Category Archives: Websites

Information on websites

Why you need to padlock your site

Websites

Why you need to padlock your site

Padlocking your site states that your site is secure. This is done by installing an SSL certificate on your website. But why would you want to do this?

  1. Increases Google rankings

    In 2014 Google decided to place greater emphasis on padlocked sites in their search results. Websites that are padlocked will have a much better chance of ranking higher in the search results than websites do not.

  2. It improves customer trust

    How safe would you feel if your browser warned you about a website being ÔÇ£not secureÔÇØ? Some browsers now notify visitors when websites are not secure. This then puts doubts in their mind if itÔÇÖs safe to look at that site and even if itÔÇÖs a reputable, legitimate site. It could be possible that in the near future website may even get blocked to load on the browser. Ensuring that your site is padlocked improves customer trust in your site and what you do. Visitors are far more likely to do business with you or even revisit your website.

  3. Protects customer information

    An SSL certificate means that any data from the visitor is locked and can be only unlocked by the intended recipient. This means that it is protected by hackers, as the data will be unreadable to them. This is especially important if you are using a website to make payments and it is widely known that you should not enter your credit card on sites that are not secure. Even if your website does not take payments it also protects the data submitted by users in a form or a login.

6 ways to improve your income on your website

Websites

6 ways to improve your income on your website

So you’ve got a website up and running and you have ways to make money through it. But it’s not doing as well as you hoped, what can you do? Read our are ideas on how to increase those profits and get your audience engaged.

1. Solve a problem

Consider your target audience and what they maybe looking for when the come to your site. What is a common problem that people have in your market area that needs to be solved? Finding that problem and giving people a easy solution will hook them into your brand and build trust so that they come back to your website again and again and are most likely to spend money with you.

2. Make your website friendly

Make your website user friendly and mobile friendly. Give your users a clear direction on where to start when they visit your website. If your website has a blog a user may become overwhelmed in which article to start with first. Create a start here page to guide them through your site and links to your products.

3. Good content

Create excellent content that is better than your competitors. Write in-depth articles that search engines love and your uses will equally find interesting. Don’t forget to add links to your products and services. 

4. Get email signups

Get your users to sign up to your email list. This list is invaluable. These are people that are generally interested in your site and what you do. Having the ability to email them regularly means that you can pitch your products to people that are most interested and likely to buy or visit your site again.

To encourage users to sign up to your email list offer them free coupons or report in exchange for their email address. Offering them free, even better content, will make them want to sign up.

5. Target your subscribers

Once you have a new subscriber to your email list send them a follow up email. Send them links back to your website to show them the key areas of your site. 

Email or blog on your passive income products to help sell them. You can’t simply rely on just having a product on your site and hope that someone sees it. Make a feature blog on it, notify your email subscribers about it.

Email your subscribers regularly offering them more great content, special offers or your products.

6. Limited time offers

Offer limited time offers. Creating a good, cheap deal for a short amount of time will get people to do business with you. Once you have them buying and hooked to what you can offer they will be hungry for more.

10 tips on creating good URLs

SEO getting traffic to your site, Websites, ,

10 tips on creating good URLs

A URL is the address of your web page. It can be hard to know what you should put for your URL and how to make it search engine friendly, so here are 10 tips on creating good URLs.

  1. Always use lower case.

    The server your website sits on can sometimes handle uppercase URLÔÇÖs differently and could show the user a ÔÇÿpage not foundÔÇÖ page. Best stick to having all lower case to avoid this.
    good-urls1

  2. Keep it short

    A URL should have about 50-60 characters according to Google. However, they wonÔÇÖt penalise you in your website rankings if itÔÇÖs longer. Also long URLÔÇÖs are difficult to cut and paste.
    good-urls2

  3. Match to your page title

    Try and match your URL to the title of the page. It this then obvious to a visitor what the page is about.

  4. Leave out stop words

    Examples of stop words are; and, or, of, but, the, a. You donÔÇÖt have to put these in, they donÔÇÖt improve the URL and it just makes it longer.

  5. Safe characters

    The only safe characters to use in a URL are: ┬á┬á_ – ┬á. + ! * ÔÇÖ ( ) ┬ádo not use any other characters.
    good-urls5

  6. Make it easy to say

    Try and make your URL logical and easy to say. It gets complicated when you have relay every dash, slash and dot. Although slashes and dots are unavoidable in URLS.

