Over the last year, some big name agencies in Leicester and the midlands have gone bust. Or, have had large staff lay offs.

The names of the agencies in question are in inconsequential. But the way they treated their staff is not.

Agencies that contract their staff 9-5, but expect them their at least 8-6 lest they get hauled over the coals. That's without the regular mandatory and unpaid overtime.

Promising staff promotions and pay rises in return for loyalty. Which staff can never take advantage, of because they are so burnt out in twelve months that they have to move on. Then the cycle repeats. Just different names and faces.

I have always been vocal about agencies that operate like this. It is one of the singular biggest problems with our industry. The impact of which permeates outwards, have a notable social impact.

With the industry shrinking in Leicester and the midlands. It leads me to muse if there's just not room for this kind of business model anymore?

There are many successful digital agencies. Digital agencies where the staff are treated well. Where they occupy beautiful offices. Where they have good working hours and where they directors are still very wealthy.

So why do people do it? In my experience power games and megalomania.

The ends must justify the means. I do not believe in a just world. And while I would not lightly wish ill upon anyone, it does make me grin a little see the perpetrators come undone. While agencies who look after their staff seem to be expanding.

"When you get there, dont be suprised if nobody knows what the f**k they are really doing -- Anon

When my partner left uni and embarked on her career as a copywriter, a friend of ours shared this little nugget of wisdom; truly an inestimable treasure.

In the first instance it made me grin. But in the time that has elapsed since, I have learnt it to be true on many levels.

People can be hugely experienced and trained in many ways. But at some point, everybody is having to "wing it a bit" and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are either liars or deluded.

So, no. No one know what the f**ck they are doing...apart from me of course.

F**k 'em

-- Olde English Proverb

Here's something I wish somebody had told me when I was just starting out: let the client ruin their website if they want to.

We have all been in the situation before. A seemingly perfectly designed and coded website. The team are slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves on an excellent job well done. Then the phone rings, it's the client; they want to change x, y and z, which, sadly, compromises the quality of your work. Backslapping ceases.

Some discuss this quandary as if it were the muse of Rodin's thinker. But the solution is simple; let them ruin their website if they want to.

Warn them, then make their changes anyway

In the real world, when you find yourself in the situation, here's what you do.

1) Strongly advise your client why they should do something or not do something - use your serious face & tone of voice.
2) Explain you are the expert and you don't think it's a good idea; that it could directly effect their ROI.
3) Swallow the bitter pill. Tell them that all this said. Ultimately you understand they pay the bills and you will do what makes them happy...even if you don't think its a smart idea and, only upon the understanding that you won't be supporting the resulting tangle free of charge.

It shouldn't be that hard to update your designs and code

If your code is not modular and not object orientated enough that it can't be adapted, then you are doing it wrong.

Likewise, if your photoshop file is such a mess you can't work with it, well that's not the client's fault either.

And if you have failed to educate the customer regarding this process adequately, how amends work and how they are priced...well that's your fault too.

Make the changes

Assuming the client has the money to pay for their changes, the only problem left is the pride and the ego of those working on the project.

Pride and ego are great attributes in artists. But agency workers are not artists - so if anyone has an artisan hissy fit, well just slap em atop the head and tell them to grow up. Alternatively, take them for a beer and and tell them it will all be OK; whatever your preferred management style is.

Then make the changes anyway.

Think long and hard about how to prevent this happening again

With proper planning and adequate workflows, you never need to be in this situation again. Things that can help prevent this kind of problem...

• Having the client sign off designs and functionality
• Making sure your contact is able to sign off and have the final decision on matters relating to the project
• Function & Technical specifications
• Thorough terms of service.
• Spending time educating clients regarding workflow.

Of course, you can do all of these things and still end up in this scenario. In which case; let the client ruin their website; it will make them happy, which should make you happy; and the merry-go-round of agency life will keep spinning on.

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Listen: We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Since late July, I have been working three day weeks. When this all started, I only meant to do it for the month of August, yet here we are at the end of October and only now am I gearing up to transition back to the five day week.

In my defense, I haven't been sitting around in my pants playing video games...well at least not all the time.

Monday, Tuesday, and Friday I have been working two separate contracts. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday I have been getting up to all kinds of mischief.

As a contractor, i work hard for my clients and do everything I can to ensure the very best ROI for them (their investment being my time). Sometimes this means working very long days, and sometimes it means unsociable hours - this in itself sounds like any job in the tech industry. But, one thing you do get with contracting is that sensation of an extra little bit of freedom and control. Freedom and control that until now, I have never been able to find; not back in the day when I used to run a board shop, not when I ran a small development agency and not in any full-time roll.

This freedom, combined with just about enough money to get by on has made for three months of happiness and satisfaction I don't think I have experienced before as an adult.

So I have spent some of this time on surfing in Cornwall, I spent some of it catching up with old friends and family. Some of it was spent playing the piano, some the guitar, some brushing up on my German (it's still piss poor) and some of it in Deutschland itself. I caught up on my industry reading, played with some new frameworks, worked on some side projects and considered at length how to improve the services that I already offer. I also sat around in my pants and played video games for a bit too.

As a result, I have been much more relaxed. I have been more productive on the days I have been at work, and have been learning new things at a rate greater than I ever been able to before.

There has been literally, no downside, apart from the fact my bank balance has been a little lower; a price worth paying in my opinion.

Now I am mega excited about getting back to work five days a week. Fresh, recharged and ready to go; I have some really exciting projects coming up. Then in 2017, when I am feeling a bit tired and worn out, I may taper down my hours again.

