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Apr 10
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Navigation Bar

Should you use a fixed navigation bar?

By Design, Website

In 2014 the fixed navigation bar or sticky menu’s are quickly becoming a typical trend in web design. The concept behind the fixed navigation bar is that it improves the user experience, providing easy access to the prominent pages throughout your browsing. While there is no questioning the functionality of this feature there are many who would criticise the fixed bar. Complaints tend to penalise the navigation bar for misleading a reader’s attention. As many of you will know immediately drawing attention to certain aspects of a site is paramount to it’s success.

Therefore it is easy to see that the dilemma here is not quite as simple as it may have seemed. The impact a fixed navigation bar will have on your user’s experience is perhaps mostly based on preference then? I would argue that in fact the answer to whether you should use the fixed navigation bar or not depends on the website you are tailoring for. So then, to be able to discern whether the navigation bar is for you we’ll have to look more closely at the pros and cons for this matter.

Navigation Bar Pros

User Experience

…or UX Design, when plowing through vast amounts of information it becomes easy to see why a fixed navigation tool can save your web visitors much needed time. When finding websites for the first time people are not afraid of making the decision they would rather read about this topic elsewhere within seconds of finding the page. We all know this however the user experience is almost as important if your site has clunky or unclear design people will not hesitate to search elsewhere. With this in mind the value of a fixed navigation bar is clear.

Record browse times

You may not think that access to various sites at all times would save you much browsing time but in a recent study by Smashing Magazine reported on average people browse 22% faster. That’s an extra 22% of time spent of people actually looking at your content rather than digging through your site. When pages are packed with content you can bet that a fixed navigation bar will earn you those brownie points from your users.

This is particularly true with the rise of flat design in 2014, when long empty space is so prevalent on the internet a fixed navigation bar can save your users a lot of time.

Navigation Bar Cons

Overcrowding hurts UX

If your site is overflowing with content in a relatively small space you may want to reconsider whether a fixed navigation bar is for you. While having easy access to the rest of your site is typically useful in certain circumstances it could be hurting your UX. Complicated websites may look visually impressive but nothing is worth making your website difficult to digest, especially when competing with the simplicity of flat design. Also when a website has minimal scrolling the fixed navigation bar may feel pointless and thus wasting space, possibly irritating visitors.

Development

There are a couple of other issues which can emerge from using a navigation bar unnecessarily besides aggravating your web traffic. While it is uncommonly seen a fixed navigation bar can be difficult to translate onto mobile format. Additionally implementing a fixed navigation bar will increase load times of your page thus it is very important to consider whether this will actually help the web traffic which you have worked hard to achieve.

All of these problems need to be considered for your website. Hopefully these points will help clear up whether a fixed navigation bar is for you.

Mar 12
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TCmarketing Marketing Icon

Is Your Website an Effective Sales & Marketing Tool for Your Brighton Business?

By Marketing, SEO, Website

In today’s ‘Digital Marketing’ world it is very easy to become obsessed or at least overly distracted by Social Media, Mobile Web, Video Marketing, Email Marketing and the like.

Even marketing professionals like us can fall in to this trap from time to time. We regularly need to remind ourselves of the fundamentals of online marketing, the foundation stones if you like. For most Brighton businesses the foundation stone of online marketing is and will always be your business website!

For many Brighton businesses your website will be your primary sales and marketing tool – your social media profiles, directory profiles and everything else are used to drive traffic to your website and help build your online profile.

Unfortunately not all business websites are effective sales and marketing tools – you would be surprised just how many websites fail to ask for the business!  Take an honest look at your company website and ask yourself “Is there any call to action on this page”, “Are we asking our customers for their business.”

What is the user experience like?

Having worked hard to drive visitors (traffic) to your website, the last thing you want is for them to leave it quickly.  According to Google, you have just 7 seconds to grab and retain the attention of your visitors. If they cannot see what they want within that short timeframe they will be off to one of your competitors’ website’s, unlikely to ever return to yours.  As the old adage goes, “you only get one chance to make a first impression”.

Here are a few pointers to help you:

1. Making a good impression

The look and feel of your website and the ease of navigating between the pages are crucial components to good design and, of course, the page content must be 100% relevant to the page topic and written from your customer’s perspective.

