Web Design & Web Hosting FAQs

If it's an existing domain name which has had an old site attached to it, chances are they already have. On a brand new site, we have a way of getting the search engines to find it in a few hours - around 30 minutes is our record. However, having the search engines find your site, and having it show up on page 1 or 2 of the search results is a very different process. The latter has all to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

The truth will be that your site has been found, but it's just not showing up in the search engines for any relevant search phrases. Probably we need to take a look at your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and adjust it.

There could be a miriad of reasons, including:

• You're targeting highly competitive keywords
• You're targeting keywords that have little or no search volume
• You're not on page 1 or 2 of the searches
• Your website has been blacklisted by the search engines.

Just like, "My car's making a funny noise!" doesn't make it easy for your mechanic to diagnose the problem, "My website isn't getting any traffic" is much the same. We will actually sit down with you and talk through your existing site, do some analysis, and then come up with a plan to help.

This one is a little easier to answer than the previous, though until some research into the site is done, it's still not going to be black and white. You may have no "calls to action" on your site, it could be boring, outdated, lacking content or unorganized content, or just not what the visitor expected. Again, like the no/little traffic scenario, we'll take time to investigate and report back what we find and how we feel you could improve.  Part of our service is offering objective, critical feedback along with solutions.

You can use Google's own tool - Keyword Planner - it's free and can help, though you will need an Adwords account (which is also free).   https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner It also will help determine the most popular PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and monthly variations of the volume for that search.

Next, analyze the competition and see what they're using. It can be good to use both similar, the same, or completely different words to your competitors. However, this is a very critical area for your ranking success and we recommend engaging the help of a professional as it really requires understanding the whole business of SEO to make informed choices. As a good start, we recommend to clients that they write a list of words and phrases they think people would use to find them.  Not to worry, we don't leave you on your own here!  We'll help you find the best keywords and phrases that we will then use as part of our on-page SEO building.

Links are still vitally important in SEO and will remain so for the very distant future. Links to your site are like votes for it. However, it is true that some links are either of less value, no value, or, worst of all, negative value. The search engine's goal is to serve its customers (the searchers) with the most relevant pages. This is done by ranking them.

Quality, naturally acquired links are good and increase ranking. Site A --> B, and B --> A links now have no value (reciprocal linking). Bought links or links from dubious sources can actually drive your ranking down.

What you want to build over time are links that occur with the people and businesses that you naturally work with and meet along the way. Just keep this in the back of your mind when you are networking.

It's really impossible to say as it's such a fast changing industry, but here are a couple ideas.

Mobile Commerce (mCommerce) - Mobile devices will continue to become more and more important to the general population. Therefore, the amount of searches on mobile devices will continue its upward trend. They have now surpassed desktop searches. In light of this, EVERY website MUST be ready for this flood of mobile surfers. The latest way to do this is using a responsive template. These allow the website to ascertain what sort of device it's being viewed on and serve a webpage that fits that particular size.

Social media will also continue its growth. Over the last couple of years, there has been some drop off in the weight search engines have given social media, but we believe that they will continue to influence the rankings.

However, one of the biggest changes in searching is the sophistication of the actual algorithms. In very early days we could search 1 or 2 words and get what we wanted - and that was all search engines could really handle. And they looked ONLY for what you put in. Now we use complete sentences, and the search engines know how to substitute variations of words in your search, and how to correct bad spelling. This means we need to be extraordinarily careful in writing content to ensure we aren't missing easy ranking opportunities.

Bottom line... Content will always be king, because that's what visitors are looking for, and Google knows it. Deliver good quality, unique content and you'll do OK.

We would have to take a good look at your site to be sure, but it could be for a myriad of reasons. As we mentioned elsewhere, this is a very good reason to have a professional do this job. Whatever the reason, there are 2 things you should think about. Did the change in traffic happen: 1. just after a major (or sometimes even minor) algorithm update, and/or 2. did it happen after a major change to the site? Both of these will give you a clue as to where to start looking and how to remedy the drop.

Another good place to look is in Google Webmaster Tools to see if they have flat out told you. Wherever the problem lies, recovering ranking and/or traffic is generally not a quick fix and you need to be prepared for it to take time.

There are many answers regarding this. Some say there should be a maximum of 100 - more or less - as discussed by Max Cutts of Google in this article.

That article talks about links to OTHER websites. For your own internal linking, there's a general rule of thumb that says important pages should be accessible from anywhere on your site by no more than 1 click. We always try to stick to this rule, however sometimes it isn't practical or possible.

They can, if handled correctly. All images have 2 descriptions you can add to them. There's "Title" and "ALT". There's much debate on the value of Title and we generally don't use it. However, ALL images MUST have the ALT tag completed for 2 reasons.

Currently, search engines cannot "look" at an image and know what it is - remember that the internet (all computing, in fact) is done in binary code - so the image is just a series of 1's and 0's. The ALT attribute tag is our way of telling the search engines, "Hey this image is about..."

If, for whatever reason, your image fails to load, your browser will load a placeholder image. Whilst this maintains the formatting on the page, it doesn't tell the reader anything. In this case, the ALT text will display so the reader at least has some idea what should be there.

Domain Authority (DA) is structured through various measurements and relates to site health. Some crucial measurements that better the DA of a page are: social profiles which lead to the site, high quality, earned links and cumulative SEO work.

