Web Design Dumfries

How a Blog Can Help Your Business

admin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:50:26 +0000

More businesses are beginning to realise how powerful a tool the internet really is and in particular the rise of the blog. In the early days of blogging they were primarily for geeks to share information with each other but today they are much, much more.

The blog is a powerful tool to help businesses stay in touch and communicate with their customers, existing and potential. WordPress in particular is the platform now used by most blogs. Google loves fresh relevant content and the best way to create a constant steady stream is by writing on your blog. The more content you create the more your website will be found in the search results and if your are using WordPress then great because it is also loved by most of the major search engines including Google.

If your main site is built on the WordPress platform it is ready made for blogging and you can interact with your customers by allowing them to post comments on your pages and the replying to them. All this is great for SEO and great for Customer Relationship Management.

Free SEO Checkup

admin — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 12:41:13 +0000

We are now offering a free SEO audit on your website. All you need to do is contact us with your site’s URL and a list of the keywords you are currently targeting or would like to target. We will examine your site’s current search engine optimization and provide you with a report detailing our recommendations (if any) on how your site’s search engine rankings could be improved. You are under no obligation to accept our recommendations or contract us to carry out any SEO work on your site. So what have you got to lose? Call us now or use our contact form and you could soon see your site climbing in the rankings faster than you ever thought possible.

Google Freshness Update-how does it affect your site?

admin — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 13:23:10 +0000

Google recently released it’s latest in a long line of algorithm updates, even though it isn’t Panda 2.6 it will still have a major impact on around 30% of searches. The new freshness update is built upon last year’s caffeine update which Google claims will allow it to provide users with the most up to date content. Google’s Amit Singhal says “Given the incredibly fast pace at which information moves in today’s world, the most recent information can be from the last week, day or even minute, and depending on the search terms, the algorithm needs to be able to figure out if a result from a week ago about a TV show is recent, or if a result from a week ago about breaking news is too old.”

So what do we know about the latest algorithm?

It shows the latest information on, breaking news, trending stories and hot subjects.

It delivers the very latest information on upcoming major events.

It delivers on product releases with the latest reviews and information.

How will this affect your brand?

For most brands this should not have a major impact on their rankings, however, if you are targeting long tail keywords that are constantly having new content created such as product releases and reviews then the impact could be quite significant.

Google assumes that users will want to see the latest reviews and most up to date product information, meaning you would have to ensure your strategy provided users with this latest information.

New WordPress site for Mossburn Community Farm

admin — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:02:03 +0000

We have just built a new website for Mossburn Community Farm using the wordpress platform. The site features a fully integrated shopping cart, allowing this local animal charity to sell products online and also enable users to foster any of their animals by having them as products in the shop. The site also features a donation facility where users can leave a donation of their choice as a one off or regular monthly donations. This new site is a good example of the versatility and functionality that wordpress now offers designers and end users. We recommend visiting www.mossburn.org to see for yourself just how well this site works.

WordPress Sites For Small Businesses

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:23:16 +0000

The WordPress blogging and website building platform has become a bit of an anomaly. Their open-source policy means that users continue to update, change, and improve this program so that it is under a constant state of evolution. For web designers that are sitting on the fence over whether they should begin utilizing WordPress for their small business sites, here are some of the advantages that this open-source platform has to offer.

The first advantage is going to come down to price. All facets of WordPress, outside of the third-party plugins and theme, are completely open to view and manipulate. Many of the most expensive or time-consuming portions of a custom-made website can be quickly referenced and adapted within WordPress. This includes menus, sliders, Analytics plugins, PPC ads, and much more. Web designers also have tens of thousands of options for purchasing affordable third-party themes that they will then be able to pass on to their clients. Many of the top selling themes come in for less than $100 and can be used an unlimited amount of times. Those that are creating themes also tend to offer single-click customization for color schemes and page layout.

Web designers are also going to find that WordPress consumes less time than almost any other website building platform. One of the major reasons for this is WordPress’ advanced content management system. For web designers that are forced to purchase a data warehousing service or have limited space on their own servers, redundancies can get expensive. WordPress offers an extremely easy platform to load pictures, video, songs, and countless other types of files without being forced to migrate them onto multiple servers. Designers will also have the option to allow their clients limited access in uploading their own PRs, pictures, videos, and blog entries with tiered access.

The final piece of the puzzle comes down to streamlined SEO support. There are thousands of plugins and themes that can be utilized to quickly update tags, check keyword competition, and optimize content and domain names. Small business owners want websites that appear organically within search engines and this can be a web designers worst nightmare. With WordPress, web designers will find that they can now optimize websites in a fraction of the time, leading to less stress and happier clients.

These three aspects are only the tip of the iceberg with it comes to the dynamic nature of WordPress. This open source platform has come a long way since its earlier days as a simple blogging tool. Web designers are going to find that they are able to cut costs, increase their efficiency, and produce happy clients one website at a time.