Trade Site - Designs on the Web, Wokingham, Berkshire

Second new site launch of 2012!!

2012-02-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of last week's site launch, we now have the go ahead to launch yet another new site for a Barber Training company based in Farnham. They provide training for mens grooming skills such as Hair Styling and Wet Shave training.

Extremely busy right now, still need to give more details, but for now, you can see their site here:

http://hfmbarberacademy.co.uk/

Need to register with the search engines, and do some tidy up on images for example. But pretty well good to go.

Mike

First new site launch of 2012

2012-02-17T03:43:00.000-08:00

We launch our latest site for an existing client : http://petrolanddieseldiagnostics.co.uk/.

Their core business is all around vehicles, recovery, disposal repair etc.. So this latest site just adds to their portfolio.

Further update to follow when indexing starts to kick in.

Mike

Quiet January - Hosting Outage - Business Restarting Now

2012-02-08T23:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas seems a long time away now, New Year been and gone and January completely behind us - where did it all go so fast!! January was quiet from a business point of view, I heard that from a lot of quarters, it seems to be the way of things whilst the economic outlook is as it is.

The quiet period was made a little more "exciting" by an outage at our hosting company. All of our sites went down, their site went down. It took approx three days to fix and in the meanwhile we can only guess that they brought up some old backup servers, because all of our emails (and our clients emails) from prior to April 2011 started to pop up. Some of my client's web sites dissapeared completely and others reverted back to content that was extremely out of date. So that caused some stress in the early days of January that was for sure!

We now have a couple of new sites in the pipeline that should move forward hopefully quite quickly, so we'll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime - a belated Happy New Year !!

Cheers,

Mike

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

2011-12-27T03:33:00.001-08:00

Hope everybody had a nice Christmas, looking forward to a great New Year's celebration. This post is more of a tweet than a Blog entry! Nothing much else to say.

Enjoying some well earned rest and time with the family, back to business next week!

Mike

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

2011-12-20T03:59:00.000-08:00

First post in a while. Been busy with lot's of other things and not too focussed on the Web Site Business of late. A couple of projects came and went. Made us a bit more wary of the laid back approach that we take with clients. Hopefully not lost, business and just delayed, however there has been an investment of time into a couple of activities that have so far come to nothing. These things happen, and hopefully our customer friendly approach will pay dividends later.

In the meantime looking back at 2011. Our business has grown, which in today's economic climate has to be a good thing. There was no ONE LARGE project like last year, but ratther a handful of medium sized activities. This meant volume growth, but flat revenue. Again, not a problem considering the climate.

If the two deferred projects come in during the first couple of months of 2012 then that will be useful.

Personally, great journey for Spurs in the Champs League earlier on in the season. Dissapointing to miss out again this year, but looking good in the league this season. Would be happy to forgoe cup runs for a good showing in the league and back to CL again next season. Lets wait and see.

Other than that. Happy New Year! For Berkshire Web Site Design, get in touch.

For other services like Reading UPVC Double Glazing, Berkshire Bricklayers, Fencing Contractors and Reading Painters and Decorators - see their respective web sites! Oh - also for Hampshire, Surrey and Berkshire Tennis Court Construction

Mike

Holidays are coming - Globalisation Meltdown!

2011-11-27T05:44:00.000-08:00

Things are clearly slowing down. For Christmas, partly, but of course the overidding economic situation is a big driver too. The knock on effect are wide ranging and frankly I don't think the government really has a cluse what's ACTUALLY happening. Nor the previous government.

What's the big bad word here?.. GLOBALISATION

That may sound rich coming frpm somebody who develops web sites on the so called worlds wide web, but hear me out. Globalisation clearly means different things to different nations. To nations such as Germany, UK, France, US etc... it means being able to source goods and labour from cheaper regions. To developing nations it means incoming business from these nations looking to reduce costs. All fine and dandy right?

WRONG ... the problem is that business is driving the transition with no throttling from Governments, so in effect what has happening is a rapidy forming jobs vacuum has developed. No one can get entry level jobs, to then progress up the ladder. Many people lack the skills and experience to jump in at higher levels and the expectation about jobs in country is still the same as it always was.

Globalisation is not neccesarily a bad thing in itself, but the consequences to society were not thought through. Social breakdown in the developedworld is no good to the developing nations either because that way their markets contract also - the end point could be considered kind of scary.

If managed in the right way it could have been a good thing. Bringing up living standards across the globe gradually, whilst managing a lowering of expectations across the developed world. We did have it far too good for far too long.

Anywau - in the mean time, any small local businesses can get a web site designed quite cheaply!

Mike

Business Slow Down - Samll Business Competitive Edge

2011-11-20T03:50:00.000-08:00

Well, the world is melting down, everything is slowing down in the run up to Christmas, so all in all it's pretty tough out there.

Every business needs to give itself a competitive edge somehow and for us, the competitive edge that we can provide is a web site that performs well in search to drive incremental business for your company.

This is not true in all areas of business of course. Take retail sales, this has gone online mad and the competitve edge is no longer having a website to take orders online, but having a GREAT web site that is easy to use and the backing of an ESTABLISHED brand. Only a few new players got in at the right time to establish themselves (think Amazon for example) but our opinion is that opportuinty has long gone and the next phase is for high street names to ensure that they keep up.

In the small local business area though, there is still an edge that having a professional website can give a small business. The feeling of size and reliability can still be conveyed through a wel designed, well thought out website. The market saturation is not there yet, so a website can still put local trades people a nose ahead of their rivals.

This won't last, eventually everyone is going to have a site, but the opportunity is still there at the moment.

Mike

Gotta love this job

2011-11-05T04:13:00.000-07:00

We (I) run this Wokingham Web Design business for two reasons. Obviously to make money. Not many people do work for nothing! But second reason is the we (I!) REALLY enjoy building web sites! If there are any charities out there, I would certainly design websites for you for free - so that you only have hosting costs.

The reason for this post is because a new client gave me some excellent feedback about the latest site we are working on. It just made me chuffed to get that sort of reaction.

We are cheap - and we probably over-deliver, but it's the sort of reaction we get from time to time that re-inforces that approach. It's my choice to do this and I don't have anyone telling me that I shouldn't be doing it. (except perhaps the wife could say that I should be charging more!!)

Anyway - new clients always welcome!

Mike

Half year end

2011-10-31T03:00:00.000-07:00

Lookig back at the last six months in business, Four new clients. Three design and host packages and one simple hosting client.

As a startup business, this is slow but steady progress, the business is run in conjunction with a day-job so there is a balance that needs to be struck. Too rapid growth, too many clients would probably break the system, so this is another reason that we are pleased with the scale of the growth.

We have the capacity to take on probably twice as much work as we do now, so new clients are always welcome. In the meantime, we'll carry on providing a cost effective, bespoke web design service!

Cheers,

Mike

Google Places - Business Verification

2011-10-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

Google places, when we first started using the service, would verify business listings by phone. This was nice and quick, as you could set up a listing and get it active within a day.

Perhaps understandably, Google have moved awy from this and verify each listing by post to the business address listed. You can guess a number of reasons for this, but primarily too many businesses could set up bogus listings based on phone number verification and I was always a little surprised that it was that easy in the past.

They have sped up their post card distribution process, so that cards are being receuieved quite promptly now. (still around two weeks - but at least they are arriving!)

So in all I think this is a wise move on the part of Google. It should increase consumer confidence in the listings that they see and it still remains a great service - especally that it is free to use!

Mike

Trade Site Web Design

2011-10-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

Nothing much to comment on this week. Something more needs to be said, to avoid that this post seems more like a tweet! But there's no new Website Design work in the pipeline at the moment.

We are still available to develop new Websites for small business in Berkshire.

Cheers,

Mike

Blogging frequency versus crawl frequency

2011-10-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

Over the past year and a half we have run this blog in support of our business. In the forst few months we made a point of blogging EVERY day. In the belief that would drive regular crawling of the site and therefore quick indexing of articles. On the whole that approach has proved extremely effective.

We then cut back a little, just to once a week. Initially there was no change, but eventually and perhaps unsurprisingly the indexing also slowed down.

Over the past couple of months though - things have been extremely up and down. Sometimes weeks going by without articles turning up. (and let's be clear here, I am still primarily interested in Google)

We have upped the posting regularity a little and things seem to have picked up a bit, so we'll kee a watch on it. Our latest activity was with an existing client to boost his Organic results for localed. So we did this sort of thing: Double Glazing Berkshire Oxfordshire and Hampshire Coverage Page

Certainly seems to work for smaller locations - locale long tail marketing!

Mike

Homework - OT

2011-10-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

Nothing to do with business, but my son emailed me this picture of Eminem. I asked him to find a picture that he liked and e-mail it to me. So this is what he likes about his image.

Actually the first picture that he sent me featured him giving the bird with both hands.

At least my sone had the foresight to apoligise in advance if I didn't think it was appropriate! But it wasn't a problem really, but meant that i could ask him to do the task again.

Anyway, upshot is that my son is perfectly capable of e-mailing somebody if given their email address. I just wanted to check that he could do that without any guidance. Tick!

Cheers,

Mike

New site area on client site

2011-10-01T02:20:00.000-07:00

One of our clients focus primarily on Tennis Courts and Landscaping, however they can work / construct pretty much any surface. A recent project now features on their web site which is a Horse Riding arena that they have constructed for an Equestrian facility.

We worked with the client to choose the best pictures of the project and have created a new area on their website to showcase that service.

You can see the page on their webiste: http://tenniscourtstheale.co.uk/

Specifically you can see the project here: Berkshire Menage Constuction

So from our perspective, we just want to encourage that the page is indexed and the new keywords that have been added start to get picked up by search.

Cheers!

