The power of social media displays its prowess again in the Olympic Games.
Athletes and fans will be able to communicate directly using their facebook and twitter accounts.
‘The Olympic Athletes Hub‘ has over 1000 members and is encourageing more members, to join, where they will be able to discuss training tips, watch videos, and communicate before or after an Olympic event.
During the games there will be regular updates with exclusive athlete chat sessions.
The London Games are putting sporting social media on the map. Introducing a new era of social networking which have branded the London Olympics as the world’s “first social Olympics,”
Can your business afford not to participate in the social media era?
Corporate web solutions can offer your business a presence on this platform of communication. We have the expertise to develop your online presence into an Olympic athlete. Its more important now than ever before to join the new way of business and social networking. No business can afford to be left at the starting post!
click here to find out more on joining the era of social media.
Google has introduced a change to its algorithms that has been tested in the USA and launched internationally to English language Google users. This is intended to help users search results providing them with higher quality sites that are relevant to the search criteria. There are several changes that have been made, including an update to page rankings and search settings. The main intention being to provide the most relevant search results.
Firstly, the implementation of reduced page rankings of low quality sites – including sites that duplicate content from other sites. It will work as an advantage for high quality sites – with original content insuring they are found in search results. This will be a welcome change to make sure people find the high quality sites in their results.
Secondly, Google are incorporating additional controls for a user to be able to personalise search results. This is not something that is entirely new – previous examples are Search Wiki and location settings. However, there is a new way to get more specific results when searching. Google has introduced measures for users to have the ability to to block particular sites. When a user searches Google there will be a link to block sites. When a site is blocked it will not appear in future searches. The feature is intended to give users greater control over their searches.
Since the changes to the algorithms Google have found that people are getting better search results from high quality sites. In addition to these changes, users can leave site feedback which means that google can go into looking at “long tail” of low ranking sites to make sure higher ranking sites are found that may have been missed previously. The algorithm is an extremely precise way of finding out the quality and relevance of a site. As websites are constantly changing Google will keep updating to indicate theses changes.
Making sure you choose the right website design company can be very difficult. How do you decide how to find the company that is right for you? Do you go for the first result in Google, do you talk to fellow business people for recommendations or spend time online looking for something that catches your eye?
Here are a few pointers to consider when you make that all important decision choosing the right company for you.
Has the company asked you what you want to achieve from the website as a business?
It is important that the design team take the time to understand what you want from the website. Therefore it’s important to consider what type of website would best suit your business. Will it be a static website, a portfolio website or a online business that you can manage.
What experience does the company have designing websites in your industry?
Have a look at the portfolio to get an indication of the type of sites and work that the design team have done. It might also be worth ringing the company and having a chat to see how knowledgeable and approachable the team are.
How well do the existing sites work?
Make sure you look at several of the websites that have already been designed to see if they are easy to find your way around. Also look at testimonials to see what other companies have to say about the work they had done.
Is it easy to communicate with the team?
It is vital that you feel comfortable to be able to talk to the design team and that they are easily approachable. It is also important that they full understand what you want to achieve with the website and keep this in mind.
Do the design team have ideas that could be useful for the website?
It’s important that the designers understand what you want to achieve and are able to suggest ideas that could benefit you. However, what the client wants should be the main focus rather than the design team pushing for what they think is right.
If you need to share files between computers there are many ways of achieving the task. Virtual private networks (VPN’s), ftp servers, wireless networks, it really depends on your setup.
As a design agency we have tried a few methods and sometimes it’s better to just simplify things, that’s where Dropbox comes in.
In a nutshell, you simply install it on the computers / devices you want to share files between and it’s as easy as that. It creates a folder on your computer and to share files you simply drag and drop into the dropbox folder. It will automatically upload and distribute files for you and save deleted files online in case you need to retrieve them later.
Tip : If you want to delete something permanently you’ll need to go to your online account and delete the deleted files (greyed out) from your dropbox. An also, have a little common sense, dont put anything too sensitive in your dropbox unless you use encryption software on it first.
Anyway, you can download it here, tell your friends and work colleagues to check it out too.
Approximately three months ago upon completing the design and development of their new website, Extrudakerb approached our team to find the most effective avenue to not only increase the exposure of their online branding but increase traffic from the right users.
After sitting down as a team we came back with a bespoke solution aimed at generating the maximum return on investment, aptly named the ‘brand awareness proposal’.
Generating traffic to a website can be achieved in many ways, adwords, backlinks, social networking, blogging, podcasts, mobile devices the list goes on. The challenge is deciding on the right combination for each client.
