Blog | Andy Clarke Web Services https://andyclarke.website Web Services - Design, development, hosting and more Tue, 04 Aug 2020 23:19:35 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.8 Beat the search engines with these top tips: SEO quick wins for your website https://andyclarke.website/blog/beat-the-search-engines-with-these-top-tips-seo-quick-wins-for-your-website/ https://andyclarke.website/blog/beat-the-search-engines-with-these-top-tips-seo-quick-wins-for-your-website/#comments Mon, 19 Feb 2018 10:59:53 +0000 http://phpstack-338466-1089682.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=96 What can you do that’s quick and easy so that you can increase your websites search engine rankings? Getting to the top of the search results is the main objective of every business with a website, and is probably the question I get asked most frequently. Here are some things that you can do to... Read more »

The post Beat the search engines with these top tips: SEO quick wins for your website first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> What can you do that’s quick and easy so that you can increase your websites search engine rankings? Getting to the top of the search results is the main objective of every business with a website, and is probably the question I get asked most frequently. Here are some things that you can do to help get your website to top spot.

Things to understand

The first, and possibly most important thing to understand is that there is no magic fix for SEO – it takes time and effort to reach the top.

The second thing is that all search engines will have their own, unique and highly top secret algorithm and filters (maths and computer stuff for getting the user the best and most relevant result for them). As these are secret to the search engine company nobody outside of those companies know exactly how they work. That being said, there is a lot of speculation, guesswork and trial and error and most SEO experts agree that the details matter and will help you increase your ranking.

Content

Your site’s content is king. Search engines love websites that are full of valuable content. It needs to be informative and authoritative on the subject you are writing about. No longer are websites something you create for your business and leave it to work its magic for a few years, and then update the website again. Your website should be a living, breathing source of information and products, updated regularly with valuable, informative information.

Keywords

When writing this content, try and select three to five keywords to focus on throughout the article or post. You can select as many as you need, though be aware that the more you select, the lower your keyword density becomes which can do more damage than good.

Title

Make sure that your content title is keyword rich and descriptive of your content. Not only do search engines still think titles are important, ultimately the reader needs to find your title informative and helpful to their needs.

Ideas

Your content and articles should revolve around ideas and not keywords. While keywords are important, your content should be valuable and informative and you’ll tend to find that when you’re finished, your content will naturally include keywords about the subject.

Page structure

To get the most out of this content it should be structured correctly. I’m not necessarily talking about how it reads to users, but more the HTML structure of the webpage.

WordPress is a great place to start for SEO. It utilises <article>, <section> and <header> tags which helps break the content up for search engines and makes sure that they are categorising the content correctly. A good theme or template for your WordPress site is essential because those tags are included as part of your content and in the correct place without you having to worry about them which lets you focus on writing great content.

Heading tags

Heading tags are different to both <head> tags and <header> tags. Without getting into it too much, heading tags range though <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6> and they format text to be a heading or content title. The numbers represent the importance of each heading for search engines and helps the reader break the content into logical sections.

The most important heading on your page should be a h1. Everything else on the page should then be a h2 or lower. There should only be one h1 tag on each page. This will help search engines rank your content appropriately and allows you to control the importance of your keywords and content.

Loading time

Search engines love websites that load quickly so a really easy win is to improve your website speed. Most of the time the largest improvement can be made by correctly optimising images as they are huge files when compared to text content.

Pictures & images

As well as correctly optimising image size to make them load faster, another great tip for SEO is to make sure that you use the alt attribute for images. In a nutshell, the alt attribute stands for alternative and is a descriptive sentence which is used in place when images fail to load or are replaced or removed for any reason.

Mobile friendly

Search engines love mobile friendly websites and will rank them higher in search results. As over 50% of page views are on a mobile device, it makes sense that search engines put so much importance on this.

Any good web designer or developer will make sure that your website is mobile friendly, mostly from a user experience point of view, although be aware that it will also impact your search engine ranking not having a mobile friendly website.

Link content

Try and link as much of your relevant internal content as possible. This will help search engines establish a structure to your website and your content, and also allows users to find more useful content.

