SEO Training Can Dramatically Improve The Performance Of Your Website

About four to five years ago there was a boom in the website design industry with lots of businesses coming forward all wanting a website. The need to have a website was because competitors were having them built and every business wants to compete. The trouble is that businesses were not seeing their website as a marketing tool but rather as a show piece.

Any business should make their website accountable for how it performs, very much like an employee; they should know its success rate in terms of enquiries and sales against the traffic received. During the recent recession a lot of businesses have had a look at their web presence and realised its importance with many seeking the help of an SEO company to help re-align their importance.

You can of course carry out a lot of the SEO work yourself which will reduce the amount an SEO company needs to do, which will reduce the cost to you.

A great way to learn SEO is to take a training course provided by a specialist SEO consultant. These can be taken in a group format or as an individual 1-on-1 basis. You can be taught everything from how to carry out good keyword research through to how to implement them into your website. Other things you can learn include:

• Link building techniques
• How to social bookmark
• Content writing – How to write dynamic content
• Using press releases to show off your website
• Importance of video
• On page optimisation
• Effective use of analytics

There are some really good SEO companies offering this service either in-house at your place of work or at training rooms available to them on their premises.

SEO is not a magical thing just hard work carried out to make sure that your website is as visible as possible to both user and search engine. By knowing your target market, you will be able to focus on certain keywords which will be the basis upon which your campaign will follow.

Learning basic SEO techniques can be vital to a business owner, so by sending a few members of staff away for the day to learn these can be one of your best ever investments. These staff members can then evaluate your website on a monthly basis and make adjustments accordingly to ensure that enquiries and sales keep coming through.

If you are interested in taking part in SEO training then the best thing to do is use a search engine to find out who is offering it in your local area or county. You may even be able to book your place online. You do not have to be a technical whizz on a computer to pick up these techniques either. Why not find a course today and improve your website rankings and performance.

Clear Web Services HQ Mentioned In The Latest RDPE News

Our brand new offices have been mentioned by the RDPE, after being opened by Mark Harper MP, in July 2010.

“People and businesses in Coleford are celebrating after the opening of a brand new community enterprise centre has given them a state of the art facility on their doorsteps.

The Coleford Community Enterprise Centre was formally opened by Mark Harper, MP for the Forest of Dean, who praised the new facility.

The Centre - renamed the Main Place after consultation with local people - was developed after the Coleford Area Partnership was given an RDPE grant.

The Coleford Area Partnership needed £129,000 to develop three areas – furnishing rooms for public use, fitting out partnership offices and the appointment of a development co-ordinator to make sure the centre is sustainable within a three year period. The RDPE grant of £91,590 covered 71% of the cost.

The Main Event is now a thriving hub of activity, with IT firm Clear Web Services and charity the Brandon Trust the first two organisations to move into the building.

You can see more details at www.main-place.org.uk.

RDPE

The Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE) runs from 2007 to 2013.  It is the 2nd pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy and aims to support the creation of genuinely sustainable farming, forestry and food sectors, whilst also bringing wider benefits for the economy, the environment and rural communities. It provides the major financial vehicle for protecting and enhancing the environment and securing a range of public benefits for society. Defra is the Managing Authority. For more information on the RDPE and the organisations involved, see www.sw-ruralgateway.info.”

The full press release can be found by clicking here.

When Is The Right Time To Bring In A Reputable SEO Company For Your Business?

The need to employ a good and reputable Search Engine Optimisation company is often a mixed bag when it comes to looking at the reasons why a SEO Consultancy would be used by all sizes of businesses. There is little doubt that if you employ the services of a firm that is really good and can make a difference, the money you spend can be recouped quickly and for years to come.

Below, we look at the reasons why you would probably look at taking on the services of an SEO firm.

When You Don’t Have The Time – We often find that one of the biggest reasons you would call upon the services of a decent SEO company is because you simply do not have the time to do things yourself. Optimisation takes time and hard work and many new and established businesses just do not have the time to make this achievement possible, so will often rely on outside sources to really make sure the job is done to the highest possible level of efficiently and successfulness.

When Things Have Gone Wrong – From time to time you will do something to your website and will sadly suffer the consequences, maybe a drop in traffic or a wrong focus on where you wanted to be. Often, it takes an outside, independent and expert view to come and work out what went wrong and more importantly, how to put things right and to make sure the same mistake does not happen again.

