We had an inquiry today (you know you are “T”!) asking for a website with an into page with flash animation and maybe some soft music. This is available to everyone but I had to steer the conversation around to a few questions that soon answered if she really wanted a flash intro page with soft music etc

• Who are you target market?
  • How old are they?
  • Men or women?
  • Irish?
  • European?
  • USA?
• What is the website for?
  • Information
  • Sales Leads
• What time are they online?
  • Mostly evening
  • online in work

The list of questions goes on and on, but our answer is, why are you putting another hurdle in front of someone who has been looking for your services or products.

Get to the point and give them the info, they will appreciate it and use your business!

Have a good weekend

Dave

1 or 2 page website for my business oh and I need it to be No 1 in Google.

This is one of the most frequent inquiries we get to our offices. Often we are asked to give a quotation for developing a 1 or 2 page website for a company as they want to keep the development costs down.

This is often because a “Web Designer” has said that they charge per page for designing a website, but in fact they have missed the bigger picture. Creating a small website is fine, but please remember you will get back exactly what you put into it. One page will not get you get you No 1 In search engines. It’s just not possible.

We have talked about this issue many times and every year it comes up again and again. We have created 1 page websites (many years ago) and we know from experience that they don’t get found. We often say to clients it would be the same as getting 1 flyer printer and nailing it to a tree in the amazon. You can image the footfall that flyer would gain. None.

So the point to this rant is, do your research, put together an informative website that search engines will actually want to display to people.

Have a search for something that interests you in a search engine, then go to the last page of the search results. . . . . That’s where the “One Page Websites” Live and that’s how important the search engines thinks your business is to it’s readers.

Just trying to help if you are in the process of setting up a website for your business. For less rant and more inforamtion call me “Dave” on 053-9430748 for more.

Where do I get good content for website?

We are just after receiving a few emails from a new client who has been busy putting together content for their website. One issue that I must bring to peoples attention is that we strongly suggest not using Google Image Search to source content for your site. You can not simply grab, copy an image from there and use it on your website.

Many people assume that they can grab an image from an Australian website and use it on their website and no one will notice. Well there are programs known as “bots” basically little search programs that will trawl the Internet looking for images. Google uses one to find images for their Google Image Search function.

These image bots will read all the websites in the world in a matter of days and be able to see who is using who’s images on their site. After that the data is then used in a legal action against your company.

Take Photo’s yourself!

or get a professional photographer to take the photo’s for you. These can then be used in brochures, web sites and all your marketing material. Companies can also buy your photos online on many of the stock photography website available, namely http://www.istockphoto.com or http://www.shutterstock.com/

Take the Internet seriously, other companies do.

Dave

Web Design Gorey

We have been looking at how Google is changing over the past few weeks and see that Goolge has definately started its changeover to the new listing method.

So I am writing this to see if it will appear in a basic listing for Web Design Gorey tomorrow. I will report back and let you know what happens.

Why?

Because if google is changing for us its also changing for the way they list you. . .  Our clients!

What are Content Management Systems?

A Content Management System is a program/software installed on your website that allows you to access and update your site through your Internet browser. You can add content from anywhere in the world. There is no need of any prior content management experience and you do not need to understand <HTML> code.

Content Management can be used to manage simple business brochure style website, portal or directory and also an ecommerce online shop website.

To Sumarise if you get a content management system, your site is ready for expansion in the future as it is built on a powerful base.

I was reminded this morning of how common this question is . Many of our inquiries always say they “want to be No 1 in Google” but don’t have an idea how to get there. I talk about search engine optimisation SEO (this goes over 99% of peoples heads) but really i am talking about getting a natural listing in Google listings.

I have to remind people that this is 2 tasks, 1 getting a website and 2 getting it top of the search engines.  It doesnt automatically happen (sorry!)

There are many search engines that are in use, Google, Yahoo, MSN and there are also directories such as browse.ie and of course GoreyLinks.com our baby ! Each search engine has it’s own formula to read a website and categorise its content into relevance for search terms people use when searching the net.

So what is SEO?

SEO is where you configure / program a website so that you are giving a better chance of coming up for a particular search phrase.

Why is SEO important?

It’s important because getting and retaining customers is important. If your website is not optimized to be read better by search engines you will not be on the first page of google let alone on the top. Remember being on the top of Google is google’s way of saying this is the best website we can recommend for your search term. So don’t expect a one-page for a chipper to be listed No 1 for “Restaurants in Ireland“.

This is actually a very common fact, that people who have a “One page website” often think that their job is done. Just put it up there and people will find it. With about 20 billion pages up on the net that theirs will pop up. You might as well nail a flyer to a tree in the amazon and hope that passers by will read it.

The internet is not “Field of Dreams“, Build it and they will come.

You must work at it, read up about what search engines want, get rid of :

• Frames
• large images
• large flash animation

And Make sure to insert:

• Meta tags
• Keywords tag
• Description tag
• Title tag

These may sound basic, but basic means to have the foundations correct before you build further on your site. Also a quick hit, make each page unique with titles, meta and content.