Mike

Google Sites- tested it out

2011-09-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

We took a quick look at Google sites and built a test site using that platform:

http://sites.google.com/site/bracknellplumber/

At the moment it is nothing more than a glorified directory. We just used this as our test bed. As we are bespoke website builders, then perhaps unsurprisingly we are not too keen, but as with other free web site building services, it seems OK.

Not sure about the URL format though!!

Mike

SEO basics

2011-09-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult, yet important, aspects of SEO is defining what keywords you want to push. Some businesses are obvious, but others less so. It can really depend on a number of factors. You can also be blinded by going down one particular road and therefore ignore the sometimes obvious. So one recent example of this is a site we worked on with a new client recently. Basically the client is a Berkshire Specialist Dyslexia Teacher (spot the backlink ! ;-)

Some obvious keywords there already you would have thought. Dyslexia Teacher being the most obvious. SO a healthy spattering of those words in the content, plus some key locations like Reading Dyslexia Teacher as well would be appropriate?

No !!.. We got very focussed on the word Tutor. Which technically is possibly the better description.... BUT rememeber who you have to think like ... the potential audience.. So whereas the site performs very well for Tutor and Tuition etc... When teacher is the search word used, the results are not so good.

So, just a small piece of work to up the relevance of "Teacher" on the site and see if we can't up the performance there a little bit too.

(Although need this blog to get it's act together being indexed too... grrrrr...!!)

Mike

Site Ranking - varying results

2011-09-25T04:58:00.000-07:00

In the past we have been quite pleased with ranking results. Mostly focussed on Google, since they remain the main search engine. For our Reading Fencing Company client we also created a Google Place page and the combination of the SEO on the main website, PLUS the relevance of the Google Place ciontinues to drive good traffic for them. This screen shot is an up to date version of one originally posted over a year ago.

This reflects Google's strategy of combining Organic results with Google Places results, so whereas in the old model you could get two listings, one of your Google Place and another of your main website, increasingly you see this hybrid type of result. From a consumer perspective probably this is better.

Previous results were probably confusing but the point here being that this client website continues to do well.

A similar case, which can be considered work in progress, is the web site for a recent client who are a Berkshire Bricklayer. The aim has been the same as for the above example. Create web site, peform SEO, supplement with Google Places page. The result for a pretty relevant serach of Berkshire Bricklayers can be seen below:

The screen shot has been doctored a little, just for display purposes. What is missing are all of the "lettered" Google places results. But what you see here is that the client's site kind of appears in Google Places. It is the "dot" marker circled in the map area, but does not appear in the lettered list. However in the organic results of the first page you see their main website listed AND a free directory listing also listed.

So we don't claim to understand Google's search strategy, but again, the result seems fairly good. From a consumer perspective perhaps confunsing that they see two listings from the same company, but in increases shelf space for the client, so what the heck!

Anyway, ramble over for today!.

Mike

Other web site options

2011-09-24T02:56:00.000-07:00

When starting up our business, one of our first clients (a Reading Replacement Windows company) had taled about Moonfruit as a way to create their company website. It's kind of free, but we hadn't heard of it at the time. In between times we created our own Moonfruit site for our Wokingham Website Design Company. You can see it here at : http://trade-site.moonfruit.com/

We built it to check that we could provide this service if asked. It is relatively simple to build a basic site using Moonfruit and we have seen free versions of the site ranking relatively high in certain cases. So it is a good option for a company who don't want to commit to ANY ongoing costs to start with.

We recently updated the site to catch up with our growing portfolio of Berkshire Web Site Designs and have added a second Portfolio page which can be seen here:

http://trade-site.moonfruit.com/portfolio-2/4555607264

Honestly we don't think we would recommend this approach, partly because it denies us an ongoing hosting revenue! But as a string to our bow it is stil worth having. If nothing else, providing a backlink resource.

Cheers!

Mike

Activity lately

2011-09-11T13:26:00.000-07:00

Not a lot to report recently. Holiday was nice, getting back to work, the main activity os to try to encourage Berkshire Bricklayers site to rise page rank. One of our more recent clients with a brand new site and Google Places page. Focusing on search terms like Bricklayers in Berkshire and Bricklaying Berkshire.

Making some regular updates to the site to improve it's relevance and will be meeting up with the client to add some more pictures and check the copy on the site.

So some work to be done, the directory listings return good search for Reading Bricklayers but the new site is not yet performing as hoped, but early days!

Mike

Break from work - back now

2011-09-05T04:39:00.000-07:00

Just got back after two weeks away. Didn't touch a computer (or mobile phone) once. Couldn't remember how to type when I finally switched the laptop on. Anyway, indexing of this blog seems to continue, just not in the same way that it used to. Very sporadic as mentioned in posts before be went away.

Just before our break, we launched two new sites:

Berkshire Bricklayer

and

Dyslexia Tutor in Reading, Berkshire

Both are starting to receive some traffic and this will hopefully increase after the summer holidays.

Otherwise, "great" to be back !

Mike

Blog Post missed indexing - new Resource

2011-08-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

This post seems to have missed getting indexed. Not sure what is happening with Blogger indexing right now, maybe it will turn uo in due course. But just in case, here we go again!

Just looking into Squidoo. Have created a new lens. At this stage it looks best to probably create a lens per client, but just experimenting right now, so have created one lens for our company and will add links to our clients' sites and see if this has a positive impact.

So here we go: http://www.squidoo.com/trade-site and also
Bricklayer Squidoo : http://www.squidoo.com/berkshire-bricklayer

Take a look! Any suggestions welcome. We will build this up over the coming weeks! It's all about keeping up with the latest trends and tools to perform SEO activities. Some of these tools may not be the latests and greatest, but we are trying to balance effort and results. So certain tried and tested activities continue and occasionally we dip into other approaches.
Recently however we have treated this Blog a little too much as if it was Twitter, with some one line entries that are probably not looked upon as favourable. So just doing a bit of tidy up!
Mike

Dyslexia Tutoring Site

2011-08-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

We launched our latest client site earlier this week. They provide a Dyslexia Tutor Berkshire and Dyslexia Tutor Hampshire service. The next phase of site launch is to work their site up the search engine rankings. There will be a number of offline activities to support their business, but one of the points of having a web site (as we have mentioned a number of times before) is to drive incremental business through new contacts made on the internet.

This can come increasingly from Social Networking mediums, but primarily search is the primary awareness driver.

So for this company, people need to be able to find them by searching things such as Swindon Dyslexia Tutor, Dyscalculia Reading and Tutoring Dyslexia Berkshire.

This is the type of traffic that needs to come to their site if it is to support their new business.

Mike

New site launch - Dispel Dyslexia

2011-08-13T03:12:00.000-07:00

It seems this blog is slowly catching up being indexed. It seems a little strange, because a post from earlier this month has suddenly popped up this morning. But not some of the later posts. There is still somthing iffy going on, but perhaps it is on Google's side rather than any rogue content that I may have posted causing me a problem specifically.

Anyway - the official launch date of our latest client's site is this coming Monday, but the delayed indexing of this site means that we want to get in early! By the the time this post gets crawled it will probably be after then anyway. We will mention our new clients on our main business site on Monday for the official day.

But we have spent a couple of months working with this client on a very specialist site. A large chunk of their target audience will be people with varying degress of Dyslexia and Dyscalculia. This means different abilities of reading and issues not normally catered for in our other web site designs.

So check out Dispel Dyslexia, Berkshire at : http://dispeldyslexia.co.uk/

Cheers!

Mike

Oh dear - things may need to change

2011-08-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

It's been getting on for two weeks now, since new posts were indexed from this blog. It seems a very big co-incidence that indexing stopped almost immediately after we posted up a very spammy looking post. Maybe it triggered some sort of mechanism to stop spammy sites getting crawled. Maybe it's just a change in policy, but the problem being is that I just don't know.

Google are great at providing what they do to be honest. You cannot complain too much when you are doing good business using their search technology to drive business for clients and it doesn't make them ANY money at all. So it's hard to be too critical. (I have had problems with Google Places before and commented about that previously)

But if things don't change then all the hard work that went into this blog may have been wasted and I might as well shut it down and start again.

Will be taking a break shortly anyway.

Then see what happens.

Signing off,

Mike

Overcooking the links - maybe

2011-08-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

From time to time, indexing behaviour makes us wonder if we have overdone any particular aspect of the way we write articles for this blog. Case in point, as couple of weeks ago we made a post to launch a new client site and perhaps included a few too many links in the post.

Since that post, our blog has not been crawled. Could be an expensive lesson learned! Although it seems to be a little hit a miss, we have panicked before and not really had anything to worry about.

So we'll see, give it a little while, a few more posts and then we'll see.

It will be a shame if we have trashed the hard work we put into this blog though.

Mike

New resource to find our company and clients

2011-08-08T02:15:00.000-07:00

Just looking into Squidoo. Have created a new lens. At this stage it looks best to probably create a lens per client, but just experimenting right now, so have created one lens for our company and will add links to our clients' sites and see if this has a positive impact.

So here we go: http://www.squidoo.com/trade-site and also
Bricklayer Squidoo : http://www.squidoo.com/berkshire-bricklayer

Take a look! Any suggestions welcome. We will build this up over the coming weeks! It's all about keeping up with the latest trends and tools to perform SEO activities. Some of these tools may not be the latests and greatest, but we are trying to balance effort and results. So certain tried and tested activities continue and occasionally we dip into other approaches.

Recently however we have treated this Blog a little too much as if it was Twitter, with some one line entries that are probably not looked upon as favourable. So just doing a bit of tidy up!

Mike

Page correction

2011-08-04T06:42:00.000-07:00

We linked to a wrong page. This happens from time to time. What we try to do from an SEO perspective is build certain keywords into our page filenames. Apparently that helps with indexing and ranking to a certain extent. How much it helps is not clear, but there is not too much effort involved in taking a little time to name the files accordingly.