How do you target the right users and keep them coming back? One of the most effective tools is the use of a blog. It was the first enhancement for the Extrudakerb site, we also installed an IPhone/IPad version challenging their competition by becoming much more accessible to prospective businesses online.
I have recently carried out a review on their monthly traffic statistics and was pleased to see over the past three months a consistent 30% increase per month. Accompanied by other brand awareness techniques they have also achieved first page rankings for their targeted keywords.
Similar patterns are emerging for our other brand awareness clients.
Without giving too much away, the secret to our success lies in targeting the relevant areas of the internet/markets specifically for each company. This is done by distributing their content across the internet. An alternative to the more common practices from our competitors who tend to run smaller scaled campaigns and never quite reach the correct online saturation points.
If you would like to learn more about how Corporate Web Solutions could increase your ROI from online marketing, raise brand awareness, synchronize offline/online campaigns and track the success, simple call our Sheffield office on 08444 145 932 or visit our site at www.corporatewebsolutions.net
This article is targeted at non technically minded small business owners. I’m going to try and explain how a search engine interprets your website and how a few small changes (upgrades) can make a massive difference in your search engine traffic.
The aim is to empower you enough to understand why your site might not be generating the return on investment (ROI) you initially expected / were sold on and put you on the right track to appear under the right keywords/phrases you are seeking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo etc.
How relevant is my website and can its intended target audience find it ?
In a previous article (5-things-to-remember-when-considering-a-new-website) I explained how a search engine places emphasis on page relevancy. Take Google for example, Google will read web pages and match results that appear to be the most resourceful against what the internet user typed into its search box.
Great, and ? Well the question you need to ask yourself is :
Does my selected web page contain enough information to outrank its competition on this topic / product?
Example : I go to Google, type in web design company sheffield, hit enter and expect to see my website. In this case I do, but why? my competition talk about the same services, they are also in the same town etc. I’m obviously not going to give away our personal tricks and secrets, but I’ll explain the basics which my competition if any good should already have covered
Meta Tags : A website’s code is broken up into two sections, something called the head and something called the body. In the head section we have something called meta tags, these are basic chunks of information that a search engine scans to discover the topics covered on the rest of the page, try to see it like the index of a book with a summary of the current chapter.
In the meta tags you can put your page title, keywords and a page description. In all honesty Google doesn’t pay too much attention to these compared to the actual page content but they are still important and should not be overlooked.
A common mistake is that people call their page title ‘My company name homepage’ for example, forgive me for saying but who cares? Your website will already be relevant enough for Google to realise you are ‘ACME co’ as competitive websites will not be competing for top spot under your company name. The right approach would be something like this ‘Web design company in Sheffield, SEO & Internet Marketing – Corporate Web Solutions ‘.
The previous meta page title is keyword dense and hopefully more informative to Google regarding what the user searched for. The page content should then include a load of information about web design, internet marketing and SEO in Sheffield. Back to the book, think the title is the chapter and the page content is the story. Keep the content relevant and outweigh competitors.
How many keywords can I put in my meta keyword section? Remember quality over quantity, as a general rule of thumb don’t overkill it with every keyword you want to appear under and list all the products/services you offer. Try to enter no more than 25 words, avoid repetition and have unique keywords for each page, each relevant to that page’s content. Let the ‘marketing’ page have marketing in its keywords and the ‘graphic design’ page follow suit.
Step 2, the actual web page content. There should be a page title in the body section, the body section is the actual visible section of the web page on your computer screen. under the URL (website address) to the bottom of the visible page.
If your website sells ‘mobile phones by Sony’ the page should have a page header called Sony Mobile Phones and then display all the products in your shop. This page title should be something called a <h1> header. The designer should have coded the site to have a H1/Header 1 HTML tag around the body’s page title, this is what Google will interpret as the most relevant title on the page and expect to find information on the page that matches to title, again, chapter, story.
If not, try not to pull your hair out, its a quick fix just give them or even me a bell and I can sort it for you.
The next step is to name your images with relevant names and add something called anchor title text to your links. These are the titles that should appear when you roll over a link containing a little more information about the link’s target page. Once again, don’t panic if you are lost, you’re probably not a techy and the aim is to open your eyes to areas of improvement in your site and ensure a good job has been done by your web designer.
Recap :
Add meta tags relevant to each page, make sure the page has a visible relevant title that is wrapped in a <H1> tag, name images and ensure your sites links have titles that show extra text when you roll over them. Make sure the content/information on the page is relevant to the page’s ‘chapter summary’.
A common mistake is not having enough text on a page, don’t overkill it with graphics and exclude text that the search engine can read, otherwise how will it ever know how to rank you? The trick for the designer is to balance graphics and text to maintain a user friendly attractive design whilst feeding the search engine enough information.
