Best SEO in High Wycombe! Are you OPTIMISED by Big Gun Digital?

Big Gun Digital’s 6 Month Guide to SEO: Month 4 – Crawlers

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:22:00 +0000

Your website might have pages with content that may not be useful for visitors; therefore it is possible to keep these pages hidden in search engine results. This is done by simply adding Robot.txt files to the website root directory which informs the search engine crawlers not to crawl that particular page and will prevent it from showing in search engine results. An example of this type of page would be a ‘Thank You’ page your visitors view if they submit a contact query form or buy an item from your website.

There are other methods you can use to prevent certain pages from showing in results. For example Google Webmasters has the tools for removing content that has already been crawled and you can also add ‘NOINDEX’ to robots meta tags.

If you have sensitive information that you don’t want visitors viewing on your site then it is advised to use other forms of blocking crawlers as Robots may still reference the URLs but not the content on the page. Not only this, but rogue search engines that do not obey the Robot Exclusion Standard may access the page.

Also there could be a curious visitor such as a competitor who may scrutinise directories or subdirectories in your Robots.txt file and guess the URL of pages you want hidden.

Your website might contain links that you would rather not be associated with. A good example is how people can comment on blogs and leave links. Some of these links maybe to spam sites or websites containing adult material. This will significantly affect your ranking as the crawlers may associate you with the site, therefore it is a good idea to use a rel=’nofollow’ tag on the links. This will tell the crawler not to inspect the link.

This advice also applies to other user generated applications on your website such as forums, refer listings and guest books. CAPTCHAs and Comment Moderation tools are a good way to prevent spammers.

Nofollow tags can also be used to stop a spamming website taking your site's reputation, for example if you write a page on fraudulent websites that you want to warn other people about, you might want to include the link for people to visit the site to see what you are warning them against. This website can get a higher ranking from the deep link on your site but a nofollow tag on this link will stop this from happening.

If you have a multiple number of links on your webpage that you don’t want to be associated with or do not want to pass your website's reputation on to then you can simply add nofollow in the head of your site.

Come back next month for our tips on how to make your website adaptable and SEO friendly for mobile phones...

This blog post is written by Big Gun Digital, a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe. We specialise in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media Marketing. If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.

Big Gun Digital’s 6 Month Guide to SEO: Month 3 – Content Optimisation

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Big Gun Digital’s 6 Month Guide to SEO is aimed at providing the reader with a good understanding of SEO and the importance it has to increase a website’s visibility on the internet. Every month Big Gun Digital will release a fresh article containing information about certain aspects of SEO Marketing.
This month Big Gun Digital will explain the importance of your website’s content and how to optimise it.

Quality of Content.
The website’s content is probably the most important factor that will influence web users to visit. Compelling, interesting and original information will help the site’s reputation and draw in traffic. People may link to your site from their blogs, website or forums and tell others about it on social media platforms.

Try to add a lot of keywords that are relevant to your topic that people may use when typing in to search engines. For example if someone is wanting to find a new pair of trainers they might search for ‘Black Nike Running Footwear’. If your site was about footwear then try and phrase the content to include this sentence. There are tools to help you find sentences that are popular in searches. Google Adwords provides a useful tool for this.

Try to avoid sloppy content, users like easy to read article. Try to keep the content relevant and not go off into a different direction as this will lose the interest of the reader and dilute the important keywords on the site. Fresh content is also extremely important as this will keep people coming back to consume new information. If you have copied information from another website it could put your search engine results ranking at risk. Remember that the content should be designed around your target audience and not the search engines to pick up on.

Over spamming keywords is not only obvious for the reader but the crawlers will pick up on this and could rank the website lower.

Anchor Text
An Anchor Text is a link on your page that will link to another website or a page on your site like the homepage. A good example is if your website was about Trainers in general and you had a specific page on Running Shoes, you might have a sentence that includes ‘Running Shoes’ on the homepage, that phrase should link to your Running Shoes page.

That’s a wrap for this month's tips, be sure to check back next month when we will be discussing how to deal with crawlers!

If you would like help with implementing any of the above tips on your own company website, then do not hesitate to contact us.

This blog post is written by Big Gun Digital, a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe. We specialise in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media Marketing. If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.

Big Gun Digital’s 6 Month Guide to SEO: Month 2 – URL Structure and Site Navigation

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:24:00 +0000

Big Gun Digital’s 6 Month Guide to SEO: Month 2 – URL Structure and Site Navigation
Big Gun Digital’s 6 month guide to SEO is aimed at providing the reader with a good understanding of SEO and the importance it has to increase a website’s visibility on the internet. Every month Big Gun Digital will release a fresh article containing information about certain aspects of SEO Marketing.
This month Big Gun Digital will explain the importance of URLs, site navigation, sitemaps and 404 pages.