(We are only craeting relatively small sites for small business clients therefore there is no CMS or anything involved in what we do. Simple manual page creation using an HTML editor)

So we realised that we could include an extra couple of keywords in the particluar page that we are referrimg too, but the original had already been indexed. So the new page was created and added to the sitemap.

Also a re-direct is in place to the new page from the old one:

http://gbbrickwork.co.uk/reading_berkshire_bricklayer_groundworks_extensions_patios.htm

Even though the site is quite new, the previous page had already been indexed, so safest to put the redirect in place to avoid any 404's.

Mike

New site launch - Bricklaying / Brickwork site pt2

2011-07-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in an earlier post, we are launching a new site for a Theale Bricklayer. The main site content will be developed over the coming weeks, but it is an established company and SEO work starts now to try to build a decent rank. Also Google Places page has been created and will be activated as soon as the pin number has come through.

Here are the main services and areas we will be focussing on:

Reading Bricklayer
Reading Brickwork
Reading Builder
Reading Groundworks
Reading Patios
Reading Hard Landscaping

(The original version of this post accidenatlly had a spammy list of URLS as long as your arm, so just modified it to stick to the important stuff)

Cheers!

Mike

New site launch - Bricklaying / Brickwork site

2011-07-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in countless Blog entries before, one of the objectives of this blog is to assist with site launches. Referring to a new site that has not been indexed before from this Blog has the effect of accelerating the indexing. Although of course all sites get registered with the main search engines too.

So the latest site we are working on is : http://gbbrickwork.co.uk

The content is under development, but the client's busienss is well established and there is no harm in launching the placeholder page, which on the off chance that prosepctive customers come across it during the development phasem, it MAY generate the occasional contact. Even if it doesn't, it creates a good foundation for the sites ranking to build on.

So for a Berkshire Bricklayer, Berkshire Goundworks contractor or Berkshire Patio Builder. Contact GB Brickwork. Established in the Reading area for the last two decades. Plenty of experience and references available!

Cheers,

Mike

Blogging pause

2011-07-13T09:08:00.001-07:00

We spent approximately 3 months when setting up this blog about Wokingham Website Design blogging every day, just to build up some sort of topical authority and some reputation with search engines as having the latest and up to date information about our subject matter. This was primarily for two reasons, as we have mentioned before:

1) To use the blog as a vehicle for getting newly launched sites indexed.
This works really well. Every site we have launched in the past year has been indexed withing a day or so. Just by backlinking.

2) To pass some search juice onto our client's sites to improve their search ranking
That is a little mor difficult to quantify success. But many of our client sites perform well in search. (aided by no small degree by Google Places listings)

So anyway, that was over a year ago, the pace of our blogging has slowed down somewhat, but the purpose is still the same. To promote our Wokingham Web Design and Hosting business and assist our clients sites.

So we dropped down to weekly entries, and now it seems bi-weekly.

Mike

Missed a week. Oops

2011-07-04T00:39:00.000-07:00

This is our fun blog. Not quite sure what is fun about it mind you!! The core aim is to talk about our Web Design Services in Wokingham. In the process of this, as discussed in a number of our other Blog articles, a number of free backlinks ar generated. How much juice this actually gives to the target websites is debateable,but the point being that it is probabably a smidgen. Which is better than nothing! So you'll often see a client portfolio update here. Actually, here you go:

Our latest client list as at End June 2011, with one new client site in the pipeline and due for launch shortly:
Reading Fencing and Decking Company – Fox Fencing
Reading Double Glazing Installers – TailorMade Windows
Berkshire Tennis Court Construction – Theale Tennis Courts and Landscapes
Theale / Reading Pub – The Bull At Theale
Reading Property Refurbishment and Renovation Company – Aspect Contracts
Berkshire Scrap Vehicle Collection – Thames Valley Recycling
Berkshire Vehicle Recovery – Thames Valley Vehicle Recovery
Nationwide Fleet Disposals – 1st For Fleet
Bespoke Handmade Beds and Mattresses – Burgess Beds
Commercial Building Contractors – Four Star Construction
UK Scrap Metal Sculpture Importer – Metal Artwork Sculptures
Wokingham Man and Van – 2 Big 4 The Car

Was going to mention something else ... but .. forgotten what that was!

Cheers,

Mike

Re-post of Website Design

2011-06-11T10:25:00.001-07:00

Sixth day of experiment. Posts are still back to being indexed within a matter of minutes as they were some time ago when we used to try to Blog every day. Doesn't take too long! But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format. Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example. (no gap again today as expected, only one more day to go. I think only a week long experiment as getting quite bored doing this now!) I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them. The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway. The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways. We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website. More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes. Not sure how we are going to tell if the concentration around the topic of Wokingham Web Design is having any effect or not though! Partially down to any degree of authority that this site has gained? Don't know. Anyway here we go with the main content of this Bracknell Web Design Post: So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read! Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect! Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain. Mike

New website development

2011-05-28T00:11:00.000-07:00

We are glad to say we received a new enquiry last week to build a new website for a small company just starting up. This is the kind of target market for us, we can deliver a bespoke website at competitive prices with a personal service.

Just started with our 5 page Wokingham Website Design package, domain is registereed and first couple of mockups done. The clients subject matter has some very specific design requirments so this will be a joint design project, which is great because the end product fits the desires of the client closer that way.

Also being supplied with our Wokingham website hosting package.

Watch this space, when signed off we'll be annoucning the site here, which will of course be part of our Wokingham SEO Services!

Cheers,

Mike

SEO Support for Damp Proofing and Timber Treatment Company

2011-05-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

We took on a low key SEO project for friends to take their existing website that had no SEO performed on it and try to get some search traction for them. The first steps were some on-site optimisation. For example the primary navigation was embedded within a flash animation, so only the homepage had got indexed! Fixed that straight away - the whole site is linked and indexed pretty well. Title tags and description tags now included with much better text and the content also updated to get some decent keyword density.

Now some backlinks from our business blogs to add whatever juice we can. Just going to focus on Damp and Timber Treatment in Uxbridge for now

For the following services:

Woodworm control Uxbridge
Damp Proofing Uxbridge
Dry Rot Treatment Uxbridge
Wet Rot Treatment Uxbridge
Timber Treatment Uxbridge

You get the drift!

Mike

New Google Places listing - algorithms???!!

2011-05-14T00:20:00.000-07:00

Google places have now implemented a postcard only process for verifying listings. It kind of makes sense, but it is so frsutrating to have to wait for the clients to receive their postcards and then let you know that they have arrived.

But anyway, we recently created a site for a Wokingham Van Man service and their Google Places listing is now live at last.

Google's algorithms are fascinating though - I'd love to really understand it.

Bracknell Man with a Van does not bring up the listing, and coincidentally brings up a competitors places listing just down their street,

Whereas Bracknell Man With Van DOES bring up my client's listing as expected. Weird. But Google is what it is. The service is free so cannot really complain!

Cheers,

Mike

Rain at last

2011-05-07T02:43:00.000-07:00

Well, this blog was always intended as our fun blog. Not all the posts are going to be about our Wokingham Website Design business!

Thank god it has rained at last, fires in the forest hopfully helped by the downpour last night, and also more impotantly, the flowers we planted a week or so ago get some much needed water without us having to get the hosepipe out!!

Anyway, no mention of our client sites today either. Not Reading Replacement UPVC Windows, nor Wokingham Builders. Not Reading Scrap Car Removal or Wokingham Van Man. Neither Reading Painters and Decorators or Berkshire Fencing Contractors.

Although we might just mention if you are looking for a Hampshire Tennis Court Builder :-)

Oh ... and we've seen these most amazing Recycled Metal Sculptures for sale!

But apart from the rain . .. nothing to say!

Cheers,

Mike

Marvellous Weekend - clean up

2011-05-02T02:39:00.000-07:00

After the Royal wedding on Friday, it was noted the Wokingham Website traffic was down. A good sign really - shows that people were concentrating on having a good time and relaxing having a good time rather than searching the internet for goods and services.

After all many people will have spent the weekend DIY'ing or having major spring cleans.

Now comes the clean up, and if you haven't got the right transportation that can be tricky to do.

A common new service that is popping up is something more cost effective, and easy.

You can hire a
Wokingham Man and Van
Bracknell Man and Van
Crowthorne Man and Van
Winnersh Man and Van or
Reading Man and Van than to hire a van for the day and have to drive it yourself.

Needless to say, there is such a website advertising this service : http://2big4thecar.co.uk

And you can find them on Google PLaces too: Bracknell Man and Van or Wokingham Man and Van

Cheers,

Mike

Royal Wedding Comment

2011-04-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

This is another test of some nature. This blog gets indexed pretty quickly, so let's see if the wife thinks victoria beckham looked like miserable wotsit royal wedding can be searched and found straight away.

Mike

And getting a coverage page indexed quickly

2011-04-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's post worked extremely well. Perhaps we should not be too surprised! It's not rocket science after all. This is the way it seems to work.

But anyway - there is a coverage page also being developed to assist local SEO. So may as well get that web page indexed at the same time.

Uxbridge Damp Proofing and Timber Treatment Services Coverage

Interestingly the posts on this blog are back to being crawled almost immediately, so proof if needed of the benefit of having up to date content.

Cheers,

Mike

Blatant mis use of this Blog!

2011-04-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

We use this blog often to get newly launched sites into search engines as quickly as possible. As recent piece of work we have undertaken for friends is on their web site which is relatively well established. From a time perspective at least .. about a year or so.

But the structure of the site made it difficult for search engines to index the site. (The main navigation was embedded within flash so not SEO friendly at all..) So we have placed some normal anchor text links on the site and waiting for the additional pages to get indexed.