Long of the short, there's an enormous amount of benefits to working a shorter week, even if you only do it for a little while. Give it a try.

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When working with small business, it can be tough to justify the cost of a VPS to the client.

For example. A $10 Digital Ocean droplet, with Plesk installed, automated backups and an SSL certificate has a cost price of approx £120 a year. That doesn't include time taken to spin the server up, deploy to it and run ongoing maintenance. Then there's you mark up to be considered on top of that.

Despite the higher cost, the use of a VPS is highly recommendable for any business. It is faster, more secure and more reliable. All things, that can have a great impact on SEO.

So how can we give the client some benefits of a VPS without the cost?

Solution?: Small Scale, Shared Hosting on a VPS

Spin up a Digital Ocean VPS and use it as a shared host. But only allow a maximum of five websites on it at any one time.

To prevent the server falling over, these websites should be vetted and serviced by you.

Benefit 1: Speed

A site on a small shared VPS, as described here, is likely to be substantially faster than a large scale shared host.

Benefit 2: Security

The risk of another site on your server getting hacked or attacked is significantly reduced (as there are only four other websites on the server), which means a boost in your security.

Benefit 3: Reduced Risk of Resource Hogging

With only five websites sharing server resources, it is less likely that any one of these websites will hog resources and slow down other websites on the server.

Benefit 4: Easier to scale

If one of the websites on the server does receive a larger than average quantity of traffic, the server can easily be scaled to this demand.

Benefit 5: More control for webmaster

Not a direct benefit to the client, but indirectly you as the webmaster have more control of a VPS then you would of a shared server. Allowing for things like SSH access, automated deployment, server configuration, etc.

Benefit 6: Good Cost to benefit ratio

In all instances, these benefits are not as substantial as if a client had a VPS which solely hosted their site on it. However, they would be paying 1/5 of the price, and receiving much more than 1/5 of the benefits.

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Once upon a time, bespoke CMS solutions and PHP frameworks were the best things for a client. This time, however, has now passed. The use of a bespoke CMS is an archaic practice which can more often than not, be detrimental to the clients business interests. Here's why.

You will be dependent on the author of your bespoke CMS

If you purchase a bespoke CMS, you are reliant on the people who coded it. It may well be written in PHP, but it's not as simple as just finding another PHP developer. Without extensive documentation, the code might as well be jibberish.

Sure another PHP developer can work with with the code base, but they will never know it as well as the original author and they will take a hell of a long time to comprehend it properly (guess who is going to pick up the bill for that). Whereas with an off the shelf CMS or framework; if you move to another developer who specialises in said system, they have all the prerequisite knowledge required to work on it right away.

There are excellent training resources (Codeschool, Laracasts, Treehouse) for open source CMS & frameworks; these do not exist for bespoke frameworks.

Do not underestimate how much developers hate inheriting badly documented bespoke code. If you're hiring a freelancer, you will be paying a premium for what they have to endure. Or if you have an internal team you are going to force to work with it, you are going to have morale issues very quickly.

I have seen developers turn down jobs at digital agencies, based upon fear of what they might inherit if they were joining up - bespoke CMS solutions are an excellent example of the kind of thing that induce this fear.

It is not Tried & Tested

The bespoke CMS may have 100 happy users, but the mainstream CMS has many, many thousands (or even millions) of happy users. Many people are sharing their experience with the system in online communities etc., something custom CMS won’t have. Because so many people use the CMS, bugs will be found and fixed much quicker than on a system that has far fewer users. This high level of usage means any holes in security, glitches, performance issues and non-user-friendly quirks are very quickly ironed out.

You won't get the support you need

If you need help on a bespoke CMS, who will provide it? I have worked in many agencies; I have yet to discover one that makes real money off support contracts. The result? Support slips to the bottom of the pile underneath new projects that generate more cash.

So, your probably going to have to look for support elsewhere or internally. Which, brings us back, to dependence. If you have used a mainstream CMS or framework finding this support is going to be much easier.

Security Issues

How secure a bespoke CMS can be is a separate matter of debate. However. When a security exploit is discovered (and, it is a case of when; not if), how quickly could the devs who made your CMS push out a security patch? Would they be able to push it out automatically or would they be able to do it as and automated update? Either way, It's highly unlikely they could patch up the exploit as quickly as an open source team.

The bespoke solution will rarely be as good as the mainstream alternative

Laravel, at the time of writing; the most popular PHP framework on the net, has 338 contributors. That's the combined effort of 338 developers. A small internal dev team, building a bespoke framework or CMS, DO NOT know better than this many people.

On the modern web, the use of bespoke CMS and frameworks is irresponsible at best and benefits nobody, apart from the team who developed and sold it.

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Recently I reported somebody I believe to be a fraudulent company director to companies house & the insolvency service. It's the first time I have ever done this, but, looking back over my years spent working in the creative sector, there have numerous occasions where I should have done this previously.

Anyone who has worked in the creative industry for any length of time will have, at some point, been ripped off. This is an inevitable learning curve. In these instances recovering your monies through the small claims court, is something I would encourage everyone to attempt. But aside from recovering your monies, ask yourself: has the conduct of the director(s) been illegal? If you think there is a chance that it is, you have an ethical and honor bound duty to our little community to grass them up accordingly.

Failure to do so means others could fall into the same trap. It could even directly come back to bite you again in the future, as I recently discovered.

What happened to me: then

As a young, enthusiastic freelancer, I took a job from a company based in Leicester. I was provided a design by the "Creative Agency" and asked to code it. Which I did, thus concluding our arrangement. However the end customer (of the Agency) decided they didn't like the design, and my client (the agency) told me if I wanted to get paid, I was going to have to code it again for free. Naively, I coded an entirely new design. They tried to pull the same thing a third time, but I said enough is enough and refused to do any further work.

