Social Media versus Company Websites

I would say about 50% of the small businesses I talk to about regarding creating a websites at first have the response that they are not interested as they have a Facebook page or Twitter account (other social media companies are available!) or they sell through ebay (other on-line auction sites are available!). So why do they need a company website?

This can be most frustrating for website designers and developers because in trying to explain the importance of a company website you can be perceived as trying to 'sell' your website skills to them, which is unfortunate (and probably not too far from the truth!).

This has created a Social Media V's Website culture which shouldn't exist. I always think about the big businesses, I mean really BIG. They always have a website and in many cases don't bother with social media sites.......So why is that?

Well, a good business website will promote your business and services completely, in a professional manner with a user interface that is easy to use and navigate. This creates an instant trusting relationship with your customer base and enforces your company brand, allowing the owner of the website to, in many ways, control and possibly manipulate how the business is perceived.

Social media can promote your business well, but as you gain notoriety you can loose control of how your business is perceived and it can also take up a lot of time to address comments and statements left about your business. Bear in mind that not all comments left on social media sites and review sites are genuine! (They may be left by competitors in an attempt to damage their competitions reputation and adversely they may be left by your own business or company itself, via business employees or friends and family of the business 'helping' the reputation of the business).

Monitoring what remarks are left on social media sites is very important and when a comment is left many genuine customers will expect an immediate response from the business. Which is very hard to achieve all the time but customers quite often won't care what you have on, they have a problem and you need to solve it now! Failure to do so will open the flood gates for more negativity so you better act quickly and be warned your actions could set a precedent so make sure you respond appropriately!

Obviously, as I work for a website design company I would always choose the website option over anything else for a business! (It's my lively-hood after all), but I think that the Versus scenario is now outdated.

Social media and websites should go hand in hand, small businesses can't ignore the exposure that social media brings and it is often free and easy to use. If you are starting up in business you need to be present on social media sites. Social media sites can really help to reinforce a website and usually a company website will provide 'links' to the social media sites they are involved with in order to actively take advantage of the exposure that social media brings, similarly social media sites should link to you company website to take advantage of the security and trust associated with a company website.

I would advise anyone starting a business or already in business to consider social media and websites as a joint on line marketing strategy. The company I work for Above Website Design is primarily a small business specialist website design company that works to provide your business with a website and to promote your website across the world wide web. We will always offer advice on which social media site is best for you and in many cases set up the suggested social media account on your behalf free of charge.

So, if you are considering whether to go for either a website or a social media presence on-line then check out our and other website design companies as the web design company may do all the social media incorporation for you too.

Q: Why does my business need a website?

Short answer:
To make more MONEY!

Long answer:
1) Public expectations.
If you ask any pc, laptop, tablet and smart phone user is it important for a company to have a website they instantly will agree YES! And the reason is because they all use devices that allow them to go on-line, and it has become generally expected that any self respecting company would have a website then there's your answer, in fact it may be perceived that not having a website could be damaging your sales.

2) Advertising and Promotion.
Whatever your business or product having a website offers you excellent exposure and promotion. It is also excellent value for money (compared to other advertisement types) and will let potential customers know where your are, what you do or what services you provide, when your open and what deals you are promoting.

3) Extended Operating Hours.

Potentially your business is never closed, and if you have an e-commerce business you can take sales whenever from anywhere in the World!

Now I appreciate that not everyone is as into technology as me, and I still have people today show me their old 'brick' type mobile phone and say 'this is all I need' or 'this does the job for me!' which is great for them, but they are ignoring the average customers needs of today by not having a website.

The costs of websites can vary dramatically, from free (if you want to put a lot of effort in yourself) to very expensive (depending on the requirements). If your thinking of whether or not to get a business website STOP! Your business needs one! When your thinking of how much to spend on a website consider how much time you wish to devote to the website. If you want a professional website then get a professional to do it. If you just want to get on-line and reap the benefits of being on-line and have time to spare then try it yourself to start with.

At Above Website Design we provide a selection of all inclusive packages that are ideal to get your business on the world wide Web. Check out our retail website today www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk

What are 'Links' to my Website?

When you click on some text or an image and it opens up a new page on the screen it means that the page that has just opened up is 'linked' to the content you clicked on.

The reason that these links are important are because they are one of the ways a search engine learns how popular your website is.

