Articles
Our articles are based on techniques that we’ve used and tested while growing our clients websites in many different sectors. (To see our case studies, visit our “Case Studies” page.)
How we understand your customers using analytics
We believe the only real way to gain a full understanding of your customers and to grow your business is to gain an understanding of your customers through analytics. This is a very specialist set of skills, that few web design companies have. We don’t design for aesthetics, we design for functional and profitability. In […]
Case Study: weconvertvans.co.uk – how we generated 756 leads costing just £0.66p per lead
We Convert Vans are a van conversion company in Birmingham who specialise in window fitting, seat fitting and carpet lining of some of the leading van manufacturers. In March 2016 I was hired to provide my search engine optimisation skills. weconvertvans.co.uk had an existing website that had not been optimised for search and the only traffic was coming via Google […]
Why beauty salon websites don’t need to be beautiful
Web Design in my opinion is an awful term that gives far too much emphasis on how your website should look, rather than how your website should function. In reality there are very few industries where you need to design for aesthetic appearance, so beautiful website design is not important for the majority of industries […]
Case Study: Kings Norton Heating & Bathrooms
Kings Norton Heating & Bathrooms are a leading kitchen and bathroom fitting company in Birmingham. They install all the major kitchen and bathroom brands including Howdens, Magnet, B&Q, Wickes just to name a few. In March 2016 I was brought in. This article describes the progress I have made so far. Phase I: Website Redesign and […]
How small businesses can improve sales by adding trust signals to their website
Highly effective ways for a small business to improve your company’s sales by adding trust signals (This is one of a number of articles, the first of which is here.) No matter how good your company may be, visitors to your website are unlikely to checkout or buy from you if you fail to persuade them that they can trust your […]
10 easy ways for small businesses to increase their website conversion rates
In this article I will outline 10 easy ways for small businesses to increase website conversion rates. I’ll refer throughout this article to the small businesses and their websites, but equally they apply to businesses of all sizes. Fix 1. Social Media icons and links. The first easy fix I want to highlight in this article relates […]
Why building an email list is better than buying an email list
Buying an email list may seem like a quick and easy solution, however it comes with greatest potential to fail and there are some very high associated risks. There are many companies out there on the market who can provide tens of thousands of names and emails, but you will be lucky if it generates just a […]
How building a data list could transform your small business
In this article I provide an example of how building a data list could transform your business. I work with many clients in differing industries and sectors, which has given me the opportunity to witness first hand how building a data list can really transform a small business. However, I have to admit it doesn’t work for […]
Inbound Marketing for Start Ups – A Useful Guide
Inbound Marketing for Start Ups is often daunting, from experience I can categorically tell you that the hardest part of running any business is acquiring new customers – especially for small business owners. No matter how easy things look like on paper, they never quite translate into reality. It’s common knowledge that a good starting point […]
5 reasons why you should collect website visitor data
Collecting website visitor data provides unparalleled opportunities to reach out to your potential target audience. We know that 96% of visitors to your website are never likely return, so if your not gathering visitor data, then expect them to take their business elsewhere. In this article we demonstrate 10 reasons why you should collect website […]
The importance of Internal Linking for SEO success UPDATE
On the 11th Sept 2014 we published the following article: The importance of internal linking for SEO success where we highlighted a marked decline in the number of inbound links that a website would likely attract (due to fear of Google penalties), and therefore the greater emphasis on the need to have a clear internal linking strategy […]
Case Study: Inbound Marketing and Data Capture
In this article I am going to demonstrate just how simple inbound marketing and data capture can be. In March 2015, I was tasked by a very good friend of mine David Peters to build a very simple website for a small Indian Curry House and Takeaway in Brewood, Staffordshire. David Peters was kindly sponsoring the […]
Beauty Websites – How to turn a stranger into a customer
Studies show that it takes on average between 5 and 7 impressions to turn a stranger into a beauty customer. In this article I am going to share with you some of the ways you can turn visitors to your beauty website into customers. It’s important to understand that during this process we should concentrate 80% […]
