… make sure you test your website.

When was the last time that you gave your site a quick once over? If you’re like most website owners, it could be anything from a few hours to a few years.

If it’s been a few months, then you could be missing out on leads. Changes to your website, issues with your hosting company, or changes of email address can all render contact forms and email links useless.

So what are you waiting for? Load up your website, and put your contact methods through their paces. It could be the difference between being an online success, and failing to make any money through your website.

For more SEO, website and online marketing advice, follow FirstFound on Facebook and Twitter, or read this issue’s Optimise Magazine.

FirstFound’s web design department, Leven Internet, are relaunching their website!

Our design and development team have slaved away to create a brand new design that’s up to date with the latest web design trends, and that showcases some of their greatest work.
If you don’t have a professional website, there’s never been a better time for you to go for an upgrade – expecially when you consider that for a short time only, we’ll be offering some great deals on our template packages and our bespoke sites!

Template Websites From Just £299

When you need a website fast, choose one of Leven Internet’s sleek and stylish website templates. Professional, engaging and built with the search engines in mind, these templates are perfect who needs a website fast and doesn’t want to compromise on quality.

Bespoke Designs by Professional Designers

For those who are looking for something that’s truly one-of-a-kind, our professional web design team are on hand to produce something special. Guaranteed to catch your customers’ eyes and hold their attention, our bespoke websites are streets ahead of anything else you’ll find online.

To discuss your requirements with our Leven Internet design team, get in touch with FirstFound now.

You’ve spent hundreds on having a designer create an eye-catching site that sticks in the memory. An expert copywriter has crafted copy that has your visitors drooling over the prospect of owning your products. A team of SEOs have done their job, and you’re top of the search engines for keywords that you know your target audience use.

And you haven’t had a single, solitary enquiry.

Why?

What’s gone wrong? Has your designer sold you a lame duck? Is your copywriter’s clever prose just all smoke and mirrors? Have your SEO team dropped the ball?

Or has something else not happened?

Have you made a mistake that’s rendered all their hard work and your investment almost useless?

Four Common Mistakes that Stop Your Website Generating Enquiries

In the excitement of making your online presence felt, it’s all too easy to miss something that on the face of it seems glaringly obvious. But don’t worry. You’re in good company. Hundreds of people have made the mistakes on this list, and there’s no shame in it. So long as you fix it!

Who’s Answering Your Phone?

This might seem obvious, and anyone with a full time call centre at their beckon call can skip this one, but who’s answering your phone?

If you’ve plastered your office number all over your website, people are going to call it. And when you spend all day out on site with your mobile for company, they’re going to get your answer phone.

And people hate answer phone messages. You might not think you want your mobile number on the Internet, but it could be just what you need to turn a click into a client.

Of course if you desperately need to have an answer phone, make sure it’s personalised, and make sure it picks up quickly. Nobody’s leaving a message for “Orange. Answer. Service. 0 – 7 – 7…” and nobody’s hanging round for six rings to give you money.

You Need to Know What?

When you asked for a contact form, your web developer wasn’t trying to make his life easier by suggesting you didn’t need nine separate fields. He was just pointing out that visitors to your website won’t submit an essay when they want to buy a product.

If you’re asking for more than a name, contact details and general enquiry, you’re asking for trouble. And it’ll still be a rare click that will stick around to give you any.

Zealotry Isn’t an Attractive Feature

Especially in a spam filter. Chances are that a large proportion of your online enquiries are going to come from the Internet. And the main way people communicate over the Internet is email. So far, so obvious. The issue comes when you think about who’s going to email you. People you don’t know. People with webmail addresses. People that your over-zealous Spam Filter might incorrectly label as Nigerian Royalty with amazing investment opportunities.

Do yourself a favour. Check your spam filter once in a while. You never know what could be lurking in there.

Search Quantity isn’t Everything

Yes, wedding bands gets more searches than wedding musicians. You know this because you’ve argued the point back and forth with your SEO until you thought you might have to introduce their skull to a snare drum. But you stood firm, got what you asked for, and you’re on page one for wedding bands in your town.

So why is your bounce rate so high? A quick image search will show you a few 24 carat, diamond encrusted reasons why. Sometimes a phrase gets more searches because it’s a synonym. And no matter how good your site, you’ll find it hard to sell three hours of guitar pop to someone who’s looking for a ring.

Of course, there are dozens of other reasons that your site might not be living up to its potential, so it won’t hurt to get a second opinion. For expert advice on SEO and online marketing, call FirstFound now on 0161 909 3411.

Taking a break from my regular search engine optimisation musings, today’s show and tell will cover the finer points of some of my favourite iPhone Apps. I will be listing my personal favourite apps, covering the Internet and network debugging, remote desktop access, telnet and secure shell command consoles, SEO and website ranking tools, web database access and more. In my opinion, these are iPhone Apps that every self-respecting web developer, SEO consultant and network engineer should have!