Months of subsequent chasing ensued, promises made, ample chances given. But the long of the short; I never got paid - it was about £1000 worth of work.

So, I began the proceedings to take my grievance to small claims court. I also started looking into the possibility, of petitioning the courts to windup the company upon the basis it couldn't pay its debts, and, was taking on work it knew it could never provide.

Upon discovering this, the director of the agency became extremely hostile. But eventually calmed down and gave me a sob story about how he was broke, had lost everything and was leaving the industry and closing the business up. Telling me if I didn't petition for the companies winding up, I might get some money in the liquidation. Alternatively, if I continued on my route "going for the jugular" I wouldn't get anything as the company was already in ruins.

Being somewhat soft, I decided to opt for the kinder of the two options. I waited for the liquidation. I never got paid.

What happened to me: now

Fast forward five years. I was consulting with an old friend on a web build. When working with them, we were sharing screens and a message popped up on their screen from none other than the individual who ripped me off and the situation my friend was in, was almost identical to the one I was in five years previous.

So I started doing some research on this individual. It turns out he had liquidated as he had promised me he would. It also turns out he almost immediately started up again. Same business, different name, again that company had massive debts run up on it, and it was then liquidated. He had then started another business and companies house is showing that company as having debts. Quelle Surprise: he is now the director of another startup with a similar name.

This behavior in itself is illegal - it can lead to jail time. But unreported companies house can struggle to detect it. So I did my civic duty and reported the shyster.

How to look up a director / agency

The two sites I use to query a director or agencies they are associated with are
https://companycheck.co.uk/
https://www.duedil.com/

Between the two of them, you can piece together quite a bit of free info to build up a picture on a person. You can then also pay for more advanced, in-depth credit reports and company checks.

Companies house can also be a good way to get further information for free.
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house

Before starting any project, i would urge everyone to do their due diligence. It can save you so much time and hassle in the long run, hopefully meaning you never find yourself in a situation like i have described.

How to report someone

Got stung yourself and wondering how to report someone? Using this form right here.
https://www.insolvencydirect.bis.gov.uk/ExternalOnlineForms/CompanyComplaint.aspx

It's a small industry, and there are a lot of unsavory people in it who look to take advantage or freelancers and startups. I felt it was my duty to report this individual; it also felt petty darn good too. I would encourage anyone reading this to know, that they do have the means to do the same thing.

If you have a local > staging > production setup and work with database-driven content management systems, you have almost certainly encountered problems keeping databases in sync across the environments. To my knowledge (at the time of writing) there is still no ideal solution. However, various techniques can help.

In this blog post, I cover some of the techniques, I have explored for keeping databases in sync across multiple stages. This is by no means exhaustive or complete, but a reference to some of the options that do exist.

Database comparison tools

The most obvious solution is database comparison tools. There are both open source and commercial software that claim to be able to do this.

In theory, this would be the easiest solution. However in practice, it doesn’t work. The comparison tools I have played with can relatively quickly fail and cause problems within the database. With CMS systems like EE, the tools fail to take into account relational data and eventually something goes wrong. They can also be incredibly pricey pieces of software which freelancers probably can't afford, and agency devs will have trouble getting their bosses to sign off.

Record executed SQL commands in one environment, then run them again on another

Recording executed SQL commands is a solution to this problem that a couple of devs have suggested to me.

On basic WordPress sites, this should...in theory...work. It would require some bespoke coding to set up. I believe with further exploration this could be a viable and effective option.

Separate Database For content

Different databases for content is an excellent idea that works in theory, but practically can be difficult to implement. Most content management systems I have played with just do not support such functionality without making hacks to the CMS core and as such this completely rules out this option for me.

If you have your own bespoke CMS this might be somewhat easier to implement.

Force client to make data changes on staging

This idea came from reading this stack overflow question. Which Peter Lewis kindly pointed me in the direction of.

The idea is that you force the client to make amends on the staging website. You then set up a function to move the site from the staging server to the live server. This function could then be run at a set time using a Cron job or triggered by a button within the CMS.

This works great if you only have two stages but completely forgets about the local stage. So there is still room for conflicts in the database between local and staging.

Use a file based CMS

There has been a lot of talk about file based CMS and how they are about to rise. These CMS use a flat file system, no database involved. As such, completely negating all the issues discussed in this document. However these CMS are still in their infancy and don't have thriving support communities, that more traditional CMS have.

Database Ownership & Maintenance windows

Database ownership and maintenance windows are the technique I fall back to. While it is cumbersome and not ideal, it works and does not involve any advanced code, or CMS based hacks; Just co-ordination between the dev team and none devs who are working on the CMS.

Essentially there is one database and this database is owned by different groups at different times. The example below assumes you have a local, staging, prod server set up, and also assumes you have two groups of people working on the website; developers and content populaters.

07:55-08:00
Content team freeze working. Dev team locks the live admin area to prevent access to the CMS and pulls down the database to staging / local.

08:00-15:00
Dev team exclusively works on the local / staging site

15:00-15:05
Dev team push up to production and re-enable admin area

15:00-08:00
Content populators enter content on production as they please till the following morning

For this to work efficiently. You must have an automated deployment tool such as Capistrano in place. This means you will be able to pull the website down and push it back up again automatically. Removing room for human error in deployment and dramatically speeding up the dev process.

For Wordpress installations, I even have a Capistrano command that locks the admin area for me and then re-opens it when the website is pushed back up to live from staging.

