Corporate Web Solutions celebrates 4th Birthday today!

Web design & online marketing company, Corporate Web Solutions are officially 4 years old today and the 5th year is predicted to be the strongest yet.

In the past 4 years, Corporate Web Solutions have gained some fantastic clients including Gleeson Homes, Extrudakerb, Wendy’s Carpets & Curtains, Braithwell Developments & Charterfields. All of these companies asked for different services from us and are still with us thanks to our word of mouth reputation and giving clients value for money.
Dealing with a variety of projects has not only challenged the company, but grown it also; increasing our skill range and making us stronger in new areas as we evolve. This has been a fantastic learning curve and both ourselves and our clients benefit.

Managing Director, Diego Herrera says :

“As it stands, we are in the strongest position we have ever been, our client bank is better than ever and as a company we are seeing the benefits both in profitability and reputation.  The biggest change is by far the growth rate of our SEO services over the past 15 months, which I believe is down to the clients seeing a faster return on investment with great online results to match, that has to be where the great word of mouth marketing is coming from.”

Many internal changes and struggles have meant Corporate Web Solutions have had to endure several dips in the road but determination and dedication have triumphed, with the future only looking brighter.

If you would like to get in touch with Corporate Web Solutions regarding any web design, development or marketing service, then just call 08444 145932 or email info@corporatewebsolutions.net.

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.

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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