Getting Hits on your web site - some things we have discovered
Your Web site is your shop window, and like any shop window you need to keep it "interesting"
See our main article on SEO for some ideas.
You don’t have a web site? Time you talked to us about setting one up!
|
|
We hope you all had a good summer break, especially given the weather this summer has thrown at us, and are now all raring to get back to work.
No? Oh well, never mind, but here are a few ideas for you anyway!
|
|
Search Engine Optimization
Some of you may have seen that we have a new Asckey web site home page plus some other much changed pages - this is some background on why we changed it!
For any Web site owner Search Engine Optimization - SEO - is, or should be, a perennial subject for thought. Judging from the calls we get - it is! The obvious questions
- How can we attract more visitors
- How can we get to the top of the search engine lists?
How can we attract more visitors
As we have a group of websites of our own, and manage some for clients, we have access to a number of web site visitor statistics and we have seen some interesting hints.
Keep Content changing
Firstly, the sites that we know to be active, where the content is changed or added to frequently, have seen site visits increase, in some cases fourfold in a 12 month period. And our star site, http://www.electroniczone.co.uk which we know is continually being updated, is head and shoulders above all the sites we manage for visitor numbers.
Market your website!Secondly, certainly in our own case, and we suspect in a couple of others, we can see a clear correlation between visits and other marketing activities such as our e-Newsletters. So your web site and your other marketing activities need to work together. On your web site, content that will make your audience want to read what you have to say, and other activities that will send people to your web site to read it.
You must have Interesting Content
So Thirdly - Content
Why would anyone want to visit your web site? Does it tell them something useful? Does it have something - information or products - that they can’t get elsewhere, or, for a Web Shop, which they might want to buy from you as opposed to somewhere else? And, in that case, why come to you, and not some other similar vendor?
And above all - does it change, so that people will want to bookmark the site, then come back later to see what you are up to?
Search Engine Lists
Getting to the top of a search engine list is on the whole, hard to achieve, though if you are in a niche market, it’s perhaps not too difficult. Try "Visual DataFlex" and you will find our Visual DataFlex site quite easily. Try "under cupboard radio" and I found Electronic Zone right up at the top, which is a very good result considering the search returned 157,000 items, so well done Electronic Zone. Try "web development" and just how do you get to the top of 174,000,000 items?!
Pay for it
Google has made its fortune by developing a means of selling positions. If you subscribe to Google AdWords then when someone types those words into Google your listing should come up on the "Sponsored Links" on the right hand side of the front page. This is done via an automated auction system - the more popular a search phrase is, the more you will pay to get your share of the searches using that search phrase put into the Sponsored Links listing .
With this system you get charged on a per click basis, the assumption being that users who click through are generally looking for your business services, so it is worth paying for the click. To keep your costs within bounds, you can set a limit on what you spend per day.
Fine if you have something that clearly generates immediate revenue, a harder call otherwise. And you still have to make the resulting page worth looking at!
One downside is that there is some evidence that the Sponsored Links list is ignored by many people, precisely because it is known to be paid for!.
Interesting Content
Other than paying for it, we come back to interesting content. Content that search engines can read and rate. Words. And notably, not images. Search engines can’t read images.
Also, content that changes frequently. By updating, editing and adding to your site content regularly Google associates the activity with something interesting
Which brings us back to why we changed our home page.
It dawned on us that our image heavy first page was actually counter productive. It may have been pretty to look at, but it didn’t actually tell either visitors or Web Site rating robots an awful lot about what we did "at first glance". So now it does. What is more, it does it in a way that reinforces the rating process. While Google et al do make money out of paid for rating enhancement, the no-cost rating is chiefly about relevance, as much as clever programmers can equip the search engine robots to analyse relevance.
Consistency - be kind to Search Engines
Relevance is about consistency, and here is where you can do a lot to improve things - assuming you have something interesting to say of course, and are saying it in an interesting - especially to search engines - way. Web site rating robots use the visible text, together with some invisible text to check for consistency. The invisible text is primarily the page Title, and, with varying degrees of certainty as to particular searches engines usage, the page description and keywords meta data tags. The page Title is what appears in the very top left border of the web browser. The description and keywords you can see if you "View Source" from your web browser, and will look something like this
<meta name="description" content="Asckey Data Services Ltd is blah blah blah" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Asckey Data Services Ltd, Asckey, web systems, and so on"/>
Title, Description, Keywords should all echo the key page subject matter that the visitor sees. And if this looks a bit tecnical, see "Electos" below!
By the way, one thing "invisible" does not mean, is white text on a white background. That is an old trick and the search engines definitely punish such trickery!