But we thought, why not try the Blog technique on the deeper pages. So here we go:

Uxbridge Damp Proofing
Uxbridge Woodworm Treatment
Uxbridge Dry Rot Treatment
Uxbridge Mould and Condensation Control

Probably will change the page file names to be also more local search friendly too in due course, but lets see how quickly we can get the other pages to get indexed too for now.

Cheers!

Mike

Site SEO Assistance

2011-04-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Quick post just to talk about the latests small project we have taken on. Just as a favour to close friends, we are trying to get them some business through their web site. Very similar to a job we did for a Reading painter and decorator about a year ago or so. They are getting little or no search related enquiries and are relying heavily on their Thomson Local listing.

So we are going to update the site content a little, to be more search friendly. Especially for local search, which is where a Google Places listing also comes in. But in addition to some on site SEO we of course cannot let up the opportunity to mention their company on this blog too. To try to give a bit of free search juice!

So here we go, here's some of the services they provide as well as a handful of the localities they cover. This is being reflected in their site content too. Uxbridge Damp Proofing, Ruilsip Damp Proofing, Hayes Damp Proofing, Hillingdon Damp Proofing, Middx Damp Proofing. Uxbridge Dry Rot Treatment, Ruislip Dry Rot Treatment, Hayes Dry Rot Treatment, Hillingdon Dry Rot Treatment, Middx Dry Rot Treatment. Uxbridge Woodworm Treatment and Control, Ruislip Woodworm Treatment and Control, Hayes Woodworm Treatment and Control, Hillingdon Woodworm Treatment and Control, Middx Woodworm Treatment and Control.

That will do for now :-)

Cheers,

Mike

Wokingham Website Blog indexing

2011-04-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

We run a few different blogs on related topics, but we were quite pleasantly surprised to see that even our unofficial business blog is still being indexed within a day by Google. Despite the fact that we only update it once every week or so.

As a reminder - this blog is primarily about our Berkshire Web Design business, but also you'll notice some persaonal posts about verious topics and also regular mentions of our clients business websites to contribute in a small way to the SEO activity we do for them.

That is becoming increasingly harder we have to say. But our client list has reached double digits now and results for most are quite good.

We are also trying to help some friends of ours out with their business web site, which is not performing so well for them, so we'll happily mention if you need an Uxbridge Damp Proofing service. Or Dry Rot Treatment Hayes, Woodworm treatement Denham or Ruislip Timber Treatment then contact http://www.datsolutions.co.uk.!

Mike

Just starting out - one year on

2011-04-23T06:44:00.000-07:00

I let the anniversairy of our setting up our small Web design company in Wokingham pass without a mention. I knew it was around about now, but let it pass. But OK .. here goes now. Happy 1st birthday Trade Site Web Design.

Well the birthday of this blog anyway. We started blogging about our Websites for only two key reasons. Firstly to assist indexing - by making regular posts on this Blog - the search engines have regularly crawled, therefore one of the quickest ways to get a new site indexed is to blog about it.

Second reason is then to carry out some regular SEO actiivity for our client sites, backlinks and the such like.

So we started out with only one "client"

A reading fencing company.

Now we have around 10 clients:

Reading Fencing and Decking Company – Fox Fencing
Reading Double Glazing Installers – TailorMade Windows
Berkshire Tennis Court Construction – Theale Tennis Courts and Landscapes
Theale / Reading Pub – The Bull At Theale
Reading Property Refurbishment and Renovation Company – Aspect Contracts
Berkshire Scrap Vehicle Collection – Thames Valley Recycling
Berkshire Vehicle Recovery – Thames Valley Vehicle Recovery
Nationwide Fleet Disposals – 1st For Fleet
Bespoke Handmade Beds and Mattresses – Burgess Beds
Commercial Building Contractors – Four Star Construction
Aliens and Predator Recycled Metal Scupltures - Metalartworksculptures.com
Wokingham Tail-lift Van Transport Service - 2big4thecar.co.uk

Not bad for a year's part time work. Never make my millions this way - but an enjoyable, if modest, second income!

Mike

Slacking on Website Updates

2011-04-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Have been slacking recently on creating new blogging material to promote various Berkshire Website Designs. Part of the issue is always think of what to say, but also about what topic? A blog gains a degree of authority by talking consistently about the same topic. But that's quite tricky when you are talking about Wokingham Website Designers. Because what you actually want to talk about covers two angles. Of course as a business you want to promote your own products and services, such as Small Business Website Design. But you also want to use your blog as a vehicle to promote your client sites also. Trouble being that the topic for posts about your client sites can vary from being about Sculptures made from Recycled Metal Parts to being about a Crowthorne Man and Van website. Now you could argue that if you are providing a full website SEO Wokingham service then you should also set up all of your Berkshire Web Design client sites with ther own blog and provide regular content to their sites to build authority in their own right. But our clients are small businesses on tight budgets. We cannot afford to do this stuff for free, but at the same time, the clients could also not afford to do this thesleves. So, by using our own blogs to try to build an online reputation for ourselves, but also provide some benefit to our client sites at the same time, is a reasonable compromise. So if you want various services in teh Berhshire aread mainly, then we have designed and host sites for these quality companies: Reading Fencing and Decking Company – Fox Fencing Reading Double Glazing Installers – TailorMade Windows Berkshire Tennis Court Construction – Theale Tennis Courts and Landscapes Theale / Reading Pub – The Bull At Theale Reading Property Refurbishment and Renovation Company – Aspect Contracts Berkshire Scrap Vehicle Collection – Thames Valley RecyclingB erkshire Vehicle Recovery – Thames Valley Vehicle Recovery Nationwide Fleet Disposals – 1st For Fleet Bespoke Handmade Beds and Mattresses – Burgess Beds Commercial Building Contractors – Four Star Construction UK Recycled Scrap Metal Sculptures - Metal Artwork Sculptures Wokingham Van Deliveries - 2big4thecar.co.uk Cheers! Mike

Spurs Champions League 2010 /2011

2011-04-09T01:14:00.000-07:00

What a journey! Highs and lows that only a typical Spurs team could provide. 3-0 down to Swiss team Young Boys in the qualifiers to Beating Inter Milan and topping our group. Knocking out AC Milan to being 4-0 down after the first leg of the Quarters against Real Madrid. Wouldn't swap it for the world. Nobody expected us to get this far, so I think we can sit back and relax when Real come to the Lane. A win on the night would be great. But I think our European trip comes to an end next week. Just have my concerns that we will be back to Europa league next year .. but I still remember being really happy when we finally got into the UEFA cup a few years back. So must keep feet on ground. Maybe we could have a good go at winning that next year. :-) Mike

New site launch

2011-04-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

Latest site developed for an existing client's new business line. Not fully developed as yet, but starting to get the site indexed to see if it generates any useful search enquiries. The business is selling Recycled Metal Sculptures. The core product lines are Predator Metal Sculptures , Alien Metal Sculptures and Star Wars Metal Sculptures, but they also supply other Scrap Metal Sculptures in the UK. So the site is indexed already, so next is some basic SEO work to try to see what ranking can be achieved for the site. It is expected that the web site mainly supports offline marketing acivity however, the website serving as the companies onlne catalogue. Mike

Blog formatting

2011-04-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... I type comments into my Web design Wokingham blog of late, and my carriage returns seem to disappear.

All I get is one long paragraph. Which isn't too much of a big deal really, on this general topic blog. But a trifle annoying. Mike

Usefulness of blogging

2011-04-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

This blog is soon to fulfil it's purpose in life with launch of a couple of new client sites shortly. It is well documented throughout this blog that one of it's primary missions was to enable quick raniking of newly created sites. We have discussed the topic before, but in summary having a blog that has regular contributions leads to Google re-indexing that blog on a daily basis. Sites that are linked from the blog therefore are crawled by Google sooner than if they were only submitted using the submission tool. So if you see posts with a few links like Reading Landscaping services then that's basically just to get the site Crawled. So we'll be doing that very shortly for the new site launches. Cheers, Mike

Site ranking

2011-04-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

Not too much joy in increasing the ranking of our Wokingham Website Design website using the approaches recently. Perhaps not surprising, the approach was very one dimensional and probably flagged our site for a downgrade rather than enhancing it. Worth a try though, and to be frank we don't really want or need to drive a huge amount of extra business anyway. So no problem. SEO for website companies should be really difficult because most of "us" should know what we're doing, right? Anyway - working on a couple of new sites that we were asked to build just recently, so looking forward to launching them, hopefully relatively soon. This is business coming from one of our satisfied clients who already have a Berkshire Scrap Car Removal company website, a National Car and Van Fleet Disposal company website and a Reading Breakdown and Revovery Service website built by us. So we are very glad to have got this initial contact through our website as it has been very good for growing our business - but not too much !! Cheers, Mike

Blog comments

2011-03-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

We get a lot of comments on our main business blog. On one hand we have no problem with that because we deliberatly made it "dofollow" to give juice to like-minded people to post some backlinks.

One of the first comments we got after that was from a fellow web designer who warned of the Spam headed our way.

Anyway - perhaps unsurprisingly we DO get a lot of spam comments. You can spot them mostly and we delete them. But some reasonable comments too.

So all in all, we don't mind, not much of our blogging is worth reading anyway!!

Mike

Website re-Design

2011-03-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

We finally put some effort into our own webiste. The original design was very minimal, black and white, but of red. Deliberately ow key originally, and partly hiding from our lack of CSS prowess.

But finally our own web site has been dragged into the 21st century with a relatively smart redesign. Yes, Berkshire website redesign ! The content is essentially the same, it just has a different look to it. Frankly is probably still a little behind the times for a really cutting edge Sandhurst Website Design but I think it a step in the right direction. More what people want to see from a Yateley web design.