When You Are Unhappy With Your Current Consultant – An SEO company is for life (or at least a long time) and not just for Christmas or in this case a month or two. But, from time to time it is possible for you to outgrow your current SEO firm or maybe look for something a bit different and it is at that time that you might choose to move on to another company, maybe one that offers different services or has more employees to cope with your growing demands on services.

When You Don’t Understand – Every person has their own unique skills, it is how the business world and indeed the overall world works, everyone uses their own skills to combine to do a whole process correctly. It is impossible for one person to know everything so it’s often at the time when a small to medium business decides the current operation needs more expertise and input that they will call upon an SEO firm to come in and take things to the next level.

When You Want To Expand – Having a website earning a bit of money is ok, having a website earning a lot of money is good and having a website making a lot of money consistently is just great and where most online retailers really want to be. If you can rely on your site to bring in a regular and steady income then that gives you the stability that you need and many businesses often need the help of an expert SEO company to show them how to raise their income from a website to the next bar.

When You Want To Improve – Finally, the main reason most companies and businesses hire the services of an SEO Consultancy is when they want to improve, knowing that without the services a SEO firm can provide the website or web presence might never get to the level that they really want. Many small and medium businesses survive for years with a web presence that they are not really that happy with, purely because they don’t have the money to improve or they just do not know how to do it themselves.

It is clear to see that there are indeed many such reasons why you might look to use the services to make sure your web optimisation heads down the correct path, but whatever reason you might be making your decision upon, just make sure that you spend enough time researching the company you are about to employ, as if you get it wrong it will be money badly spent for your business.

How To Get More Website Enquiries

Everyone would like more enquiries coming into their website, especially if you are a service provider and want create appointments.

There are many ways in which to create enquiries through your website but the first rule is try and offer as many options to users as possible. Having a contact us page just isn’t enough to create high levels of enquiries, you have to be more proactive than that. Every page on your website should have an area where someone can make a quick enquiry. Here are just some of the options you can use:

Quick Enquiry Form
Give users a small contact form to fill in quickly, this can be just name, email address and a small message. This way if users are in work looking at your website they can quickly contact you without giving away too many details. You can either put a small form on each page or have a prominent button that takes the there.

Live Chat Option
You may have been on websites that have a live chat option; you can do something like this simply through Skype or a messenger service. This will give the user a simple option to just send you a quick message which you will get back to quickly. A live chat option offers the user great customer service as they feel they can ask for help at anytime, just like being in a store.

Request A Call-Back Form
Many users are in a rush when visiting your website and are there to quickly find out information. A request a call-back form gives the user the opportunity to give you their name, telephone number and preferred time to call. This is great if the user is in work when they use your website because they do not have the time to call you and probably won’t write your number down but this way they can give you their details quickly and you can then call them back at their comfort which could either be in a lunch hour or when they finish work and get home.

We have only just touched the surface here for the options available to you and your website. Try and think of something that gives the user ease of use but at the same time gives them a reason to enquire using the various options.

It is important that these options are displayed with great prominence within your design this way the user is more likely to use them but it also gives out a message of confidence to say that you are there should the user require advice or help in any way, which is a sign of good customer service.

Top Firefox Add-Ons for Developers & Designers

Mozilla Firefox is becoming a very widely used browser; this is mainly due to its speed, security and add-ons. The add-ons are designed by developers to help make your experience of Firefox a better one. There are some great add-ons to aid the work of website developers and designers; this means that all work can be carried out in the browser itself including such things as code debugging and screenshots.

In this article we are going to take you through the best add-ons for web designers and developers, hopefully making life easier.

Add-on 1 – Firebug

Firebug is a great plug-in; it enables you to de-bug codes such as JavaScript, HTML and Ajax. You can also monitor CSS in a live webpage. There are a number of extensions to Firebug which will allow you to add even more development tools. Many developers and designers couldn’t be without this great add-on.

Add –on 2 Screengrab

If you are looking for great screenshots of web pages maybe for a portfolio or some instructions on how to use a certain web application then screengrab is the option for you. The screengrab add-on for Firefox allows you to take various screenshots such as:

• The whole webpage
• A section selected by you
• The visible portion of screen

You are fully in control of what shot you would like and then it allows you to save it anywhere on your computer as a JPG or PNG without the need to edit in a photo editing package.

Add-on 3 CSS Mate

This Firefox add-on allows you to edit CSS files on a live webpage. You can load several CSS files into individual tabs helping you to organise everything just how you like, from there you can edit your files. Another add-on option like this is EditCSS.