Relevant content - One size does not fit all
Like many businesses, we don’t just do one thing. We do Software Development and Facilities Management. (Well, actually a lot more than just that, but lets keep it simple)
So, our web pages will likely mention one subject or the other. And if we just have one set of Meta Data, probably built for the Home page, then the web site rating robots - "web crawlers" will decide they are not seeing what they have been lead to believe they should be seeing, and so will not rate the pages highly for either subject. This means that you must have the facilities to create this information on a page by page basis. And that you really must make the effort to make this information match the specific page content.
This is what we have been doing for the last several months, and we think this is what has pushed our visitor scores up.
Other Points
Check that your internal links work: The web crawlers follow the same links on your site that a user would. So if a link on your menu bar doesn’t work or an internal text link is down, then the search engine will hit the same dead end that a user would. In Google’s view, not having the link at all is better than having one that leads to an error page. You will find lots of tools available for link checking on the Internet.
Persuade other web sites to create links back to your site: But make sure they’re relevant. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. But don’t try to be clever - sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build "artificial" links designed to boost their rankings.
SEO - Summary
Search engine optimization starts with interesting content, needs ongoing changing content, needs good search engine meta data tailored to each page - and to each page as it changes, and needs external links from other pages to the page.
And, think -
- why would anyone want to read this?
- does it encourage them to come back again late?
- does this page actually deal with what it says it does?
Paid for SEO
However, we suspect there really is no magic bullet, and if there is, Google et al will rapidly nullify it! We think that search engines really do try and rate a page on its interest and relevance to the declared subject, because that matches what their audience wants, which is pages listed that match the relevance of what the search word or phrase was. That in turn makes users trust a particular search engine to deliver.
The bottom line
Think like a search engine user, and make sure your pages contain what you think the people you want to attract are looking for.
None of this so far needs professional assistance - unless you need that for creating your page content.
Once you have got your content sorted out as above, and with a good process of continuing update and new material addition, then you can think about spending direct money. Google AdWords perhaps, or one of the professional SEO organisations.
Back to Top
|
|
Electos v3.1 - SEO Friendly!
Our Content Managed Web Site (CMS) system has been updated to v3.1 during the summer, and in addition to the Web Shop facilities already covered ( December 2007) contains everything you need to create page by page Search Engine Optimization information.
The easy way to creating and easily updating Interesting web page content.
If you have read through the previous article, should by now know that interesting, relevant and frequently changing web site content is key to visitors, and good search engine ratings!
Electos has always been a system that makes keeping a web site
- up to date,
- relevant, and
- continually changing
easy to achieve.
Electos v3.1 now includes all the SEO meta data that you need to do the complete, page by page job. That’s the nasty technical stuff we explored above, made easy!
Website Page Templates - more design flexibility
The standard site templates ( here) have been re-built to provide much more design flexibility. Some elements are now inherently page sensitive - so you could have different top of page images for different pages, or perhaps less exuberantly, for different sections. A neat "inheritance" system minimises the effort needed, by ensuring a sensible default for such things as different images, and also the search engine data at the varying levels in your site.
Third Party Templates
Those same design changes have made it much easier to build the Electos "engine" into non Electos templates. Several sites exist that provide free, and remarkably good templates. Try these two if interested
http://www.oswd.org/
Building Electos page content and menu systems into one of these has become quite easy. So if we can convince you that CMS is the best way to create a good web site, you have a wide choice of pre-defined designs available to you.
Your own Web Site design
Or, if you have a site already, it may well be easily enhanced to become an Electos managed site.
Time to move up to comprehensive CMS that will make it as easy as possible to create and maintain, a search engine friendly Web Site/Web Shop?
|
|
 Trix Document Management
The Trix Document Management system is a new addition to our products and services.
Originating from Sweden, where it has been put into use for managing documents and drawings in several major Hospitals, Trix originated specifically to meet the document management needs of engineers and engineering organizations - it is not just a modified clerical document management system.
Trix Organizer stores, manages and controls all your engineering documents, whether they be AutoCAD files, scans, PDFs, Office files, even videos. It can store and manage any and all file formats.
However, while it has special knowledge of AutoCAD, it’s overall approach to document management is applicable to all situations where organisations are looking to replace laborious and fallible paper systems with on-line access to a well organised electronic document filing system where documents are available not just at the filing cabinet, not just on your fixed workstation, but anywhere that has Internet access.