The disadvantage to this technique is it means devs and CMS users can not work simultaneously. It also won't be viable on eCommerce builds where orders will always be coming in. The advantage is that it does circumnavigate all the other issues that come with moving a website between local staging and production, but only for simple websites.

Whats your technique?

Please do comment with any different techniques you have used to tackle the issue.

It never fails to astound me: The amount of digital professionals who think they know more about a client's business and what's best for them, than they believe the client knows themselves.

It is a syndrome I have witnessed mostly afflicting digital startups.

Most of the time, what (good) digital agencies have to say is extremely valuable and will indeed offer excellent ROI. But sometimes, just sometimes. You need to accept that the client probably does know a little more about their sector and business then you do, after all, they must be reasonably successful to afford your rates right?

It is a difficult, but important skill: to distinguish between when you need to shout the client down and when you need to listen. But if you don't figure it out quickly, you won't last long.

This blog is part II in the series, regarding inheriting legacy Wordpress
websites. In the first blog post I covered questions to ask when inheriting a Wordpress installation. If you have not seen this post already, you can read it here.

This blog post assumes you have already asked all the relevant questions, have decided to take the project on and are now looking to start work on your legacy Wordpress installation.

However before starting any new work, You should evaluate the current situation thoroughly. These are the steps I take at the outset of an Inherited Wordpress project.

Document

If you are following this series, you will have already asked a lot of
questions. The first thing to do is to write up an overview of the answers and store it somewhere safe.

You should also store the original answers to the questions you asked: straight from the clients mouth.

If any part of the installation or plugin requires a licence, or there is any other relevant information what-so-ever you should document and store it here too.

Getting Setup

At this stage, we get everything setup and ready for us to begin coding.

Get into version control

If not already under version control, get it under version control and make an initial commit in the state you receive the code.

If you are not currently using version control, you should consider adopting it. See Version Control, What It Is, Why It Matters.

If you can not be convinced to adopt version control, then instead make a backup of the original code received from the client and store it along with the documentation.

Get it setup in your local environment

Get the website set up and working locally, don't forget to disable any 'cache' plugins which can confuse this process.

Test, Test, Test

You need to set aside a good chunk of time for testing the code base you
are inheriting. Your target is to discover any bugs or problems the website has at this stage so that you can distinguish between pre-existing bugs and bugs caused by your team.

The more time you invest at this juncture, the more you will save later in the project. So throw everything you have at testing the site. Test it on as many devices and browsers as possible: give it everything you have got. Essentially, do your best to break the site.

Before moving forward with any new work, present these existing bugs to the client.

Mobile Detection

Not many moons ago mobile detection was a common thing. Although the web is now moving away from it, a lot of older websites still have mobile detection libraries in place.

Take a look at any mobile detection libraries and if new tech is available to replace it, do so accordingly.

Secure The Installation

If no security best practises are implemented, I would strongly recommend installing and enabling the following plugin: iThemes Security.

This plugin takes car of basic security and will thwart bots trawling the net looking for potential website to hacks. iThemes Security has a lot of options, the more you enable, the better.

In Addition to this

• remove any old users from the database.
• Force password updates on all remaining users
• change the hashes and salts
• remove unused plugins
• removed unused themes

For those comfortable with the command line. After making these amends, it is worth running WPScan which is a popular hacking tool. At the time of writing, iThemes Security will thwart WPScan just by being installed.

Plugin Review

Every plugin installed on a Wordpress installation will slow the website down a little. They also represent a security risk - especially when the plugins are third party.

Trash any plugins that are not essential

Take a look at the plugins in use and work out what exactly they do.

While you can't do away with all plugins (some are handy), you should consider all third-party plugins a security risk until you have picked apart the code and thoroughly evaluated what they are being used for and why.

If they are being used to plug holes in knowledge, can they be done away with? For example, I regularly see plugins used to

• Register a post type
• Register a sidebar
• Add a custom field

All things which are extremely easy to do programmatically and will be notably faster than a third party plugin.

For the essential plugins come up with a backup plan of what you will do if that plugin were to fail.

Introduce A Task Runner

If a task runner such as Grunt or Gulp can be introduced without smashing everything, then do so.

Notify Client

At this point, you need to inform the client of any surprises that have popped up in this process and if appropriate, amend the quote accordingly.

Plan to commence work

By now you should have a pretty good feel for this Wordpress installation, its build quality and some of the intricacies that surround it. The Next staging is to plan your modifications with a thorough functional and / or technical specification.

You can block access to the Wordpress admin area using the code snippet below.

I have found this to be handy if you need to lock a client out of the admin area temporarily to prevent database conflicts between stages.

Pop the following into your functions.php or a plugin.

add_action('admin_init', 'no_mo_dashboard');
function no_mo_dashboard() {

    if ($_SERVER['DOING_AJAX'] != '/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php') { 
        wp_redirect("http://google.co.uk"); 
        exit;
    }
}

Or you could use this terminal command to do the same job. It will add the above code to the very top of your functions.php file. I have this set up as a Capistrano task so i can issue a command to lock user out the prod CMS lickety split.

echo "<?php add_action('admin_init', 'no_mo_dashboard'); function no_mo_dashboard() {if ($_SERVER['DOING_AJAX'] != '/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php') {wp_redirect("http://google.co.uk/"); exit;}}?>" >> "functions.php"   

1.0.....Introduction
2.0.....Website, General Tips
3.0.....Website, Semi-Technical Tips
4.0.....Offline SEO Tips
5.0.....Tips for online shops
6.0.....Social Media
7.0.....Blogging
8.0.....Inbound Links
9.0.....SEO No, No's
10.0...Website Code Review & Technical Tips
11.0...Further Resources

1) Introduction

Originally Published: July 2013
Updated Last: Feb 2016

First published in 2013 when I was running Purple Claw, many of my clients had great results following the instructions in this guide. As the times change, so do SEO best practises and this update three years after the document was initially written reflect this.