When beauty websites don’t do what they say on the tin
The primary focus of any beauty website is to attract, educate and hopefully generate new business leads (and keep existing customers happy). The problem is, most just aren’t beautiful – and I don’t mean from a design perspective. I read a beautiful article recently about how a Google employee often spends time correcting snags and rough […]
Number 1 reason your beauty website is not attracting visitors
The number 1 reason your beauty website is not attracting visitors is because your website lacks quality content. As a beauty salon you offer probably over 100 various different treatments and services, despite this, your website probably contains no more than 20-30 pages or posts. You are missing out on an enormous amount of search traffic […]
96 out of 100 visitors to your beauty website will not buy on their first visit
96 out of 100 of visitors who visit your hair and beauty website will not make a purchase on their first visit. That means they won’t become a client and they won’t use your hair or beauty services. You’ve spent all that time and money trying to attract visitors to your website and nearly all of them […]
How we helped a beauty salon gain 500 new customers from their website in 12 months
slimbodyline.co.uk are a small beauty clinic based just off Oxford St in London. In just over 12-months I have turned their outdated and truly under performing website into a highly profitable lead and customer generating channel that has attracted over 60,000 page views and over 500 new customers. In this article I will share some of the secrets […]
How do I create persuasive landing pages that generate leads?
The most important aspect of any landing page is to generate leads and drive conversions. Few strangers who visit your website first time around are prepared to make a purchase, so it’s vital that we provide some form of benefit that persuades an individual to part with their valuable personal data. Such benefits could be Special Offers, […]
How to build a beauty website and content that drives organic traffic
In this post, I explain the process for building a beauty website and content that drives organic traffic*. As with all content it needs to be user centred so it starts with market and user research; determining keywords that your audience searches for online, identifying the best form of content, frequency, style and format. *Definition: Organic traffic refers to […]
How to build a keyword list
Whilst the search engine optimisation landscape has changed dramatically over the last few years, the one thing that has remained constant is how to build a keyword list. This article will help you build a list and then refine the words and phrases that you want to rank for. Step 1: List what you know about […]
10 common beauty website mistakes that prevent visitors, leads and new customers coming via your website
We recently carried out research of 100 beauty websites across Birmingham and surrounding areas. The beauty industry is like most, it relies on a constant stream of new customers and existing customers to operate a profit. Therapists and products are expensive, whilst competition for customers is high. Everyone in the industry fully understands that the internet and […]
Inbound Marketing Basics for Small Business Websites
Inbound Marketing is the art of grabbing the attention of a customer, by having remarkable content that is easy to find. In this article I demonstrate ways in which a small business can grasp the basics of Inbound Marketing and improve their website by attracting visitors/strangers, generating leads and generating new customers. We begin with the […]
Inbound Marketing is more than just SEO
Inbound Marketing is more than just Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In the past good SEO website designs primarily focused on optimising a website for search engines, Inbound Marketing is all about Customer Optimisation. Gone are the days when you developed content for the purpose of ranking and attracting visitors, nowadays it’s all about turning strangers into customers. SEO has not gone away, […]
Optimising your website to maximise inbound marketing
Optimising your website to maximise inbound marketing needs careful planning and attention. A thorough understanding of your customers and what experience you want them to encounter online needs to be established. As an Inbound Marketing Agency we strongly urge you to optimise your website is to attract visitors, leads and new customers, this includes having clear and well […]
SEO for Health, Fitness and Beauty websites
Sourcing new visitors, leads and customers is of significant importance for any business, especially for small health, fitness and beauty websites in Birmingham and London. Having a company website couple with is one of the primary ways organisations now seek to improve their sales, and when done right it can drastically turn the fortunes of any […]
The importance of Internal Linking for SEO success.