Network & Internet Debugging & Discovering iPhone App

Ping (Mochasoft) is a great iPhone app for debugging any network. The lite version if completely free and does exactly what is says on the tin, you can ping or trace to any other. If you splash out and get the full version you can to a ping sweep which is a great way to discover and identify all devices connected to a particular subnet. The full version also comes with a telnet console.

FTP and File Sharing iPhone Apps

Files Lite (Fresh Apps) is a great ( and free!) app which allows you to map your iPhone folder as a virtual drive on your computer. The bonus, is it will also open and read your Microsoft format files : Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets and so on. I Also find that FTP Lite is a nice, simple, no-nonsense App that turns your iPhone into an FTP server.

Remote Desktop iPhone App

To help manage Windows IIS servers (or if – like me! – you just like being able to set your computer doing something without having to get up from the couch!) then my first choice would have to be Mocha VNC. It provides a very responsive remote desktop service for your computer, and will happily handle multiple displays and works on many different systems including Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. I found it useful to reduce the colour depth to 256 colours to make it even faster and can be effectively be used across the web, not just on your home wi-fi connection.

Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH) & Terminal iPhone Applications

If (like me!) you practically live in terminal consoles and command line’s, then either: : iSSH (Zinger-Soft), SSH (ThroughPut Inc.) or TouchTerm (jbrink.net) should float your boat. Obviously you are somewhat limited as to the available space on the screen, and I personally like iSSH. Although it is more pricey than the others, it supports several protocols including xterm and even supports colour (making it more advanced than the one Microsoft ship with their operating systems!

MySQL Web Database iPhone App

MySQLi is a fantastic MySQL App, completely free, it will allow you to update an arbitrary database on the web, provided you have all the connection information.

SEO & Website Ranking iPhone Apps

Pokeseo ( John Christiansen ) is a neat little tool which allows you to check your web rankings for a key phrase in the 4 top search engines. SenseEarn ( Hans Schneider) gives you a neat way to view your AdSense account history and track your visitors activity. Some of the code which Analytics relies on in order to draw all graphs doesn’t work properly on the iPhone that’s where Analytics App ( Inblosam LLC ) comes in. This app allows you to connect with a clean and straight forward interface and track your visitors activity on the move. SEO Automatic ( Leon Huang ) is a great tool for tracking your websites position for as many keywords as you wish. SERPS ( Hans Schneider )was also quite a neat little tool, which will not only track as many keywords as you like in Google, but will allow you to select which language version of Google you test each phrase in.

Yes, the iPhone is truly a device that grows around you. I even found out today, that if you visit the Google homepage and click the link to activate local services (below the search bar), all your Google local searches will use your location to find the right shop, restaurant or bar near you.

SEO Friendly Websites - Leven Internet

Over the past few weeks, our web design and development team have been working hard on a new offering – SEO friendly websites. Now, after much tweaking and fine tuning, we’re finally proud to announce the new offering from Leven Consultants & FirstFound…

Drum roll please!

SEO Friendly Websites from Leven Internet

We’ve started by designing all of Leven’s websites with SEO in mind. There won’t be any stumbling blocks to stop the search engine spiders from completely crawling, indexing and ranking the websites we produce. That’s not just good news for search engine consultants, it’s good news for businesses too.

To begin with, we’ll be offering two main products:

SEO Friendly Website Templates

Our starter website package consists of a three page search engine friendly site, a free domain name, ten email addresses and one year’s free hosting. Everything a small business needs to get things started on the web. Just pick from one of our eye-catching templates, and we’ll make sure it all ties in with your company’s branding.

Our business website package gives companies a little more room to grow. Six pages, 20 email addresses and free hosting for the first year. We’ll still register that domain name for free, and you’ll get the same professional standards of design and coding.

Of course, we know that you can’t adopt a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to a business’ online profile, which is why we’ll also be offering custom built websites.

Bespoke SEO Friendly Websites

If you’re looking for a little more bang for your buck, our design team will be more than happy to build something that’s tailored to your every whim. CMS Systems, ecommerce packages – if you want it, Leven Internet will deliver.

 So if your website’s looking a bit tired or outdated, head on over to Leven Internet now. We’re certain that you’ll like what you see!

Cyber Monday was set to be the busiest online trading day of the year. While the jury is still out at the time of writing, analysts are anticipating this year will set new record highs with an estimated 95.5 million people spending a staggering $900m online. Puzzled? I know I was. It seemed to run counter to everything my senses told me was happening around me … there is a recession on, don’t you know?

But after some careful thought, I realised it actually made perfect sense. The Internet offers more choice, operates faster and more efficiently, ultimately ensuring that sales are less expensive for most businesses to make. In a recession, why wouldn’t everyone turn to the Internet to do their Christmas shopping? The added bonus is not having to depend on the British weather, nor negotiate your way though hordes of people to grab yourself a Christmas bargain!

The Second Busiest Online Trading Day … Ever!