The better the DA the better chance you will rank higher when certain keywords are entered into search engines. When the battle for competitive advantage is tough, this can be an important metric to show your company better than competitors, thus giving a higher ranking in the search engine. Because of its importance in keywords, it's generally the first metric identified in SEO.

All search engines use various algorithms to determine how your website should be ranked. Some algorithms you may have heard spoken of are Penguin, Panda, and Hummingbird. The latter was quite a shift in focus, with phrases and conversations about the website being measured as opposed to a simple keyword usage.

All algorithms are constantly updated and they form the framework of your ranking for specific words, phrases or topics. Because they determine where your page will rank, it's very important to understand how each search engines looks for and ranks pages.

It comes down to what type of product you are selling and your end goals. Targeting a specific market on Google AdWords can be a significant cost. Every situation is different - different products, different seasons of selling. However, PPC advertising can be a pricey way to get a small result. We recommend starting with a budget of $1000 plus if you're serious about running a solid Adwords campaign.

In many cases, SEO is best for companies with non-seasonal products that have long run sales and a long term success strategy. SEO helps because it focuses on blogging, mobile, social media, bringing original content, and much more. PPC is a short term way to boost a ranking over a limited time. Good organic SEO will continue on, whereas PPC stops as soon as you stop paying.

With so many different variables (currently over 200 different items are looked at), it does take time to get higher than your competitors for them all, let alone even one. There are no guarantees in SEO because the search engines are fluid. They often update and change algorithms multiple times a day. Staying on top constantly is a challenge.

With a good blog that's added to regularly, quality earned back links, and a good social media plan you can stay current and reasonably abreast of changes to the algorithms.

We can definitely help! However, there are 2 parts to SEO - on-page and off-page. On-page relates to, not surprisingly, elements on your website pages - various tags and use of font styles, alt text behind images, and, of course, the keywords and phrases you want to rank for. This is what we handle as part of building and maintaining your site.

Off-page is the business of obtaining back links to your site, generating social media "buzz" and more. This is an area we leave to experts in this field as it really does require expert and knowledgeable people to work on it. This is the one side of SEO that can very easily have a detrimental affect to your site if handled badly.

Please see "I want to rank for (my keywords); is that something you do?" above.

It depends. If you have control or administrative permissions on that website then, yes, it's easy. If the website isn't yours, i.e. a supplier or manufacturer you use, no you can't link, not without their involvement. In that case it's worth ringing and/or emailing them to ask whether a link to your site can be added to theirs. To be as helpful as possible it's worth including the code you'd like used - the less they have to think about, the greater the chance of it happening.

IT IS CRITICAL! Apologies for yelling, but without on-site SEO all other money and effort spent are wasted. On-site SEO is the backbone when talking about digital marketing. Although not technically on-page optimization in the SEO sense, good, intelligent design and layout will also benefit you and your site's visitors as well.

If your site is not well optimized on-page, the search engines will register this as a vote of no-confidence by you - they see you as uninterested in making the effort to work on the site - and they will tell their users this by dropping your ranking.

"Secure" is a relative term! We like to think we've done all a small business can to secure not only our server, but each individual site as well.

We spent a lot of money having a professional programmer and security expert go through our server settings to adjust and tweak them to try to close any holes. Plus, like most, we also run a firewall on the server.

On each site, we install a comprehensive security suite which actively looks for hacking attempts and automatically blocks suspicious IP addresses and hack attempts.

At the end of the day, as mentioned below, it's about making your site less attractive to hackers than your neighbor's.

There are many reasons a site gets hacked, and it can be important to identify why. This helps with tightening up security, but also finding trojan infections which can lead to further hacking if not removed. Like many areas of the web business, there are experts in this area too. In the rare occurrence one of our sites are hacked, we immediately give the disinfecting and monitoring job to Sucuri.net where we have an account.

The best approach, however, is prevention. However, even the best systems can be hacked (Anthem Health Insurance 2/4/2015 for example). Perhaps prevention is too strong a word - maybe deterrence is a better choice. What you want to do is make your site somewhat annoying to hack. Unless it's a high value looking site (something that might hold sensitive data), if it's a hassle, most hackers will move on. You're not truly ever secure, you're just less vulnerable than your neighbor.

There are a number of ways, but they boil down to choosing a good host and a good designer. And not only a good host, but the right hosting plan. Cheap is usually not good when it comes to hosting. You can buy shared hosting in many places for about $5/month. It will normally be bare bones, no frills, and you're grouped in with a whole bunch of other sites (which can make it less secure and open up vulnerabilities to hackers). Many promise unlimited space and bandwidth, but it's a lie - there's no such thing - read the fine print. When it comes to hosting, spend a little more and go for a VPS. You will still need to have someone competent set up your security on these.

Secondly, pick a designer who knows how to implement good site security. Not just the basic things like good passwords (all ours are 12 characters, upper and lower case, numbers, and special characters), but make sure they have a solid, tried and tested, security suite to add onto your website and that they have regular, scheduled backups of your site - stored off site.

Be careful of the sites you visit. Warez & pornography sites, in fact any nefarious type site, can be a virus just waiting to infect your computer. If you're asked to download something that you're not sure of, don't. If you're on a site and a pop up tells you something is wrong with your computer - virus, running slow, etc - close the window immediately and never, never, never, click fix, download, update or anything else on it.