Building Backlinks to Your Website

It's a no-brainer these days that to increase traffic to your website, it has to be easily found in the search engines. A well constructed website is definately the place to start to achieve this, but beyond that what can one do to improve search engine placement?

One of the best things you can do is to create backlinks to your site. Social networking sites can be a great way to create links. They are relatively easy to achieve because you generally have full control over the page you want the link to appear in. But have you considered asking other businesses to link to your site? There is never any harm in asking and many will link to you provided that you return the favour. They have to be quality links though, ie links from sites that would naturally compliment your own. So, for instance, a link to a caravan website from a 4 wheel drive website is going to count a lot better than a link from a florist.

Here's a legitimate SEO exercise you can do, one that the top SEO companies will charge big money for. Do some research on the internet and make a list of targeted websites that you think might be good candidates for linking back to you. Then contact them and offer to link to their website from yours if they do the same for you. Below are some tips to make the campaign work.

1. Treat it seriously. This is exactly what SEO is all about and every single link you can get is worth more than its weight in gold. Tackle this project like it's going to work, because it does.
2. Avoid "Link Farms"; websites that exist purely as web link lists. Many of them may actually lower your search engine ranking.
3. Avoid your competition. At best they will ignore your requests. At worst they will agree, but possibly remove you from their site a little while later.
4. Go for complimentary industries, so for a caravan website you might target websites that deal in camping, outdoor adventure, leisure, etc. You will have a better idea than me about the sorts of businesses to target. Think like Google. Look at a site and ask yourself "does this site linking to mine make sense?" Also check the site in Google PageRank Checker for its current page rank. The higher the pagerank, the more valuable a backlink from it will be.
5. Look for a "links" page or similar off the home page or the contact page. If the site has one of these it may be a sign that they are already receptive to the idea of reciprocal links.
6. Generally speaking, the older the site, the better. You can get an idea on the age of a website/domain by looking at it via Internet Archive or WhoIs.
7. Make a spreadsheet of the sites that look promising so you can make contact with them later. Record the web address, company name, industry, product/service and contact information. If possible get an actual person's email address rather than just info@ or sales@. And get the phone number too!
8. Construct an email to your selected businesses. Keep in mind that most websites generally get a few requests for reciprocal linking, which many regard as junk mail, so try and keep it short, simple and friendly. You want to ask them to put a link to your website from their own, in exchange for you doing the same for them. Think of this email as you would any other marketing text. What you say in it is key to the entire campaign.
9. Send your emails and cross your fingers but don't leave it there if you hear nothing back. Phone them. I know, radical isn't it? Plead your case directly. If you don't ask, you'll never know.
10. Record the details of any site that agrees to link and pass them to your webmaster for inclusion on your site. Once the links are up and the other business sees it they should reciprocate the link back to you.
11. Periodically check your page rank on Google PageRank Checker. Remember that each change you make to either your site's content or any external influences such as backlinks may not be reflected for up to several weeks, so be patient and don't try too many things at once.
12. Periodically go through your list of backlinks to make sure that your reciprocating sites are keeping up their end of the bargain. Businesses may revamp their site and forget to add you back into the new version, so it doesn't hurt to check in on them every few months or so.

So knowing all of this, why would you bother hiring a SEO company to do it for you? There are several reasons. For one thing, your time will generally be better spent doing what you know best - your job. SEO companies specialise in this work and can hit the ground running.

This article discusses the basic points of a reciprocal link campaign, but the finer points require a much deeper understanding of SEO concepts and search engine algorithms. If you want serious results, it's generally better to call in the experts. Keep in mind that this is specialised work, so think carefully about dabbling in anything that will ultimately affect the reach of your business. Think of it like this, just because you know how to paint you wouldn't signwrite your own shop, would you?

SEO - Black Hat vs. White Hat

I couldn't resist posting this...

At Expectra we are heavily focused on SEO, but it's a skill that is definately learnt over time. I was discussing with an employee today their overuse of the <h1> CSS tag. It was well intentioned, but definately a no-no. Google considers the overuse of heading tags as Black Hat SEO and can penalise website rankings for it.

So I told her, "What you are doing there is Black Hat SEO, but what we need to focus on is White Hat SEO." She didn't miss a beat in her reply: "I like my Black Hat; it's slimming!"

