Archive for ‘Top Tips’

The importance of Google Places

For most local businesses Google Places was ‘seen as something you could do’ but with the pace of smartphone development it is fast becoming ‘something you have to do’. The faster search feature on Google maps and the new ‘filter by ratings’ button will mean many businesses with bad reps will be ignored. Keeping an eye on your reviews has never been so important.

Google maps search list the following information (in order of prominence)
Name of Business, Address, Picture, Reviews.

You can filter the results by distance and ratings. Once into your listing the app shows some contact buttons below the first set of details which link directly into your Google places info. Under the contact buttons are more in-depth reviews which are rated with stars and colours.

The first question to ask yourself is ‘what are people saying about my business?’, all reviews come from a variety of sources but these are the main ones:-
direct through Google maps, qype.co.uk, tripadvisor.com, restaurant-guide.com, trustedplaces and touchlocal

Many of these sites allow you to register your business and then contest any reviews that are unfounded and damaging. I am sure that the first defamation case involving a Google Places review cannot be far away so businesses and users beware.

On a programming note, Google have opened up a new API for Google places. Developers building apps that include a “check in at this place” feature can use the Places API to search across all the places users might check in for basic information like business name, address, phone number and other descriptive information. That information will be editable by the businesses listed and no caching of data is allowed, so apps will have to ping Places regularly for real-time data.

You can provide up-to-date information on any location that you user may be visiting which makes for a very interesting location-based world.

If you would like us to advise or help with your listings or you have any thoughts on location based interfaces for your web experience please drop us a line

miles
Devstars
London Web Design Agency

Top 10 SEO tips

Welcome to Aprils’ top ten which is all about SEO, so pay attention at the back !

  1. Know your keywords. Try to get into your potential customers head and figure out what words they would ideally put into Google (or any other search engine) to find you.
  2. Make sure these words and phrases feature in titles, headings and body copy on your web site.
  3. Try to get relevant inbound links.  This allows the search engine to see how authoritative your site is in your chosen field.  So if you are a design agency, getting links on a design directories will do you more good than a cheesecake directory (unless you’re a cheesecake designer, in which case we are willing to do taste tests…).
  4. Research your competitors inbound links on google by searching “link: www.compeitorsurl.com”.  Then make sure you are on as many of the same directories and sites as your competitors are. As they say, you’ve got to be in it to win it.
  5. Make sure your chosen keywords are used in the alt tags of inbound links and images on your own site.
  6. Don’t spam your site by repeating the keywords, your search positions will be downgraded.
  7. Avoid hiding relevant content behind splash pages, image maps, clever JavaScript gizmos etc.
  8. Menus and navigation are always going to work better than using images or Flash
  9. Use (or make sure your developer uses) Google’s webmaster tools. It’s great for troubleshooting and helps insure your site is Google friendly.
  10. Keep an eye on the stats, Analytics especially.

We always build our sites as search engine friendly as possible but we encourage our clients to get actively involved in understanding about keywords and inbound links.  Generally, we tend to think our clients know their markets best and, given the correct tools, are able to get great results with the organic search engine marketing.

That said you can always give us a shout if you need some help.

Avoiding Spam

Our top ten tips for avoiding spam

1. Never have catch all email addresses and try and avoid using standard ones like Sales@, support@ etc.
2. It’s best to have a form on your web site for visitors to contact you by but if you want to have a traditional email link use and encoder like AddressMunger or this simple one here they are not foolproof but it will give some protection.
3.Don’t reply to spam, replying only verifies they have an active person.
4. Start using full names in front in your emails. Short names are easily spammed
5. Use a good anti-virus, anti-spam system and keep it regularly updated.
6.Spend some time setting up email filtering – Most modern mail programs allow you to do this. Have your regular clients filtered into a work folder, you mates into a friend’s folder etc.
7. Get advanced spam filtering on your server, we use Gmail for our own mail and get a lot of control of the level of spam filtering, white lists and black lists. Most hosting companies will offer a range of packages with varying degrees of protection.
8. Sign up for a mail preference service, this is a bit extreme and requires anyone sending email to you to fill in a quick form first time they mail you but they are pretty much bullet proof. Not to be confused with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) which stops you getting unwanted marketing calls (definitely do this!).
9. Don’t send bulk emails using the to or cc fields, protect your contacts by hiding them in the bcc field.
10. Protect your own domain by setting up an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record. SPF records allow software to detect phishing messages that aren’t coming from the right server and block them.

Spamming in the UK is now illegal, if you are feeling helpful and want to report spam you can use the form here or find out more info at the goverments Information Commisioners Office