Add-on 4 HTML Validator

HTML Validator allows you to validate your HTML code without the need to go elsewhere. The validation is W3C compliant which will make sure that your website is fully accessible. By passing validation your code will keep to the current web standard which is a must for any website.

Add-on 5 Y Slow

Y-Slow is a Yahoo add-on for Firefox which checks live webpage load times. With more and more search engines taking load time into consideration for website rankings it is vital that your website loads as quickly as possible.

Y-Slow helps to identify where you could do better with load times by checking code and images for file size. It will make suggestions on what could be done to make the page quicker such as compressing images and shortening certain codes.

Add-on 6 Link Checker

If you want to test out the validation of your website links then install this add-on. It will check your live web pages link structure to make sure each one is working correctly and is linked to the right place. This is a lot simpler than going through it in a HTML editor such as Dreamweaver.

Mozilla Firefox add-ons are a great way to improve your work times with many things being carried out on a live site, so you can check that everything is how you want it and if it isn’t then edit it there and then without the need to have multiple programmes open.

Is It Really Worth Paying An SEO Company To Work On your Website?

There are thousands of websites out there on the internet with thousands of website owners running them. Everyone wants their own website to appear as high on Google, Yahoo and Bing as possible but should you really trust an SEO company to help you get there or is it just a waste of money?

There seem to be lots of search engine optimisation companies out there all offering the promise of improving the ranking of your website. There has also been a rise in companies offering pay per click advertising with the promise of getting your website number one in Google. So how do you know if this will work and can these companies be trusted?

The first thing to understand is that search engine optimisation is a timely process which can often take 2-3 months to start seeing the fruits of your labour, so any company that tells you they will get you number one on Google in 2 weeks is well worth staying away from because they are either using unethical SEO techniques which will eventually get your website penalised or they are just putting your money into pay per click which means that you will be paying for number one spot which anyone can do.

There are many strings involved with search engine optimisation but the main things to remember are:

Natural / Organic SEO
Natural or Organic SEO techniques are what get you ranking on the search engine results pages for your chosen key terms. Natural SEO is carried out as a planned campaign and done correctly on a regular monthly basis is very effective indeed. It involves processes such as one way link building, social bookmarking, PR links, article writing and submission, keyword research and competitor analysis. All of these things will effect how your website appears in the search engines for your chosen key terms.

Natural rankings in search engine results are by far the most clicked so it is important that you are prominent on the results pages because users very rarely go past page two. Natural SEO campaigns should be continuous to help your website to compete but it does usually take around 2-3 months to start seeing a marked improvement but once you start climbing it is not easy to fall because you will have some great content backing it up.

Pay Per Click Marketing
Pay per click advertising is offered by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. PPC is the bidding of adverts for chosen key terms and these adverts will appear in the sponsored results section of the search engine results page which is traditionally at the top and to the right of the page.

The cost of your adverts is dependent on the industry you are in, for instance if you wanted to be the number one advert on Google (top of page) for mortgage broker then you could expect to pay over £10 a click. A good pay per click specialist will look into reducing your budget and giving you an excellent return on investment (ROI). Position one on the sponsored results is not always the best place to be because not only is it the most expensive option but you could also not see a great return on the investment.

There are many companies selling PPC management services, you will probably have experienced many calling your place of work selling their services. Be very cautious when using some of these companies as most will just lump your budget on a limited amount of keywords with high bids, this will get you click throughs but your budget will be spent very quickly. The promise of a low management fee may sound great but for the work that is carried out it is often a waste of money.

If you are looking to start a PPC campaign then see an SEO specialist who will carry out extensive keyword research so you get the best return on investment in terms of traffic and sales. A well planned PPC campaign needs a couple of hours work a day to make it effective and on budget. PPC is a very effective tool when used correctly.

Offsite Marketing/ Optimisation
Offsite marketing/ optimisation should be carried out to attract a buzz around your website. This comes in the form of press releases, social media accounts (Twitter & Facebook) and Youtube videos.

All of the above can be carried out by a website owner but if time is at a premium then an SEO company can take care of the management of this including set up and regular press release writing.

If you are looking at improving your website and are thinking of employing the powers of an SEO company then consider what you are actually getting for your money. You will need the company to be open and honest because there really is nothing to hide and if they do then I suggest getting away quickly. Good SEO companies will provide the following:

• Comprehensive monthly reporting
• Conversion and enquiry rates
• Full analytics report
• No long term contract
• Package options
• Regular Contact
• Transparency and honesty at all times
• Free initial website review and proposal

If you are concerned in anyway why not contact a previous client and hear their experience, do not just rely on testimonials.