2. Take an honest look at your website and ask yourself:

  • Has the site been designed to naturally lead your visitors to a sale
  • Are your calls to action clear, obvious and frequent throughout your sales process?
  • Is your web content presented both attractively and effectively?
  • Do your web pages include headlines, sub headings and short, succinct copy – e.g. bullet points to make it easy to read quickly?
  • Are you giving your visitors the opportunity to take the next step in the sales cycle in their preferred manner – people buy in different ways e.g. some prefer loads of detail, some prefer a video others know what they want and just want to buy it as quickly as possible.
  • Can you offer a performance guarantee to help remove any customer concerns that may hinder the sale?
  • How easy is it to buy from you?  Test your online sales process yourself by running through from start to finish – how pleasant was the experience? Now repeat the process on one of your competitors sites and compare
  • Check that all ‘contact us’ and all internal and external links actually work – we regularly find dead links (called 404 errors) and all this does is frustrate the customers

3. Keep your site up to date

A widely used Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) technique is to regularly update your website with good quality, fresh, relevant content.  When was your website last updated?

4. The Follow-Up

The ‘follow-up’) is the bridge between you, your customer and any future business they may send your way.   It is all about keeping in touch after the sale.  This could be by way of a regular newsletter, email marketing, e-zine or whatever you wish.

The point is you should have a system in place to put your new customers onto your mailing list immediately after their first purchase from you.

By consolidating your relationship with your customers through meaningful, targeted content marketing you will turn a single purchase buyer into a long-term customer – actively engaged for when you’re ready to launch your next offer.

5. Measure and monitor your website’s performance

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it!”

Measuring just how well your website is performing is not that difficult, there are many good web analytics packages available, mostly free, including Google Analytics.  All analytics software will help you to track visitor numbers, how they found you, which pages they looked at, how long they spent on the website, which page they came in at and most importantly which page they left at!

Having this information will help you to continually improve and refine your web page content and is a ‘must do’ if you are serious about internet marketing.
If you would like to review the effectiveness of your website, please leave a comment below or visit Tyler Consultants – Marketing, Design, Web Development & SEO Services for Brighton business.

Mar 11
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SEO Brighton

An Effective SEO Strategy for Brighton Businesses

By SEO

Changes in the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) mean it’s now getting much more difficult for Brighton businesses to maintain the search engine rankings of their websites.

Google’s algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin and more recently Hummingbird mean that the old ways of ‘tricking’ the search engines into displaying your site highly in their results are well and truly gone, never to return.

Personally we think this is excellent news! Those old ‘black hat’ practices did not produce top quality results and rarely gave the searcher what they were looking for.

Google has always said that their main goal is to deliver top quality results to their searchers.   If your Brighton Business website is to feature in the top results you now need to think about optimising your entire web presence – not just your website.  Good SEO is a long term investment in both good quality content on your own website and your social profiles.

If you want a quick, but temporary fix go down the PPC (Paid Search) route – we can help you with this.  Organic SEO is the way to go for sustained business success online.

Here are our 5 tips for an effective SEO strategy in 2014

1. Keyword and Competitor Research

Thorough keyword research is absolutely essential for any successful SEO strategy. You need to discover which generic keywords convert well in addition to your own branded ones. Consider looking at the generic keywords your competitors are ranking for.

2. Get the on-page SEO basics right

The technical basics need to be in place on your website from the beginning. The website structure, load speed, ease of navigation and the overall user experience all play their part in how the search engines rank your site.  Responsive design has now become a major factor with more and more web visitors accessing your website via a mobile phone or tablet.  How does your website look on a mobile phone?

3. Optimise your content marketing

Every successful SEO campaign must now include content marketing. This means you have to produce frequent, good quality content optimised for the search terms you want to be found for. Make it easy for your target audience to find the information they are looking for. This will actually make the buying process easier for them.  The very best e-commerce websites make it super easy to buy – does yours?

4.  Publish, Share and be Social!

Publish your content and then make sure you make people aware of it by sharing and distributing it through your social channels. The social signals produced from social media channels can improve your chances of being found. Using social channels can also spread your content far and wide.  Being socially active is good for SEO.

5. Measure and improve

A regular critical review and analysis of the campaign is vital. Set or agree benchmarks and objectives to be achieved and review your results against them. Good SEO is not just about where you rank for a certain keyword phrase anymore – it is about the number of visitors to your website and the number of those people that convert to sales / customers.  All SEO influencers must be taken into account when assessing performance of your campaign including not just your our keywords search rank position but also the number of backlinks pointing to your website, number of organic visits and time spent on your site, social signals and conversions.  All are essential in helping you make the right online marketing decisions for your business.  Keeping an eye on what’s happening with the data will help you decide what you should do next in your SEO strategy.