Also it has enabled us to include some of the SEO techniques that we already apply to our Wokingham Website Design sites that we develop for our clients.

Anyway - take a look if you have the time, feel free to comment!

Mike

Didn't overdo the links hopefully

2011-03-16T04:10:00.001-07:00

We ran an experiment over the past couple of weeks, to see if the sort of spammy posting that you see in many blogs can actually make a diference to SERPS. Mixed feelings about this outcome, because on one hand we are great subscribers to the belief that content should be rated and ranked based on it's usefulness and content providers shouldn't be encouraged to just churn out spam. On the other hand, everything is a means to an end right?

So firstly we were worried that we had overdone the links. Google Webmaster tools had thrown a paddy and wasn't showing any link data. Seems like a temporary glitch and now it is updated with a higher number of links than before. I kinda get the feeling that putting more than one link into each post for Berkshire Web Design may be a waste of time, because Blogspot (i.e. this Blog) is showing 15 links whereas the actual number of links on each post was probably more than that. But that makes some sense for Google to do that.

I suppose linking to other pages like Bekshire Website Design and Berkshire Website Design Portfolio maybe would have better effect. Also Berkshire Website Pricing as a link may be useful.

Let's see, but important point being that we didn't "break" things!

Mike

Ooops - Links gone

2011-03-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

Well looks like we broke somthing with our experimental postings. They DID fall into the category of Link Spam, so should not be too surprised. The only evidence that something is broken is that the Links to our site that are normally shown in Google Webmaster tools have dissapeard.

There is nothing showing, whereas a short while ago there were a high number of links showing.

So on one hand, this is kind of to be expected. But the although in this case the originator of the spam links was me, it could be a competitor knowing that thier actions would have a detrimental effect on their competitors site.

Anyway - will leave it there - so far the ranking of our main site does not seem to have suffered, and may have increased a little for Berkshire Website Designers (what harm can one more backlink do?!!)

Cheers,

Mike

Berkshire Website Development

2011-03-05T02:13:00.000-08:00

Experiment number 2, just the same as previously, but this time focussing on Berkshire Web Developers.

Posts are still back to being indexed within a matter of minutes as they were some time ago when we used to try to Blog every day. Doesn't take too long! But the search engine indexing of Berkshire websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Berkshire) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format.

Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.

I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Anyway here we go, we do: Website design in Berkshire for Berkshire small businesses needing a website designing for them.

The text of these Berkshire web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway. The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Berkshire topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways. We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across.

Berkshire website designer services for any company in Berkshire needing a website designer for giving them a quality website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Berkshire business website. More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Berkshire web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense.

It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes. Not sure how we are going to tell if the concentration around the topic of Berkshire Web Design is having any effect or not though! Partially down to any degree of authority that this site has gained? Don't know. Anyway here we go with the main content of this Berkshire Web Design Post: So in the course of running our small website design Berkshire company we have come across many posts of unintelligible (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read!

Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Berkshire Website hosting and Berkshire website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect! Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Berkshire Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain.

Mike

Blogging Experiment

2011-03-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

If you look back at the past few posts you will see basically gibberish. Focussed on highlighting our Berkshire Web Design service, but ultimately still gibberish. The aim of the experiment was to see what difference this may make to any rankings.

This blog has been going for almost a year now, and the theory was that regulary blooging for a period of time on a particluar topic should genrate some authority.

The topics have varied, but the underlying thread has always been Berkshire Web designers. So the observation desired was some increase in rankings.

I don't think the results will come through immediately, so it will be neccesary to report back later. Not sure how visible any change in ranking may be. The experiment didn't focus on Web Design in Berkshire, but was a bit more focussed.

So may repeat the experiment soon, with the Berkshire Web Builders angle to see if any effect there.

Mike

Website Design

2011-02-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

Last day of experiment.

The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website. More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes.

Posts are back to being indexed within a matter of minutes as they were some time ago when we used to try to Blog every day. Not sure how we are going to tell if the concentration around the topic of Wokingham Web Design is having any effect or not though! Partially down to any degree of authority that this site has gained? Don't know. Anyway here we go with the main content of this Bracknell Web Design Post:

So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read! Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect!

Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain? (no gap again today as expected, becuase are back at base!) I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Doesn't take too long! But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format.

Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them. We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway.

Mike

Talking Bracknell Website Designers

2011-02-24T13:44:00.000-08:00

Sixth day of experiment. Posts are still back to being indexed within a matter of minutes as they were some time ago when we used to try to Blog every day.

Doesn't take too long! But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format. Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.

(no gap again today as expected, only one more day to go. I think only a week long experiment as getting quite bored doing this now!) I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them.

The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway. The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways.

We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website. More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes.

Not sure how we are going to tell if the concentration around the topic of Wokingham Web Design is having any effect or not though! Partially down to any degree of authority that this site has gained? Don't know. Anyway here we go with the main content of this Bracknell Web Design Post: So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read! Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect! Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain.

Mike

Talking Wokingham Website Designers

2011-02-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

Fifth day of experiment. Posts are back to being indexed within a matter of minutes as they were some time ago when we used to try to Blog every day. Not sure how we are going to tell if the concentration around the topic of Wokingham Web Design is having any effect or not though! Partially down to any degree of authority that this site has gained? Don't know.

Anyway here we go with the main content of this Bracknell Web Design Post:

So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read! Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect! Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain?

(no gap again today as expected, becuase are back at base!) I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Doesn't take too long! But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format.

Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them. We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers.

The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway. The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways.

A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website. More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes.

Mike

Google Profile and Links

2011-02-22T05:59:00.000-08:00

Not sure how much useful information is contained in our profile, but it may be worth a look:

Wokingham Website Design

Primary aim as usual is to contribute to SEO activities in other areas to raise the profile of client sites. This particular action may not make any difference, but also doesn't cost me anything to do. Except 5 minutes of course.

Mike

Bracknell and Wokingham Web Design Promotion

2011-02-22T01:14:00.000-08:00

Fourth day of the experiment. (no gap again today as expected, becuase we have access to the internet after all!) I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Doesn't take too long!

But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format. The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway.

The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways.

Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them.

We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website.

More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes.

So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read!

Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect! Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain?

Mike

Wokingham and Bracknell Web Design Promotion

2011-02-21T02:23:00.000-08:00

Third day of the experiment. (no gap today as expected, becuase we have access to the internet after all!)

The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways.But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format.

The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway.So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read!Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect!

Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain? Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them.

We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website.

More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense.

It's hard to know whether you have actually re-shuffled the Website design post well enough sometimes. But I am sure the chances of duplicating one exactly in this random fashion is remote. But always worth adding a sentence or two. Doesn't take too long!

Mike

Website designers Bracknell and Wokingham posts number 2

2011-02-20T02:43:00.000-08:00

Second day of the experiment. (Although there will probably be an immediate gap Monday and Tueasday, due to other commitments, but c'est la view!)

This experiment will over the next couple of weeks (mid-february to March). We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website.

The text of these Wokingham web hosting posts won't always make sense either after we have chopped them around due to the experiment.

Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway.So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read!Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect!

Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain? Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.Anyway here we go, we do:Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them.

More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways.But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format.

Mike

Website designers Bracknell and Wokingham Spammy posts

2011-02-19T01:51:00.000-08:00

We are going to try an experiment over the next couple of weeks. We are just going to place some really spammy posts that have some serious keyword density around the topic we want to get across. Ultimately we want to drive traffic for our Wokingham Website Design company.

I am interested to see if Google penalises any of this sirt of stuff and does it penalise this blog or the destination domain? Would seem unfair to penalise the destination domain, since anyone could do this and potentially have a negative impact - on a competitor for example.

Anyway here we go, we do:

Website design in Bracknell for Bracknell small businesses needing a website designing for them.

Wokingham website designer services for any company in Wokingham needing a website designer for giving them a quailty website to give them extra visibility and extra customers. A website design can be affecting in a positive way the business coming in through a Wokingham business website.

More and more text about also providing a quality Berkshire web design with random comments around it seems to be what a lot of website designers do on their blogs, to the point that comments on our Wokingham web design link to blogs that have lots and lots of spammy looking posts that simply don't make sense. The sentences are long, I guess to look like they are REALLY talking about the Website design in Bracknell topic, but under scrutiny from the human mind, it is clear that the posts are mentioning Web designer services Berkshire in seemingly random ways.

But the search engine indexing of Wokingham websites perhaps is fooled because Google (and maybe to a lesser degree other search engines for website builders in Wokingham) can only apply algorithms and algorithms are not flawless. Not all posts can be in good quality optimised website format. Posts are done quickly, and of course not always by good speaking authors anyway.

So in the course of running our small website design Wokingham company we havecome across many posts of unintelliglble (!) text, I can say that even this post makes far more sense than a lot that we have read!

Lastly, we will chop and change this same post around, always around the topic of Bracknell Website hosting and Wokingham website hosting and the such like and re-post it regularly to see if that has any effect!

Mike

Spurs Champions League

2011-02-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

Continuing in the vein of Devu vu. After falling to a 4-0 defeat to Fulham in the FA Cup a few weeks ago, I find myself pleasantly surprised after a few back to back wins in the Prem and find myself at Half-time watching us play AC Milan away and doing ourselves credit.

Funny old life being a Tottenham supporter!

Still, watching football is distracting me from doing Berkshire Website Design!

Must Blog more often though - indexing rate has dropped.

Mike

Google Places Categories

2011-02-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

Discovered yesterday that Google have "tried" to be helpful. I have to assume this. The example I am referring to is one of our client sites that deal with the free collection and removal of scrap cars in Reading.

When setting up a new site through our Wokingham website design business we usually also set up a Google places listing for the companies too.