  7. Not too many sub folders

    Inserting the page into many sub folders can make the URL too long.
    good-urls7

  8. Add keywords

    Add keywords into your URL, it helps with being indexed properly and it clearly states what the page is about.

  9. DonÔÇÖt repeat keywords

    Repeating keywords is something that search engines frown upon.
    good-urls9

  10. Make it readable

    You may have many pages to your website and start giving each page numbers, but who is going to remember a load of numbers? Make sure the URL is readable for humans.
    good-urls10

    ReadHow to change your URL

How can I make my web page search engine friendly?

FAQ, SEO getting traffic to your site, Websites, , ,

How can I make my web page search engine friendlyHow can I make my web page search engine friendly?

So you have a website but it doesn’t come up when you search for it on search engines.┬á Google states no set time for the search engine to index new websites or pages. But when it finally does get indexed you need to make sure that your site is optimised in the best possible way.

Below is SpiralNetÔÇÖs recommended guide on how to format your pages for search engines.

Select your keywords

Each page of your website should have a different focus keyword. A keyword is one or more words that users will use to find your page in a search engine. For this example we have used the word ÔÇÿBlue BananasÔÇÖ.

Set the right URL

A URL is the address of your web page. Adding your keywords in your URL will help, but it is not always necessary in order to rank well. Sometimes itÔÇÖs more important that your website pages have a logical URL thatÔÇÖs short and easy to remember, approximately 50-60 characters.

page-seo-1
Read10 tips on creating good URLs

Titles and description

Add keywords to the title and meta description.┬á This is what will show up in search engine results. ┬áItÔÇÖs important here to think about how you can stand out from your competition amongst the search results. What is going to make someone click on your link?

page-seo-2

RULES:

  • The page title should be between 35 and 65 characters.
  • The meta description, however can be up to 156 characters.

Keywords in the text content

The text is very important when it comes to the adding keywords.

RULES:

  • The keyword should appear in the first paragraph so that it is obvious what you page is about.
  • The keyword should appear in a heading.

The content of your page

Google ideally likes to see a minimum of 300 words on each page. This is not always easy if you are creating a contact us page. The last thing you want to do is fill it with unnecessary dribble so this may be one rule you canÔÇÖt always stick to.

The keyword should be found in your text, but repeat it too many times and youÔÇÖll be penalised by Google.

If you have a WordPress site with SpiralNet you will have a plugin that tells you if your keyword density is too high in your text.

Keywords need to be put in the alt tag of an image. An alt tag is what you name an image for search engines to read. If an image could not be displayed visitors would see the alt tag instead.

Blue Bananas

ReadHow to set alt tags in images

Good readability

It is important that your page reads well. Google will be looking for easy to read web pages so try and follow the rules.

RULES:

  • Keep your paragraphs short.
  • Try not to have too many sentences more than 20 words long.
  • Each sub-heading should not have any more than 300 words in the text that follows it.

If you have a WordPress site with SpiralNet you will have a plugin that rates the readability of your text.

ReadWriting content for your website

A word on blogs

Blogs are a great way of getting more traffic to your website as it allows you to create more pages that target many keywords.

Inbound links

The more inbound links you have to your website the better.  Google ranks a website higher if it has good reputable links coming from other websites.

Writing content for your website

Websites

Writing content for your website

How often do you spend more than five seconds on a web page? Usually, it’s a case of quickly scanning a page before moving on to the next. This is something we need to remember when writing content for websites.

Break it down

Creating a whole chunk of text is not going to attract any readers so break it down.

Use titles and subtitles so that visitors can quickly see what your page is about. Short and to the point makes sure the reader doesn’t have to do any guesswork.

Having a short paragraph at the top of your page that summarises what the page is about will inform the visitor quickly if it’s something they want to read more of.

Think about what your visitors will want to know when they get to your site. When you are searching for a tradesman, restaurant or club, what do you want to know?

