Expanding our services from web design & development and digital marketing, we are pleased to showcase our new range of services; all under one roof – giving you one contact for all of your marketing needs.

Additionally, we welcome the local franchise of Printing.com. With our new partnerships come monthly special offers on printed collateral…

This month’s print offers:

1. Buy 1 business card set and get one free!
2. Pull up banner stands from only £99.00!
3. 25% off all booklets!
4. 5000 A6 flyers from £99.00!

More info? Call the studio on 0800 112 3403

Who are DocumentShop and Marc Wilmot Photography?

• DocumentShop – With clients including the NHS, Barnsley Council and bringing with it the Printing.com franchise, DocumentShop has a wealth of experience providing the highest quality and best value print production around.
• Marc Wilmot Photography – For the last 7 years, Marc Wilmot has been shooting professional photography for clients including Tesco, Sainsburys, Nigel Tyas Ironwork and High Technology Lighting, in addition to designing brochures and all manner of quality print work for numerous local businesses.

As a search marketer I do preach (too much?!) about how important  blogging for SEO is. It’s something that’s still relatively new to the non techy, non geeky, “standard” web user. And not only that, most companies that should be blogging for SEO purposes don’t usually know how SEO can benefit their website rankings and how blogging for SEO can benefit them from a lead generation perspective.

When it comes to convincing clients that blogging for SEO is a viable and valuable route to more sales, or conversions, or whatever their goals are; it can be an up hill struggle fraught with pricing negotiations and sometimes stalemates as you’ve done all you can to showcase blogging benefits, having been met with a lukewarm reaction from your web content client.

Well, I’d advise directing your clients to The WebProNews article titled “Blogging Is Important To Your Overall SEO Strategy“. It’s an interesting read looking at how a full SEO strategy can greatly and profitably benefit from a blog presence.

Check the article out and let us know if you’re currently blogging for SEO purposes, and how it’s helped your search rankings.

The website project started a few months ago, and after alot of hard work from Ray Oldroyd and everyone at UNISON, we worked together to create an excellent new site which we hope members and staff will enjoy being a part of.

Check out the screenshots and once again, thanks to everyone at UNISON for their hard work!

It’s a question that we’ve all been wondering the answer to since Google rolled out the service late last year. In the alreay dubious world of search marketing, the addition of personalised search was seen by many as a potential “kiss of death” to search marketers.

Whilst it’s not as bad as all that, conducting any sort of testing on whether your search rankings are affected by personalised search is both time consuming and difficult at best.

Well, the fantastic Dr. Pete at SEOMoz has done some of the hard work for us. His post looking at whether Google are getting a little too personal is a brilliantly informative read which proves thought provoking and reaffirms that testing is the only sure fire way of making any decisions about personalised search.

Have you come across any other testing methods for checking the impact of Google’s personalised search? If so, let us know in the comments!

As a search marketer and general digi marketing geek I’ve often wondered the best way to use Facebook for my clients. Of course we know about the “Pay Per Click” style advertising Facebook allows but what about those people who can’t afford that; the people who want a more cost effective Facebook advertising solution?

Well, whilst it’s not a golden egg, the recent announcement by Google that Facebook Pages are now included in real time search results is very welcome.

Google currently is seemingly only showing status updates regarding trending or news related items (it is real time search after all), but the potential here is big: you’re a switched on company and you’re on top of what’s happening in your industry. Given the magnitude of any particular even in your sector, you could find your Facebook page displaying in Google’s top ten for a search term you considered a throw away comment on your social network.

Of course, some creative thinking would need employing to sell this as a service to clients; you have to, after all, make sure that anything like this draws quality and relevant traffic.

It’s a big enough development in online marketing to warrant heated debate amongst search marketers, I’m sure – whilst I’m not sure that we can use this as a service alone I do believe that it has some weight if considered as part of an overall digital strategy; after all, Google is all about providing quality and relevant content to searchers and as real time search grows over the year(s?), having your finger on your clients industry pulse will become more and more important.

How have you employed Facebook Pages in your online marketing strategy?

Over on the mojoPortal blog Joe mentions that a couple of Artisteer designs are actually included as skins in the new release.

For anyone unfamiliar with Artisteer it’s a fantastic licensed product which allows you to build a web design using a drag and drop interface; adding advanced elements and navigations with ease.

