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Jul 08
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TCmarketing SEO

SEO in Brighton – Is Your Website Ready to go on a Date with Google?

By SEO

This is the latest in a series of SEO Articles for Brighton Business.

If you want to get high rankings for your business website on Google, you have to make sure your site meets all the demands of Google’s ranking algorithm. When Google’s web crawler visits your web pages, it’s just like having a date with Google.

Here’s how to make sure that this date goes the way you want it to:

  1. Check your appearance

Web design is very important for your Brighton business. Does your website look good compared with those of your main competitors? Can all the important pages be found quickly and easily? Can search engines see all the pages of your site? Does your website look good on desktop computers, tablets and mobile phones? Does it display correctly on all browsers?

The appearance of your website has an influence on the successful outcome of your date with Google.

  1. Be on time

If you don’t show up on the date, Google won’t index your web pages. If your web pages deliver error codes, Google won’t be able to index them. If you’re late (read: slow loading web pages), you won’t make a good impression. Slow loading pages and web pages with error codes usually do not get high rankings. Check your web pages load speed with one of the many free tools available to make sure that everything is okay.

  1. Conversation matters

Talk about the right things on your first date and chances are that there will be a second date. The content on your web pages is important for SEO. Offer interesting and compelling content that encourages website visitors to become your customers. Search engines like web pages with good quality, frequently updated, relevant content.

If you talk about strange things (spammy and automatically-created content), the date will go wrong. Better avoid that awkward moment if you want to get high rankings.

  1. Are you a nice person?

Your family, your friends and your acquaintances define who you are in real life. If they think that you are a rather unfriendly person, chances are that you really are an unfriendly person.

When it comes to your website’s date with Google, the links that point to your site define the quality of your site. If your website has many low-quality links or links from spammy websites, it is likely that Google won’t trust your site.

If a high quality website links to your site (a very trustworthy person is your friend) then you can expect a ranking boost from that link. We can help you to find out who is linking to your website by running a link profile test.

Dating Google can be tricky. SEO can be tricky and engaging with an SEO agency that doesn’t understand what they are doing and what the ‘rules of dating’ are just because they are cheap is false economy.

Call us today on 01273 328877 to see how we can help you make a match with Google. If preferred please leave a comment below.

Jul 02
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web design in Brighton by Tyler Consutants

Choosing The Right Web Design Company in Brighton

By web design

Founded in 1998, we are a full-service marketing company and design agency with a focus to help companies get the most from their marketing potential. We also specialise in web design in Brighton, UK. Over the years we have produced a solid reputation for building and designing websites that look modern and are exceptionally easy to use. With this experience and knowledge we know exactly what aspects and factors you need to consider when it comes to choosing the right web design company for your business.

As a business owner you will no doubt already know that in order to succeed within an incredibly strong competitive market you will need to be able to offer the best brand experience for all of your loyal and potential customers. During the past decade the way companies market their brand has changed significantly as a result of social media platforms and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

These new methods of browsing and buying have allowed consumers increased power to choose the brand they wish to commit too. This new type of consumer can often leave business owners with the fundamental task of finding the right and best website design company to deliver their company’s message to their targeted audience and potential customers in the most effective and efficient way possible.

Across the UK there are hundreds of web design companies popping up here, there, and everywhere, which means there are plenty to choose from, but how can you decide which one is right for you? Without a strong and user friendly web design, you are unfortunately placing both your company and brand at a disadvantage if you are trying to grow your company’s brand online.

There is an abundance of professional website design companies in Brighton, London, Edinburgh and all other major cities, but many don’t understand that a clean and effective website is well designed website that can help you grow your business and brand with ease.

So before you start to work your way through the mountain of web design companies out there, it is important to understand what basic things you should always expect and what they should be doing for you.

  • Design your website’s physical design such as layout, colours, etc.
  • Setup your websites CMS.
  • Place any static web pages that you may need.
  • Setup a control panel or publishing page where you can add new content/products
  • Provide you with any logins and passwords to the CMS so you can edit the website.
  • Inform you of how to use the CMS if you don’t understand.