In Google places you have to choose at least one of their pre-defined categories, but many are US centric. So for this company we had to choose "Auto Wrecker" as the closest fit. The we chose custom categories like scrap my car for cash and scrap van collection.

So what's the problem? We reviewed the site performance with the client recently and they commeted that they had recently started to get a lot of calls from people looking to buy spare car parts. That's not what they do.

Upon checking, I have to assume that Google have been doing some localisation of terms, so this company are now listed as "Car Breakers and Dismantlers" - which is more recognisable in the UK as being an "Auto Wrecker" I suppose. But it implies they are a scrap vehicle yard, rather than being a Vehicle Disposal Company in Reading which is what they are - and that is very different.

Any way, hopefullt now have removed that categorisation and tweaked the address so that it shows that they don't sell spares!

Shows that search can drive incremental contacts for sure!! But not always the right types! Nothing to do with poor content either, just because Google tried to be helpful!

Cheers,

Mike

Business Client Listing

2011-02-06T13:33:00.001-08:00

Just a blatent plug for our latest client list:

Reading Fencing and Decking Company – Fox Fencing
Reading Double Glazing Installers – TailorMade Windows
Berkshire Tennis Court Construction – Theale Tennis Courts and Landscapes
Theale / Reading Pub – The Bull At Theale
Reading Property Refurbishment and Renovation Company – Aspect Contracts
Berkshire Scrap Vehicle Collection – Thames Valley Recycling
Berkshire Vehicle Recovery – Thames Valley Vehicle Recovery#
Nationwide Fleet Disposals – 1st For Fleet
Bespoke Handmade Beds and Mattresses – Burgess Beds
Commercial Groundworks Contractors - Four Star Construction

Also a reminder, our "domain for sale site", also a perfect website for a Bracknell Plumber is also used by us as a kind of directory too.

Cheers,

Mike

Deja vu - Spurs pfah..

2011-01-31T03:57:00.000-08:00

I have been running this blog for coming up to a year. In the early days, to get traction for a new Web Development Wokingham it had posts on a daily basis. Now it's down to about one a week. But i am sure one of my earlier posts would have had a simliar title and content after we (Spurs) got knocked out of the FA Cup in rather shaby fashion.

Well it happend again yesterday. Typical Spurs!! If you're going to get knocked out - do it in style. But still have Champions League too look forward to and the League position is looking quite healthy. I hope this result doesn't prove to be a catalyst for some type of implosion as can happen sometimes.

Not too fussed about being out of the cups, as long as everything else goes ok ;-) Don't want to be accused of being a fickle Spurs fan!

Mike

Review of site performance

2011-01-22T01:34:00.000-08:00

Part of site optimisation HAS to be regular monitoring of it's performance. The end 2 end picture does not stop at web traffic but covers conversion rates also.

Search Engine Optimisation brings eyballs to a website.
Search Engine Optimisation done well brings the RIGHT eyeballs to a website.

But anyone in business will tell you it cannot stop there if you want to be fully effective. Once a potential client arrives at your site. (they've searched for somthing relevant right? - that indicates they want your service - like "I want to get cash for my scrap car in Reading" or "I need a building contractor near Wokingham"or some more simple searches "Reading Double Glazing Company" or "Berkshire Fencing Contractor") they then have to be engaged by what they see, it has to live up to their expectations in order for them to make contact.

Finally once they do make contact you could argue that the web site has done it's job. But there will be lasting impression that your web site has left, and don't forget - after talking with a potential client in this day and age they are still likeley to go back to the internet to research your company a little further, so having reviews from past clients either on your site OR on business directories may help further to secure business.

And you thought it was simple to just get a web site ;-) ?

Don't let me put you off, just getting a website starts you on the road - with a professional well presented site you already are one step ahead of your competitors that don't have that.

But you are increasingly behind other competitors who have embraced the internet better. Ultimately, you have to make yiur own choices based on your aspirations for your business.

Cheers,

Mike

New Site launch

2011-01-14T03:46:00.000-08:00

We are working on a new client site over the next few weeks, the basic structure is there for a Construction and Refurbishment Company in Berkshire. We will be refining the content and so on with the client, but that should happen quite quickly, so steps to take now are to register the site with the search engines so it can get picked up ASAP!

Watch this space for further updates,

Mike

Blogging update - take a break?

2011-01-08T02:58:00.000-08:00

Frankly, the primary purpose of this Blog was to aid new sites that we launch for clients to be picked up by the search engines quicker. We have talked about that aspect of blogging in previous posts, so if you are wondering about that aspect, look through our archives, we discuss that point in some depth in a previous post. You can also look at our official blog for our Website Design Company.

To a certain extent, some blog entries may add some juice to client web sites to aid their ranking, which is why you'll occsionally see me comment something like "if you need Double Glazing in Reading" This is just to create another backlink. I am not sure how much value in adding links like this has, when you have done many like that already.

So the point being - when you haven't launched a new site for some time, the need for the blog kinda diminishes somwehat. BUT .. then what about when you do have a new site on the horizon - simple start blogging again in advance, just to get Google and the other search engines looking at your blog again. (regular posts = fresh content, right?)

But, hopefully we have a couple of new sites to launch in the comeing month or two, so we won't take a break just yet....

Cheers!

Mike

Happy New Year - Website anyone?

2011-01-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

So Christmas and New Year celebrations are over. Decorations are taken down, kids back to school. All a bit miserable really!! But New Year, new enthusiasm etc... Just the time to get any new business off the ground.

An essential part of any new business in this day and age is of course a website. It's one thing that should be on anyone's startup list.

We provide a simple, lowcost service for any small business looking to get a site up and running and can work with you for the life of your site.

Contact Trade Site Web Design in Wokingham

Cheers,

Mike

Christmas observations

2010-12-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

Pretty obvious I suppose, but here's a little Christmas quiz for you. No prize! Don't submit an answer but this should be as easy as some of those "competition" phone ins from the TV.

Which Reading area website showed the most traffic over the Christmas period of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing day? Was it:

A) A Reading fencing contractor

B) A Reading plasterers, painters and decorators

C) A Reading pub near the M4 Junction 12

D) A Reading, Berkshire Replacement Double glazing company

Well... what do you think?

The answer is .......

Wait for it!......

C) A reading pub (they have a Theale New Years Eve Party too...)

Cheers,

Mike

Season Slowdown

2010-12-21T05:26:00.000-08:00

Quite unsurprisingly, things have quietened down in the run up to Christmas. The snowy weather may have contribiuted I suppose. It's the first time that I have actively monitored rates of traffic to different types of web sites, but the down turn is clear.

Except 1 - the Theale Pub! Again, perhaps unsurprising, but there has been no let up in the people looking at this web site. Planning Christmas meals, meet ups and of course somewhere to go for New Years Eve bash all point towards doing searches for this type of thing.

Anyway - blog shutdown now for a couple of weeks I would have thought. Doubt I'll post in between now and next year!

Cheers and Merry Christmas,

Mike

Prospective Clients

2010-12-11T04:58:00.000-08:00

We have meetings from time to time with possible new clients for our Website Design Services.

We naturally meet up, quite often have a couple of drinks or lunch as well, so the financial investment in new clients is always there and cannot be ignored. Minimizing the expenditure on securing new business is only one side of the coin, because by doing that you are potentially going to lose that business in the first place.

Or you raise your rates accordingly to absorb some of that client investment cost, but then also maybe you don't win as much business because your competitiveness is eroded somewhat.

It's a tricky balancing act and I suppose only come the end of the year when I do our books will it become clear if this business is actually viable in it's current state!

Cheers,

Mike

Spurs CL Group Snapshot

2010-12-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

So, this blog is primarily about our Website Design Company for Small Business. But it's our fun blog and we've made no secret of being followers of Spurs. So this seemed like a reasonable place to register for posterity this snapshot:

It may not happen again for a while, so wanted to remember it. 2010/2011 has been a great season already, no matter what happens from here!

Cheers,

Mike

New years eve - night

2010-12-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

We of course focus on creating effective website for our clients. One aspect of this is basic SEO, so we thought it pertinant to mention that the Bull in Theale (who are one of our Wokingham Website Design company clients) are holding a New Year's Eve Theale event for 2010 /2011.

So check it out if you want ideas of what to do this year!

Cheers,

Mike

Snow joke working at home!

2010-12-04T00:13:00.001-08:00

My description of the snow that we have had in our area (Remember - we are Wokingham Web Site Providers) is that it was perfect. My reason is that it was just enough for the kids to have real fun with snowball fights, making snow angels and building snowmen - BUT not so much that it made the roads a nightmare. Everything around the Bracknell area and Wokingham as far as I could see was running pretty well.

The other advantage from a very personal point of view is that workning from home makes it all that much better - going out in the snow becomes "optional". Which is great.

Now on the other hand - if you were a Reading Fencing Contractor then your business means that you have to work outside, right?... Suits some people of course, can't say as I fancy it myself!

Much rather be cosied up in a local pub!

Cheers,

Mike

Blogging Regularity

2010-11-30T10:57:00.000-08:00

Just noticed that I've blogged a bit more frequently during November than previous months. Thought I'd get one last post in this month before we flick into December. Not much useful to say, mind you. Business has slowed down a bit again for our Wokingham Website company. Not a bad thing though, we have been quite busy enough for now.

Looking forward, hopefully, to winding down during December and then see what next year brings.

I suspect that December might see a dip in our blogging activities.

Cheers,

Mike

Spurs Champions League Progress

2010-11-25T07:50:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, I blogged that we had finally got to the Champs League. In between then and now quite a roller coaster after being down 3-0 to the Swiss Young Boys in the qualifier and seeing it slip through our hands, to beating InterMilan and Weder Bremen to secure the passage to the knockout phase with a game still in hand.

