Make the website about one thing.

It can be about other stuff, too, but choose one primary topic that is most essential to your message. This step is important, so you may want to do a little Keyword research before choosing a topic.

Link to internal pages on your site.

A lot of content management systems automatically do this, but if yours doesn’t, you’ll want to be intentional about linking to your most important pages directly from your homepage and cross-linking them with each other.

Remove anything that slows down your website.

These may including music players, large images, flash graphics, and unnecessary plugins.

Use keywords in your images.

Include words that reflect your site topic in the image title, description.

Also, re-title the file name if it doesn’t reflect your main keywords (e.g. writing-tips.jpg instead of d1234.jpg).

Link to other websites with relevant content.

You can do this by including a blogroll, link list, or resources page on your website.

Of course, do it sparingly, as each outbound link is a “vote” for another site. However, if you do it well and people click your links, this tells search engines you are a trusted authority on your particular topic.

Update your website frequently.

Sites with dynamic content often rank higher than those with static content. That’s why blogs and directories (like Wikipedia) do so well on search engines. They are constantly being updated with new content.

Make sure your website is indexed in search engines.

A lot of search engines will automatically find and index your content, but don’t count on it.

You want to be sure engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are crawling your site, so that people are finding you online. (You can add them directly, if they’re not.)

10. Have other websites link to you.

This is really, really important, when it comes to SEO Preston. The bummer is that it’s not something you can necessarily control. Other than creating excellent content, the only thing you can do is ask (which occasionally works).

My counsel is to spend the time you would trying to convince somebody to link to you on just writing great content. And, start guest posting on other blogs.

Regardless of what you do, know that inbound links are essential to SEO.

Stop changing your domain name.

The age of your url is a factor in your site’s search ranking, so be patient.

If you’re launching a new blog every six months, you’ll never see your site get the value it deserves.

Write like a human.

None of the above matters if you create content that sounds like a robot wrote it.Write great stuff, follow the steps above, have patience, and you’ll see results.

Does negative SEO exist or not? Is the question on everyone’s lips of late, this may be because you’ve noticed a drop in your position on the search engines, you’re worried about the possibility that this perhaps mythical beast is the reason as to why? The reason we do not say its impossible and harsh terms such as this is because over the years we have seen people do crazy things to hijack domains. More people actually discuss negative SEO than attempt it under a sort of controlled experiment due to the fact that no one really knows what effect it will have. Who is to say pointing a few links to a site would help it instead of hurting it.
However, if there is a site where you are worried negative SEO may be occurring it is easy to disavow any links you want if you use Googles Webmaster Tools. You can even sort to see the most recent links if this has occurred relatively recently. The primary usage of the disavow tool is so that sites can disavow bad links to the site itself and cant get removed from the internet but the tool also works fine to stop links that your worried might be spam.
Most do not focus on negative SEO because obviously it is not known or determinable what effect it may have so your time is better spent focusing on your own website, but for SEO to be successful it takes time and dedication and patience. Alternatively you could hire a Webdesign Preston company who are experts in SEO who will do all he work for you! We hope this advice was useful, please read our other articles to better your web understanding!

These days you can guarantee that a large percentage of visitors to your website are accessing it via a mobile phone or tablet device. Technology is constantly changing and how people interact with technology changes even faster.

This is why responsive web design has become ever more important to web design companies because it allows a website to be accessible, and more importantly readable, on a variety of devices.

Desktops, tablets, mobile phones and even home consoles now have to be considered when designing a page so that there is a level of consistancy throughout the devices.

One of the major things that people often forget about when designing a site that is consistant throughout the different devices is the content. Content and responsive design should go hand in hand because the content visable from the start of browsing on a desktop will be completely different to whats there on a mobile.

The main thing to think about is the fact that there will be hiarchy of the content. Some content needs to be seen more than others and therefore will be buried if its not towards the top of the page. The information you need the visitor to see first needs to be clear and at the top of the page on all devices, including those with much smaller screens. There also has to be a balance ofcalls to actions and content. Users need to have significant information as well as options to redirect to other pages and sites.

Content also needs to be broken up into consise informaiton, allowing the reader to take in their information they need in chunks. The hiarchy mentioned above means nothing if you overload the user with the important information all at once and dont allow them to process it properly. There needs to be a mix of text, photos, videos, infographics etc and there needs to be breaks in each of these.

Breaking up the content vertically is a proven technique and allows users to go through each section on the same page flicking the content box sideways. It alludes to ease of mobile friendly users and allows for a better user experience so they feel more comfortable chosing the company to do business with/buy from.