Now that you understand a little more about what to expect from your web design company, it time to think about where they are based. If your company is situated in Brighton, a web design company in Brighton is preferred, as they are close and meetings can be arranged quickly and easily.

Below you will find five quick tips on how to choose the right web design company for your business and brand.

  1. Take a look at a company’s web design portfolio.

As like many artists, web designers all come with their own bespoke design style. This means you will more than likely find a designer who creates websites with the exact look that you want for your company branding. If you have found a designer or a company, make sure that you browse through the samples of websites on their portfolio.

  1. Communicate with the web design company, tell them what it is that you need.

As with any good service, you expect them to be honest. A good designer should be entirely honest with you and tell you exactly how capable they are at achieving what you are looking for. The true sign of a good designer is that they will talk about your company, your services and products to gain a real insight on what angles to take when designing your website.

  1. Don’t choose a web design company that promises to put your website on the first page of Google.

Placing your website on the front page and the first rank of Google is not your website designers job. Their job is to design and to provide you with the necessary tools so that your website has the potential to get to the front page of Google and other search engines. Any designer or company who promises the first page of Google in their sales package should be avoided.

  1. Don’t choose a web design company who will charge you to make updates.

Every website on the world wide web is continually in progress. When a website is ‘finished’ it never truly is, as new products and content should be added on a regular basis. This means, if you are a company that needs to update their website with new content and products each week or month, you do not want to be spending a fortune updating it.

  1. Don’t choose a web design company who designs websites all in Flash.

Many of us are aware that Google can search Flash websites, but they often come across tacky and dated. It increases website load time significantly (which may hurt your ranking), they don’t work on all browsers, they certainly do not work on some mobile devices and flash websites are not always user friendly.

If you would like to know more about our web design services in Brighton please leave a comment below or call us on 01273 328877

Jun 26
Love1
TCmarketing SEO

Is Link Building Still Relevant for SEO in Brighton Today?

By Link Building, SEO

The more of your competitors believe that link building is dead, the better for your own Brighton Business. The truth is that links are still the most important factor for Google’s ranking algorithm and should remain a part od any effective SEO strategy. However, the type of link that points to your website makes a huge difference.

Don’t be fooled by Google’s smoke and mirrors game

When it comes to backlinks, Google is giving advice that confuses a lot of people. In addition, Google’s Penguin updates have created the impression that Google doesn’t like backlinks. Actually, Google only dislikes artificial backlinks.

The problem is that many people do not understand the difference between ‘link scheming’ and ‘link building’. Link scheming leads to penalties. Link building can greatly improve the rankings of your website.

The difference between link building and link scheming

Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Google penalises websites that have link scheming links.

The following link types are a red flag for Google and it’s likely that your website will be penalised and are not recommended for SEO:

  • Paid links that do not use the rel=nofollow attribute, including advertorials, paid blog posts and paid footer links.
  • Links from article sites or press releases with over-optimised anchor texts.
  • Backlinks that have been created by tools that create backlinks in bulk.
  • Links from low-quality directory or bookmark sites that only exist to create links.
  • Keyword-rich or hidden links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites.
  • Links from forum comments with optimised anchor texts in the post or signature.

How to decide where to get links

So which type of backlinks are okay with Google and good for SEO? Just ask yourself: would that link make sense if there were no search engines? If the answer is yes, then the link is a good link that will have a positive influence on the rankings of your website on search engines.

You do not need special metrics to judge the quality of a web page. When you find a web page that could link to your site, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Does the linking page look good to the average web visitor?
  • Does the page have interesting content?
  • Is the content closely related to my area of business?
  • Does it make sense if the web page links to your site?
  • Would you be happy to give them a link i.e. recommend the site to your site visitors?

If you can answer all questions with “yes” then you should try to get a backlink from that page. It doesn’t matter if that page has a low PageRank as long as it has good content and is relevant to your area of business.