Fanstastic! The life of a Spurs fan is certainly a mixed bag.

But enjoying it while it lasts!

Now, what's this all got to do with a Small Business Website Designer in Wokingham? Well very little, this is our fun blog after all. Just trying to keep it up to date.

Gooners as clients are quite welcome by the way, it's not their fault that they didn't stay where they belong, South of the River, all those years ago. I forgive 'em ;-) You get quite used to living in someone's shadow, not sure how I'd cope if we lauded over them for a while.

Think it will be nice though!

Cheers,

Mike

Website design back after Weekend Celebration

2010-11-23T04:30:00.000-08:00

First away victory over the Gunners since 1993!!! Only just back to life after the monster celebration that Saturday night!

Even if you wanted a small update for a Scrap Car Collection web site on Sunday, it wouldn't have been advisable to get it done then, since we could not really see beyond the hangover that ensued!

But well worth it, just need to get a league victory over United now... That'll re-set all of the hoo-doos!

Cheers,

Mike

Website design on hold for the weekend

2010-11-20T00:40:00.000-08:00

Normally we would perhaps be doing some work on a client website, Reading Tilers and Plasterers perhaps, or Reading Fencing & Decking.

But North London Derby this weekend, too distracting an event to be developing any new websites for clients.

Even some website logo design work, which we are finding fascinating, is going to have to take a back seat!

Cheers,

Mike

Daily Blogging

2010-11-18T00:16:00.001-08:00

At the start of this Blog, we posted daily. Why? Well the theory at least was to provide fresh, up-to-date content regularly so that the search engines would also check up regularly.

Two hoped-for outcomes. The first very tactical, so that this Blog becomes part of the strategy to get new site launches indexed quickly. We have discussed it before elsewhere, but the steps are like this:

1) Launch new site
2) Submit it to Google, Yahoo etc.. Set up webmaster tools and if required Analytics
3) Blog about the site, being sure to include links to your newly launched site
4) If required add site to local (free) business listings and Google Places

Specifically, what step 2 does, if you have blogged regularly, is almost immediately register some juice to your new site. I have seen new sites launched only hours before become searchable in Google by blogging about them in regularly crawled blogs like this one.

Of course that does not add much to the ranking for keywords, that takes all of your other SEO activities to push the site up the lists, but Blogging starts that process quicker, and if you have managed to associate some authority with your bog, then of course some juice is bound to be added too!

So when we launched sites for the following companies we followed that exact process, no harm in mentioning them again! (like Painters and Decorators in Reading, Double Glazing Installers in Reading, Fencing Contractors in Reading, Scrap Car Collection in Reading, National Fleet Vehicle Disposals, Berkshire Breakdown Recovery,Quality Pub near reading M4 J12, Handmade UK Beds and Mattresses and finally Tennis Court Maintenance in Berkshire)

And finally, we shouldn't forget to mention that we are a small independant Website Designer in Wokingham!!!

Cheers,

Mike

Link building

2010-11-14T03:34:00.000-08:00

I know that one tactic for link building is commenting on Blogs. I see comments on my blogs that I am running directly on my business site. Many of them are clearly for link building purposes only. (not so much on this Blogger platform or on my unofficial blog actually hosted by Wordpress mind you)

Not that I mind so much, I also do it occasionally too, but what I don't like is where people CLEARLY have not read the content and the comment is just some smarmy BS to obviously encourage me to approve the comment.

For example, one comment recently said something like "I really like what you said, interesting and thoughtful, where did you get this expertise it's amazing" ..

The comment was on a post that just described one of my client sites, it wasn't any of the above, it was frankly a ridiculous comment related to the post.

Also, some comment in Russian typically are some obviously jam packed full of random links, there's no way I'm going to approve them. But others that are probably still for link building only, but where the person has at least attempted to show that they have read my post, I'll probably approve.

Lastly, if you're going to link build, use some useful anchor text for your name! I'd also appreciate the honesty of that!! So not Jason .. for example. That's not much use.. Now Theale Plasterers - much better. I don't mind that.

Cheers,

Mike

Web Site for Double Glazing in Reading Area

2010-11-13T06:10:00.000-08:00

OK, a bit light on the ground this weekend, we did our biggest site launch and hosting migration so far during the week, and well, it's like the quiet after the excitement of the storm. Very pleased to have launched the new web site for a Handmade, Bespoke Bed and Mattress Company.

It's the top of mind topic, being the latest addtion to the portfolio of Trade Site Web Design in Wokingham, but let's not forget some of our established clients. Today, here's a reminder about TailorMade Windows in Reading.

Their full trading name is TailorMade Windows, Doors, Fascias and Conservatories.

So obviously they do UPVC Double Glazing in Reading - for starters.
They can also provide, and install:

UPVC Doors in Reading and Composite Doors in Reading,
UPVC Fascias and Soffits in Reading and UPVC Guttering in Reading,
UPVC Conservatories in Reading

They provide service to your existing installations, so if you need the following they can also help:
Repairs to cracked glazing in Reading, clean UPVC fascias and soffits in Reading, clear and repair UPVC Guttering in Reading.

Finally they can service your Conservatory in Reading or repair any Reading Conservatory leaks.

Cheers!

Mike

Site update launch

2010-11-11T08:08:00.001-08:00

We're pretty excited here at Trade Site. Today we launch our biggest client site so far. If you are looking for bespoke, handmade beds - made to exacting standards right here in the UK, then take a look at Burgess Beds. We finished re-building the first phase of the site earlier in the week and launched today.

On a related note, it's impressive how quickly DNS updates propogate these days. It was only a matter of minutes / hours that the new site was accessible. (Having moved hosting) so good stuff.

Read the official announcement on our Wokingham Web Design blog.

Cheers,

Mike

Google Places Frustration

2010-11-06T01:27:00.001-07:00

For most of my client sites, (all 9 of them!!) I set up a Google Places pages to go with the main site. Google places in my experience so far is generating a lot of traffic, up to 75% in some cases.

I'm not sure why they do so well, but I can only summise that Google Places usage, coupled with having your own web site and linking the two closely is not done all that much. (at least within the trades that I am working with)

So I guess although I'm only doing the basics (in my mind) it's still more than most competitors to my clients are doing.... therefore my clients are doing quite well from it - at least from a traffic perspective.

I am therefore really frustrated by what's happening to the Google Places page for the Reading Fencing Contractor client. The Google places page got put on pending status back in August and then finally was rejected due to Quality Guideline issues. To be fair I had stuffed in keywords left right and center and it probably was overdoing it a bit, so a made lots of edits to get the listing into line and resubmitted. .... Review,.,,, and ... Rejected again.. So I paired down the content even further to ensure no duplication anywhere ... Reviewed and ..... Rejected.

I have pleaded to Google to let me know why... NOTHING.. So it's all very frustrating as traffic to my client's site has suffered a lot due to this.

Anyway .. I have one last step to take, which a lot of people have suggested is the only way, because apparently Google won't talk to you at all. (fair enough it's free, but they surely should be able to send a reply saying what to do to fix the problem...)

That step is to delete the Google Places entry and then set it up again from scratch and see what happens. Will do that soon and report back later.

Cheers,

Mike

New site launch

2010-11-03T09:32:00.001-07:00

We have been working on a site refresh with a new client for a couple of months now, and frankly we're quite excited and nervous at the same time now - because the launch is around the corner.

It's been mostly remote developed, which is unusual for us so far. The client company is based in Manchester, my client contact is a little more local, in the Reading area, but nevertheless, it's near enough all been conducted by email and I think the outcome is pretty good.

It's by far our biggest and best project so far, getting on for 40 or 50 page site, fully CSS driven. Minimal cose on each page to auid optimisation.

Great collaboration with the client, good design phase solid implementation phase, all ready to go any day! We'll announce who it is and the site URL here.

Watch this space!

Mike

Anchor text

2010-10-30T02:24:00.001-07:00

Google's webmaster tools is kinda interesting. Part of my SEO activity (which frankly is a little limited) is to post regular blog entries talking about clients business areas, linking to them using descriptive text from time to time, just to create additional one-way backlinks from domains that are within my control.

Over the past months I have added countless links to the various client sites that I run, but Webmaster tools only shows up a few. I did wonder how this is derived. On one hand it seems quite random, some anchor text shows up, some doesn't and there doesn't seem any rhyme or reason to it.

Then secondly I must also confess to not really understanding what constitutes good anchor text.

OK - so I know that "click here" is no good. Also image links with no alt-text for example. But then flip it the other way. Is website design, build and hosting in Wokingham, Bracknell, Reading and Camberley good? So various relevant keywords included in the anchor text. Or is that of limited benefit because no-one is ever likely to search for that phrase and are you better to do this: wokingham website designer or website designer bracknell and website designer camberley.

Just wondering!! I'll look it up sometime when I get the chance I suppose .. see if there is any guidance out there, somebody has likely written up their opinion on it somewhere!

Cheers,

Mike

Backlink monitoring

2010-10-25T01:53:00.000-07:00

Just a short post to see how long this particular entry takes to show up.

Today I are mostly linking to:

Remove Scrap Car in Bracknell

That's all :-)

Mike

Great UK hosting provider

2010-10-23T01:26:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give another shout out for my uk web hosting company.

Check them out: http://www.uk-cheapest.co.uk/

I'll say straight away, these guys are great. (and they HAVEN'T paid me to say that and they haven't done me a deal to say that either!)

I was skeptical to start with about working with a company who you can only contact via email. I'l be honest that I only found them due to the fact that two of my clients who had web sites already were using them.