Ok, I think I’m covered. Once you have the basics covered and have made yourself more relevant you need to let Google know. Don’t just sit there and think that everything will miraculously kick in now. Go to Google and add your website address (URL) to Google (click here to add your website to Google). Add your website address in and approx 8 top keywords.
Following that, go to DMOZ.org, that is the open source directory project (directory of websites Google pays a lot of attention to) and drill down the categories until you find the list of websites that best represent your industry and in the top right hand corner click suggest URL, if you cant see it, then you need to drill down deeper into the categories.
Dont stop there…. Open a Google account if you dont have one and add your website to the local business directory. This will include you in the map section of Google and hopefully increase the awareness of your site. Go to Yahoo and do the same, In fact, search for business directories in Google and add your site to as many freebies as possible.
Top Tip When adding your site into directories etc if possible name your site as ‘Keywords – Company name’ in the directories, ensuring the phrase is associated more and more across the internet.
Publicise your site as much as possible Include a link to your website in your email signature, search for similar websites with blogs and comment with useful information and a backlink to your website. Links back to your website are another massive aid to search engine optimisation and it’s something I’m going to cover in a future post.
For now, I hope this article has helped you and opened your eyes a little to a few things you can do to take control of your website’s SEO.
Comments are always welcome, suggestions for future topic coverage also.
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Good logo designs are the ones that stand out from the crowd, whatever the reason may be, there is something about them which makes them memorable. Remember to consider font legibility, design clarity, font typography, colour contrast and the use of symbolism.
Try not to use fonts that are difficult to read. Time and time again I come across clients who request ‘fancy fonts‘ which are only suitable for certain company names, and I try to advise them about legibility. I personally like fancy fonts‘ however, a severely swirly F, S, J, or K always seem to cause the reader problems as they can be misleading.
Clarity is key, apart form the printing issues I’m going to cover in no.2 below, avoid the heavy use of gradients, shadowing and glow effects. A nice logo clearly bounces off the page / screen it’s on and is eye catching to the viewer. With regards to white space usage ‘less is more’, less text, more white space.
Contrasting colours are a wise move in my book as they stand out to the reader, try not to squash words together to fit them in a box for example, this is a common mistake and many readers scanning a page of adverts will glide over your design as they tend to blend into a grey blur in a newspaper or generate adblock in online directories.
Regarding icons and symbolism to represent words, I love the clever techniques some designers use, the hidden arrow in the Fedex logo embedded in the white space between the e and x letters, the underlining yellow arrow in the amazon logo representing everything from a – z or simply using icons in replace of letters i.e a wheel instead of the letter ‘O’.
I’ll pop a link to a good list of these at the end of this post for you to check out.
Hot Tip : Ensure the spacing is correct between the preceding and consecutive letters to ensure the logo is read correctly and not broken into two words by the reader.
2. Logo design & corporate identity medium transferability.
This issue is very important, have you ever tried to print something and the shadow doesn’t look right on paper? Imagine what would happen if you tried to put the logo on a van using vinyl and create an identical match to the digital version.
Aside from full print vinyl wrapping such as the marketing on a Sky Tv van for example, the most common manner to transfer a logo from its digital format to a real world environment is vinyl graphics which are applied to windows and vehicles.
Vinyl are rolls of self-adhesive plastic film which are cut independently based on their colours then applied to the surface of the advertising medium. Shadow effects are very hard to replicate in these environments and will increase your long term costs considerably.
The same concept applies to bevelling (simple 3d effects), and gradients (the blending from one colour into another) as the vinyl rolls only come in solid colours.
A work around is digital printing but result vary. Some companies also have an online version of the logo as well as a print version for marketing and other mediums such as embroidery on clothing.
3. The use of white space on brochures
With regards to effective brochure design and flyer marketing materials, less is definitely more. A common mistake for brochure design layout is the use of inconsistent blocks of text which follow no visible page pattern. The pages simply blend together and are difficult to read which result in them being ineffective. One of the most eye catching brochures I have come across had a white front cover with nothing but one line of small text in the centre saying open me or you’re missing out. I opened it!
Always consider the gaps and spaces between text and images, make sure the same spacing applies throughout the page or it will look unprofessional and unaligned.
Try to use some clean photography, too many highly detailed graphics on the same page will guarantee they all fail to stand out.
4. Match your industry
Of course you want to be unique and stand out from your competition but don’t go overboard. If you are a florist I would advise against using the same font and colour scheme as a heavy death metal band.
Of course I hear you say, however, others may see something you don’t – ask for opinions, specifically ask ‘does it look like anything else you have seen before?’. Even if the answer is yes it’s not the end of the world unless it’s highly irrelevant or offensive.