If you’re able to link to other reputable sources of information and other small businesses with some good content, then do so. If they can do the same in return then that can quickly help increase your search engine ranking.

Stick with it

As mentioned at the start of this article: there is no magic fix for SEO – it takes time and effort to reach the top. If you follow these quick wins and top tips for SEO and keep posting regular, valuable content then hopefully you will start to see an increase in the amount of traffic to your website.

Need help?

Alongside all of the above quick wins and top tips, there is still plenty more than can be done for SEO. A good web developer or SEO specialist can help even further. As part of my design and development service I also ensure that all of your content is optimised for search engines.

If you want to find out more, then contact me for a chat or a quote.

The post Beat the search engines with these top tips: SEO quick wins for your website first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> https://andyclarke.website/blog/beat-the-search-engines-with-these-top-tips-seo-quick-wins-for-your-website/feed/ 1 7 reasons to have an online presence https://andyclarke.website/blog/7-reasons-to-have-an-online-presence/ https://andyclarke.website/blog/7-reasons-to-have-an-online-presence/#respond Fri, 02 Feb 2018 16:30:23 +0000 http://phpstack-338466-1089682.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=54 You know you should have a website and be posting on Social Media, but why exactly? Keep reading to find out why. The stats Back in the olden days (September 2015), the IAB (Internet Advice Bureau) and UKOM (UK Online Measurement company) published some research saying that users in the UK spend an average of 2 hours and... Read more »

The post 7 reasons to have an online presence first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> You know you should have a website and be posting on Social Media, but why exactly? Keep reading to find out why.

The stats

Back in the olden days (September 2015), the IAB (Internet Advice Bureau) and UKOM (UK Online Measurement company) published some research saying that users in the UK spend an average of 2 hours and 51 minutes every day on the internet. Oh, and that’s being active online too, not time connected or with just one webpage open in the background. It’s the time of users actually doing stuff online.

“It equates to about 1 in every 6 waking minutes.”

– IAB & UKOM
Read more

One interesting thing to note is that IAB & UKCOM’s research has shown that over 50% of users in 2015 were online with a mobile device. This puts the UK well ahead of the curve of global webpage views on a mobile device.

Maintain your brand image

A well designed website will help maintain your great reputation, online. Your brand is your company’s identity and customers looking for more information about you should be able to find you online. If they can’t…

Competition

… the worst may happen and they find your competitor online instead. A great website also helps small businesses level the playing field and go head to head with larger companies to secure those customers.

Low cost advertising

You can spend as much, or as little, on advertising as you would like. Your website is the showroom to your business that never closes. Let customers browse your products or services, get to know you and your brand a little bit and make their own decision on whether to buy and what to buy.

Huge reach

Your website and online advertising has so much more potential to reach more pairs of eyes than a flyer in the local shop ever will. When you pair your website and search results with active social media posting and advertising then that is a massively powerful force.

In fact, my business cards arrived around 4 hours ago and after a little post on Facebook I know that already I have got those business cards in front of around 500 people, and at least 40 of them have had a look at the photo. Not bad for 4 hours work…

Easily target advertising

With the above ‘insights’ and Google Analytics the power of advertising can be targeted to certain demographics. Are your products or services suitable for a certain type of person? Then with targeted advertising you are able to target those potential customers directly.

For instance, I know that most of the users who like my page on Facebook are the most active at 17:00. To use this data practically, I would target my advertising or posts to be published at 16:45 so that it’s waiting in their newsfeeds for when most people (I’m guessing) finish work and check Facebook.

Potentially untapped markets

By using targeted advertising, coupled with the huge reach and a strong brand image it will help your business tap into markets and demographics you may not have realised even existed.

Shows you what marketing works and what doesn’t

Google Analytics and Facebook’s insights will help you see which marketing and posting campaigns are working for your business and which aren’t, meaning that you will have more time to focus on what matters.

Useful?

If you found this article useful or I’ve missed anything then please get involved below.

If you’re looking to learn more or would like a quote, then feel free to contact me for a chat.