Tips for reducing content

When you think you have written the perfect page, cut it down by half and then reduce that again by half. Extreme I know, but don’t forget that website visitors just scan, they will not read huge paragraphs of text. So cut down using these tips:

  • If your page is about prices then just layout your prices. It’s a complete waste of time adding paragraphs of text introducing your prices. All visitors will do is skip down to the prices and then move on. So cut it out.
  • Adding content like ‘Welcome to London Hairdressers’ is not necessary as it’s on the top of every page of your website and it’s not giving any information that’s new. So cut it out.
  • Don’t add simple instructions such as ‘click on this button’ or ‘fill in your name, phone number and address below’. If it looks like a button or a form then it’s obvious what needs to be done. So cut it out.
  • When you read back your content do you find yourself saying ‘blah, blah, blah, blah’? If you do then you’ve just written a load of waffle. Cut it out! 

REMEMBER: Cut your text down. Having a long chunk of text is boring and it could also mean that visitors will leave your site.

7 reasons to have a website

Setting up a business, Websites

7 Reasons to have a website

1. Great first impression.

A professional website acts as an impressive first contact, convincing the potential customer that they need what you are offering and inviting them to contact you, via telephone, email or contact form on your website.

2. Open 24/7.

A website is a cost-effective tool that allows your business to attract new customers continuously 24/7.

3. Increase your target area.

Attract new customers that otherwise would never find you and they can do so when your business is closed.

4. A website address is much easier to remember than a telephone number.

Include your web address on all your promotional material allows customers to take action straight away when they see your advertisement or hear about your services.

5. Increase customer confidence.

With the right content, easy navigation, and quickly accessible contact details, your website greatly increases customer confidence in your company and therefore more business.

6. Find out what your customers want.

Website statistics makes it easy for you to find out what customers are looking for on your website, how long they spent on your site and if you have want you want.

7. Low cost Advertising.

Use links to Facebook and other social sites to promote your business to a wide range of potential customers.

How to choose the right domain name

Setting up a business, Websites,

How to choose the right domain name

OK, so you have your business name and now you want a website. You need to start with a good domain name. Read on for advice on good and bad domain name choices.

If you havenÔÇÖt worked out your business name yet check out our blog on Creating the right name for your business.

What is a domain name?

A domain name is also known as a website address. It is a name that a website visitor has to type into a web browser in order to visit your site.

Why donÔÇÖt I just use my business name?

Using your business name may work very well as a domain name. Just check that no one else is currently using your name. You can check this by using our domain name checker below. You can look domains up in any search engine but sometimes domains are purchased and unused, use a domain name checker to tell you easily if the domain is already owned by an individual or company.

 

Keep it short

The best domain names should be short and easy to remember when they see it on the side of a van or on an advertising board. If your company name is long is there a way of shortening it to create a good domain name?

Avoid using hyphens

Having hyphens in your domain name is hard to communicate on a telephone and looks unprofessional. Choose www.theredprintingshop.co.uk rather than www.the-red-printing-shop.co.uk.

Avoid plurals

Be careful with this as this can be confusing. www.sunnygift.co.uk can be confused with www.sunnygifts.co.uk . The best way around the problem is to purchase both domains. This doesnÔÇÖt mean you need to have two websites. A redirect can easily be setup between one to the other.

Avoid spelling short cuts

Another confusing one for the telephone. Having spelling shortcuts in your company name can cause problems in your domain name. You donÔÇÖt want to have to explain that ÔÇ£Flowers 4 uÔÇØ is www.flowers4(the number) u (the letter on its own).co.uk. It will drive you mad I promise you.

One domain with every website

Have a website made with SpiralNet Design and get one domain included in your package. Read more…

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 .com or .co.uk?

If your company is based in the UK and you have no attention of expanding world wide then purchasing a .co.uk is enough. However if you plan to go global then consider a .com domain name. Whether you purchase other domain names (.uk .net .info) itÔÇÖs up to you but it will guarantee that they are not taken by anyone else.

Check similar domains

Check to see if there are any domains that are similar that you wouldn’t want to be mistaken for. You could also lose business easily if a customer confused your domain name and ended up on website for a different company.

Check your domain

Before you make that final decision and purchase that domain check to see if your domain has recently changed from registered to unregistered status. It could be that the domain was previously connected to a website that was considered adult content and you would not want your company to be associated with this.