywords

Selecting the right keywords for your site is crucial. The right keywords and use of those keywords are not just important for optimising your website for the search engines, they are also going to help you communicate to site visitors in language they choose to use themselves. The key here is to be sympathetic to search engines, but not forget that the page has got to make sense to humans too. Loading keywords onto a page is seen as ‘spammy’ and won’t do you any favours on search engines. You’ll come across some pages on websites that just don’t make any sense because they have been written for search engines, and not for humans.

To start with, make a list of keywords, not just single words and the top terms, but groups of words and phrases too. Think about your ideal customer. What words, what phrases would they use to find your website? Include them in your list. Ask colleagues, friends, family, and existing customers for ideas on words to add. Go onto competing websites. Have a look at the bottom of Google results pages for alternative suggestions. There are some tools you can use to help with keyword ideas too.

Once you have a good, long keyword list, think about how you are going to use the words. You don’t want to take a chunk of say 100 words and group them together into a paragraph that doesn’t make sense. Instead group the keywords into subject areas and write good quality content that includes them. Don’t overdo it. Your chosen keywords should only form about 3% of the text content. This is known as keyword density.

You need to use keywords in META tags. META tags are bits of your pages code that are there to help search engines understand what your pages are about. You need to use keywords in your pages body text and you need to use them in the anchor text for the links that point into your website from other websites. For example instead of having the words ‘click here’ on a clickable link, relevant keywords instead give the search engines a better idea of what the link is pointing towards and adds a bit more weight to it.

More about the content you need to be writing next time. In the meantime, if there’s any help you need with SEO, you can contact us via our website.

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Search Engines Chester, Google, podcast, search engine optimisation, SEO

Disaster has struck Team Roodee ruling us out of Chester Raft Race 2010. A back injury to our skipper, Simon Davies, leaves us with no option than to quietly watch the race from the Meadows this year.

Organised by the Rotary Club of Chester, Chester Raft Race is an annual event that raises thousands of pounds for worthy causes and charities. This year, ‘Help For Heroes’ is the beneficiary of the fund raising efforts of Chester businesses taking part on Sunday 4th July 2010.

Although we won’t be able to make a splash in the water this year, we are still looking forward to being in the thick of it and look forward to meeting up with our friends and clients on the Meadows before a short walk over to Chester Racecourse for the Showjumping. If the Met Office forecast is accurate, spectators will be just as wet as the raft racers.

We are making a donation directly to the Rotary Club of Chester.

Community 2010, Chester, chester raft race, donation, injury, Rotary

With millions and millions of websites, and billions and billions of pages all fighting for attention on Google, it’s no wonder you can easily get lost in the noise – no matter how great your site is, or how great your message is.

 

 How to be found on Google episode 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Some people say having a great website that no one can find is like being lost in the desert. We disagree. We say having a great website that no one can find is like being part of a really big city, but you’re stuck on a back street that no one can find.

So if your website is stuck half way down page 1 million and you want to get nearer to page one – and even better, nearer to the top of page one, what can you do?

That’s what this series is going to be about. Just what can you do to improve your chances of being found on the search engines.

That’s where search engine optimisation comes in, or SEO.

With SEO, like with many other digital marketing activities, you need to carefully define what you want to achieve for your website, and then get the right tools together so you can hit your targets. More about these tools later.

Secondly,it’s important to measure the traffic you are sending to your website. And it’s important to stress that we’re not just interested in volume of traffic being driven to your site, but it’s the quality of that traffic that’s far more important. There are free and paid for tools that can let you see how you’re doing so you can make adjustments as and when necessary.

And thirdly, you need some creativity. A little is good, but lots is better. SEO today really does need good quality content that’s going to entertain, tell a story, be passed around, be linked to and so on.

Your content needs to be found by the search engines and there’s far more than just text that users are looking for when they search. Images, videos, maps, blogs, comments, posts can all get you in front of your prospects as they use the search engines.

