Q – An SEO company says they can guarantee me top spot in Google? How do they do it?

First of all no SEO company can guarantee you top spot in Google. It is also worthwhile noting that some being top of Google by searching your business name is not the same as being top of Google for your preferred search term. For example if you are called Joe Bloggs Plumbers and you are in Leeds, if you come top of Google for Joe Bloggs Plumbers, it is only useful for people who already know your business and are just trying to find your telephone number.

However if you are wanting to generate new business from Google, you would need to be top for “plumbers in Leeds”. Because the average person that is looking for a plumber in Leeds, is not going to type your business name into Google, they will type in the service they are looking for and where.

Q – What is the secret to getting my website to the top of Google without paying for it?

Well there is no real secret and no guarantees. Content is king every time, so spend time updating and adding new pages to your website with useful information for people that is relevant to your business services. Also taking the time to visit other websites and get involved and leaving links back to your website is a good idea, but only really worthwhile if you are doing it on websites that have a decent page rank. Type “google page rank tool” into Google and that will help you discover websites with a high page rank.

Q – I have had an SEO company call me for business, should I use them?

Well this is the big question. Are they telling you any porkies? If they are making claims (usually guaranteeing you top spot on Google) I would not deal with them, just from that statement I know they are happy to lie to me so are not bothered about my business, just their sales. The same goes for people trying to blind you with science. Get them to speak to you in laymans terms, if they refuse, you aren’t going to get along in the long term, and they are probably deliberately blinding you to make sure they get a sale over the substance of their service.

I would suggest having a chat with your current web design company, my reasons for this are simple. Some SEO companies work will have a negative effect on the design (eg reducing image quality for faster load speeds) however the SEO benefits are negligible compared to the benefits of a quality design. So your web designer may have already reduced the images size as far as it will go without effecting design quality. So ask your web designer first before doing anything.

Q – How much should SEO cost?

How long is a piece of string is the honest answer. It is about value for money. Some of the cheaper firms may not deliver you a good service, SEO is about time and care, they do not call those results that are not paid advertisements “organic” for nothing. In general you get what you pay for. But it pays every time to have a chat with the SEO company or your web designer in detail before deciding. In the web design and search engine optimisation industry, price does not constitute value for money. In fact, long term it could end up costing your business far more than you planned.

Share on Facebook

The match is already a sell out and for those who did not get tickets, it will as usual be shown live on BBC1. Good luck Leeds Rhinos from Easybiz Sites, the first choice for website design in Leeds.

We are running a special offer for businesses supporting Leeds Rhinos with £100 off any of our small business website design packages. It ends on Saturday. Simply give us a call on 0844 3573731 for more information.

Easybiz Sites, first choice for small business web design in Leeds.

Share on Facebook

Web design for businesses is more than just the design, it is also about promoting your website to really make it work for you. With many businesses you may well choose flyers for advertising or join a local networking club.

Facebook works in much the same way as any networking situation except with it’s popularity now making it the most popular website on the internet asides from Google in the UK (more popular than Google in the USA) the opportunities for networking are huge.

More businesses are setting up profiles and pages on Facebook to either target their audiences, direct traffic to their own website or interact with other businesses for networking. With so many people on Facebook (over 1 billion) it does not take a genius to work out the potential of Facebook.

It is in businesses interests to explore this relatively new avenue of promotion because Facebook is not just appealing to younger users, but covers whole generations. This gives a great cross section of society, something which savvy businesses have been quick to pick up on.

With a bit of experimenting and patience you could transform your business by cornering a niche for yourself. You are the experts in what you do after all, so think what potential customers might want to know. Fun is the key, but also something informative in many cases. With it being experimental we have ideas of what can and will work, but there are so many avenues to explore. Facebook is free to join and many things have just taken off and become newsworthy. For some people it has happened by accident, people who are just normal people who had a thought that provoked others to agree or disagree and talk about it. Imagine the opportunities if you are taking the time out to experiment and find something that can work for your business.

Facebook is no different to any other way of life, those with staying power that persevere will be able to get what they need out of it. It is also a very good way of directing traffic to your website to promote your services.

Share on Facebook

Your website design could be costing you money in the longer run if you have cut corners on an online shop. E-commerce is all about the shopper trusting the website they are buying from, and with users getting more savvy to scams, genuine business websites are suffering because their website might look a bit suspect. So if you are wanting to sell online, or if you already are but find you are not getting many orders, this could be the reason.

Make sure your web designers get it right first time for you. Cutting costs will cost you in the long term in lost sales.

Share on Facebook

£350 for Silver package ends August 27th. Choose start-up website design and if you are based or live in Ilkley you will automatically get the benefits of our Silver web design package.