 

The post 7 reasons to have an online presence first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> https://andyclarke.website/blog/7-reasons-to-have-an-online-presence/feed/ 0 Why you needed a mobile friendly (responsive) website, yesterday https://andyclarke.website/blog/why-you-needed-a-mobile-friendly-responsive-website-yesterday/ https://andyclarke.website/blog/why-you-needed-a-mobile-friendly-responsive-website-yesterday/#respond Mon, 22 Jan 2018 06:30:51 +0000 http://phpstack-338466-1089682.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=56 Something that is commonly overlooked by a lot of small businesses and local schools, is that their website also needs to look and perform great on mobile. The stats Did you know that over 50% of all website views are from a mobile device and it just keeps on growing. This has increased massively since only... Read more »

The post Why you needed a mobile friendly (responsive) website, yesterday first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> Something that is commonly overlooked by a lot of small businesses and local schools, is that their website also needs to look and perform great on mobile.

The stats

Did you know that over 50% of all website views are from a mobile device and it just keeps on growing.

This has increased massively since only 5 years ago and the trend does not seem to be slowing down. The only sure thing is that in the coming years there will be a huge amount of different screen sizes. To maintain your brand image or, more fundamentally, just for your website not to hurt potential customer’s eyes as they read it.

Okay, it’ll look nice… why bother?

There’s actually quite a few reasons to make your website responsive (mobile friendly), aside from the huge potential market of customers you’re missing out on.

Search Engines

Google and other search engines like mobile friendly websites and rank websites with a responsive design higher on the list.

Social Media

A huge amount of people using Social Media now do it primarily on their, you guessed it, mobile devices. This means that as you post a link to Social Media, the majority of people who will click on the link through to your website will be on a mobile device.

Easy Maintenance

If you have had experience with old-school mobile websites then I can see why the idea of making a website mobile friendly makes you shudder. Fear not though, with a responsive website, it is just one source of information to keep up to date which makes maintaining your website easy and the changes happen for all devices.

Future Proof

Responsive websites adapt to the device screen size. That means that a responsive website will work and look good on any new devices that are released in the future. When there are new devices released every few months, it’s a no-brainer for me that websites should have a responsive design.

The post Why you needed a mobile friendly (responsive) website, yesterday first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> https://andyclarke.website/blog/why-you-needed-a-mobile-friendly-responsive-website-yesterday/feed/ 0 Free Dropbox Storage https://andyclarke.website/blog/free-dropbox-storage/ https://andyclarke.website/blog/free-dropbox-storage/#respond Sat, 20 Jan 2018 15:30:31 +0000 http://phpstack-338466-1089682.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=36 Dropbox is a great way to keep your files in the cloud and accessible on all of your devices. The flaw? The free account only comes with 2GB of storage for free users. [Sign up] Desktop Download and install the desktop client on your PC or laptop and Dropbox will automatically create a Dropbox folder... Read more »

The post Free Dropbox Storage first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> Dropbox is a great way to keep your files in the cloud and accessible on all of your devices. The flaw? The free account only comes with 2GB of storage for free users. [Sign up]

Desktop

Download and install the desktop client on your PC or laptop and Dropbox will automatically create a Dropbox folder so you can easily add, edit and delete files from your Dropbox account.

Your files will automatically sync to your account and one awesome feature is if you right click a file you can see the version history (every save you made) of that file.

Mobile

Installing the mobile app on your tablet or phone and logging into your account will let you see your files stored in your Dropbox folder.

A nice feature of the mobile app is the automatic backup of your photos to your Dropbox photo folder. However, be warned that you will more than likely burn through your free 2GB of storage space pretty quickly with this enabled. Fear not, however, there is a much nicer solution if you’re looking to automatically back up your photos to the cloud.

Get more free space!

There are loads of handy guides online which walk you through getting more space for free on your Dropbox account. In fact, Dropbox itself will walk you through the steps to increase your storage for free.

Some simple steps are connecting services like Facebook and Twitter, following Dropbox on Twitter and giving Dropbox some feedback. Doing all of that will earn you an extra 250MB of space. You can complete the getting started tour for another easy 250MB.