Getting the attitude right is the prerequisite for responsive website designing. Content should not be considered as an add-on responsibility that the development team needs to fulfill at a later point. Correct content and responsive design planning can actually play a crucial role in a company’s success in the long run.

Smart design is all about understanding the industry and what it wants at any given time. This can change drastically from year to year so its best to keep up to date with all the trends in the web design industry so you know what will work for you.

Boosting your eCommerce prospects is obviously the ultimate goal of any website supporting eCommerce. You want to make money for your business and you want the website to help with this. These are the trends that a lot of design companies are now using to help achieve this goal so you know what to look out for.

First of all you should noticed that flat design is in. What do we mean by flat design? Well this design method uses a series of simple colours, shapes and lines to create something thats smooth and clear to navigate. Its minimalist in appearance and often uses whites and greys well with small amounts of colour to train the eye of the user. This has been developed further through something called material design. Its flat design with additional colours to enhance users to shop. There is a lot of psychology involved with this and its been found that oranges and reds are known to  prompt purchases from website users.

Within the trend for flat design is the trend for minimalist buttons. These are things like ghost buttons that can be used for any type of button and any type of action; browsing, shopping, sharing etc. They don’t interrupt the overall design of the page and they are perfect for sleek, uninterrupted layouts on your site.

Full page background images are also very prominent in web design these days. Used well they blend into the shopping experience and help allow the site to look and feel less cluttered. HD images that blend well with your website niche will be the thing you want from your web design company so make sure you get it.

Mobile optimisation is something that needs to be carried out on all sites, regardless of whether they are eCommerce based or not, but its vital that eCommerce sites work well on tablets and mobiles because around half of your customers will be visiting the site on these devices.

Card design is nothing new but its being used more because of how well it works for mobile optimisation. This allows for small bits of information about a product to be shown in an almost business card type way, alongside an image and some buttons (read more, buy, options etc) and its an easy way for people to find what they need quickly and effectively.

These trends will help boost your eCommerce prospects so make sure any web design company you use can help implement these, or look out for them on the portfolio of shortlisted web design companies when you are looking out for one.

Looking for a web design company can be a pretty terrifying experience. Due to how huge the web has become web design companies have popped up here, there and everywhere and its pretty difficult to find the best one for you from a quick google search.

Chances are you will have to go and visit a few web design companies, or arrange for them to come and visit you at your office. Even once you have done this it can be hard to determine who is the best person for the job without asking the right questions.

However asking the right questions is linked to knowing the right information and lets face it, if you knew the right answers then you could potentially be doing the site yourself. What we want to let you know is what you want from a web designer and what to ask to find out if they will give you it.

Most web design companies will have a web designer and a developer working for them. There is a difference between these two roles and the main thing is that a designer will work with you to choose colours, branding/logos, discuss layouts and create mockups. They will also be knowledgable about concepts like calls to action, organising content and setting out layouts to meet set goals for your site. A developer is the person who will then use those mockups to build the working website, they can also add functionality to an existing website and help with troubleshooting. Designers often have some of the skills developers do and vice versa so you might want to clarify with your chosen company who will be doing what if you are interested.

One of the things you have to consider once you have narrowed down your option of a few website design companies is if you like the look of websites that the company has designed before and if those designs will fit in with what you want. If there is a huge range of designs and a few of them stand out to you it might be that one particular designer within the company will work best for you, don’t be scared to ask who that is and if they will be available to work on your website.

You have to ask how much upkeep your website will need following its completion and if this will be possible to do yourself. If you have no idea about websites and what is involved then you will need to consider hiring the company for web maintenance services following on from the completion and you should get the breakdown of costs for this also.

You should receive files from the web design company following completion of the design, ask what files you will receive and what you will have ownership of. If the company is rebranding your business then you should receive editable versions of your logo and any premium fonts or photos/graphics used in the design of the site.

Also you want to consider the future of your business and what changes you may need down the line on your website. You need to ask questions regarding revisions, like if the designer will be available for them if needed and how much these will cost. You hire a company with a set plan and if there are additions to this down the line then you have to know what that will cost you, but bear in mind that the rates change over time and if you’re asking for new pages to be added to your site two years down the line the rate you were quoted at first may have increased since you got the quote.

Finally you want to obviously go with the best value for money but this doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest option. If there is a company offered substantially less than others then its likely there may be a reason for that and it could be that their service isn’t as good. Some companies have their own content and marketing person to help enhance the website content and help get the website seen by the right people and while this could cost slightly more, it will be worth it in the long run as its more likely your website will succeed.