Google uses a technology called Latent Semantic Indexing to try to imitate common sense with its algorithm. If you use common sense in your link building efforts and follow the tips above, you make sure that the backlinks to your website will help you in your search rankings and you are unlikely to have to worry about any future updates of Google’s algorithm.

If you would like to know more about our search engine optimisation services in Brighton please leave a comment below or call us on 01273 328877

Jun 17
Love0
web design in Brighton by Tyler Consutants

Web Design in Brighton

By responsive design, web design

Are you a Brighton based business owner or company marketing director wondering how successful your current web design is? Excluding social media, do you actually have a local web presence at all? Whether you’re a Brighton estate agency, a local artist or fitness coach you still need to be reachable online through more ways than ever before. Take a look at the most accomplished Brighton based organisations online and a quick search will reveal they all have one thing in common – a solid web design.

Web design in Brighton has evolved quickly over just the last few years due mostly to the explosion in smartphones and tablets, with mobile usage now beginning to overtake traditional desktop use in Brighton. Therefore it is crucial that your website or blog can be accessed easily on multiple sized screens at any moment. This can be achieved using the latest responsive web design technology. This is vital not just for your customers, but also important for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) with Google recently confirming it was now ranking website results based on how mobile friendly their presence was. For example, a Brighton Florist with a responsive web design will now likely rank above their local competitor, naturally enjoying more visitors. Can you afford to miss out on this latest local trend?

At Tyler Consultants we understand better than anyone how to engage with the local Brighton online community. You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of your online audience so your website design needs to load quickly, be easy to navigate and be usable on all modern devices. Our bespoke web designs specialise in online call to actions too, encouraging Brighton visitors to engage in your website either by placing an order or contacting you for a quote.

If you are based in Brighton, Hove or surrounding areas and would like a free chat about your current web design solution then give us a quick call today on 01273 328877, or, if preferred, leave a comment below.

May 28
Love0
The Best Colour Generator

The Best Colour Generator on the web

By Design, Logo/Branding, Recommended

Finding a colour scheme for your brand has never been so easy!

Coolors, the super fast colour generator for cool designers is by far the most efficient way to get yourself a groovy colour palette for your latest project.

So how does it work? A single tap of your keyboard’s space bar will generate a perfectly good colour palette. But it doesn’t stop there! You can click a colour column to lock it and tweak colours via a HSB/RGB/CMYK & PMS slider. This combined with the fact that you can place your own colours into the tool means that you can look only for colours which compliment your current scheme.

A truly complete colour tool but simple enough for anyone to use.

Even on mobiles. Coolors is just as effective and easy to use on mobile devices. Not only is there an app available for iOS and Android (though these require a fee) but the website is responsive and just as addictive as ever.

It’s worth mentioning that while Coolors is a truly powerful app, it’s not completely groundbreaking. In fact colour generators have been around for quite some time, a simple Google search will find you plenty. The difference here is how much more effective Coolors is at actually finding and tweaking those generated palettes.

Coolors also has a browsing function, letting you see which colour palettes have been downloaded and viewed the most. This is useful if you’re just looking for inspiration rather than something in particular as you can see much more colour palettes at one time.

Personally I prefer the full colour generator as opposed to the browser though. Having the full size columns makes it easy to immediately recognise when you’ve found what you’re looking for. Plus there’s just something about hitting that spacebar repeatedly and watching colours fly by which is great fun.

If you’re looking for any more help with your branding or you’re just looking for some advice give us a call on 01273 328877

May 15
Love0
TCmarketing Design Icon

The Impact a Great Logo could have on your Business

By Design, Logo/Branding

A common misconception about logos is that they are used for the purpose of creating a good first impression. It’s true that having a logo which stands out and connotes clear brand values can help distinguish your brand from competitors.

But the truth is that a logos greatest strength isn’t in the first time you lay eyes on them, it’s the umpteenth time. Logos aren’t just important for a first impression their real draw is making your brand memorable.

