Moodey IT

There is no doubt that this is one of most asked questions.  There is no doubt too that as a company in a niche market you want your website to rank high in the search engine results, if not at number 1 position.  How is this achieved and can you do it your self?

There are many ways to draw traffic to your website and one of the best ways is to be found on the internet in places like Google, yahoo or MSN.  Search engine optimisation is about optimising your website to appear in the organic or non-sponsored (left-hand side) list of links in the search.

Search engine optimisation requires time and effort and is measurable.

To start with your web page must contain relevant content that relates to the products or services that you are offering.  Search engines are not human and rely on the text of the page to inform them what the information is being offered from that web page.   You need to ensure that your keywords, (phrases used to search for your website) are repeated throughout the text.  This should not be done too often,  as stuffing a web page with the same keywords will actually make the search engine rank it lower.  You should also use the keyword in the title tag.  Using the keyword naturally throughout the page is a good policy.

Using back links, or incoming links to your website is essential.  This is one of the most beneficial ways to increase your ranking.  Incoming links should be from relevant sources, in other words sources related to your own industry.  The back link text should be related to your keywords.  There are many ways to find places for your back links such as blogs, forums, article and directories.  Another method is to contact a webmaster of another site and request a link, or offer to provide content.  In many ways it is like getting a vote, the more links there are the more popular the website.

Another good way to help increase ranking is to add more content to your website.  The reason for this is that the website will get spidered more often by search engines.  With good internal linking structures your website will be seen to be offering new fresh content, and this will grab the attention of the search engine bots.

Search engine optimisation takes time to increase your ranking in the search engines because it takes extra effort to ensure that your website is marketed properly.  To get to the first page in a search engine requires many different internet marketing techniques, time and effort!

(Source: moodeyit.com)

This is an anti-virus prevention guide teaching basic knowledge about virus’s and to teach you what to look out for on a daily basis to keep you Safe.

Be Aware of how malicious software spreads and how to avoid it.

They say that prevention is better than cure. Although, the chances of getting a virus is very high, it is still suggested that you are careful when surfing websites, downloading files from email or web and installing programs.

Some programs may look very attractive but they can be dangerous to your computer. Taking precautionary measures will reduce your chance of getting infected.

One of the biggest and quickest way of spreading a virus/malicious software these days is adverts, popup’s and scripts built into websites and emails. If you don’t know who the email is from don’t open it or are on a website that you don’t frequently use don’t go clicking on adverts and popup’s. Being aware of these will drastically reduce your chance of picking up anything malicious.

Be Safe

You cannot avoid viruses or malware because it is everywhere, but basic information on being aware on what to look out for is half the battle against modern infections. What’s important is that you have the knowledge about viruses and how to use Anti-Virus protection.

Keep your anti-virus up-to-date, everyday new malicious software is introduced so it is vital to update so you can be protected from the newest infections.

Be Smart about your decision when applying Anti-Virus Software.

There are many different kind of  Anti-Virus software, The 3 main types are:

• Complete Anti-virus suite
  • Anti-virus, Anti-spyware,  Anti-spam, Firewall, Real-time scans, and User Control

• A Lightweight protection
  • Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and Real-time scans

• A Stand-alone scanner
  • Virus; Malware; Spyware scanners

The main decision is to compare their advantages and disadvantages.

You may be getting an Anti-Virus Suite that does everything and locks your machine down nice and tight but realise because this software is so heavy it is hindering your machine’s performance and do you really need all this protection? Because if all your doing is browsing the web and reading email’s you don’t need that tight a protection. So it’s all about picking the right protection.

If you have any questions or need help and advice on which protection package you need please give us a ring or drop us an email and anyone from Moodey IT will point you in the right direction.

www.moodeyit.com

The term ‘Search Engine’ refers to a search index, a large database containing information about individual web sites. The large search index companies have thousands of computers that use software to search the internet and index them into their databases.

This software is often referred to as ‘spiders’ or ‘bots’. These ‘bots’ grab some or all the information from web pages and use complex algorithms to index the pages into their databases.