As a web-savvy Brighton business owner  you may already be changing your approach to SEO, but if you are not then you could find yourself slipping further and further down the search engine results.

Did your business drop off Google’s radar following a recent update? What have you started doing to get yourself back on track?

If you want to move your online business strategy forward and need help or more information, please get in touch or if preferred leave a message below.

Feb 26
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SEO Brighton

2014 SEO Guidelines For Brighton Businesses

By SEO

Since the release of Google’s latest algorithm change, known as ‘Hummingbird’, many SEO experts have been wondering what this new algorithm change means in terms of practical application.

Like all SEO agencies when it comes to Google’s algorithms, we only know what Google wants us to know. They do share some useful information with us, but, unfortunately, they also keep plenty of the information that we would like to know to themselves.

Whilst no SEO expert knows all the information with commitment, hard work and dedication it is possible to understand a few general principles that need to be observed if you want your website to rank high in the Google results.

Let’s take a look at what we know and how that helps us to help our Brighton SEO clients:

Our Knowledge Sources

Unlike many of our competitors the majority of our knowledge about Google’s algorithms comes directly from Google and not from online forums.  Whilst Google will not give us all of their information, they do give us helpful, accurate information that is essential for good SEO practices. In fact, their SEO guidelines are usually in line with good marketing practices anyway, so it is always wise to heed their advice.

In the past, Google ‘s results have been the victim of manipulative SEO techniques, often called ‘black hat’ SEO.  As a result, Google now recognizes those manipulative SEO techniques and has taken aggressive steps to penalise websites that publish low-quality content, have spammy inbound links, use other techniques to try and manipulate search ranking authority, or violate their terms of service or webmaster guidelines.

Publishing only relevant content both on your own website and your social profiles is pivotal to your online success.

In addition to the information that we get directly from Google, we get much of our knowledge about SEO from our experience, observation and practice.

The practice of SEO is both an art and a science. We test and try things out, and we see what works. We learn from the experiences of others, and use that information to recognise trends. This helps us to learn what kind of content will achieve the best results.

In the past, many SEO agencies devoted much of their time trying to find ways to outsmart Google’s algorithms. However, as we move forward, time is now much better spent on making sure best SEO practices are used in all SEO campaigns.

If you would like to know more about our Professional SEO Services call us today on 01273 328877

Feb 19
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SEO Services in Brighton

Is Your SEO Strategy Fit For Purpose?

By SEO

Google’s recent SEO Algorithm updates have spread fear, uncertainty and doubt among Brighton Business Owners who rely on the web for leads and sales. Which tactics can you still use to build back-links to your website and which tactics should you avoid if you want to keep on the right side of Google?

Many people now believe that Link Building has had its day – but this is simply not true.

Here is a summary of some of the SEO initiatives that will still work, if done correctly:

1. Forum backlinks

The wrong way to do it:

Automatically created back-links from any web forum are almost guaranteed to incur a Google penalty, usually in the form of a manual action. There are still many tools and services that are being peddled by unscrupulous (or uneducated) SEO agencies which automatically created forum accounts with keyword rich links that point back to the websites of the user. These links do not work anymore and should be avoided.

The right way to do it:

If a high quality forum is closely related to the topic of your website or your industry then a link from that forum can still have a positive influence on the search engine positions of your web pages.  Typical forums that still work are industry associations, trade associations and professional governing body forums that are well established and have already built trust with the search engines.

2. Directories

The wrong way to do it:

Bulk submitting your website to directories that have no inclusion criteria, i.e. they will accept any website will not do your rankings any good at all.  Never use any software or automation to submit your website to any directory.

The right way to do it:

If there is in a high quality directory, usually some form of payment is required for inclusion, that can deliver targeted visitors to your website, you should manually submit your site for inclusion in that directory.  Links from authoritative directories (including niche directories) with strict submission guidelines and inclusion criteria are still good for your website ranking.

3. Guest blogging

The wrong way to do it:

Using the same article on several different blogs doesn’t work. These days using keyword rich links in an article can even trigger a Google penalty. If the main purpose of your posting on someone else’s blog is to generate back-links to your own website, don’t do it.

The right way to do it:

Guest blogging can still be a good way to drive targeted visitors to your website if you write solely for blogs that are related to your business activity. Your guest blog article should always try and add value for the readers of the post by giving insights, sharing knowledge and demonstrating your expertise. Done correctly guest blogging good quality articles on established related blogs can have a positive influence on your website’s performance and your own ‘authorship’ rating.