With SEO, the key thing to grasp is that Google is working extremely hard to make sure that the websites with the best content make it to the top of the search results, not websites whose owners have the largest SEO budget. Before even considering spending cash upfront on SEO, you should run through the enclosed list and make sure you are taking all the steps applicable to your business.

*Remember*: SEO is both an offline and an online effort. It is not instant; it takes time for new websites to gain authority and compete with more established websites in search engine results.

The times are a-changing and the concept of ‘build it and they will come’ is no longer a strategy...nore is hope; you must compel people to visit your website.

Also, take a moment to make sure that your not doing anything that could harm your search engine rankings. Please read the attached SEO no-nos further down the page in order to make sure you are not stifling your SEO efforts.

2) Website, General Tips

Below are none technical tips for making sure you are maximising your SEO efforts on your site. All of these tasks are easy things to do within any CMS admin panel.

Are you regularly updating your website with fresh content?

Regular updates play a vital part in rankings. Whether it’s a new blog or a new product make sure you keep on adding to and growing your website with relevant, engaging content that people want to see.

Does your site display well on mobile devices and tablets?

More people now access the web from mobile devices and tablets than they do with computers. Does your website facilitate this? As of 2015 Google now penalises against websites which are not mobile friendly in their ranking algorithm.

Are you sure there is no duplicate content on your site?

Duplicate content can cause your SEO ranking to sink like a stone. Make sure you are not reusing content from one page to another and make sure your not republishing content found elsewhere on the web.

Are you using search engine friendly URLs?

This is essential for helping people find your website and telling Google what your site contains. Examples below;

Example of an SEO Friendly URL

http://yourdomain.co.uk/friendly-url

Example of a None SEO friendly URL

http://yourdomain.co.uk/asdfjnsdf&id=591

Have you set up Google Analytics?

Gooogle Analytics does not directly help improve your ranking, but it does allow you to track and get a surprising amount of information about your website visitors, and they're on site behaviour. This data, used effectively, can enable you to tailor your site to your clients and their browsing habits. It can help you identify exit points (pages from which the user leaves) and what content users find interesting. All this information can be indirectly used to increase SEO rankings.

Do you publish a newsletter?

Newsletters help convert prospects into customers. You’re missing a trick if you are not regularly emailing customers. A good way to get mailing list members is monthly give aways to members of the list e.g. £20 of free vouchers to one mailing list member per month. Back when I ran an eCommerce store, once somebody was on the mailing list eventually they would convert from prospect to customer, getting them on the list was the tricky bit and in that instance, the voucher give away was an extremley valuable tool.

Do all pages have unique titles?

Google does not like websites where every page title is the same. Make them all unique. Aside from helping Google to identify unique content, this title shows in search results.

META Descriptions

The META description has not factored into the ranking algorithm for many moons. However it does show in search engines;

This makes it essential; you need to sell your page and compel people to click through.

If you do not specify a META description, Google will choose one for you.

If your website has pages made entirely up of images and no text blocks it's doubly important to specify a META description for the page to help users identify what the page contains in search results.

Snoop on the competition

High ranking sites in your sector; what are they doing and how did they get to their current position. Can you emulate it?

Avoid short pages

Little pages without much content can be bad for SEO. Try and combine them into bigger pages, or remove them from your site.

Make sure all images are named well and descriptive of what the image is..

Example of a good image name

joseph-joseph-model-name-pink-kettle.jpg

Example of a bad image name

josephjosephkettle.jpg

Keep regular backups

Any downtime is catastrophic for SEO. Make sure you keep backups, then test these backups and make sure they work. Get yourself into a position where if the website goes down, you can restore it within minutes. This means being proactive and not just relying on somebody else (e.g., your Webhost or developer) to do this for you.

Monitor downtime

Some services can monitor downtime for you. Use them and you will get pinged and email if and when your website goes down.

Image optimisation

Large images mean large file size. Large file size means slower loading time, and slower loading time is bad for SEO. Make sure all images you upload are optimised for the web. You can save for web and devices from Photoshop, although there are websites and programs out there that can compress images even further than Photoshop. A personal favourite: image optim

3) Website, Semi-Technical Tips

The following tips are semi-technical. But are important info and are explained in a way none techies should be able to understand;

Monitor for 404 errors

404 errors occur when a page that was once on a website no longer appears.

Custom 404 pages can help explain this to a user and possibly assist them to the content they are after. However Google is not to keen on 404 pages, so they are best avoided. If a page is removed from a website ask you your dev team to set up a 301 redirect to the nearest equivalent page to prevent 404s.

Make sure server is in the country most its visitors come from, or use a CDN

If a user is based in Australia and they request information from a server in the UK (by simply visiting the website), that data has to go all the way round the world and back again. In this example, the site would be much faster if the server was in Australia as the data would not have to travel as far.

There are two ways to deal with this. First is to make sure your server is located in the country that the majority of you website visitors hail from. The second and most efficient technique would be to use a Content Delivery Network or CDN.

A CDN will deliver your website to users in Australia on an Australian server, and then if a visitor visits your site from New York, the CDN will deliver the site on the closest server to New York.

Everybody gets a fast site.

Basic CDN's like the one I use for this blog come free of charge from Cloudflare.