Client-Server based - robust, and secure
The system uses a robust, reliable, client-server architecture. The underlying database is Microsoft SQL Server. The document files themselves are stored inside the database so nothing is left vulnerable on regular file systems. Backups don’t interfere with use, and where required, access can be restricted to appropriate personnel.
Scalable
Trix Organizer is provenly scalable with document quantities stored ranging from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands.
Document Access
Clients can access documents over their local office network, via a local client, via the Internet through their Web Browser, through Terminal Services or through Citrix. This enables us to build a system tailored to what you need, from strictly "in office", to full "any time, any place" Internet access.
Trix Organizer Features
- Store and secure all files in one place
- Prevent duplications and unauthorized copies
- Simple, user customizable, interface
- Find the right documents quickly and easily
- Check out/check in procedures enforced
- Regulate who sees what and when
- Edit, version and release control
- Previous versions retained and restorable
- Histories of changes, check-outs, distributions
- Manage all documents, not just drawings
- Drag and drop file import
- Built-in viewer and markup tools
- Auto-imports metadata from DWG (AutoCAD) attributes
- Supports and manages DWG x-refs
- Customized reports to print or spreadsheet
- LAN, Web, Citrix or Terminal Service clients
- Floating user licensing for flexibility (i.e. concurrent user count, not named users)
- Pass data & drawings to other applications
Meeting the Need for general Document Management
Corporate document management is more than just scanning and tagging of paper archives. Trix Organizer can let you build a complete document library that will combine the benefits of both making documents available, and controlling their availability. With full security and user identification, it is the equivalent of having an all knowing PA available to unlock the filing cabinet when needed - with none of the staff costs involved! So even if you are not looking at the task of electronically archiving miles of dusty physical document shelves, Trix Organizer can revolutionise document management for any business that has the problem of managing document distribution and availability to its employees.
Application Integration
While being an effective stand alone document and technical drawing manager, Trix is particularly easy to work with when there is a need to build document access into a business application. Two way operation, linking to appropriate documents and drawings from particular application data records, and jumping from within a Trix managed document (particularly AutoCAD) to an application data record are both possible.
Scanning and cataloguing
For many organisations, achieving an on-line document store is an urgent goal, but organising the manpower to do the scanning and tagging of documents into the database is a daunting task.
Through our associations with Provanum, the authors of Trix, we can work with you to provide a complete service for this, at economical costs, a service that is well aware of the likely sensitive nature of many of the documents which will be involved.
Talk to us if
- You need to explore a comprehensive engineering drawing and/or general document management system
- You need help in scanning a large, corporate paper document repository
- You need to build document access into a business application
|
|
Free One Day Seminar
October 1st & 2nd, the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham
On this occasion we will be covering some topics which may be of interest beyond our specialist software developer community. We will be covering:-
Electos
Our Content Managed Website System (CMS), with a special emphasis on building the CMS "Engine" into non Electos web sites, and the many web page templates that are freely available from a variety of sources.
The "CMS" concept is undoubtedly one which makes creating and maintaining a web site much easier, and without the need for specialist technical know how, so if you already have a website, or a web page design, we will show you that adding the Electos CMS "engine" is really quite easy.
Dynamic AI Business Intelligence
BI is proving itself to us as an invaluable tool for "Management by Exception". Most of us rely on data of some sort to help manage our businesses, but we spend a lot of time looking at a lot of data, most of which is quite routine, and which may even be hiding the ital numbers that are telling us something is wrong. BI can be used to monitor these, and provide exception reports and notifications as soon as there might be someting wrong. Much better than waiting for, and wading through the usual month end reports!
Dynamic AI will be featured at the seminar.
Legacy Systems Updating
Lots of business systems come into this category, and it is becoming apparent that time really is running out for them now. Lots of reasons why, but here are two.
- Legacy applications pre-date the revolution that is the Internet. Many functions that used to be done by paper and post are self-service today, with a consequent economy in time, and hugely increased opportunity for the world to know about them. catalogues, the travel business, fault reporting, and many more of course
- Legacy programmers are starting to thin out! Today, we have a good population of "dual skilled programemrs, but the understanding of the arcane ways of old style programming is begining to fade away. It won’t be too long before this starts to bite.
We will be looking at this as a topic (find more on this here if interested), and while this will have a "DataFlex/Visual DataFlex" slant to it, we know many of you are part of that world.
Click on this link for more details on the seminar. Or if interested, just email us either to find out more, or to book a place.
|
|
 For expert business application development, using virtually any database format, specialist web site and web application development and hosting -
Talk to us! 08701 634466
Your individuality drives our excellence
Church End Farm
Warboys Road, Pidley,
Cambs PE28 3DA
 |
|