4. Link Building

The wrong way to do it:

If the pages that contain your links also contain links to many other non-relevant websites there is a strong chance that the links will not be good for your site ranking as Google will regard these links as ‘unnatural’.

The right way to do it:

Highly themed, i.e. relevant to your industry, link pages that contain links to closely related high quality websites are good for website visitors and search engine rankings.

A scattergun approach to link building is no longer going to help you – it will only lead to your site being suspended from Google’s results pages.  Link building is no longer a numbers game – it is all about quality and relevancy.

The bottom line is: spamming doesn’t work anymore, building genuine good quality backlinks from relevant high authority web properties still works, in fact it works better than ever before.

It you are not sure if your Business SEO strategy is on the right track give us a call today on 01273 328877

Feb 13
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TCmarketing Website Icon

How to make WordPress secure

By Website, Wordpress

WordPress is the most popular CMS system with over 20% of the website CMS market. Not surprising considering it is open source, packed with features and very easy to use.

But with popularity it has become a target for hackers and so it is vitally important to make sure it is secure.  Our quick list outlines the 5 main areas you need to cover when running a WordPress website:

1. UPDATE your plugins and core WordPress files regularly.  There is a whole army of developers out there that constantly work to make their plugins more secure, so take advantage of it.  But remember to back up before doing this.

2. Make the LOGIN HARDER.  There are lots of things you can do to make it harder for hackers to login to your WordPress website; put a captcha on the login page, allow only 3 login attempts, delete the ‘admin’ account and use strong passwords.

3. Upload a SECURITY PLUGIN.  There are lots of Woprdpress security plugins, some are better than others, but make sure you have one that protects against people hacking into your files and database.

4. Try to avoid FREE THEMES AND PLUGINS. For the home blogger they are fine but for a business then they can come with too may vulnerabilities.

5. Take a regular BACKUP.  This speaks for itself and there are plugis that will do it automatically for you.

WordPress has its own article going through some common forms of vulnerabilities, and the things you can do to help keep your WordPress installation secure.

If you’need more professional help and advice with securing your WordPress website then please call us on 01273 328877.

Feb 12
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SEO is a Marathon – Brighton Businesses Need to Get in Shape to Run it!

By SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is definitely not a sprint – it is a marathon and just like the people preparing for this years Brighton Half-Marathon, if you want to reach the finish line you have to get your website in shape.  If you want your website to appear high in the search engine results, just like any athlete, you have to be prepared to accept that there will be a good deal of hard work involved and maybe a few disappointments along the way.

Here are a few things you need to understand if you want to ‘win’:

1. Be willing to change and be willing to work

Good SEO programs and SEO services providers can do the work for you but you must be committed to see any SEO project through until the end. You must also accept the need to make some changes to your website. Take the advice of your SEO fitness coach to do something to improve your website content.

Try not to look for reasons why improvement is not possible. Commit to doing the things that are necessary to bring your website into shape even if it requires some work and effort.

2. Be honest with yourself

If you really wanted to get fitter then you would not go to the refrigerator during the night and then pretend that you didn’t! Similarly you need to take a long and honest look at your website – does it really deserve to be at the top of the Google rankings?  Is the content adding any value to the reader?  Would you buy from it?  Is it as good or better than the sites of your competitors?

If you cannot honestly answer ‘yes’ to all of these questions it is time to take action.

3. It helps a lot if you have the right equipment

It’s easier to work out if you have the right equipment. If you want to run long distances, you need running shoes. If you want to get on Google’s first result page, you need a good domain name, a good server, clean web pages, good content, quality back-links and a good SEO coach.

4. Do not try to cheat the system

If you want to be fitter without working out, you might take some pills. This can work for some time but ultimately, the pills will make you sick and destroy your body.

If you want to get quick search engine optimisation results, you might consider spammy techniques that promise immediate or very fast results.

These methods can work for short term but eventually Google detects all spam methods sooner or later and your website will be banned from the index, which could be devastating to your business.

If you’re not afraid of change and choose the right SEO partner then your website will get the rankings that it deserves. It’s not easy to get top 10 rankings on Google but it’s also not difficult if you know what you are doing.  If you would like more information about our SEO services please leave a comment below or call us on 01273 328877

Jan 24
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TCmarketing Design Icon

Font layouts can make the reader feel good

By Design

Research by psychologist Kevin Larson into how font and design layout affect our emotions produced some interesting results.