What is link Building?

This is the process of getting relevant website to point to your. It’s no good having a website but no ones knows about it. You don’t get a business telephone line and then keep your number our of the phone book, so don’t do it online.

Get your website listed on directories and portals that are important to your industry. Links are the Internet version of sign posts, Get “links” or signposts from good sites. The more signposts/links you have pointing to your site the more footfall you will get.

Note: don’t get links from crap sites, sites that are just one long page of links for every industry in the world, This is a link farm of 000′s or links and does nothing of benefit for you site. In fact some think it may have a negative effect on your site. Like putting a link in the local dump to your hotel, Its guilt by association.

Time for lunch…..

We have a number of requests to get a content managed system (C.M.S). This is a website whereby the client is able to log in and update and write content, new pages on their own website. Thus keeping it up to date and fresh. This is now becoming the standard style of website that businesses today.

CMS websites are great idea, but a few things must be taken into consideration when you are looking into getting a website of this style as opposed to a “static brochure website” whereby the pages are created in a format that can only be edited by either a web designer of a kid with good web knowledge.

Content management is about being able to edit content, but its a lot more that that it actually allows you to edit the whole site, the menu system, the layout, the colours, the design, everything!

Now here’s the But. . . this is all great but a few factors we would suggest would be required in getting involved in this.

• Time
• Creativity
• Experience in Desk Top Publishing or Graphic Design and Layout.
• E.C.D.L

Time: Being able to change a websites content is wonderful and really puts power in the owners hands. That’s of course if the user assigns time to the project and we have found that the more time the users give to their website management the more they will benefit from this tool. And that’s all this is, a tool to editing the site, so depending on how you use it will depend on the results.

Creativity: Say you edit the text and insert only a few words about a topic. The search engines will see that this is all you know about the topic. Don’t keep this knowledge in your head, put it on the site. Write about your chosen topic and remember you are not writing a book, Think of it as a magazine, you need to understand you reader and the time they have to scan down through you content.

Layout and Design: Ok so now you have the time, you’ve inserted the content. How does it look? Does it look like a long back and white page or have you used indents, bullet points, italic, bold, remember you online users scan down through the content so grab their attention and highlight words for them.

ECDL: These types of courses are great to give the user an understanding of the methods that can be involved. But do note that content management is not MS Word, Its a thousand time more. We think of it like comparing MS Word and MS Excel to Content Management and An Accounting System.

If you post an invoice on an accounting system you can not just click “back” and start again, you have to insert a credit note to minus the invoice. Its a little more structured but there is method and reason for this.

Content management systems are similar to this as you can’t just click back, they are online applications that need to be closed properly otherwise you lock a document. And once the document or page is locked it may not be accessible to edit by another editor. A Desktop application like Word etc can close and you can open it again it may have tried to so an auto-save.

So to sum up, think about your design skills, your time and your typesetting skills.

Duplicate Content is getting it’s serious tie on these days as many websites are falling down in respect to “Duplicate Content Copyright Infringement”. We supply web sites that our users can update, upload text and images themselves, but where are they getting the content ? Where are they getting the images from?

We have been advising our clients for a number of years now to make sure they write good web content for their sites to attract visitors. If they use content from other sites/books then they will attract visitors such as solicitors and american lawyers!

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Sample letter received

Pursuant to US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Ireland Copyright Act

To Whom It May Concern:

I represent X Company (client), the exclusive publisher of the XXX book, which is a secure test instrument restricted to purchase by qualified individuals. The book is an original work of authorship registered with the United States Copyright Office.

It has recently come to the clients attention that you have a web site that contains an unauthorized reproduction of the Book. The reproduction, display, and distribution of the material at the online location infringes our clients copyright in the book because the test items are reproduced and displayed on the online location without our clients’s permission. As such, the web page you are hosting clearly infringes both U.S. Copyright law. See 17 U.S.C. 512(d) and New Zealand Copyright
law .

LOCATION OF INFRINGEMENT

The location of the infringement is:

http://www.yoursite-name-here-.ie

NOTICE OF TAKE DOWN

The purpose of this letter is to advise you of our clients’s rights and to seek your agreement to (1) remove and destroy the copyrighted material; and (2) disable or remove any hyperlink(s). Please note that the disabling or removing of Pearson’s copyrighted material from this site should include destroying the usefulness of any textual directory or pointer information contained therein.

Please confirm in writing that you have complied with the above request.

RESERVATION OF RIGHTS

Clients name reserves its position insofar as costs and damages caused by the unauthorized reproduction and/or display of the book and any information locating tools with respect to online locations engaged in infringing activity. Pearson also reserves its right to seek injunctive relief to prevent further unauthorized activity, particularly any information locating tools, pending your response to this letter. We suggest you contact your legal advisors to obtain legal advice as to
your position.

VERIFICATION

The information contained in this notification is accurate as of the time of compilation and, under penalty of perjury, I certify that I am authorized to act on behalf of our clients, xxx client name has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

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