Giving great service or value to your customers means a whole lot more when ultimately your customers remember that experience and want to return.

Brands today have achieved such a great depth of recognition that they have arguably impacted what colour means to us.

If I was to ask you what comes into your mind when someone mentions the colour red, sure there will be natural connotations like danger, power and passion. But also you are very likely to think of a large brand which has impacted you maybe Coca-Cola, Virgin or even Manchester United.

Having this level of awareness for a brand is invaluable. Which according to the BBC is why global scale companies are willing to pay tens of millions on their logos, in example UK oil group BP paid £136 million introducing their new logo back in 2000.

Something to keep in mind about logo’s is that they aren’t necessarily aiming to be love at first sight. Remember, the true value is in how memorable a logo is and how easy it will be for people to recognise.

There are three points which your brand needs to cover to attain a memorable logo:

  • Relevant to the business, both in terms of industry and the business’ values.
  • The logo must be simple enough for  even a glance of your logo to be recognised as your brand.
  • Plus a great logo will always be original, blending in with the rest of your industry is not what a logo is about.

Your logo is what people identify your business with, and it should most definitely not be overlooked. The best logos take months of planning and iterating before the final designs are completed.

If you’re looking for a logo which is highly polished, carefully considered and designed by an experienced, proven team why not get in touch? Call 01273 328877 for a free audit.

May 11
Love0

Why You Should Use Podcasts to Market your Business

By Marketing, Website

It’s been a well known fact that blogging is a seriously cost-effective way to gain solid exposure on your brand. Blogging is a great way to market your business because when implemented correctly, it’s a natural process where visitors want to spread your content to their friends and followers and the it works great.

Marketers who have prioritised blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI

Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website

So what is it exactly which separates this blogging phenomenon from other marketing methods? Advertising, while generally a more invasive format can still be highly informative, relevant and valuable to a user – particularly online.

We’ve all been in the situation where you have been looking out for a shirt on Amazon only to find on the next few websites you visit a whole load of brands advertising their shirts. Sure, it might feel like they are interrupting your browsing experience but sometimes that ad can be exactly what you’re looking for.

The real secret to the success of Blogging is that content can feel great to share. Sharing content which has valuable statistics or useful information from a credible source puts you in a respectable position. Likewise sharing entertaining or funny content makes you yourself look witty. Sharing great content is cool. People are much less inclined to share an advert, unless it really is truly exceptional.

However, for all the great success stories there are with blogging there are plenty of failures too. Yes, not every Blog is given the time it deserves. Yes, web traffic can fluctuate so you’ll not necessarily gain the consistent numbers you have earned.

But ultimately, some Bloggers are just simply not good enough at writing or do not have the time to devote to good writing. That’s why if you are not having the success you are looking for I think that it’s worth seriously considering Podcasting.

Podcasting has many of the same qualities as Blogging. It is still a shareable, entertaining and potentially resourceful platform. Remember, there’s no shame in being a poor writer or even a podcaster. What’s important is to cater your marketing to what skills you do have and to develop those skills over time. If you’re going to do this properly it won’t feel like a chore that’s when you’ll know you’ve found the best platform for you.

67% of podcast listeners don’t mind sponsorship messages and occasionally find them useful, compared to 6% of television or commercial radio listeners.

During an annual survey, 15% of adults listened to a podcast in the month prior to the survey in 2014, up from 9% in 2008.

Podcast consumers index very highly for social networking behaviors.

Only 3% of marketers use podcasting in social media marketing, but 32% have a desire to learn how to use podcasting and 23% have plans to increase podcasting.

While it’s definitely true that more people tend to read blogs than listen to podcasts, it’s still fair to say that podcasting is booming right now. Not to mention that the volume of content created in the podcasting space is significantly less than blogging. Yes there are less listener’s than readers but you have a lot less competition in the space to make up for it.

So if you decide podcasting is for you what’s the best way to go about it? SoundCloud seems the obvious choice with over 175 million monthly listeners and over 200 countries listening each hour there is definitely the potential to shift huge volumes of traffic from SoundCloud.