Website designers in Ilkley anniversary celebrations on October 29th 2010. More information to follow over the coming weeks.
Website design in Ilkley? Choose Easybiz Sites. Small business website design packages.

Share on Facebook

]]> http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/16/ilkley-website-design-offers-for-august/feed/ 0 http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/11/music-industry-in-need-of-reality-check/ http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/11/music-industry-in-need-of-reality-check/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 08:17:54 +0000 admin http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/?p=720 There has been much whining over recent years from some in the music industry that illegal downloading is killing the trade. But that is not very accurate and as South Park tried to point out is more based upon greed rather than being able to earn a decent living. Now it would seem that chart sensation Eliza Doolittle would agree with the fact of the matter being that the record sales are not the main source of income for any aspiring pop star.

In a recent interview she said “I would really love to make a living out of it (music) and a comfortable living if I can but it is hard these days.” Going on to say “You don’t sell as many records as you used to because of illegal downloads but I think there are other ways you can make money through music”.

The music rich list by comparison is a relatively new phenomenon which came to a peak in the 1980’s with artists such as Elton John and Madonna being up there with some of the richest names around. In the modern era the Premier League footballer is the new pop star.

With any industry there are always reasons for decline in certain income streams for a manner of different reasons and music is certainly not immune, neither should it be. For those who have made it, it is easy to complain, but getting the opportunity to make it in the industry has increased compared to what it was back in the music boom years. Free download sites, Apple iTunes, Facebook and other social networking websites, blogs and TV shows like X Factor have all given great opportunity for those who normally would not have been discovered to be discovered and build a loyal following. But as with any business, it takes a bit of working out how to go about it the smartest way. Sadly in music the ego can come before common sense and this is the undoing of a great many potential music stars.

The internet far from killing the music industry is revolutionising it. But still unknown talented bands want to charge people 99p for their latest single in the hope a hundred give or take people will buy it. The sensible way would be to let people download it for free, see how many downloads they are getting and build a following based on that and of course live gigs. This way the opportunity of selling an all important album either independently or with a well known record lable will increase dramatically. But sadly so many people in the industry think they have made it before they have even got on the first step of the ladder.

For those who have made it, many think the world owes them riches beyond imagination. For the smart thinkers it can happen and has happened. But these are usually the very creative and astute. For the rest their careers in music are short lived and the money they make is frittered away before they notice that they were making money for their music not their party antics.

So no, it is not illegal downloads that are killing the music industry. It is the “jobs for the boys” and the huge egos of people who think they have a divine right to sell loads of records and be famous that are killing it. If you are going into music because you want to be famous, you are probably in it for the wrong reasons and even if you have short term success will eventually be found out and pay a price for it. Blaming illegal downloads is a cop out, there are many bands now who have made it due to giving away their singles through websites that may not be illegal, but the same principle applies through the availability and popularity of the free download.

Imagine what would happen to Facebook if they decided “we are great, lets charge people 99p a month for what we do”. It wont happen because Facebook are not stupid. So why does this happen with unknowns in the music industry?

Share on Facebook

]]> http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/11/music-industry-in-need-of-reality-check/feed/ 0 http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/09/businesses-duped-into-putting-google-above-users/ http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/09/businesses-duped-into-putting-google-above-users/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:11:19 +0000 Rich Copley http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/?p=715 Businesses are receiving more calls and emails encouraging them to “get to the top of Google” with a Search Engine Optimization company (SEO). But in the chase for the holy grail of number 1 in Google for your preferred search term (e.g. – affordable website designers, small business website designers, website designers in Leeds…..you get the idea) businesses are forgetting the impact on user experience when they find your website.

It is smart to choose a website design company that can combine SEO and Web design, both to a high standard. Easybiz Sites has made a point of doing both affordable website design and SEO because it is important to get the balance between SEO and a professional web design just right. With having the two separate there is a conflict of interests where the website designers methods infringe those of the SEO company and vice versa.

In simple terms any SEO company promising to get you to the top of Google for your preferred search term (did I mention the examples, website designers Leeds etc) are not being 100% truthful. It is a competitive market to say the least (especially ones like affordable website designers) and if you are trying to occupy the top 3 of the 10 positions on the first page of Google remember probably 50 other companies are, nobody can guarantee that you will get to the top. Any SEO company making this promise is not to be trusted.

Google optimization has become the online version of the “get rich quick” schemes. And businesses are going to all lengths to get to the top of it. Tunnel vision has kicked in as SEO companies improve load speeds (I will go into page load speeds in greater detail in a bit) make your title tags (that is the bit you see at the top of your browser) more “keyword rich” and make sure your description tags (the bit that you see under the link of websites telling you more about the business on Google) are filled with all the right keywords, so Google will see your business website as the most relevant. I would go onto header tags, but I assume your head will already be spinning by now.