In this article I discuss the importance of internal linking for search engine optimisation success. As we see a marked decline in the number of inbound links that a website attracts (due to fear of Google penalties), this places a greater emphasis on the need to have a clear internal linking strategy and authoritative hubpages. To […]
Find iPhone App – How to prevent thieves from disabling the app
Find iPhone App is a very useful tool. Being able to track a lost or stolen phone has obvious benefits for crime prevention and data protection. However, thieves can easily disable the app if additional security measures are not put in place. If you want to ensure you can track your iPhone successfully, in this […]
Has reputation management just got easier?
A top EU court has just ruled that Google must remove listing of ordinary people if the listings are irrelevant and outdated. The right to be forgotten has come about after a Spanish man complained that a 16 year old auction notice of his repossessed home infringed his privacy. So has reputation management just got […]
8 competency based interview questions for hiring SEO professionals
I recently wrote an article published on Moz.com regarding competency based interview questions for hiring SEO professionals. If you have yet to read the article, it would be good to digest it first before reading on: Having seen a shortage of quality competency based interview questions in the SEO industry, I thought I would provide further examples […]
Does Google+ help influence website rankings?
Rank Fishkin founder of Moz has been undertaking some considerable testing on whether Google+ helps influence website rankings. Rand thus far has concluded that there is no evidence that Google+ activity helps to improve a websites search engine rankings. The testing showed a small increase of 3 places, only to return to its original starting […]
Is guest posting okay providing it’s good content?
There has been much discussion and speculation about guest posting since Google came out and said if guest posting is your strategy for getting links, then you should probably stop. The questions is, is guest posting okay providing it’s good content? The answer to this could be NO! “Guest posting has become spammy” – another […]
FREE Product Photography
Do you own a website and you would like to improve the imagery of your products featured online? How would you like us to provide you FREE product photography? Professional photographs will help boost your marketing and increase your sales and turnover. For a very limited time only we are offering a days worth of […]
12 sure fire ways to get a Google penalty or rankings drop
Is the art of link building dead? Is link building a sure fire way to get a Google penalty? The simple answer is no, however the landscape in which we go about link building has changed forever and has become somewhat chaotic. If you don’t choose very wisely where you source your links, then you […]
20 link building strategies designed to attract customers to your website
Are you looking to attract new customers? Here’s 20 link building strategies that are designed to attract customers to your website. Internal Linking and on-page SEO – I’ve started with this one, because it’s the one that you can control, yet some many people fail to do. You can easily control the anchor text of […]
Is there other ways to get traffic to my website other than via Google?
It goes without saying that Google should be apart of any marketing strategy, with the aim of bringing visitors, leads and customers to your door. However, if you completely rely on Google to bring you leads, then this is a very dangerous strategy because Penguins, Pandas and Hummingbirds have a habit of wiping websites of […]
Google begins to penalise poor mobile websites
Google announced in June that it would start to adjust rankings for websites that failed to provide a user friendly mobile experience. A poor user experience included homepage redirects, unplayable video’s, or when 404 errors were served even though the page existed on the desktop website. Such penalties mean that it is vital that you […]
What’s the best way to build links and get traffic to my website?
The best way to build links to your website is to ensure that you create the best possible, high quality content that is merit worthy, and then use relationship marketing, PR and content syndication to tell others about it. This way, people will naturally want to link to it. You have to create content that is scalable […]
What is rel=”no follow” and when to use it
The rel=”no follow” tag was introduced by the major search engines in 2005 to fight spam and allow publishers to prevent outbound links from receiving ‘votes’ in favour of the content. So why would editors want to avoid passing votes? Well if search engines believe that outbound links have been paid, or are in anyway […]
How important is it to have a mobile site?