Enable Caching

If you are not using a CDN, another option is to enable server caching. This could be as simple as enabling gzip on the server, or installing a WordPress plugin.

Do you have an XML sitemap set up?

An XML sitemap is a file that helps search engines index your website and keeps up to date with changes. If you don't know, ask your web developer.

Do you have an SSL certificate Installed?

You can test if you have an SSL certificate installed as if you do, there will be a little padlock icon in your address bar. It looks a little like this;

Having an SSL certificate means that all data passing through your website is encrypted. Should it be intercepted, it would be extremely difficult to decipher.

Payment processors have used SSL certificates for years now, although not many others have. However, if you are transferring any user data (even just a contact form), it is commendable to have one installed to show you take security user seriously.

As of mid-2015, Google announced that websites using SSL certificates would get a boost in the ranking algorithm.

Costs for SSL certificates vary (you can even get some kinds for free), but they begin from as little as $10 plus installation cost.

Google Webmaster Tools

(Google webmaster tools)[https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en] will update you if there are any significant problems with your webpage. It also allows you to specify your sitemap and also configure various other settings that can help SEO.

Google Page Speed Insights

Run the website through Googles Page Speed Insights, it will likely have some handy tips for you on how to make the website faster.

4) Offline Promotion

Offline promotion is just as important as online advertising and done right, can in effect boost your online efforts. Some of these are incredibly basic recommendations that can make all the difference.

Is your website on all your stationary?

Make sure the web address is on all stationary such as pencils, business cards, etc.

If you have a shop / office are there calls to action encouraging people to use your website?

These could include banners, posters, QR codes.

Have you told all your suppliers about your website and asked them to promote it?

They may be able to put it in a newsletter or help support the launch of your site in some way. If they are big established brands, an inbound link from their website / blog could be incredibly valuable to your SEO efforts.

Have you written to the local chamber of commerce hidden your new website?

In tough financial times, chambers are desperate to publish good news.

Have you written to the local newspaper about your website?

As above. Have you written to industry-specific publications about your new website? If your site is particularly groundbreaking, they may well be interested in blogging or writing about your new site.

5) Tips for online shops.

Are you distributing business cards and promotional items with orders?

Does your website instill confidence in your users?

Users look for certain things to help instill confidence in them. Things like a UK landline number, direct email address, secure payment processors and clear and concise delivery information all add up to help a client decide if they want to purchase from you or not.

Are you shipping fast?

Users wanted their orders yesterday. Make sure you can send them quickly. If you can’t, maybe look into something like Amazon fulfilment so users can get their orders as quickly as possible.

Are you making sure that the user is enjoying the process of receiving goods?

When a user opens their order, they want to have a positive experience. This could be achieved with a few different tactics, for example, packing nicely using cardboard boxes and packing hay instead of just using a bubble lined envelope. Putting an extra surprise in the box is often a winner with clients even if only a couple of boiled sweets.

6) Social Media

Social media is not a replacement for the aforementioned SEO efforts. Use it to compliment your other techniques, don’t rely on it solely.

Do you have a Facebook page?

Most Facebook users visit their profile more than once a day (not me, though). Having a page on Facebook can help you get your users’ attention.

Do you have a Twitter page?

Remember always to set up a Twitter account as a person (who works for a company) rather than just a company. Also, make sure you add a picture of yourself and not a company logo. The whole point in Twitter is it is personable, and you can interact with a person rather than a faceless business; stick with this concept.

Do you have a Google plus page?

Growing in popularity and rumoured to have SEO benefits. Encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google Plus page

Do you have a Youtube channel?

Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Product reviews and promotional videos can generate huge amounts of inbound traffic to a website.

Target by region

What people keenly interact with in Manchester may be completely different to something those living on the south coast may be interacting with. Know your demographic and target your social media campaigns accordingly

SMS marketing

Email inboxes are constantly under a barrage of email marketing and spam. By comparison, SMS is much less abused.

It has a higher opening rate than emails and its extremely affordable.

7) Blogging

Blogging is a seriously powerful SEO tool with far-reaching benefits. Even if you’re in a boring sector, you should be writing blogs.

Are you regularly blogging?

Regular blogging is an excellent way to keep a website up to date with regular and fresh content.

Do you have an RSS feed set up?

Some people read lots of blogs and collect them all in an RSS reader. Make sure you’re giving them this option

8) Inbound Links

Inbound links are a particularly powerful thing for increasing your websites authority and improving subsequent search engine listings. Remember not all inbound links are good links. Dodgy sites linked to you can do more damage than good.

Have you asked suppliers to link to your site?

As they often will! If they are large established brands, a link from them could really bolster your SEO efforts.

Do you have listings in other industry specific directories?

For example Purple Claw develop using Expression Engine, so we are in a few Expression Engine developer directories.

Links to your website from .gov and .edu domain names are extremely valuable.

If you know someone who works on one of these sites and can get you an inbound link; do it.

Another approach is to search the net for blogs on .edu websites and comment on the blogs with a link back to your site. But always read the posts and make relevant comments to avoid having your post [and thus your link] removed as spam.

Avoid link networks / exchanging links

The value of the inbound link is small, and the risk of being penalised for links from bad sites is high.

9) SEO No, No's

Never, ever, ever...

Never believe anyone who tells you META data is relevant to ranking

META data improving your ranking is a thing that died many moons ago. Now none of the major search engines use META data in the ranking algorithm. META data can, however, help people to decide if they want to visit your site because it is the text that appears in Google when searching, but it does not directly effect ranking.

