Archive for August, 2010

This was sent to me by a client that was approached by a ‘SEO’ company and shows how ruthless some companies are in trying to attract website owners to pay for their services. It contains some glaring inaccuracies and attempts to charge £900  for a Google Maps listing  for the year. If you didnt know any SEO / Web site design company or indeed website owner can create a  Google Places listing for free, we include this listing as part of our SEO packages. The text also states that 70% of website searches click on a google maps listing, the latest research I read puts it closer to 15%.

SEO review

Your website is already search engine friendly and ranks very well for terms relating to your local area. The areas that we would suggest expanding to would be too include [other local areas] where there is a good volume of search traffic. What we would suggest would be a website ready package for these areas which would cost £99. This would include full key word research to find the best search terms to target in terms of traffic relating to your business as well as detailing what should be included on the website to focus on these terms. There is full phone support for 28 days included. We would then need a £100 per month SEO package to boost your website’s popularity on the internet and boost your rankings. We don’t tie you in to a long terms contract and although it would take some time to get you ranked you would only have to carry on paying as long as you are satisfied with the service that you receive.

The other option that we would suggest is a Google Maps Listing. This is an area the we specialise in and can be done without making any changes at all to your website. For the term ‘generic term in an area’ there are 19 searches every day and with the first page of results returning a map box at the very top of the page, we can get you into that listing within three months. The cost of £150 a month for these three months and then £50 a month to maintain it as long as you would like the listing to remain. With around 70% of the clickthoughs going through these listing not to mention the number of searchers that just phone straight up without visiting the website they are a prime place to get your site displayed.

The next Google Pagerank update is slightly overdue compared with previous updates and now we are ‘guessing’ / predicting it will be on the 31st August. Page rank is an indication of the weight of the links coming to your webpage and is used as a general metric by advertisers and domain purchasers to assess the importance and value of your site. Some people dismiss the toolbar pagerank as not important and we believe there is some vanity involved with having a higher page rank and the real importance is where the site lies for its most important ‘keyword searches’  in Google (SERPS). Therefore we are saying that if you are an Electrician in Essex its more important to rank highly for search terms like ‘essex electrician’ than to have a higher page rank than your other essex electrician competitors.

We don’t focus on page rank but aren’t naive about the power of a page with high Google Pagerank, we quote it in our SEO reports and website overviews and monitor it when updates occur. When we create websites and promote them via SEO and SEM we get to have a good feel for their ‘Google Link Power’ and for a bit of fun we are going to predict the following domains that we have worked on being changed in the next update:

http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/ prediction up from 4 to 5
http://www.marquees-london.co.uk/ prediction up from 1 to 2
http://www.johns-brickwork.co.uk/ prediction up from 1 to 2
http://www.securitysystemsessex.co.uk/ prediction up from 1 to 2
http://www.jacksonco.co.uk/prediction up from 1 to 2
http://www.kellysoccasions.co.uk/ up from 1 to 2

There’s hundreds of thousands of routers, networks and switches that make up the Internet. Not being able to reach one is generally just an indicator that the path taken is broken or misrouted. To identify whats wrong and where its wrong you run a traceroute

Do this (in Windows 7) by opening your command line (Windows Start > type “cmd” in the find line)

The command is:

tracert [domain name]

eg

tracert [scubacat.com]

then you can copy the trace by right-clicking > Select All > then pressing “enter”

If you want to transfer a .com domain from one hosting company to another it can take longer than .co.uk domains, the steps to follow are

1, Unlock the Domain in the control panel of the existing host

2, This will give you the EPP code, this initiates an email to be sent to you or it will show the code on screen. The message in the email will be similar to this

You will need the following authorization code (also called an “auth-code”) to transfer your domain away from [your old hosting company].

For more information on doing so, please visit our tutorial on the website

The auth-code for [website to be transferred] is: aefal?dS

3, Register the Domains with the new hosting company

4, The registration process will require you to enter the EPP code

5, A confirmation email is sent to the owner of the domain with an approve / disapprove command, the information is similar to this

Welcome to the Fast2host Limited Domain Name Transfer/Renewal Interface.
This  is intended for the use of domain name contacts in approving or rejecting a domain name renewal/transfer (ICANN registrar) requests.

Transfer  Information

Attention: [domain owner]
Re: Transfer of [website to be transferred] on 8/16/2010 1:51:24 PM for us to become the new registrar of record.

You have received this message because you are listed as the Registered Name Holder or Administrative contact for this domain name in the WHOIS database.

You must respond to this message via the following choices, if you do not reply by 8/23/2010 2:02:15 PM, [website to be transferred] will not be transferred to us.).

Approval  Information
I Approve – Please renew/transfer [domain name]. (Your computer’s IP will be recorded as part of your response.)
I Reject – (Your computer’s IP will be recorded as part of your response.)

6, Once the confirmation is approved you will get a message similar to this

Welcome to the Fast2host Limited Domain Name Transfer/Renewal Interface.
This interface is intended for domain name owners to  approve or reject a domain name transfer (ICANN registrar)

7, you may then get a subsequent Transfer Away Confirmation with an approve / reject option request from the existing hosting company that you will need to approve, receiving a final message of:

Thank you. Your domain will be transferred to [the hosting company you are going to] You may be asked to complete their confirmation processes before the domain is actually transferred away

then it can take 4-9 days for the transfer to complete and in your control panel you will see the transfer as ‘in progress’

Recently had a new client that requires 3-4 websites to cater for his new business ideas, thought it was useful to document my thoughts and replies to his request for an ecommerce website, a graphic designer’s portfolio website as well as a main or master corporate website.