Artisteer then allows you to export your design in a variety of instantly compatible formats for some of the most popular web platforms out there, including WordPress, Joomla and now mojoPortal.

It’s a double edged sword for mojoPortal; skins are now easier to create (even though most designers I suspect will stick with the Photoshop slice and dice method for flexibility) and the inclusion of mojoPortal as a supported platform adds credibility to this fantastic system whilst showing it’s growth.

Have you tried mojoPortal with Artisteer? Let us know how you got on!

Whilst I’ve had a play around with the desktop version and to be honest, couldn’t see much point in it considering we’re on Twitter and Facebook (just another social network to update?!), I didn’t find it revolutionary or at all useful; especially considering I’m not an ardent Gmail user.

Anyhoo, I can see why people would like to use Google Buzz and one day (if and when it opens up to non Gmail users and fixes some bugs) I might even revisit my own personal Google Buzz profile and crack on. For now I’ll keep it at arms length, especially given the privacy concerns (which Google have apparently now fixed).

That said; there are some very interesting features within the Buzz setup. The most promising aspect for me is the location feature – the ability to find what’s “buzzing” in your area and see what people you may have never come across before are saying about things around you opens up networking opportunities that may have been previously unheard of.

And, for those who do enjoy Buzz I’d imagine that mobile solutions are a huge selling point; keeping your Buzz profile up to date on the go is integral to a healthy social experience.

So, does Google Buzz have an iPhone App? Sadly no, not yet. However, the Google Buzz iPhone Web Interface does a great job of simulating a real life iPhone App – as do all Google’s iPhone targeted web interfaces. If you get a coffee break and fancy looking into it more I’d strongly suggest a read through Digital Trends Hands On Review With Google Buzz which looks in depth at the mobile interface and provides some great insights.

What do you think of Google Buzz – hit or miss?

Obviously this piqued my interest, given that a lot of companies outsource such tasks to us at The Design Loft.

The article isn’t actually a search marketer bashing as I may have expected, it’s actually an interesting piece on how getting a basic grasp of SEO can greatly benefit your online business.

It also looks at how employing search marketers such as us to manage your SEO can be a daunting task; asking how can search marketers know how you want to promote your business any beter than you do.

Whilst I don’t agree with everything the article says, it does make some valid points around avoiding search marketing companies who promise quick ranking boosts and various grey hat methods – methods that, whilst not strictly “wrong”, do leave something to be desired and are likely to be flagged as bad practice at some point in the near future by the big search players; Google et al.

It is true that most of our clients do actually have a basic understanding of SEO, and it helps us to get along better with them. We can talk more openly about techniques used and the clients who do have some search experience are full of enthusiasm for the new strategies we propose.

As a business owner, the bottom line really is that gaining a basic understanding of SEO will allow you to make informed decisions about which search marketing company to choose, what realistic expectations are and how to effectively track the search marketing company’s progress on your websites.

As a search marketer, it’s reassuring to know that the processes we undertake here as standard; getting to know our clients, their businesses, their goals and past experience among other things is a vital part of providing a complete and quality SEO service to you as a client.

If you’re a designer looking to outsource SEO, or a company looking to find a search marketing company to work with, I’d greatly advise spending a little time getting to know the basics so that the (not so) “ninja art” of SEO becomes a welcome addition to your marketing arsenal.

Have you had any bad experiences outsourcing your SEO?

Open up iChat and then follow these instructions from the Facebook Site Tour:

• Go to iChat Preferences
• Click “Accounts” and then hit +
• Select “Jabber” from the list and then enter:Username: yourusername@chat.facebook.com
  Password: <your Facebook password>
• Click the arrow next to “Server Options” and enter:Server: chat.facebook.com
  Port: 5522 5222
  (Uncheck the box labeled “USE SSL”)

Voila! Facebook is now set up to work with iChat!

It’s a good read as a SEM and provides a bit of an insight into the company’s plans for it’s search product going forward; Yahoo! of course did pioneer this a decade ago…

The thing that really got me wondering is this quote from Greg Sterling of SearchEngineLand:

“I think the market wants a competitive Yahoo, it doesn’t want to see just two players dominate this space. It wants more diversity and innovation and that comes from competition. I give them a fighting chance.”

As a search marketer, of course we want to see Yahoo! bounce back and drive innovation in search the way that Google is constantly doing. But, my question is this:

As standard web users – do people really care whether or not they have a pick list of search providers, as long as they get relevant results from their queries?