Not to mention the service is free, is easy to set up, has a solid infrastructure due to the large organisation behind it and comes with deep, detailed built-in analytics. When it comes to making some noise in the podcasting space, SoundCloud is the clear choice.

Hopefully this will be useful for those of you out there who understand that digital marketing is a highly effective route to generating leads but just isn’t comfortable with writing a blog.

Of course there are other means of marketing digitally but pod-casting is one of the cheapest in the long term, much like blogging.

Apr 22
Love0
TCmarketing SEO

Brighton SEO Tips – 5 things to do to gain page 1 rankings

By SEO

Getting listed on Google’s first results page can be very difficult. There are many tools and services that promise to get your website listed. What exactly will help you to get the results that you want for your Brighton business? There are five things that will get your website on Google’s first results page. Guaranteed!!

Step 1: You have to know what you’re doing

Don’t just blindly follow the advice of gurus and self-proclaimed SEO experts. Don’t believe everything that you read on the internet or receive in your inbox either. When it comes to SEO in Brighton, make sure you listen to people with proven expertise and a good track record.

If you have the skills or the resources you can do your own tests. You could even create a website just for testing purposes and find out what works and what doesn’t. Educate yourself and keep current. That is very important because SEO changes rapidly. Keeping up to date with the ever changing SEO landscape is an essential requirement for successful SEO in Brighton

Step 2: You have to work with your web pages

Some people think that SEO is a one-off ‘on-page’ thing, or that SEO can be done on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work.

If you want to succeed, you have to invest a lot of time and effort in your search engine optimisation activities. There are several things that you have to do to make sure that your website becomes a success:

  • keyword research
  • continual optimization / refresh of your page content,
  • fixing technical errors, etc.
  • responding to search engine algorithm changes

Without putting the time and work into your web pages, you won’t get the best results.

Step 3: Convince the search engines that you’re serious about it

Google wants to list high quality, relevant websites in their search results. This is the mysterious “authority” that is often mentioned in SEO articles.

To build a website for a Brighton business that has ranking authority, you have to do several things. The most important is to create web pages that have good content and present that content in an attractive way and engage with your audience.

Essentially, your website has to deliver what the web searchers want.

Step 4: Be smarter than your competitors

Every Brighton business owner wants their website to be listed on page one of Google. The website that is given most attention will get better rankings.

If your competitors invest more time or money in search engine optimisation, they will get better rankings.

It’s also important that you invest your time or money in doing the right things. A person who is working hard but on the wrong things won’t get good results.

If you work smarter than your competitors, you will get better results. If you do the right things in the right order, you will get results more quickly.

Step 5: Be patient

Successful website promotion takes time. It is possible to get some quick wins but lasting results that will deliver a steady stream of new visitors to your website can take some time depending on how good the websites of your competitors are.

It takes time to research the right keywords, it takes time to optimise your web pages, it takes time to fix the architecture of your website, etc.

Be patient, do the right things, or use the right people to do the right things for you and your website will get the rankings that it deserves.

Website promotion isn’t rocket science. The five steps above are a sure way to get in Google’s search results. If you would like to know more about our SEO services for Brighton businesses please leave a comment below or call us on 01273 328877

Mar 31
Love0
Brighton web design

Learn Why Cheap Website Design in Brighton is Not Good Value

By web design

You’re no April fool, so learn why a cheap website is not good value!

Can A cheap website make a fool of you?

People can be thoroughly confused when they get quotes for web design in Brighton. Prices can range from extremely expensive to downright cheap! The project is the same, the requirements are the same, so why are the prices so different?

It’s easier to understand price differences when we take time to understand the product being bought. As an example; an off the peg suit that costs £80.00 or so will have low expectations. It is unlikely to be made from superior cloth, it will not fit your body shape perfectly because it’s cut from a standard template pattern based on a ‘one size fits all’.