Bouncing All The Way – How To Understand Your Bounce Rate And What It Means For Your Site

The dreaded bounce rate is seen by many as an instant failure when it comes to the success of your website, but sometimes you have to look a lot deeper at the actual source of the visitor and then match the bounce rate and referrer up before hitting the panic button. Although Google Analytics is one of the most important tools for any webmaster, it is important to remember to look at multi levels of data so that you can truly understand the impact this has rather than just assuming every minus sign is doom and gloom.

The rate is so called because of the likening to a rubber ball – it goes up and then down – in the website world this means the visitor comes, looks at the page they land on and then goes no further, basically closing their browser or going elsewhere. The most common mistake when trying to understand the bounce rate is to simply assume that if it goes up you are doing everything incorrectly or that your site is not good enough, but you have to take a much broader look at the data and then delve into another level to really understand.

So, what to do if you notice your bounce rate has risen and you are concerned:

Once you log into Google Analytics, on the right hand side click onto Traffic Sources. This now brings up a list of the most common referrers to your website, or where the person has come from to look at your website or page within your website. If you then click onto “all traffic sources” which appears under this menu, you will then be presented with a screen that offers a wealth of information, but you need to focus on the referrer and the bounce rate, both of which can be seen on this page.

If you see a very high bounce rate from a couple of the referrers, then you can begin to find out why the traffic from these places is not really sticking around on your site, or it could be that they have found what they needed to and gone else where, satisfied and fulfilled.

For example, you might have one of your articles linked to from another site, but the other site only offers an introduction or a teaser. The reader then has to click on the link to read more, ends up on your website, reads the article and then goes elsewhere, either with the knowledge they required or without. You could expect a high bounce rate from this link because it might be your article explains how to do something or offers a guide that the person only needs to read once.

There are lots of reasons why some referrers could lead to a high bounce rate and these include incorrect linking, misleading descriptions, and incorrect page linking and so on, so it’s important to find out from which referrers the bounce rate is highest and then tackle the reasons why. If the bounce rate is high from your Pay Per Click campaign, then you might need to look at your advert, keywords or linked to page to try and understand why the rate is quite high.

A high bounce rate is rarely a good thing, but it is vitally important that you take a deeper look at the main source or sources of the high bounce rate before you start to really worry about the quality of your site.

Why Every Business Can Benefit From An Online CRM System

A CRM or a customer relationship management system is something that allows you to store, handle and output data regarding your customers, clients, potential clients and possible marketing opportunities. Basically, it allows you to build up a massive database of names, numbers and addresses and then keep track of the information and contact you have with them, meaning nothing ever gets lost.

A CRM is perfect for any type of business. Whether it’s a small one man band to a company of 30 employees, a well designed and managed CRM system allows your company to make use of all the data that is currently flying around, reducing your reliance on spreadsheets and other offline databases.

There a lots of online CRM systems that you can choose from on the Internet today, with many varying in functions and pricing structures. These include:

• Salesforce
• Web Ex
• Zoho
• Web CRM

Many businesses operate on a low key scale in their early days, months and years, using spreadsheets and other types of databases to store their potential clients and other bits of information. As the company hopefully grows and employs more people, the access to this data becomes a nightmare, especially if each of the individuals needs to update the information.

This is where an online CRM can come into play.

With most of the paid online CRM systems you can have multiple users, meaning that the key people in your organisation have access to the data they need to and can update it without the worry of over writing or ruining the existing data. You can also plan the calendar side of things for multiple people, meaning that they can all see where the individual is at any time of the day and also book meetings and share documents should you need to, safely and securely.

As a supervisor, manager or company owner, using a CRM means you can see exactly what is going on within the company. It allows you to view information contacts, leads, your employees and potential clients and it brings everything together all under one roof. Most of the better CRM systems allow you to view the most important data as soon as you log in, meaning that you get instant access to the key information you need on one screen.

Using a CRM can bring much more efficiency to your business. No more swapping spreadsheets or corrupt databases, it is all secure and safe online, fully backed up and accessible from anywhere. Increased efficiency means increased productivity, success and sales, which is why a CRM can really work for any business, but you do have to put the initial time and effort

When August Comes, Does Traffic Drop For Some Websites?

