I remember many years back working as a young man in a sales position.  One of the first things taught to me by the more mature staff was the simple lesson 'Never Slag Off The Competition'.

There's a couple of reasons, the first is that they are professionals just like you.  To slag them off is in a sense to slag yourself off. Secondly the customer may well be considering them for the work that you are hoping to get.  To then slag them off makes you look like a poor loser that cant adequately compete for the business.  In short it does you more harm than your competition.

Why I am writing about this, well recently we were contacted by a company that wanted to engage our web design services having seen one of our sites they really liked it, followed the 'Designed by CPTsolutions.biz' link at the bottom of the page and asked us to put together a quote to redesign their old website.  Naturally we were delighted.

We met with the new clients found out all about their business and asked a couple of questions as to why they were'nt using their old web design firm.

It transpired that their old firm had been bought out and no longer traded in Swansea and they had never heard from them since, despite their continued hosting of the site (and the annual fees that came with that).

We contacted the old company who were really nice people and professional  and arranged for us to transfer in the domain name.

What happened next marked them as unprofessional. 

They waited for us to complete the project then contacted the client and told them that their new site was (in their opinion) a step backwards and poorer quality and inferior to the old site.

The first we heard of this was when the new client sent us an email telling us exactly what was said.  They said that they were delighted with the new site and that this marked the old firm as unprofessional.

I agree

I cant see any gain the old company could have had from doing this which is why it makes me sad, especially as it is bound to take the shine of the new site for the new clients who have as mentioned previously are otherwise delightfully happy with the new site.

Anyway you can make up your own mind by looking at the images below.

Old Highgate Website 

New Highgate Welcome Page

Everyone is an expert at Search Engine Optimisation

Today i've received another email from a well meaning person who has had a good look at a client's website and has sent me a really long email full of observations and tips that I could use to improve the website in question.

My first reaction run along the lines of ****** *****! then i remembered that a person's ego can often times be their biggest stumbling block and greatest impediment to success, so putting my initial reaction behind me, a read the email a second time.  The email was really well put together and contained useful ideas and observations some were wide of the mark, others were interesting.

As web designers we almost never ask for feedback from people other than the client.  There are many reasons for this, the simplest is of course that you can't please everyone and if you ask twenty different people their opinions you will get twenty different opinions.   If you try and work those twenty different opinions into a web site design or your search engine optimisation strategy you will wind up with a web site that pleases no one and ultimately fails to do it's job.  You can die of having too many doctors, your site can die from having too many directives.

Setting up a sucessful seo strategy is a bit like taking a bow and firing an arrow to it's target.  It's good if you can clearly see the target in question and it's even better if you can get expert advice from people that have fired the bow before and have a sucessful history of hitting not just that target but many different targets at different ranges and sizes.  

Taking advice from a client's customer might at first seem like a silly thing to do, but it can help occasionally if someone is already at the target web site in question and can shout some directions to you.  This is where customer feedback comes in. Returning to the list, not all of the suggestions are going in, but the ones that are most congruent with the site's goal definately are.

At Nice Site Solutions we spend the bulk of our time learning new things, coding developments, web site design developments, new tips and tricks for search engine optimsation or the latest developments and changes from the big names like Google and Yahoo, understanding these new things and adding them to the vast bank of existing knowledge for integration is time consuming and hard work.  Applying this mix of knowledge to a new site strategy is even harder, to make it work we have to have visible and attainable goals.  Does this make us experts?  The short answer is no?  We are increasingly expert which is all anyone can be in this ever changing field.  Hence my initial reaction when I got the email.  The person in question does none of the above and doesnt work in web design or development or even on page site optimisation or search engine optimisation, not even internet marketing.  All of the above I spent years learning.  So you can forgive my initial thoughts on getting the email.  Like I say I reconsidered it, because in one important way the customer is an expert, they are an expert at using the site in question, which is why the feedback becomes important.  Best advice for anyone in a similar position is to solicit opinions, not just any opinions though, but the opinions of those close or at the target and the opinions of those that have fired the arrow before you.  With all that expert help you wont go wrong! 

Off Page Search Engine Optimisation

We’ve gone over the onpage seo web design and optimization, so let’s move on to the offpage search engine marketing and SEO which is what really makes a difference in your site’s ranking. Off Page Optimization is done outside the website in order to increase its performance in search engines for the desired keywords.

• Which web sites point to you
• The number of websites linking to you
• The Google page rank of the website linking to you
• The page title of the web site pointing to you
• The anchor text used in the URL pointing to you
• The number and type of links linking to the website that’s linking to you.
• The number of external links on the web site that is pointing to you
• The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
• Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website.

The major offpage SEO techniques are as follows:

1. Link Campaign: One of the important parts of search engine optimization is building of links with the partners. Link building increases link popularity which in turn increases the google page rank of the particular webpage. Link exchange is one of the critical method of the web site Off Page SEO.
2. Social networking: Social network service refers to the several online social communities where the members share the similar interests and activities. Examples of such web sites are Facebook and My Space.
3. Directory Listings: Submission of the website to the directories will definitely enhance the generation of the traffic and link popularity of the particular website. Directories include list of websites that are meticulously checked. The directories are differentiated into several relevant topic categories which give information to the customers. Web directories are human edited and are much smaller than the search engine database. 
4. Article Distribution: Article distribution is the modern trend of off-page optimization. An article with relevant keyword is written and the uniform resource locator of the self-owned website is placed at the end of article. Thus when the article is submitted in the popular article websites the traffic is generated to the self-owned website. Within less time, the website owner will receive potential buyers in the effective manner.

While doing off page optimization one should research and come up with multiple Anchor Texts containing the recommended density of keywords/keyword phrases. If you are not familiar with the word “Anchor Text”, it is the hyper linked text that is put on the Webpage which links back to your webpage.

Improvement in SERP or Search Engine Ranking Positions: It is the list of the web pages which a search engine returns according to the keyword query. The results generally incorporate the web pages with link to the page, titles, a brief description showing where the keywords have similar content in the webpage.

The Internet belongs to the person with the most money!