Never Believe anyone who guarantees you rankings

No one (apart from Google) can control the Google algorithm, or even knows what the algorithm is. We can only make educated guesses and use this to attempt to manipulate it in our favour. For this reason, it is impossible to promise a certain position (e.g. number 1) in Google search results. Be very nervous about people who promise you they can do this.

Never Pay for inbound links.

These will be low-quality inbound links. They are likely to do more harm than good to your ranking.

Never Create doorway pages.

This means creating pages for the sole purpose of linking to another part of the website. For example: if you were a window cleaner with a website and you created lots of additional one-page websites linking to your main site. Eg; setting up windowcleaningleicester.com, windowcleaningnottingham.com and directing them all to your site.

Never Create duplicated content on your site

Google can sniff it a mile off, and it will lower your ranking.

Never Copy content from another website

Apart from making enemies and infringing copyright, Google will punish you for this too.

Never Use cheap hosting

Cheap hosting means more downtime, more often. Downtime can do huge damage to rankings. It will also frustrate users which may stop them returning. Good hosting doesn’t have to be expensive. As a general guide, anywhere that offers you unlimited space or unlimited bandwidth is likely to be low-quality hosting

Never Put invisible text on your page

Putting invisible text in your page to enhance SEO worked in the 90’s, now, however, Google can spot it at 50 paces and will penalise you for it.

Never Keyword Stuff

Creating a page and stuffing it with lots of keywords is bad. Make sure all text is readable in plain English.

Never Use Flash

Flash is dead. Don’t use it, enough said.

Exercise extreme caution grey hat techniques

Grey hat techniques are SEO techniques that are sailing pretty close to the wind regarding what will get your penalised or not. Be very careful about using such techniques; even if your competitors are. If you do use them, monitor them carefully and make sure they don’t develop into black hat techniques or known reasons for Google to penalise you.

I have seen more than one SEO agencies use grey hat techniques, which became black hat techniques. The result? Their clients websites dropped out of Google overnight and in one instance, the company folded.

10) Website, Technical Tips

I have left this section to last to prevent boredom and confusion. But Quelle Suprise! Here it is. Alot of these tips all revolve around making your website as fast as possible. If you're not technical, get your technical guys on this.

Concatenate All CSS & JS

The fewer CSS & JS files, the fewer requests have to be made to the server and the faster the website will load. Combine all your CSS files into one, if you cant combine into one combine into as few as you can.

Tools like Grunt & Gulp can do this for you.

Minify all CSS & JS

Minifying code is the act of removing all white space, and it can save you precious bytes and notably reduce file size. Again grunt and gulp can help with this.

CSS & JS - put it in the footer where possible

As much CSS & JS as possible should go in the footer, not the header. This will lead to faster page rendering times. Not all of it will able to go in the footer, but some will. Again JS runners like Grunt can help make this easier.

Write clean, semantic and Object Orientated code.

Code written to a high standard will be faster. Faster code means faster websites; faster websites means better usability and better rankings.

It can be quite difficult for a none developer to appreciate how efficient code is, but it is worth getting your dev team to conduct a review and ensure your code conforms to the latest standards.

11.0 Further Resources

• Officail Google SEO Resource Blog For Beginners
• Lynda training courses - Proffessioanl SEO training
• Woorank - Scans your website and makes reccomendations to improve your site
• Sitebeam - Another service that scans your website and provides tailored advice
• Pingdom - Test how fast your website is from various locations around the world

Recently I decided to give up my spangly super nice website and blog and move all the content to Ghost, using no more than the default Ghost theme with some slight tweaks and enhancements.

When making this decision, I asked myself "Why do people come to my site", I came up with the following

• They want to see projects I have worked on
• They want to see agencies I have worked for
• They have found relevant blog content through Google.
• Just sh*t out of luck (I mean who wants to read my ramblings anyway!?!)

In all these instances, could I deliver this content in a more simple way? Do the people visiting care about how slick the mobile menu is, how pretty the page was or what my latest tweet has been? I have a portfolio stuffed full of things like that so do I really need to puff my chest out and display it on my blog?

Content is king; people come to the site for the content. In moving to Ghost, i have decided to get away from everything but the content; and occasionally a pretty header image.

The result is a website that is infinitely faster and more efficient than a Wordpress build could ever be...even a really, really optimised WordPress build.

I spend my working life maintaining websites and servers (and that's freaking awesome), but do I really want to spend my evenings and weekends doing that on my site too?; Nah!

If your dev team are not using any kind of version control, it is one of the single most effective and easiest things you can do right now to make projects more manageable and more profitable.

Aimed at (version control less) developers, project managers and business owners this blog will walk you through what version control is, why it's important and give a brief introduction on how to leverage its power to make for a happier, more profitable dev team.

So what exactly is version control?

At its most simple, version control is the ability to keep a complete history of every version of a document that ever existed.

Example please

Take this blog. It first started out life as a selection of scribbles and bullet points, later it became half-coherent sentences, later still I improved the sentence structure and grammar (hard to believe I know), and then I deleted some text I didn't like, and then my copywriter / girlfriend made some amends...I then undid some of those amends (sorry chlo). What version control would allow me to do is take snapshots at each of these stages and then quickly allow me to browse back through them in the future. Allowing me to quickly see what I wrote, what I changed and when I did so. I am sure you will agree it's a very handy sounding premise and it's particularly useful when you apply the concepts to more complex data types such as code.

Different types of version control

There are a few different types of version control. In my adventures as a web developer and technical director, I have found Git to be the most ubiquitous and simplest method of version control, especially in the creative industries where I have focused my career. As such this blog centers around version control with Git. However the principles discussed are relevant to other version control systems too.