5. Do you like Marmite !
In the defence of the designers, please remember that a logo is one of the most difficult things to get right for the client as they tend to be very personal and the chances of the client liking the first design are extremely hit and miss.
Try to help the designer, write a list of 5 words that represent you as a company, draw five shapes or symbols which in your eyes represent the brand, let them know your favourite colours.
To be fair most designers will ask you something along these lines anyway but it never hurts to be helpful.
In some cases you may have something in your head and struggle to get it out, try it on paper or find something online that looks similar and you will get there in the end.
Feel free to comment below and let me know if you found this article helpful. Don’t forget to spread the love and use the social networking tools below to share our blog with more users.
As promised here’s the link to the blog with a few cool logo designs on it, just Click here.
Here are a couple of designs im working on for new clients, the F could be tricky but all the other boxes are ticked, transferability, vinly accessibility, stationary and symbolism have been taken into consideration. What do you guys think ?
1. Consider the target audience and how they are going to find your website.
Content is key ! It’s a common assumption for people to think that when your shiny new website is all finished you will be flooded with enquiries from the largest target market to date, people from the internet.
Well, that depends. How will they find you? Google is the usual response and I’m not saying it won’t happen but you must consider a key point to give your website every chance of being a success.
There are a wide variety of techniques Google uses to anaylise a website, rank it against your competition and deliver the right users to your door. Assuming you aren’t a web designer yourself, I will cover the main asset you can bring to the table to aid your success, your content.
Try to remember a key issue for Google is your page relevancy, the page content needs to be relevant to the phrase the user typed into the search engine. If you are a ‘Website Design Company In Sheffield’, try to have refer to yourself as a website design company based in Sheffield then explain about the services you offer.
Try to be resourceful in Google’s eyes. Provide more relevant information to the user than your direct competition. Consider what you think they will type into the search engine and be relevant.
2. Who will look after the site post launch?
When a company usually approaches us we normally hear one of two things, ‘We have a website but it’s very out of date and needs a facelift’, ‘We have a website, but it doesn’t do anything for us’. There may be many reasons for the second problem which I usually go through with the client however the first one could have been avoided in two ways.
Option 1 : The web design company updates the content for you on a pay as you go / monthly agreement system.
Option 2 : A Content Management System (CMS). (This is where you have a login which would take you to a control panel and provide you with the tools to edit / manage your own content.)
Hot Tip : Try to remember, websites which are frequently updated rank higher in search engines. Use dynamic content from other sources if your industry doesn’t alter frequently.
3. Consider Your Photography.
Do you have good photos of your products? Do you need the web design company to source images or provide you with a professional photographer? Do any previous photos taken still reflect the image you / the company would like to portray?
Successful websites are usually aesthetically pleasing, user friendly, well built and marketing correctly. A good web design company will tackle these issues on a regular basis for a variety of clients. Try not to cut corners on the photography and factor professional images into your budget. In the past I have sourced a full set of images and videos for clients for £0-20. We have also hired photographers and done custom video shoots for clients with larger budgets. Your photography should leap off the page and capture the audience as a sale sign does in a high street shop window.
Hot Tip: The same psychology can be applied to high street shoppers browsing shops as internet users, grab their attention and remember, Internet Explorer / Firefox / Safari and Google Chrome are all referred to as internet browsers.
4. How will you introduce your site to it’s target market ?
Hit List :
a ) How will you market the website online?
b ) Have you considered the social networking side to marketing online?
c ) Would you benefit from email marketing?
d ) Ask your web designer how you could use Google Adwords effectively.
e) If you have an offline brochure have you considered a downloadable version to email to prospective clients or even converting it to an interactive brochure?
f ) Ask a professional about a ‘link campaign’.
g ) Ask about Google Base, Google Trends, Rss and Xml Feeds. These are all useful online resources which used correctly can aid companies dramatically.
h ) Consider running an affiliate marketing scheme.
i ) Consider blogging about your products, new product/services/news and then publishing articles on other relevant websites to increase your traffic.
j ) Be honest with the design agency. If you don’t know who to market yourself they should have the answers.
Hot Tip : For more info on internet marketing click here
5. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask! If You Don’t Know Just Be Honest.
Communication is key, a good web developer will try to explain how and why things work the way they do as it expresses the value in their work, educates the client and involves them in the development process, (that is of course if the client has any interest in knowing).
Never feel embarrassed to ask or act as if you know more than you do. A good company should be approachable enough to ask for help / advice / support on any topic. When a client gives the impression that they are more knowledgeable on a topic than they actually are, the end result could be that your are left with a website that you don’t understand, which in turn results in you not maximising on your investment and not feeling like you have value for money.