Due to the general nature of the initial request we were unable to give a  general / ballpark figure or estimate of the work required. To find out exactly what the client requires we normally need to meet them to discuss requirements additionally we use a website questionnaire to capture more business information about the required websites, as the client is  thinking of having multiple sites, we apply our  ‘multi-site discount’,  currently 10% of 2nd and subsequent sites.

Ecommerce sites – vary enormously and you can have a site that sells 3 things that never change and we can apply one solution or you can have a full ecommerce solution that has full back end database and admin functions to allow you to control your store and stock. estimated cost £599 – £1999 example site http://www.pinkonwhitewalls.com/ (click on clients to see the ecommerce functions) another example site that we are currently coding is http://www.dollyrockerkids.co.uk/shop/

Static business brochure sites (suitable for a porfolio site the client mentioned) comes in 4 sizes and they are detailed here depending on the clients exact requirements, http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/business-website-choices.html these have an estimated cost of between £399 – £1199

We give a discount for multiple site and always think it would be valuable to have a meeting / chat with new clients about their plans for their business and their websites and how we can ensure this is a success for them. There are loads of things to consider at this early juncture and we will need to chat to you to tell you more about the process and whats involved and to get a better idea of your requirements. This webpage goes some way to document our website development process.

The most important area of your site for search engine optimisation is the title. Your primary key phrase should ALWAYS be the first few words. i.e. “Essex electrician” or “chocolate fountain hire”. Instead a lot of websites  put their company name, ‘home page’ or ‘welcome to our site’ as the page title. This is a complete waste as anyone who knows your company name will simply type in your web address and ‘home page’ and ‘welcome’ aren’t really the searches you are targeting.

As your company name is probably unique and it appears somewhere in your site that is good enough to rank for it if its used to search for you. If a potential client does not know your company name, nobody in a million years is ever going to type it in so you will have completely wasted your best opportunity to be ranked for your key search term.

We specialise in search engine optimisation, generating high rankings in Google, Bing and the Bing search engines for your websites, for when a potential customer or client searches for the products / services that they require a  business to provides.

We have found that many web designers specialise in building websites with no thought to search engine optimisation and find that these two should go hand in hand. We are now offering our services to new clients who didnt get their website created and designed by us, with our new SEO package, this package  will give your poorly performing website a massive kick and get it working for you. We will provide you with full reports to tell you all you need to know about how we go about fully optimising your website.

If you have a website created by another agency and that website hasnt been bring in any business to you and not delivering the visitors to the actual site then this program is for you. As your website has not been created in a ‘search engine friendly’ way then this additional business expense will end up being the best money you have spent, dont take our word for it though look at our previous client comments.

This project, our search engine optimisation project, currently costs between £750 – £900 (August 2010 prices) depending on the size of your website, the complexity of it and how much work is needed to bring it up to speed to get it ranking highly, we also take into account what you want to achieve and what keywords you want your site to rank for before creating a project plan and coming to a final price, we have also found that many clients after having their website built go on to pay thousands of pounds a year to other so called SEO companies to optimise their website but see no work completed or improvement in their rankings and visitor numbers. If this sounds familar then pick up the phone  and talk to james today 07743 853976, alternatively email us.

Dont get this SEO program confused with ‘paid for results’ which is  Google / Bing and Yahoo’s ‘pay per click’ advertising, we can help our clients promote their business with a PPC Program but we believe the SEO program is the best value in the long term for your business and website, why pay thousands of pounds a year to generate paid results when these do not effect your organic (free listing results at Google, Bing and Yahoo) when our SEO Package will provide everything you need for a set fee.

We ensure your website is set up correctly for search engines to return clients to key areas on the website
We setup your websites external back linking and article submissions, ensuring online exposure is always growing naturally
We implement measuring tools for your website to give you clear and consise online results

Our expertise is in optimising search engine results. Put simply, we understand the functionality of search engines and are able to optimise your website to ensure the best result (without having to pay someone for temporary PPC results) to ensure your investment in an online presence translates to increased sales for your business. With many years of online search experience, we can provide your business the right information to ensure you achieve the best results.

As a client of ours your feedback, contribution and continued participation is greatly appreciated. by all of us at Delicious Webdesign, but did you know we can also help you get traffic to your site, we help site owners and promoters get the most out of their sites.  We have developed and promoted hundreds of web sites and hope to help you by sharing my experiences.

Free Site Analysis

We have evaluated literally hundreds of websites over the years but the site owner rarely saw my findings.  You will be glad to know that our initial analysis is done for free. We accept new websites for a free evaluation.  Presenting the business owner with a free report with the results so you can see what we see.  It will include site accessibility, usability, search engine results, and our overall impressions (our delicious rating !)

For some of the evaluations, we will film the evaluation process and make it available to you.

When you contact us about this SEO Analysis report please make sure you send your URL of the site you want to be evaluated and some key phrases you want to be found in the search engines for.

We can help you take your site to the next level.  Some of the services we can provide are:

• Implementing a Content Management System
• Upgrading your design or functionality
• Leveraging our design and development teams to save  money
• Improving your traffic through search engine optimization
• Tuning up your web site for better speed and traffic performance
• Building a community through social media
• Developing video and content that attract people to your site
• Translating your site into other languages to broaden your traffic base
• Cross promote you with some of our other sites to generate more traffic for you