Referring others

This is the big one. You can earn up to a whopping 16GB of free space just by getting others to signup to Dropbox. Each new user you get will give you another 500MB of space.

But… I only have 2 friends…

Don’t worry! A little known trick is that you can do this all from your own email address.

Some email providers allow extra characters in their email addresses such as “+” and a lot of services will recognise this as a unique email address. The best part is that the emails will still go to your email address. Anything after the extra character is ignored by the email provider.

Simply put, it means that you can do something like this:

Normal email: BillyNoMates@gmail.com

Alternate email 1: BillyNoMates+Dropbox1@gmail.com

Alternate email 2: BillyNoMates+Dropbox2@gmail.com

Alternate email 3: BillyNoMates+Dropbox3@gmail.com

Alternate email 4: BillyNoMates+Dropbox4@gmail.com

Alternate email 5: BillyNoMates+Dropbox5@gmail.com

And so on…

 

I hope this helps and if you have any questions or suggestions, please comment below.

The post Free Dropbox Storage first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> https://andyclarke.website/blog/free-dropbox-storage/feed/ 0 Google Photos https://andyclarke.website/blog/google-photos/ https://andyclarke.website/blog/google-photos/#respond Fri, 19 Jan 2018 18:30:32 +0000 http://phpstack-338466-1089682.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=46 Looking for a no hassle way to automatically backup and store your photos in the cloud? Look no further, Google have pulled through once again with an amazing service called Google Photos. The best bit? You can get unlimited storage space. Step 1 Download and install the app. Step 2 Log in to your Google... Read more »

The post Google Photos first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> Looking for a no hassle way to automatically backup and store your photos in the cloud? Look no further, Google have pulled through once again with an amazing service called Google Photos. The best bit? You can get unlimited storage space.

Step 1

Download and install the app.

Step 2

Log in to your Google account.

Step 3

Go to settings and make sure that you have selected the “High quality (free unlimited storage)” option*.

Step 4

On your app settings go to “Backup & Sync” and turn it on.

Step 4 and a bit

Have a little look at the “When to back up” settings too and set them to your preferences.

Step 5

Watch in amazement as your photos are automatically backed up as you take them.

 

Hopefully this article helps you out. Let me know in the comments if there’s anything I’ve missed or if you know of a better solution.

* This option does compress your images a bit (not noticeable) but if you’re planning on backing up RAW images or huge resolution images then this option probably isn’t for you. Then again, you probably have your own backup systems in place.

The post Google Photos first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> https://andyclarke.website/blog/google-photos/feed/ 0 Design https://andyclarke.website/blog/design/ https://andyclarke.website/blog/design/#respond Tue, 16 Jan 2018 15:10:07 +0000 http://phpstack-338466-1089682.cloudwaysapps.com/?p=17 After a recent interview and getting the feedback “we need someone who is a bit more experienced on actual design”, it got me wondering. What is actual design? How do you define design? I tried googling it and that didn’t help. I didn’t get much further with different search strings; they were all coming back with... Read more »

The post Design first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> After a recent interview and getting the feedback “we need someone who is a bit more experienced on actual design”, it got me wondering. What is actual design? How do you define design?

I tried googling it and that didn’t help. I didn’t get much further with different search strings; they were all coming back with the same, fantastic resources. Websites like Udemy, Codecademy, Freecodecamp and Wix are great for teaching you and providing you with the tools and the knowledge to create websites but my question remained unanswered.

You hear and read a lot about people who are naturally talented artists/poets/musicians/writers etc. and it must be so easy for them because they are naturally talented. Design, like writing/signing/playing an instrument, is a skill. Skills should be practiced, and practiced and practiced. Either way, I’m not ‘naturally talented’ and I’m very under-practiced! So where to start?

I kept searching and eventually I stumbled across this gem. It taught me more in the 4 minutes of going through the website than the 4 days of head scratching and reading different articles on ‘proportion’, ‘composition’, ‘colour meanings’ and ‘assessing the mood of a typeface’.

The post Design first appeared on Andy Clarke Web Services.]]> https://andyclarke.website/blog/design/feed/ 0