Published by Jon Roberts
North Wales web design

I wasn’t too sure whether to place this post under the category marketing, due to its referal to search engine optimization – seo, anyway it is here under web design.

One of the most important parts of a website is its’ wording – or copy as it is known.  Afterall, it is the copy of a website that will inform your customers/users of the purpose of the site and detail your products/services.  I will look at the other parts of a website in later posts.

Why is the copy so important?  It is important because your customers/users have arrived at your site looking for information (information can be defined as data with meaning), unless your site provides information clearly, the users/customers will leave your site pretty quickly and probably never come back – not the desired effect at all!

You have heard the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a well structured copy is priceless in comparison.

I regularly read the search engines – particularly Google – will scoure the copy of a site to identify the keywords and key phrases (or data); it is all to easy therefore to fall into the trap of loading your website with your keyword/phrase to the hilt.  What must be born in mind is who are you writing the website for?  Will Google ever purchase your products?  Will Google bookmark your site as a favourite and keep returning waiting for that next gem from you?  I think not!  Only real people will become customers and raving fans of your site – but they will only do that, if you have put something of interest on your site, something that they have in common with you and something that they can empathise with.

Your customers/users will run a mile from your site if it is little more than a list of keywords.  Humans find data boring, information however, is a different matter.  As tempting as it may be, avoid writing your website to ensure that you get a high ranking in Google.  What you should do is write great copy aimed at your customers/users, then and only then tweak the copy slightly to ensure that you have the desired keyword density to help improve those rankings.

Don’t ever forget that real people will read your website and purchase from you or subscribe to your website.  Search engines will only ever list your keywords and leave, no purchase and no subscription!

Remember to give the data meaning if you ever want to provide your customers with information and give yourself a chance of your customers buying from you or subscribing to your site.

Published by Jon Roberts
UK Business Directory

In my earlier post I briefly discussed some important points to help improve your Google ranking (and thereby your ranking in other search engines).  The post was not by any stretch of imagination an exhaustive guide to search engine optimization – it was meant to provide some simple pointers to help improve the ranking of your web design.

In the post I raised the idea that link building is all important, contacting websites within your industry and and offering reciprocal links.  There are some shortcuts available to the busy webmaster to successfully link build, they are link exchange sites.  These sites are set up to provide webmasters a central point to offer and seek link exchanges.  I generally use three (off and on) www.uklinkexchange.co.uk, www.linkmarket.net, http://link2me.com.  My personal favourite of the three is UKLinkExchange, their system suits my needs far better than most I have found; you search the categories for websites you wish to exchange links with, they provide you with a communication tool to request the link and when approved the code to add the link to your site manually.  Of the three link2me.com is probably the one I use least, simply because you have to add a page generated by link2me then search for sites request a link – the link is then automatically added to the generated page.

I was really disappointed that there are very few sites that offer you free link exchange systems and very few that are easy to use.

Of course, I still don’t think there is anything to beat looking up your keyword in Google, identifying pages with a page rank of 3 or more (ideally) and contacting all the non-competitor webmasters to request a link exchange.

Published by Jon Roberts
Website Grants Available

Need free advertising?  Have you considered asking your local newspaper to do an “advertising feature” about your business.  The policy of my local paper is that the features should be newsworthy, such as, you have just taken on a new key employee, you have just won an award, your business has a unique selling point – lets face it, if you have done your business plan correctly this will be dead easy!

If nothing else, your business will be brought to the attention of the other businesses that the paper contacts to advertise your feature, my local paper boasts a circulation of 72000.  I am sure in a more urban area, this could rise considerably.

Published by Jon Roberts
Website from only £35.00!

I have read hundreds of articles about this subject and as yet I am to get my main  site www.jnkservices.co.uk into the top 10 for the key phrase North Wales Web Design, I am not far off, it is currently number 11.

I would love to see it at number one for this key phrase and for the key phrase web design.  But I have to be realistic, there are thousands of web developers who are clamouring to do the same.

One thing that I have learnt is essential, make sure that your site, particularly its title and description are optimized for your key phrase.

I have seen sites that have little in the way of onsite optimization breaking into the top 10 for a given phrase, after spending time, and possibly money, ensuring that your site is optimized for search engines, this can be a little irksome.  So how do they do it?  Links, links and more links.  A very important point here, you will get thousands of emails offering you thousands if not millions of links – DO NOT RESPOND TO THESE!!!!!  They are at best a complete waste of money and at worst they may detriment your listing in the long term, do a search in google for paid for links, you will find several articles stating that Google are considering penalising sites that pay for links.

Ok, so how do you get good quality links and how many do you need to get to the top for your key phrase?  Good quality links come from making contact with other website owners and exchanging links with them.  The better the quality of the link, the better your chance of improving your position (page rank).  A good quality link is one that is with a site closely related to yours – don’t go offering your competitors links! – for example if you design websites, a hosting company is a good link.  The second part of the question, how many links do you need to get to the top for your key phrase, unfortunately is like asking “how long is a piece of string?”  If you could find out how many links your competitors have, you would know….