Imagine having nearly 60% of visitors land on your website, only to hit the back button. Is that enough of a reason for you to have a mobile site? Or perhaps you need to know that 67% of people are likely to make a purchase if the site is mobile friendly. You cannot ignore mobile […]
SEO for Beginners and Novices
In this article we discuss SEO for beginners, including on-page and off-page SEO. Since way before Google existed, we have always relied on indexes and directories to advertise our products – the BT phone book for business is a classic example of such. Born out of such directories was companies like A1 plumbing, A1 taxis […]
The importance of links for ranking is higher now than ever
There has been much debate and speculation from industry experts about whether the importance of links for ranking is diminishing. Some say they are, as Google gets to grip with social and sharing. However, for me. I side with Eric Ward. If you think about it logically, over the last couple of years Google has […]
SEO Case Study – The importance of SEO
It’s rare that I give specifics in a public forum about any of the websites that I build, however the following SEO Case Study clearly demonstrates the importance of SEO and the power of search. advancedfitness.org contains a new website that was launched at the beginning of April 2013. In just over a month, it […]
Upgrading WordPress Security
Have you been hit by the Levitra hack? WordPress is a widely used CMS platform, but to ensure you are not a victim of hackers breaching your site to embed hidden code, we advise you to install some additional security plugins. Wordfence and WP Better Security are two very good plugins that alter the core framework […]
Google Penguin 2 Update by David Vidgen
Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam team has today announced some changes that are coming into play with the launch of Google Penguin 2 update this summer (as early as May). The message was consistently clear from Matt, Google’s advice is for webmasters to produce great sites that have excellent content. Matt specifically mentioned bookmarking and repeat […]
70 million reasons to use WordPress
As of Dec 2012 there is a staggering 70 million WordPress-powered websites. It powers some of the worlds biggest brands and celebrity blogs/websites, including Sylvester Stallone, Paris Hilton and Linkedin – proving it to be the leading Content Management System (CMS) on the market. That’s why we use it! It has over 17,00 plugins available, so […]
Press Release : Free SEO friendly websites
A Birmingham web design and SEO agency davidvidgen.co.uk is helping small companies beat the recession by offering free SEO friendly websites. davidvidgen.co.uk is offering small and medium sized businesses a free SEO friendly professional website when you subscribe to their link building services for just 3 months. United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland […]
Google Panda Update
Google has undertaken its 23rd Panda update since the algorithm was introduced in Feb 2012, affecting 1.3% of all user queries. The update will come as a shock for many just before Christmas, but signals Google’s determination to ensure that it delivers quality search engine results pages. Earlier in the week some of our clients […]
Google+ and Google Authorship Markup
If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to create a Google+ account and ensure that your website and blog have the appropriate Google Authorship Markup. Google+ is their own Social Network hub designed to share as you would in real life. Check out Circles, Events and Hangouts… For a business, it will become a vital […]
The Aftermath of Penguin & Panda – How to Remove Poor Quality Links
For years many SEO firms have adopted the use of links from directories and other broad related websites. The recent Panda and Penguin update has left many website owners see the value of their domains vastly disappear down the SERPS. In fairness, Google has always promoted the need for good and unique content, which in […]
Link Bait Strategies or Just Good Content?
Link bait is a term widely used in the SEO industry. For me, link bait is just a fancy word for describing great content; if you develop great content, it will attract links. But will it attract the right kind of links? Well this depends on the content. If you develop a funny youtube video, the vast […]
Beginners Guide to SEO
Building an online brand and developing an internet site that is profitable, can be achieved with the right guidance and expertise. The main objective of any website should be to help a business flourish, communicate any desired messages, and most importantly ultimately aid in the profitability of the company either through direct online sales or by providing […]
Link Building Strategy – Some Useful Methods
Inbound links combined with on-page SEO are the most important ranking factors for the SERPS. Links are also vital if you are to increase traffic to your website. Here are some very useful methods to assist your link building: To attract links of any sort, content is key. Make sure your content is unique and […]
Linking Overview by David Vidgen
Search engines use links to determine the order they list sites in their search engine results pages (SERPS). They also use links to discover new webpages and sites. Without inbound links, a website is unlikely to appear top of the SERPS for any competitive keyphrase or words. Thus links are (along with on-page factors) the […]