Custom Website Design vs Web Templates

Recently we were approached by a customer to create an online shopping cart for their retail store. When they came to us they had a website that was 90% complete and had just sacked their last web developer. The site had been created using a Joomla template.

Our client was frustrated by the fact that seemingly trivial design attributes, such as text colours and fonts, were impossible to achieve using the template that their developer had chosen. They supplied the developer with precise graphic images of what they wanted the site to look like, but there were always reasons why they couldn't be exactly reproduced. In the end they came to us and within the month their website was up and trading, perfectly mirroring their expectations.

It was a happy ending, but it did make us stop and consider all the differences between templates and custom designs. The ability to customize (or lack thereof) is by no means the only consideration when making this important business descision.

If you're considering using a template for your website, consider the following points:

• Templates are widely used and copied. Your site may end up looking just like someone else's.
• Except for the most basic websites, a template website will need some kind of further development. You're either going to have to hire somebody for the job or do that yourself, in which case there is the very real cost of your time spent in learning how to achieve the effects and results that you want.
• Depending on the template it may be difficult to optimise each page effectively for search engines which could cost you sales.
• Customising the site could prove extremely difficult. There could be CSS stylesheets in play that prevent you from changing one thing without changing many others. Even worse, style elements may be dictated programmatically, in which case it may be impossible to change at all.
• The template may not be cross browser compatible, so it may not look exactly the same to everyone that visits the site.
• The end-to-end cost of getting your website up and running may end up no cheaper for using a template solution, so if you're seriously considering a template because of budget constraints, it may pay to at least get a quote for a custom design.

Now consider the advantages of a custom design:

• A graphic artist will give you a completely unique design, one that captures the essence of your business perfectly. Many designers will be happy to make as many changes as required to achieve just the look you are after. You won't have to settle on a design that you're just "ok" with.
• Being in complete control of the site, a custom developer will be able to optimise each page of your site for the keywords and phrases that your customers are likely to be searching for.
• With a custom design nothing is ever set in stone. If you later decide to add more to the site or change the way something works, it should be easy enough to do.
• A web developer can build Content Management features into your site, but if you choose not to manage the site yourself, ie request the developer to make changes on your behalf as required, you could save a substantial amount on the site by not adding these features.
• A custom web developer can test your site in all browsers to ensure that all your visitors see the same thing.

When deciding between a custom design or template keep in mind the end goal. Most likely you will want your website to stand out from the crowd and to be informative and helpful to your visitors. And of course we all want our website to rank well in search engines. All of these things depend on good design. Also there is the cost of each method to consider, which may be difficult to accurately calculate if you are planning to tackle the project yourself.

At the end of the day it is up to you to decide which way to go. It's an important descision for you and your business. Speak to others and research the portfolio of any potential developers.

Solving the "network BIOS command limit has been reached" error in Visual Studio

If you're a web developer using Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 then there is a very high liklihood that you've seen this error:

Parser Error Message: An error occurred loading a configuration file: Failed to start monitoring changes to 'J:\Expectra\Clients\Voco\4. Jobs\Website\app_code\br' because the network BIOS command limit has been reached. For more information on this error, please refer to Microsoft knowledge base article 810886. Hosting on a UNC share is not supported for the Windows XP Platform.

For those that don't know what I'm talking about and have been roped into reading this article via subscription, the above error occurs when attempting to launch a website, whose files exist on a network drive, from within Visual Studio. It is the ultimate in frustration and there seem to be very few that ever find relief. Google "network BIOS command limit has been reached" and you'll get an idea of how widespread the problem is. Most eventually concede that the only solution is to copy their projects from the network store to their local hard disk, which is massively inconvenient for a few reasons.

Like many other developers, I have been battling this error for years. First with XP and VS2005, then through Vista and VS2008 and still now with Windows 7. Trauling user groups uncovers a myriad of possible solutions. Hands up those that have tried Microsoft's classic 810886 fix? What makes this a particularly frustrating issue is that it seems to come and go with no explanation - but therein lies the key!

I have finally stumbled upon the solution and it seems so obvious now that I really feel quite silly talking about it. I mean I know that there are dozens of developers out there that face the same problem daily, and yet the problem can be solved so very simply.

Close files.