URL Structure
It is important that your site has a simple and well structured URL for various reasons.

• A well structured URL with descriptive filenames and categories allows crawlers to crawl and document your site easier.

• A simple URL structure is important if a visitor wants to navigate through the website and decide to cut off various parts of the URL to be directed to a certain page, for example, www.biggundigital.co.uk/seo-tips/structuredurls.html might be cut down by the visitor to www.biggundigital.co.uk/seo-tips.html to go back a page but if the URL contained excessive cryptic code (biggundigital.co.uk/pp1221/set-tips223341.html) then the visitor will have difficulty and maybe leave off part of the code resulting in a broken link.

• A simple URL will allow other website owners to link to the site using anchor text easily as it will be easy to remember which can help with organic SEO, leading to higher rankings in results pages.

• As the search engine results show the URL under the title (explained in last month’s tips). People who are searching for a topic will see that the URL contains relevant words therefore prompt them to visit.

Figure 1. URL shown in the search results

Site Navigation
The next BIG Gun Digital Tip this month is how to make your site easier to navigate for visitors.
Website navigation helps people find content on the site easily and also helps Google (and other search engines) distinguish important content. It is a good idea to plan navigation form the homepage (root page) as it is normally the most frequently visited page and the starting point for visitors. Things to consider when creating a good navigation structure are:

• How to categorise the products on your site

• How visitors will find other pages from the homepage

• Are the topics of your site detailed enough to have subcategories of their own

• Does each ‘product’ need another page describing it’s features in further detail (homepage -> product listing -> specific product -> product spec)

It may be a good idea, if the website is complex, to create a Breadcrumb. This is a formation of internal links placed on each page that the visitor can use to navigate back to the previous page/pages. Breadcrumbs usually consist of the root page (home page) being at the top left and the more specific pages mapped out to the right as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Example of a website navigation structure

Importance of Sitemaps
A sitemap is a simple page on a website that consists of an orderly hierarchical list of pages on the site. Visitors may use the sitemap if they are having trouble navigating to the pages they want. This is mainly for human use although crawlers may visit the page to gather information of the site. However crawlers usually use the XML Sitemaps which have to be submitted separately. Sitemaps are important for boosting page rankings and there are a lot of factors that need to be taken into consideration when creating / submitting sitemaps so if you are new to the world of web development we strongly advise it is left to the experts!

The last topic for this month is 404 pages
404 pages appear when a user clicks on a broken link of a website or doesn’t type the URL properly. It is strongly advised that the 404 page is customised to help the person back to the website by providing links on the page to the site.

Well that’s it for this month folks, be sure to check back for next month’s tips when we will be talking about optimising content!
If you would like help with implementing any of the above tips on your own company website, then do not hesitate to contact us.

Big Gun Digital’s 6 Month Guide to SEO: Month 1 – Basics

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:03:00 +0000

Big Gun Digital’s 6 month guide to SEO is aimed at providing the reader with a good understanding of SEO and the importance it has to increase a website’s visibility on the internet. Every month Big Gun Digital will release a fresh article containing information about certain aspects of SEO Marketing.

Although this guide doesn’t disclose any secrets that will place your website at the top of search engine results, it does however give useful advice that will help search engines index, crawl and comprehend your site’s content.

The Basics:

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the term used for undertaking certain changes to a website in order to improve the website’s user experience and increase the rank in organic search engine results pages. Putting your site’s best attribute forward for search engine results is what Search Engine Optimisation is really about but baring in mind that the consumer’s experience on the website should be the main priority, not the search engines.

Now for the technical bits....

The Importance of Page Titles.

A Page Title should be relevant as it informs the search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, ect) and the user the subject matter of a page. A unique page title should be created for each page on the site that may include different content as this will help search engines distinguish that the page is different to all the others on the website. The title is placed in the HTML within the Title Tag and will be the main underlined heading visible in the search engine results as shown in Figure 1. Also highlighted by Figure 1 is how the key words that the consumer searched for (‘Big Gun Digital’) show up bold in the title pages displayed in the results to help people distinguish what sites have relevant information to their query.

Figure 1. Big Gun Digital is searched for and shown up bold in the Title

The title of your page can include your company’s name, your website’s name and maybe other important factors including the location of your company, or even the industry your business operates in.

The Importance of Page Descriptions.