If you buy an off the peg website it may well serve its purpose in the short term but, like the cheap suit, it won’t last long, will soon need to be replaced and therefore it’s not great value in the mid or long term.

By contrast a bespoke tailor made suit costing in the region of £500 or more can be expected to be unique, without short cuts in the design process and crafted by a skilled expert. An expensive suit will be durable and made from premium materials; it will fit perfectly and last for many years.

Cheap website design in Brighton will not have hand written code, it will utilise a generic (non customised) template, it will not be unique with bespoke features or functionality and it won’t be a perfect fit your business goals. A ‘one size fits all’ website is a low budget option, but it won’t meet your needs for long and there is no room for it to grow as your business grows. For your business to succeed online your website, which for many businesses is a ‘shop window’ needs to measure up.

When cheap becomes expensive

“Good work isn’t cheap and cheap work isn’t good!”

There are many elements involved in building a high quality website for Brighton businesses, there are no short cuts. A website needs secure foundations and this takes time and expertise from skilled Brighton website developers and costs more than a ‘take away’ website. A good website will help you achieve your business growth ambitions – it should generate a return on your investment and quickly recover the cost of producing the website.

A cheap, website, with boring or inadequate content will quickly disengage users. Remember lost traffic is lost revenue. A bad website can damage your brand, a huge cost in terms of lost business opportunities. Defective copy content can lead to penalties from Google and ultimately make your website invisible in the search engine results. If these pitfalls sound familiar, your only choice is to start again and build a new quality website making your initial choice to go for a cheap website a wasted investment. Cheap does not always make economic sense.

You only get what you pay for
A website needs to be updated regularly, it will not maintain itself and publishing fresh new content on your website should be an ongoing process. A good Brighton web developer will monitor the website performance and help you to measure the return on your investment.

A so called ‘cheap’ website can quickly become expensive with hidden updating fees, or worse, be left to become stagnant and worthless. A cheap website might look visually pleasing at first but without expert development it’s no more than an enticing shop window display, in a shop that is permanently closed, situated in a road that nobody uses! It becomes easy to understand why a cheap website does not equal good value.

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” – Oscar Wilde

Mar 25
Love0
SEO Services in Brighton

It’s Official: Google to Launch Doorway Pages Ranking Penalty

By SEO, SEO News

When was the last time you encountered a doorway pages in Google’s search results? Although this doesn’t happen very often, Google seems to think that doorway pages are still an issue. In the official Google blog, Google announced a new penalty for doorway pages. Here in the UK the term “doorway pages” might not be often used so:

What is a doorway page?

According to Google’s announcement, doorway pages are pages that are created solely to gain advantage in the search engine results:


”For example, searchers might get a list of results that all go to the same site. So if a user clicks on one result, doesn’t like it, and then tries the next result in the search results page and is taken to that same site that they didn’t like, that’s a really frustrating experience.”

How can you identify doorway pages on your website?

Google published a list of questions to help you determine if a web page could be regarded as doorway page:

  • Is the purpose to optimise for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
  • Are the pages intended to rank on generic terms yet the content presented on the page is very specific?
  • Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
  • Are these pages made solely for drawing affiliate traffic and sending users along without creating unique value in content or functionality?
  • Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions for any of your website pages, the chances are that Google will think that your page is a doorway page and it could be penalised.

Will this penalty affect Google AdWords (PPC) landing pages?

Most of the things above also apply to landing pages that are used in Google AdWords (PPC) campaigns.

It has long been considered good practice to use individual landing pages for each ad group. Landing pages that have a strong connection to the ad text usually convert better than general landing pages.

Will Google penalise these landing pages?

Unfortunately, that’s not clear yet. Landing pages are good for pay per click campaigns but they are not suitable for organic search engine optimization (SEO). High rankings on Google and other search engines are the result of good on-site and off-site optimisation.

Tyler Consultants can help any Brighton or Sussex / Surrey based business succeed online – why not call us today on 01273 822755 or leave a comment below.

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