Design on the mind

Top SEO tip No.5 – Google Analytics

Once you have designed and optimised your website, you need to check your stats regularly to see how well it is working for you. You can then make educated adjustments to your web design or page content.

Sign up to Google Analytics (It’s free) and you will be able to track visitors in intricate detail from where they enter the site to where they are exiting, which pages they are viewing, how long they are on the website. Also, where your traffic is coming from ie referred websites or search engines.

You can set up ‘goals’ on your website so that you can track conversions. For example if you want to know how many visitors make it to a certain page but drop out before they actually buy the product, this is very easy to do. All this and much more, so give it a try!

That’s all the tips for this week folks, have a good weekend!

Toni

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Top SEO Tip No.4 – Directories

Submitting your website to certain online directories will bring not only extra traffic but good inbound links to your website as well. So, good for your SEO and your business will be found more easily on the seach engines.

I would highly recommend FreeIndex, as their name suggests it is FREE! There are many other useful features on this website; you can add images, testimonials and get your clients to leave reviews on your company profile. Very easy to do

If you write a blog or have a blog based website I would recommend going to Technorati to claim your blog!

Join me tomorrow for your next top SEO tip

Toni

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Top SEO tip No.3 – Title tags

Once you have written the relevant content for your website (See yesterday’s blog), it is now very important that your Title tags are written correctly and you are making the best use of them.

Your title tag is the heading of each web page that appears at the top of your screen. It is very important that you optimise these by describing the key phrase for that page as well as including your company name. For example a web page describing pink bananas sold by Bananarma Ltd in Bristol should read:

Pink Bananas Bristol – Bananarma Ltd – bespoke bananas Bristol

Join me tomorrow for your next top SEO tip

Toni

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Top SEO tip No.2 - Content and Key phrases

I’m sure no one will disagree with me that Content is still King in Search Engine Optimisation terms. When writing the content or copy for your website you need to keep the focus on your target audience. What are the phrases that your potential customers are using in the search engines?

Spend a little time using a tool like wordtraker and you will see not only what key phrases people are using but also how many other websites are competing for them. (It even has a free trial to get you started!). When you have found your niche key phrases, take the time to write a separate piece of copy that focuses on each one and turn them into separate pages of content for your website.

This is the best way to build up good, relevant content for your website that focuses on what your target market is searching for.

Join me tomorrow for your next top SEO tip!

Toni

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Over the space of this week I will post a series of blogs containing some top SEO tips that I hope will be of some use to you, particularly if you are just starting out. So here goes with the first one:

Top SEO tip No. 1 – Domain Name

If you are about to choose the domain name for your business website, then bear in mind that Google will favour a keyword rich domain name. What I mean by this is;
 If your company sells green widgets in Bristol, you will be better off choosing the domain name www.greenwidgetsinbristol.com as opposed to your company name.

This of course is only one factor in your overall SEO strategy and this one aspect alone will not give your website first page Google listings for those keywords. It can, however give you an advantage over your competitors who have a less descriptive domain name.

Join me tomorrow for your next top SEO tip!

Toni

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I was reading this book ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle to my youngest daughter the other night and I was struck by the thought that really this book has become somewhat of an institution. I remember my mother reading it to me as a child and I loved it too.

The illustrations are such a unique style, in fact the whole design of the book is what makes it so memorable and successful. As I’m sure you all remember it has the little holes in the pages that children love to stick their fingers in:

And of course the favourite page that all children want to rush on to because it makes the parent talk very fast! Genius:

I then started to think about other book illustrators whose work has been absolutely instrumental in the success of the publication. For me, when I first read ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ by Hunter S Thompson with illustrations by Ralph Steadman, I was just blown away. How perfectly the illustrations worked with the story, in fact, they made the story for me.

Apply this to Web and Graphic Design

In any graphic or web design project it is vitally important to get the balance and relationship right with the text and the illustrations or pictures so that they are complementing each other. Even if you are designing a simple flyer or leaflet you must apply the same rules;

1. It must be designed firstly to catch your eye and your attention using a sympathetic balance of text, graphics and imagery.
2. Then you must feel compelled to give it a closer look and read it.
3. Then if it has been designed well, the imagery and the message should leave enough of an impact for it to become memorable. Hey presto job done!

Have you got a favourite illustrator? Have you been influenced by the work of someone in particular? How effective do you think a design can be with no illustration or imagery at all?

Toni

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Happy New Year to you all! Hope you all had a fun time.

As always at the start of a new year, it is a time for reflection, taking stock and starting afresh with new ideas. I am hoping that 2008 will bring new exciting challenges and adventures for the Deckchair team. One of the main things on our ‘TO DO List’ is to redesign our blog. It is rather uninspiring to look at and it is a bit shameful that it has taken us 6 months to get round to thinking about it.

There are lots of things I think we should include aside from the obvious much needed asthetic redesign. And of course it goes without saying that I would be most grateful for any advice or suggestions from any of you:

1. Add in the Dofollow plugin as Randa Clay mentions in her I follow blog. It will give more incentive to visitors to leave comments as the search engines will recognise the link.
2. Make it more obvious which of the Deckchair team is writing each post by adding an author picture at the top of the post. (might have to do a bit of arm twisting on that one, designers are so shy!)
3. Add a community panel (if that is what it is called?) so that recent visitors and commentors can be seen and can see each other. As on Paul Enderson’s blog Reflections.
4. Add a counter that clocks the number of times each blog post is viewed. This is mainly for my benefit as I don’t get many comments at the moment and it will make me feel better if I see that lots of people have at least looked at it.
5. Add a ‘popular articles’ list down the side of the blog to make it easier for people to get to the good stuff.
6. Add the similar posts plugin as suggested in David Airey’s blog Top 5 essential wordpress plugins.
7. Make it easier to subscribe to the blog.
8. Some of these plugins look interesting on Elliot Swan’s wordpress plugins worth having blog. But still working my way through understanding what most of them are!
9. Search function of some sort to help people find what they are looking for.

I am sure that this list will grow and change as we start the makeover process so watch this space! Again, if you have any useful tips or suggestions we would be most grateful

Toni

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