“1. Readers felt bad when reading a poorly designed piece of literature that was often expressed with a frown – not what you want your clients to do!
2. Readers felt better when reading copy from a good layout and felt like it took less time to read.”

The conclusion we draw from this is that for brochure, advertising and leaflet design a well-designed layout will communicate your company’s messages more clearly and powerfully.

If you need help making your marketing literature more effective please call us today on 01273 328877.

 

Jan 22
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Why Doesn’t your website feature in the search results anymore?

By SEO
In a recent online online discussion, a website owner complained that his site was no longer listed on Google for one of his most important keywords. The site had been ranked highly in the past.
At first glance the backlinks pointing to the website didn’t look suspicious and the other factors such as page content also looked okay. So why did the rankings of the website drop?
What exactly happened?
The webmaster of www.mamajeanius.co.uk wondered why his site was no longer listed for the keyword “materity jeans”.  Another forum member where the discussion was raised analyzed the site and also found nothing unusual:
• The backlinks looked okay to the other forum member; he didn’t find any spammy backlinks.
• A ‘site search’ showed there were about 417 pages of the website indexed on Google UK.
Again it begged the question: Why did Google delist the website for that keyword?
Google’s John Mueller joined the discussion to explain why Google did not show the website for the keyword:
“It looks like your SEO Company (or previous SEO Company) may have tried to promote your site in a way that’s in violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, I see a lot of unnatural links in low-quality articles as well as blog comments left by someone called ‘Maternity Jeans.’
Stopping these practices, cleaning up unnatural links like these, and using the disavow links tool in cases where you can’t clean them up, would be a good step in the right direction.
Over time (and this process can take months), as our algorithms re-crawl the affected URLs, reprocess the links found on the web, and update their data, they’ll be able to take the new state into account.”
In other words, the rankings dropped because the website was spamming Google with artificial links. What appear to be good quality links to you as a site owner may not be regarded in the same way by Google!
What does this mean for your website?
Google is serious about removing spam from the search results. If you want to get high rankings on Google, you should know that:
• Artificial backlinks (blog comments spam, low quality articles, forum spam, etc.) will get your website in trouble sooner rather than later.
• It can take months until your website recovers from bad backlinks (see John Mueller’s answer above).
Use an SEO Company that only uses ‘white-hat’ SEO methods to promote your website.
Yes, it takes longer to get high rankings with these  tried and trusted methods but it’s also much safer. If you use white-hat methods to promote your site, your web pages will get high rankings that last.  If you need help getting your web pages ranked high in the search engine results call us today on 01273 328877
Jan 13
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Google confirm that repeat offenders get bigger penalties

By SEO

The head of Google’s anti-spam team, Matt Cutts, has published another video on YouTube. In this video, he explains why Interflora’s penalty was lifted after just 11 days. He also talks about whether Google has different penalties for different websites?

Why was Interflora’s website penalised?

Some months ago, the website of Interflora (a popular UK flower website) was penalised because the company had purchased many backlinks from various newspaper websites.

Despite this transgression, after just 11 days, the Interflora website was back in Google’s index.

This seems very strange as most websites need several months to recover from Google penalties.

In a YouTube video, Matt Cutts was asked by a webmaster to explain the penalty of the Interflora website.

Unfortunately, Matt Cutts was reluctant to talk about specific penalties or companies. In the video, he said that repeat offenders get hit with a stronger penalty than websites that have used spam techniques for the first time:

“Google tends to look at buying and selling links that pass PageRank as a violation of our guidelines and if we see that happening multiple times, repeated times, then the actions that we take get more and more severe. So we’re more willing to take stronger action whenever we see repeated violations.”

It seems that Interflora was a first time offender and that they weren’t fully aware that the paid links from newspaper websites could cause problems. When Interflora removed the newly purchased links, Google restored the previous rankings of the website.

What does this mean for your website?

If you have received a spam warning message from Google, you should remove all spam elements from your pages and you should try to remove all spammy links that point to your web pages – see our earlier post here

Interflora’s high rankings have been restored because the company previously had high rankings before they acquired the paid links.

If your website received high rankings because of the paid links before Google detected them, it’s likely that your web pages still won’t get high rankings when Google lifts the penalty.

If you want your rankings back, you will need to replace the spammy links with good quality, relevant links. We can help. Call us today on 01273 328877

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