But this is no isolated spike, either. Early data from research firm comScore suggests that yesterday was actually the second busiest online trading day in the Internet’s history. Sales are up 15% on this time last year, which was itself a new record, beating the one set in 2007. Despite my television constantly reminding me how gloomy the economic world is behind my curtain, it is clear that a vast chunk of these sales have not dried up … they have simply moved to the web.  This is a trend we can expect to see continue for some time.

We are now in December, with only 24 days until Christmas.  It is very easy to lose focus of our goal once the short-term flurry of activity has died down.  It is tempting to walk away with the message that: ‘Christmas is becoming an Internet thing’, rather than taking a step back, and seeing the bigger picture which indicates a steady migration of business to the Internet, year upon year.  As a search engine consultant who spends his life matching patterns, I can tell you that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is for life, not just for Christmas! 

Quite a number of people ask me to optimise them for seasonal phrases to ensure they are able to catch a lot of the holiday traffic. This makes perfect sense on the surface – but in reality – SEO itself responds quite slowly and is probably not the best tool for the job. The smart person will be investing in their website now, carefully manoeuvring yourself ready for Christmas 2010.

The Most Effective Way to Target Seasonal Traffic

Does your website have a blog or news section? If not, you should probably look at getting one installed. This is an increasingly popular self-promotion tactic that will allow you to post news about your seasonal promotions and offers. You will find search engines are far more responsive to blogs and news which will prove more effective at capturing your slice of the seasonal traffic. What about your websites page structure? Could you add more information pages to your site, or improve your websites page structure to allow for better quality traffic? When was the last time your website had a face lift? Trends in programming techniques on the web are constantly shifting. A few years ago it was acceptable to use table structures for the design, but this has become a tactic that is now frowned upon.

If you have an SEO consultant, then perhaps it would be worth having a chat about web development work that will help you get more out of your online presence in the long term? Rather than a sudden reaction to short term trends, this is best done in response to the gradual trend which shows the Internet is likely to play an increasingly dominant role in our shopping habits in 2010.

When I was small, one of the songs we sung at school described how the foolish man built his house upon the sand, and the wise man built his house upon the rocks (insert accompanying hand gestures for people who remember this one!). Believe it or not, the same is true when it comes to your hosting. Search engines are designed to deliver useful results in a timely fashion. If they find themselves recommending broken links or offline websites, then – in many ways – they have failed in their duty.

 

Hosting that Meets the Needs of Your Business

So how does all this affect your hosting and SEO? Well, to help cope with the ever-shifting sea of search results, search engines will rapidly move an unavailable website down the rankings until it comes back online. This often causes downed websites to disappear in a matter of days, rather than weeks. Doing this allows the search engines to preserve their quality of search for users and ensure they rarely recommend a link that is broken. If people begin clicking your broken link, If you have a problem with hosting that is addressed quickly, you can expect your site to reappear back up to where you were fairly rapidly. However, if the problem persists for any length of time – say, a week or more – it will have far-reaching consequences for your search position which may take months to claw back.

I like to compare it to your shop or business premises – you wouldn’t dream of tolerating a building with major structural problems, where the electricity cuts out periodically or the water stops running now and again. Having a server that occasionally experiences problems is just like politely asking all your customers to leave until the issues with the shop are resolved. Do this regularly enough and some of the customers will stop coming back entirely!

The Importance of Getting Your Hosting Right

Getting your hosting right will provide a solid foundation upon which to build a successful online presence. But speed and reliability are just two ongoing factors. Before you begin building, it is important to consider the technical needs of your website are met in the same way your premises must meet the needs of your business. Do you need database support for an online shop, blog or content management system? Will there be sufficient file and SQL space for your website to grow? Do you have special requirements such as HTTPS and SSL which will allow you to take payments online?

As always, all of these questions can be easily answered by thinking about your target audience, and their needs. Doing this before you start building will help ensure you minimise any potential future headaches and avoid most major obstacles when promoting your site.

Google has announced the latest Google Labs experiment on its official blog. They rolled it out yesterday afternoon, and already there has been lots of discussion in the SEO community on the impact it will have.
Google Social Search is still being developed and experimented on, and I am sure Google have still a lot more to play with and tweak, but essentially it is a another step toward personalising search results for Google account holders.
Google Social Search is essentially connected to your GMail account, social contacts via Twitter and Friendfeed, news feeds, RSS feeds and Google Reader feeds. Great news if you want to connect that missing link to all your online activity via Google and use this feature like a friends network as on Facebook. However, if you do not have many contacts nor followers on Twitter then this latest development is unlikely to be life changing.
I look forward to experimenting with this latest development through Google Labs and comparing my results with the rest of my colleagues results at FirstFound. The indications are clear from Google that it intends to press ahead with personalising search results and in doing do bridging the gap between generic marketing for the masses and personalised marketing for the niche. For now social media seems to be Google’s new darling.