Where does this conflict kick in? Is probably the question you are asking. Well the conflict comes down to how your business website looks when somebody actually visit’s your website. You see this is the website designers job. Making your website look professional and making sure it is easy to navigate for your visitors. They may also do some copyrighting to make sure the website content is relevant and easy to understand, containing all the right information that a potential customer needs to know.

Back to the website load speeds. Load speed is one of many parts of what is taken into consideration for search engines, and I mean many. SEO companies will successfully reduce the load speed by milliseconds for you, but in order to do this they need to optimize all the images on your website. This means all the photo’s and if you have a logo or pretty heading with your company name, this is going to get it.

More and more I see websites now that have been optimized into a grave. Keep an eye out for website designs that seem to have poor quality images, or there is a strange noticeable haze around their logo and company name. You can guarantee these have been optimized for Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines, but mainly Google. Something that would infuriate the website designer who has spend much time and effort making everything look perfect and professional. To give your business the right image for anyone who visit’s your small business website.

In the name of a few milliseconds saved in load time, barely noticeable and not the most important requirement when it comes to Google page ranking and positioning, the user, the potential customer, the bank manager, the company thinking of putting a contract your way, have been totally ignored.

Well done, you got on the first page of Google did you? All you succeeded in doing is telling more people that your company is rubbish, because a rubbish website, if you think about how your image of a business is affected by what you see online, is the moment the company loses credibility and the visitor goes to a competitor. Don’t believe me? Well the average visit to a website is less than 10 seconds, that is the time a person makes up his mind about your business based on what they see on your website. Not getting as many contracts nowadays? Well maybe that is because they are “checking up” on you to see if you are as good as you say and not liking the state of your website.

To illustrate I was talking about a job I was preparing for a football club. My wife with no web design experience , your average person looking for services on the internet, said there is no point me touting for business with Leeds United, because they are a big club and will have a professional website design already. I know they do, and so do all professional football league clubs, regardless of the League they’re in. Whether its Bradford City in League 2, Leeds United a world famous football team once playing in the champions league, or Manchester United. The standard of design quality will be the same, except for personal preference on which design you prefer.

The same rule applies to businesses. Regardless of size you are professional in what you do. Therefore you have a professional website design, your website should be, looks wise no different in quality than Virgin or Coca Cola. It may not have all the bells and whistles like them, but the standard should be the same. If it isn’t, nobody will think you are professional about what you do, finding another company that is. And that could be Fred Bloggs your next door neighbour who runs his business from a shed, but has had the common sense to create the right impression to people visiting his website.

My point is, do not let Google positioning cloud your thinking. Think of the website visitor and usually Google positioning will follow anyway. Keep regular with adding fresh content to your website and include (not over doing) the key phrases (e.g. affordable website designers, small business website designers) in your content and titles. If the key phrases are un-natural and interfere with the message you are trying to get across to the user, always put the users need first. Google also appreciates that. Not sure how many SEO companies tell you this truth.

By the way, there has been some humorous examples of keyword placement in this article. See how many you can spot. And I hope it has not taken away from the enjoyment of reading this article. If it has, feel free to complain below. But start off by saying “website designers Leeds” or “affordable website designers”.

Share on Facebook

]]> http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/09/businesses-duped-into-putting-google-above-users/feed/ 0 http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/04/website-design-leeds-august-offers/ http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/2010/08/04/website-design-leeds-august-offers/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:20:06 +0000 admin http://www.easybizsites.co.uk/?p=694 Website design offers in Leeds

Website design offers for businesses in Leeds only. We have a range of offers from our web designers and they are available until August 31st 2010.

Website design offer 1 – Buy Any Silver Web design package for £500 get Search Engine Optimization 100 free (submit to 100 search engines, key phrase optimization).

Website design offer 2 – Buy our Gold Web design package for £850 get free 12 image gallery and SEO 100.

Quote Leeds 1 or 2 when our designers call after you order.

To look at our website design packages click below.

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

Is your small business on Twitter? If the answer is no, why not? Facebook and Twitter are now common day to day words that most people have heard of, and that is world wide. Networking companies like to charge you a fortune to be in their network, yet the worlds biggest networks are free.

Get your web designer to include a link to your Twitter and Facebook account, or get a new website design done by Easybiz Sites. We will gladly include a link to your social networking accounts. To follow us on Twitter, simply click that link, or add us to Facebook and we will update you with useful tips on social networking.

Share on Facebook