It's all In the repo

So where are all these versions of your code kept?; In the repository, or 'repo'. Think of the repo as offsite cloud storage, which developers can quickly reference. Allowing them to check they have the latest version of the code and catch up on what's changed since they last looked at it.

Popular Git repository hosts include

• GitHub
• Codebase
• Bitbucket (my favourite)

Terminology

There are three bits of terminology you need to understand before proceeding with this blog, Thankfully they are easy concepts to grasp.

Git commit
The act of taking a snapshot of your code; saving a version.

Git Push
The act of pushing your snapshots to the repository.

Git Pull
The act of pulling the commits of others down from the repo.

Git has many more commands than this. The commands i have listed also have further function. However, for the purpose of understanding this article these are the three that will allow you to understand the core concepts I am outlining here.

So why is this useful to me?

Now we understand a little bit about what Git is, the next question to answer is why is it helpful to you?

Ability to roll back

Your code was working a couple of hours ago; now it's mysteriously stopped working!? Using version control you can rollback through your commits and find the last commit where the code in question is working. You can then compare code from the working commit to your broken code. In effect massively narrowing down the amount of code you have to search through to make a fix; if you're looking for the needle, it makes the haystack substantially smaller.

Absent Developers

Because using version control makes your code accessible to everybody on your team, you no longer become reliant on one dev. If a developer gets ill, is out visiting a client (some devs like to be sociable) or mysteriously disappears, any other developer will be able to pick up where he / she left off, just as long as the absent Dev pushed to the repo before disappearing.

Client flip flopping

You should be locking your customers down at the start of a project with functional and technical specifications. However, anyone who has ever worked in an agency knows; there is always scope for the client to change their mind. Client flip-flopping can be made slightly less painful with version control. Need to restore that functionality the client made you remove last month? With version control, this is a straightforward task.

Accountability

Using Git, you can see who coded what and when. Even the none developers can do so. As such it makes developers accountable for their choices. This is particularly useful when working with contractors and freelancers. If they come in and smash something, you can take action with indisputable evidence at hand.

Collaboration

Version control makes collaboration with third parties much simpler. Say your team have coded up some templates and that code needs to be passed on directly to the client. Rather than packing up the code and sending it on, you can just provide them with a link to the Git repo where they can download the latest version of your code.

Remote working

Got a Dev working offsite today? No problem, with version control they can easily access and update the codebase from anywhere with an Internet connection.

Other Code Management

Training a new developer up? Or maybe you need to keep an eye on what your new contractors doing? Version control makes it very easy to keep track of what they are doing. Making coaching and management of developers an easier task.

Taking version control to the next level

What I have discussed so far are some very basic applications of just how much version control can do for you - it can, however, do even more things like;

• Git based deployments; scripts that take the code from the repo and move it to the production server for you (no more FTP)
• Commits can be tied into your bug tracking system, allowing you to see what code was written to fix particular bugs.
• Commits can be linked to your time tracking software, see exactly how long certain tasks take
• Commits can be linked into your agile process
• Multple "branches" or versions
• Much more advanced version control then the basic concepts discussed in this blog

Commandline Vs. Git Clients / Apps

There are two primary ways in which you work with Git. The command line or a Git client / application. So what's the difference? Think of the command line as you giving direct instructions to a computer; matrix style! Whereas Git clients give the commands to the computer for you.

A wise developer once tweeted...

"Open your favourite Git client." You might as well say "cuddle your favourite venomous spider" or "insert your favourite prostate scope".

— Bruce Lawson (@brucel) September 17, 2014

Essentially; Git clients are a bit rubbish. They discourage developers from learning how to use Git properly, and prevent them from learning what is 'under the hood'. Generally speaking your devs should be using the command line to work with GIT, even juniors can be taught the absolute basics in a matter of hours.

Resources to get you started

Liking the sound of version control? There are many free resources to help you get started.

• Code school, Fee Git Training
• Official Git website
• Gitflow - handy extension
• Getting Git right

In conclusion

Every now and again you come across something in business which you adopt and in a minuscule space of time wonder how you ever managed without. Adopt version control now and in two months time, looking back at life pre version control will feel like the dark ages. It will make your developers and all those who have to work with them happier for the headaches it saves and will ultimately increase the profitability of your team.

It occurred to me recently the enormous amount of SEO con artists I have met over the years.

‘SEO experts’ who have little knowledge of the web and its intricacies. ‘SEO experts’ who are not involved in the curation of the internet, won’t influence, nor particularly care about the future of the web. ‘SEO experts’ who, with the use of buzzwords and hype that they don’t truly understand, make SEO sound like quantum physics when it is in fact very simple.

Google has spent billions – billions – making sure that the people who rise to the top of the search engines are the people with the best content and who are best at what they do – not the company who has the biggest SEO budget.

The real truth about ranking well

If you want to appear in the top search results for your keywords, there are three things your need to do.

1) Have a well built and fast website that is optimised from the outset
2) Create content that people genuinely want to read
3) Be the very best you can be

A couple of years back I wrote a document; Getting started with SEO. As a freelancer many of my clients had great success just following the guidance in this document, without ever having to pay an SEO specialist.

While SEO is common sense, it can be hard work and who likes hard work? So when a charismatic man (or woman) offers to fix your SEO problems for a small fee, it can seem like a very tempting offer. But don’t fall into their trap!

(Most) SEO guys are like a hybrid of double glazing salesmen and vampires. Hang the garlic, grip your crucifix and don’t invite them into your home; build an impressive business and higher Google rankings will come.

SEO is common sense; it is not Quantum Physics.