Website Design & SEO Tips

Just a quick reminder to all small businesses that would like to become larger businesses.  Firstly get a Google Map Listing, secondly GET A WEBSITE, thirdly publicise it!

If you do not have a website, please please at least get a Google Local Map listing, if you do not know how to read my SEO Blog.  As long as you do not work in the graphic design, web design or SEO industries you will be fine as searches for “your type of business town” should bring local map entries up at the top of the search results.

If you do decide to get a website make sure you follow all the advice I give here and on my SEO website BUT whether you create the site yourself or whether you ask us or anyone else to do it remember CONTENT is KING!  You may well like all the pics etc but without some good interesting relevant words the search engines will not like you.  Sometimes you have to just bite the bullet and write honestly about what you do and what services you provide.  You need at least 300 words on each page – in this post so far my word count is only up to 205!!  Write out at least 600 words for each page and let your web designer cut them down if they feel it is necessary.  Any good website designer will know how to best phrase your content.  If you give us only 150 words for each page you are heading for failure no matter how lovely your website looks.

Thirdly as I said publicise!  No search engine is going to give a jot about your website if you do not market it.  You must have business contacts who have websites too, well ask them to write up a few paragraphs on their website as to how you helped them or whatever and make sure they include a link to your website but make so so sure that they use good link text [read my SEO website above and the attached blog for more information].  Plus of course use social media to drive people to your website, again look on the SEO blog mentioned above.

Wierdly though, we have a website we designed about a year ago that has only ONE incoming link, no adverts, but has a pagerank of 3/10 for most of its important pages.  So Google is fickle, but you can’t rely on that and our wonderful programming skills, you have to do stuff to help yourselves – but if you can’t or don’t have the time, call or email us and we will do it for you, for a fee of course!

Getting links to your website is good but not all links or all link-building methods are good.

Search engines adjust their algorithms constantly to try and ensure that the search engine results are relevant to the search term entered.  The easiest way to get into the head of the algorithms is to imagine yourself as an honest internet user.  If something regarding a particular website fools or confuses you, you would not have confidence in that website and that is how the algorithms feel also.

If you, say, went onto an apparently reputable photographer’s website looking for someone to take some nice pictures of your children you would look at the quality of his work, read any client testimonials and may decide he would be perfect but would you feel the same way if you saw a link to a soft porn website on one of his pages?  Obvious links on his website are easy for you to see, but to see who is linking to him is a little harder.  I am sure you will appreciate the website owner has no control necessarily over who links to his website but if he has used bad practices ie buying links then equally well you may feel some level of doubt as surely if his business was good enough he would not have to pay websites to “like” him!

And this is the crux of the matter, if you would feel more faith in a company because human beings have freely decided they like that company then so will the search engines. 

Honestly earned links are what you want – links that human beings have added to their website because they like what you have on offer and are happy to be associated with you.  The search engine algorithms are modified continually to exclude dishonest practices.  If a website owner buys links from other websites then it is trying to fool you that it is more popular than it is, the algorithm will therefore penalise websites that do this. 

A website that has a few good quality links from respected websites will do better than a website with numerous low quality links.  Too many unrelated low quality links added very quickly to a website will flag the website as being a spammer and there is a real risk that the website could be removed permanently from the index.  Links from relevant websites, ie websites that are perceived as related in some way to your business (and reputation!! remember my analogy of the family photographer and the porn site) are far more valuable than high page rank (PR) links from unrelated websites.

Honest Ways to Build Links Include;

• Fantastic, well written, informative content that is regularly updated, that other people WANT to link to or bookmark so that they can come back to see what else you have to say.  If your website content makes visitors want to come back for more then the search engines will want to too.  Earn public votes of approval and you earn search engine votes.
• Draw other people’s attention to your content using Digg, Twitter and Delicious to point out new content on your website.
• Have an FAQ or news page and add an RSS feed.
• Your business is your expertise – give other people the benefit of that by answering queries in forums.  This will give you extra mentions in searches and, if you are good, people will start to follow you.  Always make sure you put a good signature into your posts with a link to your website.  Fill out your forum page with useful information about you and your business.

Build an honest, knowledgable, helpful reputation and you will earn valuable links without ever having to worry about it!!