Examples of search engines include: Google, Yahoo.com, Bing, MSN.

(Source: moodeyit.com)

Keywords are the search terms that people put into a search engine to do a search.  A search term can be a single word term or a phrase.

A ‘bot’ will index your web pages and calculate the most relevant keywords associated with your web page, and when a person searches using those keywords, the results are shown.  We call the results Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs.

(Source: moodeyit.com)

Creating Website Design Images

Images often don’t get the attention that is necessary when building a website. Creating problems with the download times and optimisation of the website design. With a little bit more effort your images can be more beneficial than you think. Helping you with your search engine optimisation and keeping you potential customers on you website for longer.

Reduce the size of the Website Design image

• Reducing the size / weight of the images must be done in an image editing programme not a web creation programme. There are many image editing programmes on the market.  See the following list. 
• A good maximum size for your website images is 10Kb.
• Compress your website image into a JPEG, GIF or PNG.

JPEG (Stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group):
When you compress your website images to a JPEG file you lose quality and size but not colour so it is fantastic for photographs.
GIF (Stands for Graphics Interchange Format):
Compressing your image to a Gif file you lose colour and size so it is suitable for flat colour images e.g. logos and buttons.
PNG (Stands for Portable Network Graphics):
This was designed for the internet only and supports palette based, grey scale, RGB and RGBA images only ,not CMYK images. It also not supported by all browsers.

Optimise the Website Design image.

• Reduce the size and “weight” of the images.
• Alt tag (words that appear when you mouse over) of the image should have the keywords that relates to the image.
• Image folder must be accessible to the search engine spiders.
• The text surrounding the image allows you to use your keywords, giving you a longer description than the alt tag.
• Images Searches are growing at an alarming rate, this can help with increasing traffic to your website.

Creating a website design image that is the correct size and optimised will improve your website, helping you to get mote traffic to your website and keep them there for longer.

Make your website easy to read after all a website is about sharing information.  If you want to keep your visitors on your website then there are some principles that you should use. 

Good website design tip 1 – Websites are read by people so they should be written for people.  You maybe optimising your page for search engines, but in principle it is your human visitors that you are trying to attract.  Making your text easy to read, written so that a person can easily understand what message you are trying to get across.

Good website design tip 2 – Using an easy to read font is important.  Website designers are finding it easier and easier to create web pages using any font they desire.  Using the right font that is easy to read is good practice. 

Good website design tip 3 – Size is important too.  The text too small and your readers will be straining their eyes, too large and decorative can put your reader off too.

Good website design tip 4 – Notice that newspapers put text in columns rather than across the page.  This is because it is easier on the eye, and makes for faster reading as the eye does not need to move too far across the page. This makes it easy for people to quickly scan what your message is.

Good website design tip 5 – The use of colours is vitally important too.  Putting a dark coloured text on a dark background can make text almost unreadable.  Too many bright colours can be off putting.  Again make the web page easy to read.

In essence an easy to read, uncluttered website that gets your message is exactly what you are aiming for.  Keeping your visitors on your website is essential to improving your sales – an informative, easy to read website will do just that!

There are a few simple questions you need to ask before choosing the right website design company.  Price alone should not determine which web design company you chose, there are other factors to take into account such as the companies portfolio, skills, qualifications, references, size of the company, deadlines and personality.

Take a look at the website design companies portfolio.  This is a quick easy way to determine if the website design company is right for you. Do you like the styles they have used?  Do all the website look the same?  Would any of the styles used suit my company?

Website design companies charge different ways, as some charge high set up costs and low recurring fees, and others low setup fees yet high recurring costs.  Most professional website design companies work on a bespoke basis and are unable to publish prices up front, however most will be able to give you a ball park figure based on a technical and/or design brief.

Make sure that the company you chose have the qualifications and skills to do the work.  If your website job requires specific skills such as flash design, database design or search engine optimisation, then ensure the web design company can produce this type of work.  Asking for references is a good place to check and ensure that the website design company can produce what they say they can produce.