Web traffic is variable depending on many things. The type of industry you are in, the type of product you might be selling or the service that you may be offering. Although every business has their peak months when traffic rises and their slower months when traffic tends to fall, it would seem that August signifies the biggest drop for many websites as people go off on their holidays or are too busy covering for their colleagues who are relaxing abroad.

Traditionally, web traffic tends to drop off in the summer months, but many websites and web site owners are reporting higher than normal drop offs for the month of August this year, which indicates that either more people are taking time off in this month or businesses are still struggling for survival.

Of course, not all websites and companies see a drop in traffic for the summer months, especially if they are in the niche of:

• Holidays
• Accommodation
• Outdoor Activities
• Leisure Activities

But the majority of other types of business are seeing substantial drop off’s in traffic, especially search engine traffic.

It is important not to panic if your traffic suddenly drops in this month because if you are using analytics software it is quite easy to ask a couple of questions to make sure this is down to seasonable reasons and not penalty reasons. If your traffic has fallen, there are a few things you need to do to check that this is down to the time of the year and nothing more sinister like hacking or SERP drops.

If your traffic has dropped, follow these procedures:

Open up your analytics and look at the keywords you were ranking highly for last month, pop these into Google or a keyword tracker and see if you are still ranking.

If you are still ranking for all of these keywords then really is nothing to worry about and you can rest assured that the drop is due to seasonal issues rather than being dropped from the engines or losing SERPs.

You should also look through all of the hits you have had from other sites and make sure that they are around the same level that you would of seen a couple of months ago, which again will maybe indicate if there has been a dropped link or some of your previous referrers are no longer sending as much traffic.

August sees many people go away on holiday and all you need to do is go down to your local town or usually busy place to see this. This is the same for the Internet. For example, say the Managing Director of a company goes on holiday, the rest of his staff will not only need to cover his work load but they will also usually not really have the authority to make the decisions they could normally pass by him.

This will mean that if they were planning a marking campaign, new website or anything else along these lines, there would not be much point in sorting anything out until the MD’s return from holiday, as nothing will get approved anyway.

It is important not to panic if your traffic falls during the month of August, but do follow the advice we have given and do some basic checks to make sure it is just down to seasonal reasons and nothing else.

Top Things To Avoid When Setting Up Your Google Adwords Campaign – The Most Common Mistakes

A cost per click campaign can bring immediate success to any business, whether you are selling websites or washing machines; the AdWords system really does offer a sales platform for any type of business. But like any advertising, it can only really work for you if you are prepared to put the effort into it and the time to make sure it is going to really bring home the rewards for you.

Below, we look at the things to avoid when running and setting up a cost per click campaign and the most common mistakes people make when doing so.

Prepay Not Postpay – When you originally set up your campaign, make sure that you set the billing to PREPAY, because this means you can only be charged for the money that is actually in your account. If you go for Postpay and forget to set a low daily budget and do not check the campaign for while, you might be greeted with a bill that is bigger than you expected!

Incorrect Linking – Make sure that your advert links to the most relevant page on the site that your advert is selling. For example, if you were a kitchen domestic appliance company and the advert was for fridges, make sure that advert links directly into the fridge section of your website, as this has been proven to increase the conversion rate and the success of the advert.

Misleading Title – Your title is the same as a headline on a newspaper, it is what makes people want to read further, or in this case, click through to your website. If your title is misleading or not related, you are going to end up with a load of clicks that you really do not want, costing you a lot of money and therefore making your advertising campaign a waste of time. Make sure your descriptions are accurate, advertise exactly what the person will see when they land on your website or that page and make them catchy if possible.

Budget Restrictions – The old saying – you need to spend money to make money – is as true on the internet as it is for another type of advertising. If you go in with a tiny budget then you are not going to get the rewards you deserve. You need to set a realistic monthly and daily budget, you can always start quite high and then drop down or vice versa, but do try to spend more than just a couple of pounds a day, especially if your industry is quite competitive.

To Many Keywords / Adverts – One of the most common mistakes is to set such a low budget and then add loads of adverts and keywords. You must remember that the more adverts and keywords that share the same budget, the less they are likely to be displayed as the system has to try and spread them out to display across your time frame. Try to limit each advert to around 20 keywords maximum and if you need more try upping your budget for a couple of days to get more joy.

Wrong Keywords – Too many keywords is bad, the wrong keywords is really bad, as once again you will just be losing money. If the keywords you choose to bid on are incorrect or irrelevant, you will just end up with lots of click throughs and no success, so always make sure you spend time looking at your chosen keywords and making sure they are the best they can be.

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