Posts About ‘website’

Relaunching Websites (no SEO Tips)

laptop

Working on your website takes a lot of time and is an ongoing process. It sometimes feels like a master’s degree paper, which you just don’t want to read and correct anymore. But you should! You sometimes just feel like you want to throw it all away and restart. But you shouldn’t! If you keep on going this is what separates good websites from great websites.

Relaunching or redesigning websites should be an ongoing slow evolving and tested process not an overhaul of everything every two years. Especially not for the wrong reasons, just because you or your boss can’t stand to look at the website anymore because you have to see it every day.

So the question should be, is it really your customers who need a new website or is it just you wanting something new and shiny?
(more…)

What Website Owners can Learn From Gordon Ramsay

ramsey

Who doesn’t know British chef Gordon Ramsay. He is well-known around the world, mostly because of his swearing in the kitchen, but also because he has set up many successful restaurants., His fame is mainly based on his television shows like “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares,” and the swear words he uses in these shows.

One show in particular is now running for years with huge success: “Kitchen Nightmares”. In this show he comes into a restaurant, which is usually almost bankrupt and barely attracting any customers, and helps save it.

Watching this show can help you a lot when optimizing your website. Think whatever you want about Ramsay and his swearing, but he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to optimizing a business. And optimizing a business, or restaurant in this matter, is not that different from running a restaurant. Let’s take a look at some lessons we can learn from Gordon Ramsay. (more…)

Should You Build a Website? And If So, How?

build-site-and-how-intro

Last year in a panel I got the question whether or not in five years ‘websites’ would disappear and everybody would be using Social Media pages. I thought that would not happen. Another panelist disagreed and I still think websites matter.

You do have to think well about your website: what purpose do you want it to have. Why do you need it. And off course after that comes the question: but how? This infographic looks at all these elements. (more…)

Upgrading a website shouldn’t affect your SEO traffic

UpgradeOne of the key misconceptions from website owners’ is that a website re-launch will cause a temporary, or permanent, drop in SEO traffic as the search engines switch to the new URLs. In my opinion the search engines have got far better at ensuring the migration from the old to the new website is far more seamless than before. There are, however, many areas that you need to ensure are 100% to ensure uninterrupted service.

I recently ran a migration project for a key client of MediaVision’s where we had improved organic traffic by over 600% in the last two years. Clearly the client was concerned that the traffic from organic search would drop as it was a key lead generator for their business and would definitely affect their bottom line. What was very pleasing was that not only did we preserve the current rankings but by using the strategy below we actually increased non-brand SEO traffic by 23% month on month. (more…)

SEO for Web Developers

I’m due to give a talk at one of those surprisingly fun crowdsourced unconferences – BarCamp Belfast. My talk will be about what web developers can do to ensure the websites they build are search engine friendly. Too often I’ve had to work with websites that seemed built to thwart search engines instead of welcome them, so it’s a topic dear to my heart.

I’ve had some great input from the members at the SEO Training Dojo and have a clear idea of what I want to discuss in this 30-minute talk I’ll be giving, but I figure it never hurts to get some extra input. I’m sure the the State of Search audience has their own horror stories about SEO-unfriendly websites to share.
(more…)

The future of publishing, or is it?

Last week the Times announced that in June readers will have to start paying for content. Is this the start of a new era in publishing? It might be. Many are very much opposed to the steps Rupert Murdoch is planning to take when it comes to paying for content. Still, there are not many who have an answer to Murdoch’s problems: how do you make money with newspaperwebsites? We now know that advertising won’t give us the answer, but what will?

The video below is a brilliant video, which does not give us the answer to the big question, but it does point us in the right direction: Listen to your target audience. Be sure to watch the entire video, it really is brilliant.

State of Search launches: get more insight in the world of search

Hi and welcome at Stateofsearch.com!
Today at SES London we launch a new website which aims on giving more insight into the world of search and social media: Stateofsearch.com. The website is an initiative from former Searchcowboys Chief Editor Bas van den Beld, in cooperation with amongst others Lisa Myers.

Bas van den Beld says:

“When I left Searchcowboys I needed a ‘homebase’ for my articles. I wanted to more in depth and State of Search is the place to do that. When I talked to Lisa about this she immediately liked the idea and we decided to set up the website.”

On State of Search posts will appear that will look further than just at whats happening in search. State of Search will take a deeper look at search, trying to find the reasons behind and the impact of what is happening. Basically Stateofsearch.com will give you more insight into what is going on and why.

Bloggers
State of Search now features bloggers Bas van den Beld, Lisa Myers and Nichola Stott, but soon more names will be brought out from search experts who immediately responded to the news that the site was launching. The site will be open for bloggers around the world to contribute to the site, making it the place to be to find out everything about search and social.

Stateofsearch can be followed all over the web. Off course via Twitter (@state_ofsearch), Google Buzz (statesearch@gmail.com) and many more.