The difference between organic search and paid search

There’s a key difference between paid and organic search, and it’s important to know the difference between the two. Open up your browser and go to Google. Type in any search term you like, for example ‘garden furniture wirral’ and then click ‘search’. When you see the results, all of those listings you see at the very top against a beige are labelled ‘sponsored links’. And there are more down the right hand column. These have all been paid for by advertisers, and Google charges them a fee every time someone clicks.

All of the other links are not paid for. These are known as organic results, and this is what people who are interested in SEO concentrate on. They get the most clicks, and no matter how many people click on these links, Google doesn’t charge.

Getting to the top of the organic listings, especially in a competitive niche isn’t easy and staying there can be very difficult. Today the number one result for that term is a client of ours, but as there are many variables, and competitors can pull some surprising tricks – not all playing by Googles rules – things can and do change.

But with good, unique (this is very important) content and properly built web pages, quality links pointing to your website from other websites and content that’s updated regularly, your chances of getting a good position on Google are improved.

Beware anyone who claims or guarantees a number one position, that’s an impossible promise to make. All that ethical SEO can guarantee you is an improved chance.

Now SEO usually covers what you do on your websites pages, and once you’ve optimised your pages, you need to look at the various ways you can bring people in. There are many ways you can do this. For example you can have links from other sites that are relevant, links from articles, you can have links from social websites like Facebook and Twitter. These all come from elsewhere, off-site and the process is often referred to as Search Engine Marketing or SEM.

Practicing SEO and SEM can help to get you to a good place on the search engines.

We’ll go into the nitty grity of Search Engine Optimisation next time. In the meantime, if there’s any help you need with SEO, you can contact us via our website.

Roodee is a web design company based in Chester, UK. You can find us at www.roodee.co.uk.

Advice, Audio, Search Engines, Video be found on Google, boost, Chester, get found, Google, how to be found on Google, search engine optimisation, website

Today is the day Apples eagerly awaited iPad lands in the UK. The Twittersphere is full of Tweets from people from all walks of life who have added them to their wish-lists. There are some who have had iPads for some time and are letting everyone who’ll listen know how wonderful they are.

The hype spilled over to London’s LBC radio this morning, with host Nick Ferrari taking calls from listeners who will go to great lengths to get their hands on the thing. We even got to hear from an entrepreneur who managed to get on to promote his iPad screen protector films.

Thanks to Steve Jobs master marketing, everyone knows the benefits and what iPad looks like (and demand is pretty much guaranteed to outstrip supply).

What does iPad mean for web design? Our thoughts are with load speed now a major factor in Google’s results, thanks to the Caffeine release, and with iPad’s reliance on 3g and wifi connectivity, lean and compliant code is a must.

As the argument between Apple and Adobe continues to keep Flash off Apple products, jQuery’s use is booming, and alternatives to Flash delivery of video continue to be implemented.

There are over 200,000 apps already available for iPhone users, with the vast majority usuable on the iPad. Some make the transition from the small screen to the near A4 size screen better than others. There is the option to view in original size or expanded. There are already thousands of apps designed just for iPad, and the smart money is on this being a massive area of growth for designers and developers.

Last week Apple overtook Microsoft as the worlds biggest tech company. It will be interesting to look back in 12 months from now to see the effect the iPad has had on the gap.

Advice Chester, iPad, web designing

After heated scenes in Chester on polling day, Roodee was asked to help deliver the news of who had won and lost seats in Cheshire.

We quickly deployed updates for the news sections on the radio stations for Chester and Macclesfield which included a full list of voting results and exclusive photos of Chesters outgoing MP, Christine Russell with her feet up in the cafe at the Northgate Arena after a hard day, and the first photos of newly elected Stephen Mosley as he made his speech.

With results for Ellesmere Port and Neston coming late, due to a recount, Facebook and Twitter were the perfect platforms to deliver this news.

Need to deliver news to your clients? We love communicating. We can help with blogs, Facebook, Twitter and even radio, tv and video. Our office is in Chester. Talk to us on 01244 566286.

Community Chester, Christine Russell, election, ellesmere Port, heated scenes, MP, Neston, radio, Stephen Mosley