After the Title of a webpage has been defined, it is important to add the page description to the HTML. Just like the page title, this should be unique for each page on the website. The description will be viewed as a small summary about the page under the page title in the search engine results and will put the key words in bold as seen in Figure 2. It is important to keep the description significant and informative but not too long as the search engine will cut it down to fit. If the description is crammed full of keywords that do not make sense as a sentence then the search engine may consider this as spam which will negatively affect the site’s ranking. If you do not include a description in the HTML, then search engines will use a relevant snippet of the page’s content automatically which may not be as informative as a purpose made description. On the other hand if the search engine finds content in the website that may be more relevant to the user’s query, then they will use this instead.

Figure 2. Description of the website’s content with key words highlighted in bold.

If your page’s title and description are user friendly, relevant and informative then Search Engines will give great credit for the site and may rank it higher on the results pages. Although titles and descriptions are important for SEO, this is a fraction of the types of practises that are required to increase a page’s rank in results pages. Be sure to look out for Big Gun Digital’s SEO tips next month where we will be explaining URL structure and how to make your site easier to navigate.

Traditional Pub comes out of hiding with the help of Big Gun Digital

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:14:00 +0000

The design, development and basic SEO set up of The Crooked Billet Website.

One of our latest recently completed projects was design and development of the website for The Crooked Billet, one of Buckinghamshire’s hidden delights. The traditional pub, conveniently not too far from the Big Gun Digital office, has award winning gardens, real ales and a gorgeous selection of very reasonably priced, home cooked food.

Our client who came to us with a verbal brief stating that they wanted to let people know what they had to offer and to broaden their visibility to potential customers in order to enhance the business’ success. The online presence of the pub is very important to let people to know they exist as it is located off the beaten track, quite literally in the middle of the countryside. Our client showed us a couple of existing websites they liked which gave us a good insight on their taste. We then visited the pub to get a good feel of the atmosphere and consequently portray in the website. As you can see, a mixture of our photography and their own shots give you a good feel of the award winning gardens.

In designing the webpage we wanted to really sell the traditional, warm and welcoming aspects of the 'oldy worldy' pub as these are rare in modern times. We did this by using traditional, easy on the eye colours and included photos of the pub’s fresh, homemade food which is a strong selling point for the business. We included picturesque photos of the pub along with a short story of its history (which also hangs up in the bar) to really draw on the pub’s characteristics.

We took several important factors into account which will increase the entire customer experience from visiting the site to travelling to the pub. We added opening times and a map to help people locate the pub easily and also added a photo gallery of the pub in every season to let people have a good idea what to expect.

Click on images for an expanded view...

Other important functionality included a PHP based form to ensure a quick, flexible and easy method of contact as well as the facility to input their own information onto the What’s on page.

We also added a downloadable version of the menu, accessible through just one click, to allow customers to view the pub’s homemade, freshly served food from the comfort of their own home.

As online marketing is a huge part of Big Gun Digital’s operations, we ensured the website contains ‘under the bonnet’ elements which maximise the online visibility of the site and its priority in search engine results.

The optimised Google Places page will hugely help local search visibility and address the problem of people being sent to the Crooked Billet in Henley by mistake! As if it wasn’t hard enough to find anyway in between Marlow, Bourne End & Flackwell Heath - Buckinghamshire.

If you are looking for a similar pub website build and basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) set up with Big Gun Digital you would be looking at a figure of roughly £1,100.

To finish the post we would like to say a big thank you to Bill and Anita for inviting us down to the 25 year anniversary. A great time was had by all. Oh and if you are still reading by this point why not give them a call and arrange a table for this evening!

This blog post is written by Big Gun Digital, a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe. We specialise in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media Marketing. If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.

SMART Board Rooms designed & optimised by Big Gun Digital

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:48:00 +0000

We recently completed this website for one of our long standing High Wycombe based clients, Educationall Ltd. The project consisted of Logo Design, Website Design, Website Development and On Page Search Engine Optimisation.

Educationall Ltd, who are a specialist in audio visual for the education sector had identified a niche in the market for audio visual in the business sector. Interactive Whiteboards such as SMART Board's and Promethean ActivBoard's have been a revolution in classrooms around the country and Educationall have the knowledge and expertise to supply, install, provide training and maintain the equipment taking the hassle out of involving multiple parties.

We decided upon a clean, easy to navigate website with strong visuals and obvious but not overly distracting calls to action. As it is a relatively new trend it was important to show the whiteboards in meeting room scenario's. It was also important to differentiate the various types of meeting room for SEO purposes to ensure that individual search preferences were catered for.