The size of the company has no relevance to the quality of work a website design company can produce. There are a lot of freelance web designers that can produce far superior work to large companies.  Preconceptions about the size of the company should not interfere with the facts.  Can the company provide a high level of support?

Ensure that the web design company can meet your deadlines.  No matter how big the web design company is they may not meet your project time scale.  The complexity of the website will greatly affect the time scale.

One of the most important factors to your decision to chose the right web designer is to ensure that you get on.  Working with the right people and enjoying the project is important for everyone.

Just by going through these questions when choosing a website design company can save a lot of hassles later.  It is important to work with the right people within project deadlines and to your budget!

Blogging is still an excellent way to build link popularity for your website, or for your customers websites.  However this method to create back links to your website  is getting more and more difficult.

The difficulty here is that most blogging software now includes code which prevents some search engine bots from following the link. Some search engines will not count this link as a relevant link to your website, in fact some will completely ignore the link altogether. However some search engines will count the link, and some will even index the link.

There are many search engines but only a handful is used by the majority of people. Consideration needs to be taken for your target market and what search engine your potential customer is likely to use.  Google is currently the most widely used.  Understanding how each of the search engine algorithms work will determine the best method to use when it comes to adding links back to your website.

When adding a comment to a blog to create a back link that has the nofollow tag could be  a waste of time.  This assuming of course that the only reason for leaving this comment is to create a back link to your own website.  This makes for creating back links to your website using blogs difficult.

TIP: Look for the ‘nofollow’ tag in the code if you are trying to increase your Google Page Rank!

(Source: moodeyit.com)

Today there are many websites that offer a website that you can design yourself online within minutes.  These offerings can be low in price and allow you to get a website up in minutes.  But is this the answer?

There is a lot more to designing websites than creating a website and putting it on a server and waiting for people to do business with you.  Creating a website that reflects your business and marketing strategy is very important, however very time consuming.

Compiling content, images and relevant links to other websites takes time if you are starting a business.  If you are an established business then you may already have the marketing content you need, however do you have the time required to learn new skills like website design, search engine optimisation and ecommerce.

When using a good website design company you will be tapping into the experience and skills required to ensure the success of your website.  These companies use search engine optimisation skills to ensure that the website has good content, designed for ease of use and yet allow search engine bots to easily index them, so that your website can be found by people who use search engines, such as Google or Yahoo. 

There are many sites that offer ‘build your own’ ecommerce websites within minutes.  The difference between these and what a good designer will do is that you will need to match the features offered, whereas using a designer you can get the features you want.

These website designers will have experience in what works and what does not work.  A classic saying ‘you get what you pay for’. At least with a good website design company you can guarantee that their input into the success of your website will be invaluable!

(Source: moodeyit.com)

Keywords or keyphrases are those search terms put into a search engine like Google or Ask by your potential customers.  Wikipedia describes keywords as:- Keywords are the words that are used to reveal the internal structure of an author’s reasoning.

We often get asked the questions ‘Do I need keywords for my website?’ or ‘How many keywords should we have?’ or ‘What keywords should we have?’  Understanding the role and importance of keywords or keyphrases is paramount to the marketing success of your website.

Keywords tell search engines what the content of your website is about. Remember that search engines are computers, and computers only understand what we tell them.  We tell search engines what our web page is about by using keywords.

Understanding your business and how it relates to your customers helps you to understand what your keywords should be.  Thekeywords chosen need to be those used by your customers and those search terms most used by your potential customers.

Imagine you open a book shop.  This bookshop will be stocked with all the latest books. However when chosing the location of this shop you chose to open out of town on a very quiet road.  Unfortunately your advertising costs are going to be higher than if you were in the town, just to get people to your shop.  This is similar to chosing keywords. Chosing keywords that your potential customers do not use compared to using keywords that people do use.  The more people that use a keyword that you have chosen the more chance they have of visiting your website.

(Source: moodeyit.com)