Make up your mind!
Sitting here working away on a busy Friday after singing happy birthday to Mary and eating our squashy buns from Joanne’s, we heard one of our pc’s in the office saying “google alert” over and over again. (yes it’s annoying, we usually have the sound turned down)
It was a Google alert telling us that we have received an email about a topic we have subscribed to. A Google Alerts is a way of asking Google to email you when someone searches for a phrase or posts information about topics that you are interested in. So you tell google to notify you by email when someone searches for a phrase like. . . “Hair dressers in Wexford” for example that it emails you.
Why would you do this?
Well, it tells you how often a search is carried out, what were the results of the were, basically it’s a simpler version of Google Trends which is another online tool about how people use the web and what they are looking for. More on that, another day.
It’s all about “information” these day, knowing and understanding how the internet and people work together makes for a better web designer and web developer. Wexford web designers such as ourselves are interested in more that if an image goes to the left or the right of a page. We are interested in the method of navigation a person has when they arrive on a site, What pages are they interested in, do they use menu systems or search facilities to find information, do they speed read and jump to anchor text on a page. How long do they stay on each page or is the “bounce rate” very high, meaning that they have literally bounced away from that page.
Its this “information” that is available using web design tools and using your head and a spoonfull of “cop on” as my Dad would say. Often people will tell me how may “hits” they get on a website and I will tell them how many pageviews we get, what time we get them, what button people click on the most, what part of Ireland they are searching from and what our most popular search terms are. They usually ask do I know who the people are and I have to say no, but I know roughly what district in Dublin they are in , if Sandyford or Dun Laughaire etc.
This is available to everyone.
Anyway, getting back to the point!
Today we noticed that a web design business in Wexford has registered a number of domain names and is using these domains to point to their website. Great, I think most of the full time web designers in Wexford, Enniscorthy and Gorey have done this too. All we are doing is speculating that the Google Algorithm will detect this domain and associate it this us.
It’s worth a try, We here have a number of domains we bought about 4 years ago such as
WexfordWebsiteDesign.com and WebsiteDesignWexford.com
Will it help, who knows, it it any harm, Well the Google Webmaster Handbook wouldn’t be putting it top of their list of “great ideas” but at the moment the Google Algorithm seem to like it.
So how does this help you, well if I you’re thinking of registering a domain name, I would suggest looking for register a .com for instance for your trade and in your town. www.HairdressersWexford.com for example.
Remember Google changes it results everyday, so this is just one way to get ahead in search results, It will be different in 1 month, 6 months etc
To get ahead in business today, call Dave Jordan of Cada Media Ltd on 053 9430748