Search engines will take this information of how many links your website has had to it (as well as the time visitors spend on your site, the content on your site etc) and work out where your page should be ranked in relation to other pages with similar criteria.

These links may also be referred to as back links, in bound links, in links etc.

If you have a new website and wish for it to get a better position when you search for it then you will want to increase the amount of links it receives, but be careful as many search engines are wise to false linking strategies and you could damage your sites reputation or even have it banned from search engines entirely by using underhand tactics.

The best way to increase the amount of useful links your website receives is by creating a blog, or using one or several social media sites, to promote your website and or business. Please keep in mind your keywords and where you point your link to (If you are referring to a page on your website will you point the link to the home page or a specific page in the website?).

The more your blog or social media site or sites get noticed then the more chance you are giving your website of receiving genuine links to it and moving up the page rankings.

Be warned though, blogging and social media sites can take up a lot of time so make sure you manage how much time you spend doing these to promote your site. However despite this if you have a business website then it is a must that you have a blog, social media pages or both.

At Above Website Design we provide excellent SEO packages and services to really get your website noticed and working for your business.

What's all this KEY WORD stuff?!

Key words, or keywords are very important to your website. and keywords are something that search engine optimisers seem to love to ramble on about, why? Because they are really important for your websites search listing and page rankings.

Basically I would say that a key word is a word or phrase that someone (a potential customer or blog reader etc) would type into a search engine to find your website.

For example if you sold fruit cakes on-line it is important that you refer to that fact you sell them and what features a fruit cake have.

So if you sell a range of alcoholic or non alcoholic fruit cakes them this needs to be displayed on your website, and the more you can tell your customer and the search engine about your cakes the better. But be aware that if you repeat the phrase or key words too often then you may be marked as SPAM by the search engine and this will demote your rankings, with some search engines even banning your website from their listings as a result!

Key word stuffing is a term for when you 'stuff' as many keywords into your website as possible, and this is NOT a good idea. Search engines do recognise this procedure and they will penalise your website for it.

My advise when it comes to your key words or key phrasing would be to always think carefully about what the general public would search for in order to find you. Try to always put your key words into a phrase or sentence and do not repeat that phrase or sentence again without changing a few of the words around.

For example on page one of your cake site write 'we sell our fruit cakes on-line keeping our overheads down and your prices low' and on page two write 'luxury fruit filled cakes with on-line ordering and direct delivery to your home' and page three 'alcohol free and alcohol laced fruit cakes delivered to your choice of address when you place an order with us on-line'
These examples use the keywords fruit cakes, ordering, on-line over and over but disguise them with the ordering and changing or words and sentence length.

It is important where you use your keywords too, meta tags, image tags, alternative text and heading are all places where you need to think of what and how your writing for the search engines.

The best way to have success with your keywords and phrases is to write them as if to keep the reader engaged in the topic you are promoting and try your best not to duplicate content, you wouldn't like to read the same thing over and over and the search engine doesn't like it either.

If you would like us to take a look at your site and advise you on how to improve your page rankings then please visit our commercial site www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk where we have a number of services/packages that could benefit your website. (You can have your fruit cake and eat it!!!)

Web Crawlers

To me they sound like something from a horror film: 'the dreaded web crawlers!' but despite their 'creepy' name these are what retrieve the information from your website for indexing.

Web Crawlers are often also referred to as an internet bot, web spider, web scutter, ant or an automatic indexer. I'm sure their must be more names but these are the ones I have actually heard people refer to them as. Web crawlers are NOT something to be feared, in fact you want them visiting your site as much as possible!

Depending on what search engine your referring to and or system you use you will usually start using one name and stick to it, I prefer the 'Spider' analogy as the whole 'web and spider' scene works in my mind!

So what does a web crawler do and why? Well a web crawler visits websites and sends back information to the search engine for the purpose of indexing (page ranking) your site. They recover meta data, key words, the last time of update, the frequency of usage etc.

Depending on the search engine it is thought that as the amount of world wide web content that is indexed is somewhere between 40%-70%.........which I find shocking. If you think of some of the past things you have searched for on-line and the search engine has returned hundreds, maybe thousands of results, now think that at least 30% of results aren't showing! This is why it is important to get your website indexed and indexed properly.

With the shear scale of the world wide web it is understandable that not all of it is indexed, and as accessibility to it becomes easier more and more content appears. Search engines must work out what is popular and relevant as well as what isn't and what has stopped being used altogether.