Ever noticed how rebooting your machine seems to give temporary relief to the problem? As a developer it is not uncommon to have many programs running simultaneously, but most of them open files and therefore add to the number of open file handles. I discovered that by closing as many applications as I could, except for Visual Studio, the problem just went away. I've since tested the theory on XP and had the same results. It makes sense when you think about it. The answer really is in the reported error, "the network BIOS command limit has been reached". So by terminating network BIOS commands, or the applications that generate them, the network BIOS is freed up. 810886 is supposed to correct this by raising the network BIOS command limit but it simply doesn't and nobody seems to know why.

Brilliant? Hardly! Just a bit of observation. Do pass it on next time you hear someone griping about this issue though.

Does Your Website Need A Makeover?

So maybe you had a website done up 3 or 4 years ago. Have you taken a good look at it recently? Websites can become dated surprisingly quickly, or even worse, can suddenly stop working as they ought to!

We recently gave one of our older sites a complete makeover and it made me think "not a moment too soon!" Take a look at the points below and cast a critical eye over your own website. Changes in the web design industry can leave a once snappy website looking and feeling a bit, well... yesterday.

1. Does your site look dated?
Much like the fashion industry, website design is also evolving at a constant rate. What looked cool and hip just a few years ago can now be seen as dated and boring. For instance, bevelling and embossing buttons on a website was all the rage not so long ago, but overuse gave it a short shelf life and now these buttons just look tacky. Another phenomenon to fall by the wayside is Flash introductions. They can be quite artistic, but in reality visitors just want to get to your site, not sit and watch a pointless animation. So 2005; lose them!

2. Does your site always display correctly?
If your site is more than three years old, then it predates some modern internet browsers. Microsoft release a new version of Internet Explorer every 18 months or so, as do Mozilla make new releases of Firefox. Plus there is Chrome, Safari and a plethora of others. All of these browsers have the potential to display your website slightly differently. Also, a site that worked just fine in Internet Explorer 6, may not look so great in version 7 or 8. It is important that your website displays correctly on all browsers and across all platforms. Your visitors shouldn't be penalised with a bad visual experience just because they use a new or different browser. It will damage your business' credibility and could easily cost sales.

3. Does your website load quickly?
In any given industry there may be literally thousands of websites competing for attention, so every visitor should be treated like gold. Don't make them wait to see your site by having long load times. It will drive traffic away from your site and business to your competitors.

In 2006 Akamai conducted a study finding that one third of visitors will abandon a site if it takes more than 4 seconds to load completely. In addition, Google have found that that an increase of just half a second on load time could drop traffic by 20%. Maybe people are too impatient, but when a better alternative is just one click away, who can blame them?

There are many techniques that web designers can employ to reduce load times, so if your site is plodding along at a snails pace, look into having it corrected!

4. Does your site have a consistent look?
In terms of looking professional, consistency is a must. Elements such as navigation menus, hyperlinks, buttons, etc. need to have consistent formatting in order to present professionally. If your site has typos, different font types or colors or even different column layouts from one page to another, it can greatly impact on not only your credibility, but also your search engine optimisation efforts, which can directly impact business.

Take a look at the really big players on the internet, such as Yahoo, eBay, NBC, etc. Businesses like these have hundreds of web pages on their site but there is always consistency which gives the user a certain degree of comfort whilst navigating through. Now take a look at your own site. How does it match up?

5. Does your site get the traffic you want it to?
I've saved the most important for last. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is what can make or break your website. SEO has arguably the most impact on driving your website toward the top of  search engine result lists. It is the practice of analysing every page of your website to ensure that it is search engine friendly, geared toward the search terms and phrases that your customers are likely to use when searching Google for your product or service. You could have the single best looking website on the planet but it won't count for anything if Google doesn't index it favourably. A SEO savvy web designer will be able fine tune your website, but generally speaking the search engines are looking for good descriptive headings backed up with well worded subject content in natural easy language. Following a few simple rules, any home made website can compete equally with sites that cost thousands to produce.

And remember that this is all measurable in your website statistics. Ask your webhost if you don't know how to access yours. Take a look at your stats and see if your happy with the number of daily visitors. 

Carwatha College go live!
We are pleased to announce the launch of Carwatha College's brand new website. This replaces another website we did for them three years ago that was becoming somewhat dated. The client wanted a site that was "modern and informative", which is exactly what we delivered. I am informed that the principal is "delighted" with the end result, as are we; I truly think this one is a new plateau for our graphic designer.