But the support team are so helpful. My first contact was not as their customer and at the time I may have even been moving business away from them, but they still responded professionally and were extremely helpful. Solving issues for me that I thought were going to be a real pain to fix. Nothing too technical, just administrative points of process, I thought it was going to be really awkward. But they think outside the box and do whatever they can to help.

Since then, I now subscribe to their PRO SSL package. This is really competitively priced and allows me to conduct my small business in exactly the way I want to. I can host up to 25 client sites and work though their PLESK control panel which gives me everyting I need. I also have full control of my client domains (nameservers, tags etc..) through their Domain admin suite.

I mention this now, because I just had to deal with another hosting supplier and it was a nightmare. It two weeks and several phone calls to achieve what I needed. Not that each individual wasn't helpful, but they all had to stick rigidly to their procedures and roles and I was often bounced from department to department, speaking with different people who each had a slighltly different take on what needed to be filled in, signed etc... Nightmare!!!!!!!

Lastly - when I have had the occasional technical query I have always had a comprehensive repsonse to my question and my issues have always been fixed.

So in summary, if you can just be a little patient and wait for email responses to your queries without having that immediate feedback on the phone, then I couldn't reccomnd uk-cheapest (UK Web Hosting Services) more.

Cheers,

Mike

Trade Site Web Design Twitter Update

2010-10-22T03:16:00.000-07:00

We have rather neglected our Twittering. Frankly still can't see the point to it! Especially for our business. There simply aren't snippets to keep people up to date about, let alon snippets that people would ACTUALLY be interested in!

But from time to time we'll add a tweet or two, either to announce a new client web site launch or the such like.

Bracknell Vehicle Breakdown Recovery is the latest launch to ge tweeted by us.

Cheers,

Mike

www.bracknellplumber.co.uk - testing power of SEO approaches update

2010-10-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

A long time since we posted an update about this experiment. It went on the back-burner a little whilst we concentrated on setting up our Wokingham Web Design and Hosting capability. And also due to summer holidays and other client sites.

But anyway - since doing all of that we have looked back at this experimental service - initially that would suit Plumbers in Bracknell. We cannot say that it has been successful from our perspective, because success would be measured in a very black and white way for us. If it had been successful, then we would have sold (or leased?) the site to a Bracknell Plumbing Company by now.

However, from a search engine point of view it is doing it's job. Getting on the first page of Google search results for a number of specific search terms. For mor focussed searched on suburbs then even getting a No.1 position. We have set up a blog on the site to keep the content fresh too.

So success?... Yes and No.. This site would really help a Plumber in Bracknell, especially if complemented with a Google Places listing. I think it would generate additional enquiries for such a firm.

Just need to market it properly I guess!!!

Cheers,

Mike

CSS Design Web Sites

2010-10-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago, when we first started out in business and with this blog, I commented about my CSS knowledge. It was sketchy at best and frankly I viewed it with some skepticism (sp?).

Gradually I have got to grips with it and got the point of it. For example I have simplified the Berkshire Tennis Court Constructors no end by using CSS to control the style of the pages. I think by doing that each HTML page has halved in size by removing lots of elements and dumpling them into a separate CSS.

That means certain changes I can make in one place now, search engines have much cleaner content to search through and (maybe) the pages will load a little quicker.

(I'll confess that I question that last point, since surely the broswer needs to make two calls to the server to download the page and render it correctly, but perhaps the css file plus the html file is still smaller than previously due to the lack of repeated code)

Most of my sites are still primarily tables based, such as Reading Car Breakdown Recovery and Reading Fencing Company for example. Mainly because most of my templates start off that way and I'm still not totall au fait with CSS from scratch. Plus I'm seeing good results with these sites, so I cannot see that it has that much impact. Reading Painters and Decorators for example is very code-heavy since it was inherited from a previous designer, but it still performs very well - all beit the Google Places page generates a lot of the traffic I think. The actual site in the organic results still performs very well indeed.

Anyway - an upcoming site which we are due to launch for the client in the next few weeks is almost exclusively CSS - except for a couple of tables used to do what they are supposed to do - present tabulated data. So I am quite excited about that one. It is fully CSS with cross-browser compatibility and some nice features. It might just overtake my current favourite site which is the one produced for a Reading Double Glazing Company.

Anyway - I'll stop rambling now!

Cheers,

Mike

Official Blog launched Finally

2010-10-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

Trade Site Web design have finally installed WordPress onto their primary domain and have now launched their OFFICIAL company blog. The comments and discussions will be limited to company business, so less worhless ramblings than on this Blog. But hopefully you'll find it unseful and informative.

You can view the Trade Site (a Wokingham Small Business Web Design company) official blog here: Wokingham Small Business Web Design Blog

Thanks for looking,

Mike

Another new site launch

2010-10-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

Firstly an experimental comment, so bear with me.

Berkshire Vehicle Recovery

You may wonder about the point of that, but I want to see how Google is picking up anchor text for back links. It all seems a bit random, some links picked up, some not. So I just want to see if perhaps the first anchor text for a particular site FROM a particular site is what is picked up and then perhaps nothing else after that. (If that is the case then I have wasted some opportunities in the past .. but oh well, cannot be helped)

Anyway - to the point, we have launched another new site for a local Vehicle Recovery company. Part of the same group, hence the same basic design leveraged re-jigged to give consistency across the group, but at the same time being distict for the message.

Not a lot else to say at this stage, get it indexed, hopefully with relevant anchor text from this blog at least and then see where we go from there. The first two sites have been successful so far, so hopefully this site can also hit the spot.

I like happy clients!

Cheers,

Mike

Client Blog

2010-10-04T03:37:00.000-07:00

Well, not strictly a client blog, but a trade blog set up of our Bracknell Plumbers Domain as an experimental setup. Just as a summary, the idea of teh domain itself was to set up a site for Bracknell Plumbers and see how such a site could be manipulated to rank for relevant search terms. The ultimate aim to then sell the domain to a local tradesperson as a pre-prepared web presence. So anyway - that sort of worked OK, relatively good rankings, but no sales strategy to offload it! But anyway, as a next step to affect rankings, we have created a blog hosted on this site, to prvided an easy way to give regular content upadtes.

Again, wait and see what effect this may have. Entries probably need to be Plumbing related to have any real use, but will take advantage of the situation and create some extra backlinks to existing client sites also.

Here's the blog - wonder how well it will index?

http://bracknellplumber.co.uk/wp/

Cheers,

Mike

Keyword refinement part III

2010-10-02T00:54:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in previous post, I was taken by surprise a little how a small word like "my" could affect search results. So it was a good learning experience. I had assumed that Google would be skipping over certain words that would not be fundamental to what the customer was actually searching for.

I haven't thought it through completely, by I cannot fathom what difference "my" would make to any searches. But anyway - Google know best, and as I said, I haven't given it too much thought and I have probably missed the point somewhere.

The good news, as I had hoped, was that a number of subtle changes to the content of the Scrap Car Disposal Company in Berkshire web site have resulted in the desired effect. Whether searching for remove scrap car Camberley or for remove my scrap car Camberley you get pretty much the same result. Same for all the other locales.

At the same time the Google Places listing has kicked in and the site is now ranking pretty well for a whole range of relevant searches.

So valuable lesson learned.

Mike

Keyword refinement part II

2010-09-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

Doing some further checking of organic results for various search terms on the two recently launched site and only now have realised what a difference a small word like "my" could make.

If any really experienced SEO folks read this you'll probably "humph" at that because perhaps it's obvious, but I just hadn't really thought about it.

So here's the specific example, the Scrap Car Collection Company in Wokingham site talks to the customer. "We can remove your vehicle at times to suit you" etc... But what might people search for? Well OK the basic search terms considered are like "Vehicle Disposal Slough" and "Scrap Car Collection High Wycombe"

But what about someone that may enter "remove my scrap car in Reading"? The word "my" made a big difference. Searching for "remove scrap car in Reading" gives a top two organic result. Happy with that. But add the word "my" into the mix and suddenly nowhere to be seen.

So, I think that it is very reasonable to expect people to search for something like "sell my scrap car in Wokingham", hence have re-engineered the site a little to include "my" in the right context. It still reads good, noo impact to customer experience, but also should now include "my" as a a searchable key word for search engines.

I'll report back on that, I am hoping for good results if I'm honest,

Ciao,

Mike

Newly commisioned web sites - keyword refinement

2010-09-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

So - pretty happy with the speed of indexing for both of the new sites launched last week. The first site mentioned, for a company who will remove scrap car in Reading is certainly visible on the first results page already for a number of relevant keyword searches. But it was noticed that a number of certain keywords would also be useful. The word "removal" features OK, but the word "remove" does not. Now I'm not sure how google works out what are variants, but it does not seem that these two words are related as far as they are concerned.

So, content has been updated to include that, so that hopefully people searching for something like remove unwanted car wokingham or remove mot failure bracknell etc... will see the Thames Valley Recycling site. Thats the aim anyway!

Fleet disposal company web site seems to be preforming better already, with views already coming from all over the country for searches like company fleet vehicle disposal - which matches the sort of search term that the content was optimised for.

All good so far,

Mike

Fleet Disposal Company

2010-09-18T05:27:00.000-07:00

Commisioned at the same time, we have also developed a web site for 1st for Fleet, Company car disposal firm. Developed during the past week, pushed live on Monday/Tuesday, now looking to see how the ranking goes for national coverage search terms such as sell company vans as opposed to what we are used to working on which is local search terms such as Berkshire fleet vehicle disposal services for example.

So will be interesting to see the results on that one. You can see the site at http://ukfleetdisposal.co.uk

It has been quite a flurry of activity over the past couple of weeks after what has been a fairly quiet summer.

Still working on getting rankings for Fencing Reading up a bit for their Google Places listing. It used to perform really well but dropped off dramatically during the summer, that one is proving to be a little frustrating.

Ciao,

Mike