This is why when a company begins SEO (search engine optimisation) work it can take up to 3 months top be web crawled, but once your site has been 'crawled' for the first time the web crawlers will return to see what changes have happened. Once your site is really up and moving it could be crawled as much a once a day but at first it will be more like once a month.

If the results returned by the web crawlers suite the search engines algorithms then you get to watch your site move up the page ranking, which in turn will drive more traffic to your site and so on! If your site isn't returning what the search engine wants then don't expect any positive page ranking movement.

(I have heard that they recover text in a ratio of somewhere between every 3-7 words and that they only really concentrate on the first 100 characters found on your site. This can be very useful information but I would always recommend providing a website full of useful, relevant information and not to try to second guess the web crawlers activities).

Hopefully now you'll have a better understanding of what web crawlers are and how they work. If you have a website that you feel is not getting the noticed then please visit www.abovewebsitedesign.co.uk. We specialise in small businesses and offer affordable Search Engine Optimisation packages that will get your site indexed and moving up the page rankings.

Website Indexing?

Also referred to as web indexing or internet indexing is quite a complex topic. However I feel it is one of the easier on-line topics to explain on a basic level as many of the terms used conjure up mental images that help me remember how it all works.

As website indexing implies it is about getting a website indexed or listed on search engines and the results they provide.

The usual goal is to try to get a website indexed at the first position available when the search engine returns the results back to you after search for whatever you have typed in search box. Quite often this doesn't mean that you will be listed on the top of the page as many search engines will have paid for advertised links at the top of the page, however it does usually mean that you will be found on the first page (directly under the paid results).

So how does the search engine decide which page gets listed where? Well there is no straight forward answer to this as search engines have unique 'algorithms' that set the criteria as to what makes a good website.

When you try to get your website on top of the page listings or index it requires a bit of trial and error, and not everything that works for one website will work for the next, which can be frustrating and opened the debate of whether search engine optimisation of a website is an art or a science? (but that's for another blog!)

There are however certain things we know about how a website gets 'indexed' and if you have a website these are the least things that you need to do to ensure your site gets indexed and moves up the 'listings'

Here's what we know for sure:

Search engines like Google, Bing, Internet Explorer, Zafari, and so on....Use something called 'Web Crawlers' to gather information relating to a website. These web crawlers may gather information from many areas of your website but tend to use your websites 'keywords' and 'meta data' to add to the search engines search criteria (or to match to what someone searches for).

So it is important that your website has the correct terms and keywords in use enable the search engines to list or index your site where it should be when it is searched for.

Although search engines take into account many other factors including site age, site popularity, up to date coding, site usage (content management), and so on, to insure your site gets positioned on the index or page rankings correctly, the meta data and keywords are something you should like to get right from the very beginning.

(If your getting lost with the terms already don't worry because we will explain and link from them in future posts.)

If you require a website why not visit our commercial website Above Website Design. We are specialists in getting small businesses on the World Wide Web.

Let the Blogs Begin!

As anyone involved with SEO (search engine optimisation) and website development will tell you, 'a blog is essential for a successful website', well that is what we think.......erm well, actually know!

Since the introduction last year of the Google Penguin algorithm to regularly update the content of your site with relevant information is of the most importance. It shows that the website is being used and hopefully maintained. So when your site is 'spidered' the information retrieved is different, but also retains the 'key word' or statements associated with your website.

This has seen many retail website owners introduce 'bloggers' into their work place and it has also seen a rise in blogging websites using their platform to release website creating platforms.

I fear however that businesses using such platforms for their wevbsites may be at serious risk of not being able to update the code the websites have been written in or adjust the content of the websites they host should the next algorithm change dramatically. Personally I think these sort of websites will hold some penalty in page rankings in the future as they do negate the skill and education acquired by website designers and developers throughout the world.

For someone new to the world the internet and world wide web it can be an extremely confusing place. Even the reletively simple terms used above can strike fear into the hearts of the non internet savvy!

So in order to promote my new website: Above Website Design, and provide valid 'back links' etc I will be 'blogging' about the terms, phrases and processes of websites, SEO and well.......blogging!

I hope I can help everyone to understand the internet a little better and if I get too technical and you require any more clarity on then please message either through Blogger or visit the website and message me directly.

I start blogging this week and will keep posting out interesting and relevent posts so keep watching.....