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.

 

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

We are often asked to redesign or ’sort out’ underperforming websites. Sometimes it’s because a competitor has taken delivery of a better website, but often it’s because an established website has started to look dated or isn’t performing as it should.

If you’re considering a website redesign, here’s some helpful advice from Roodee Web Design:

Have  A Clear Goal

Whether it’s an online shop, a lead generating site, an online brochure or an information website, establish what your goal is. For example, if you have an ecommerce website, the goal is get a click on the submit button on the payment page. Consider how you are going to take your site’s visitors from the point they entered the site to the goal. 

Our advice: make reaching the goal as easy as possible and strip out any obstacles that get in the way.

Look Current

What looked great a few years ago can quickly look tired, so new visuals are often top of the list when we’re asked to rework a website. Styling a concept begins on paper. See what else is out there; inspiration doesn’t just have to come from other websites.

Our advice: Get your pens out. We do this before we think of firing up Photoshop.

Ditch Splash Intro Pages

These were very fashionable in the 90’s. The majority were animated company logos that whizzed in or jiggled about a bit. They were supposed to give websites a professional and expensive ‘feel’. The truth is they got in the way for users, and they didn’t do well with search engines either.

Our advice: Whip out  the splash and ditch any pointless Flash.

Switch From Table Based Layouts

For a long time websites were built using tables to hold everything in place. These days websites use something else called DIV’s to place elements on pages and are styled with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS not only gives us far more freedom to come up with visually exciting designs that work in modern browsers, but it means the websites work better with search engines too.

Our advice: Ditch the table layout.

Keep Your Site Up To Date

What’s the point in presenting old, out of date information? It used to be very complicated making websites updateable (and expensive). These days it’s not. Visitors like current content, and search engines do too.

Our advice: Opt for a Content Management System.

See examples of our website redesigns or contact us for a quotation.

Advice CMS, content management, Redesign, search engine, SEO, webdesign

We’re chuffed, and our client is over the Moon. Look at this result (in purple) for their number one key term, Motorbike Accident Claim. It’s taken three months, but to get to the upper part of page one on Google ahead of schedule is a great result – especially in such a competitive market.

How did we get this position? Good quality content that’s constantly being updated. Simples.

If you’d like help with your Search Engine Optimisation give us a call.

Search Engines, Website News Chester, Motorbike Accident Claim, search engine optimisation, SEO

We are delighted to announce that the brand new website for an exciting photographic studio, based just outside of Chester, goes live this week.

The website will act as a shop window for our clients new photographic studio, portrait commissions, and works available for sale. The website features a stylishly simple Flash animation to showcase recent works, and a fully updateable gallery section for visitors who wish to browse.

The website features our standard Search Engine Optimisation, meaning it will be easy to find on Google using the target keywords specified by our client.

Our client can keep in touch with any visitors who arrive at the site via the easy-to-update Blog, and for techie-fans there’s an RSS feed (a simple way to receive only the latest content from a website or blog).

An elevated level of Content Management was requested for this project, so this has been built in to the project along with full training and ongoing support.

Revisit us on Friday 19th June to visit the new website. Alternatively, subscribe to our RSS feed or join our Newsletter.

We can add a Blog to virtually any website, even sites that we haven’t designed. Find out more.

Search Engines, Uncategorized, Website News Blogs, Chester, CMS, SEO

We have come to the conclusion that, for a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy to work, it should include a well-balanced combination of three core elements:

• 20% onsite optimisation; technical tweaks (many web design companies stop at this point);
• 40% ‘link building’, attracting links from other sites to yours;
• 40% on site content.

Get these three areas correct, spend enough budget so that the project is resourced correctly (ongoing SEO usually involves a lot of ‘donkey work’) and your site will start to perform in the organic (free) listings.

We have seen a few briefs that propose search optimisation at any cost. SEO was given cart blanche in many cases, compromising a website’s usability or its chances of reaching it’s ultimate goal such as converting a paid user.

Look at it this way: an over-the-top SEO strategy that dominates a website at the expense of other key site design considerations, like usability, would be just like creating an amazing radio commercial but forgetting to add in the contact details or the company name. The ad reaches loads of new potential customers, but they have no way of acting on it.

SEO does have an important place in the mix, but it must be sympathetically implemented, carefully balancing the key components that relate to a good user experience.

Website News adwords, Google, optimisation, optimization, PPC, search engine, SEO, Yahoo