The website is built on a Joomla content management system which allows Educationall complete control for text and image updates throughout. We also installed ACE SEF for ease of updating search engine friendly URL's as well as assist in all the other Search Engine Optimisation fundamentals.

Features include a number of image slideshows to captivate visitors, a good number of ways in which to contact such as a clear phone number (01494 616 090 incase you need one!) and numerous links to quick forms. You will also find a product / offer gallery on the sub pages which the client can easily update themselves.

We submitted and pinged the XML Sitemap this morning so hope to see it appear in Search Engine Results pages in the next few days. Once in the index we expect the site to gain good Google ranking positions for phrases like 'Meeting room audio visual' and 'Interactive whiteboards for business' and 'Training room SMART Board'. A little down the line we may look into more generic phrases with Adwords such as 'Meeting productivity' and 'Video conferencing' and 'Meeting room equipment'.

Don't forget to visit SMARTBoardRooms.co.uk site here and Bookmark, Share, Favourite, Like & Stumble the pages until your heart's content!

This blog post is written by Big Gun Digital, a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe. We specialise in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media Marketing. If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.

First Year's Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 20:42:00 +0000

Big Gun Digital are one year old today with a BANG! So just a quick message to thank everyone for their involvement so far... Here's to many more successful years.

This blog post is written by Big Gun Digital, a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe. We specialise in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media Marketing. If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.

Big Gun Digital Latest Work - TS Construction Website

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Big Gun Digital have successfully completed a new website and On-Page SEO Set-up for TS Construction Ltd, a well established local builders based in Marlow, specialising in bathroom fitting.

Even though TS Construction are well known in the local area, they came to us as they didn't have a website to refer potential clients to, especially leads from a local web based business directory in which they had recently invested advertising budget. They also wanted to gain additional business through online search engine referrals.

We answered this brief with initial keyword research and competitor analysis which enabled us to carefully plan a search marketing strategy and integrate it into the new search engine friendly website. We then came up with a clean, professional website design that enabled the client to showcase their services to potential clients with features such as an attractive image slideshow banner, work gallery, testimonials page and contact form.

The client specialises in bathroom fitting, so this was given it's own page and a different colour scheme to help it stand out. This is the page what would link to the website directory. Once the website was built, a basic On-Page SEO Set-up was completed including the right keywords and the site was uploaded. We also set up regular monthly reports for the client, which enables them to see useful website statistics such as page views, keywords used and visitor conversions.

Big Gun Digital Latest Work

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:53:00 +0000

Ultra Ensign - Website Design and SEO Set Up

Big Gun Digital have successfully completed an additional website design for Ultra Supression Systems Ltd, a company specialising in the supply and maintenance of fire suppression products and systems, based in High Wycombe.

This client already had an website demonstrating their expertise in water suppression systems, but wanted to create a new brand encapsulating their full expertise and creating a complete fire equipment installation and maintenance service which offers businesses a one-stop-shop for fire protection, installation, management, risk assessment and compliance management.

We answered the brief by creating a website that is informative, fresh, modern and visually engaging, adding several tools to aid both the user's experience whilst visiting the site and its usability.

In addition to the website's attractive colour scheme which breaks the mould of fire = red, we added a moving flash banner to help highlight and illustrate the services on offer and at the bottom of the screen we also have another moving text element, with questions encouraging the website visitor to call, such as "is your fire equipment regularly maintained?". Features that encourage the website visitor to interact with the site include a form to fill in online to book a fire safety check, along with a free download of fire prevention tips.

Each page on the finished website is fully optimised for search engines with a carefully thought out keyword strategy. The website is easily maintained by the client using a Joomla Content Management System and the client has full access to website statistics. This enables them to measure the site's number of visitors and hence the website's success, based on reporting criteria such as number of visits, keywords used, referring sites, page click patterns and length of time on site.

This blog post is written by Big Gun Digital, a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe. We specialise in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media Marketing. If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (BigGunDigital) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:37:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to the Big Gun Digital Blog. We are a young Internet Marketing company based in High Wycombe, specialising in Website Design, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Campaigns, E-mail Marketing and Social Media. So if you need more from your website, we will no doubt have all the answers you need.

On our Blog, you will get a fresh slice of Big Gun life, getting to know us better as we share all of our news, latest projects and relevant industry updates that we feel will help our readers and clients alike.

We hope you enjoy reading and do feel free to comment on our posts and check back often! If you wish us to help with your Website or Internet Marketing needs then do call us on 01494 557311 or email us LetsChat@BigGunDigital.co.uk.