All posts by Roddy Newlands

McLaren Books Ahoy! SEO on webSEOlive

By On 02/07/2011 In Blog Permanent Link to McLaren Books Ahoy! SEO on webSEOlivePermalink

McLaren Books, one of the UK’s leading bookdealers in maritime & nautical rare books based just outside Glasgow, has commissioned webSEOlive to not just design a new ecommerce website and optimise their online presence, but create a complete solution to the almost defunct PBFA Book Management System (BMS) database that will not involve annual license fees.

An Online Presence Cutting Down on Commission Fees

Online presence has become increasingly important in a competitive market, and while sites such as ABE and eBay provide a useful facility for reaching & selling, they often do so with a hefty commission.  This is where a good, optimised website is crucial, particularly for booksellers with an area of specialisation, or looking to sell at the high end of the market; the ability to be placed on Page 1 of Google above ABE results allows you to sell and foster relationships without paying commission.

For this reason we are proud to announce not just our first book dealer client in McLaren Books, but that we are now looking to offer a variety of customisable solutions tailored for bookdealers, which can be completely tailored according to your short- & long-term business needs. We can not only redesign and build your website from scratch but can work on the optimisation/restructuring of a pre-existing website to dramatically improve page-ranking.

We can also help set up feeds to automatically transfer your stock details onto the main bookselling portals such as ABE and Ilab-Lila. For those interested in the business potential of social networking, and bored of Stephen Fry’s twitterings, we can also provide Twitter profiles for your business so you can Tweet yourself, as well as creating/optimising your Facebook page.

Sustainable Tourism Websites

By On 03/13/2010 In Blog Permanent Link to Sustainable Tourism WebsitesPermalink

We love travelling and producing websites & marketing campaigns for the Travel industry.  We’ve particularly enjoyed managing Jamaica’s environmentally-friendly No1 Eco Coastal & Blue Mountain resorts,  Hotel Mocking Bird Hill and Lime Tree Farm respectively.  

The two successful web optimisation solutions for these Caribbean-based companies are quite different but what they both shared, which we loved to embrace,  is a passion for ethical-based business; exactly the type of travel companies that webSEOlive feel inspired & privileged to work with.

We have an active interest in eco-friendliness and wholly support & respect sustainable tourism. We have also greatly enjoyed working alongside our ‘Green’ clients so far! For these reasons webSEOlive are now offering a comprehensive selection of tailored components especially for this sector’s needs.

Increasing & Sustaining your Online Presence

With the increasing number of businesses that look to the web as an affordable alternative to more traditional marketing and PR,  so the competition grows within the area to receive your precious marketing budget.  These include specialist portal and directory sites, all  claiming to offer definitive directories of eco-lodges etc.; the choice is bewildering and often they are biased or inadequate.  Many only list those have paid a a fee to appear, or take a commission. Wouldn’t it be better to alternatively appear on Page 1 of Google above these sites and cut out the middleman so to speak utilising the latest free tools such as Twitter etc to help get you there?  After all if a journalist is looking to write a story about your location where would they first look an independent company’s website or a directory.  Getting found doesn’t just attract customers it also attracts press too.

webSEOlive believes that to  attract that constantly blooming eco-conscious market you need to have a strong, identifiable and memorable brand, with the right blend of textual and contextual information, images, an ever growing number of pages and appropriate links to help you turn a visitor into a customer and it is in providing these assets.  webSEOlive uses our accumulated, varied experience to ensure that:

  • Your branding is believable; people will not spend their hard earnt pennies online if they don’t believe you even have enough money to invest in a logo, style or brochure.
  • Your content is king; inspiring & believable, people should be encouraged to book immediately with confidence from reading the pages on your website.
  • Your marketing delivers visitors that become customers as well as attracting press; we know how to promote green businesses on the internet, particularly in regard to ‘findability’ (i.e., Google search ranking) and attracting press.  It does take time and is not instantaneous, but we do what’s required, deliver results.

What we can offer your business:

Eco Friendly

  1. Website design or redesign
    Either building a website from scratch or redesigning & optimising a pre-existing one to improve the site’s ‘findability’.
  2. Provision of Content Management Systems
    Creation of a control panel or content management system (CMS) and blog sites that allows site owners easy & free access to make updates to text, basic format, images, etc without being charged to insert changes to their own web pages
  3. Reservation & Calendar facilities
    Full online booking solutions & calendars for availability; rooms
    and excursions.
  4. Specific optimisation focussed on location and eco-searches
    Ensuring that the client’s website is on the first page of
    organic searches that use location and improved ranking for
    searches on environmentally-friendly holidays etc and
    holiday accommodation in generalAutumn in Abruzzo.
  5. Content / Copy Writing
    We can either provide guidance & proofing for content writing on the site or we can write content under the site owners’ auspices, again to maintain search engine optimised copy.
  6. Relevant Links & Keyword Building
    We will research and build the website’s links with appropriate and related websites in a wide variety of sectors to boost the site’s indexing; we also understand and will implement the relevant keywords to your particular business, crucial to being discovered online
  7. PR and general profile building
    In online and traditional media
  8. Brochures, Leaflets and Downloadable documentation
    We can create publicity and information documents in a variety
    of formats, including PDFs, for print quality or screen resolutionchilies in winter
  9. Editing of digital images
    If clients can provide good quality images we can edit, process and integrate them into the website. If clients wish to fly us over to take advantage of our own photographic skills we won’t grumble of course!
  10. Social Network campaigns
    We can boost our clients’ profiles via such services as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. This includes webSEOlive composing and sending regular “tweets” if required

Email Newsletters Made Simple

By On 03/04/2010 In Blog Permanent Link to Email Newsletters Made SimplePermalink

There are many ways currently available to remind people of your brand, including RSS feeds and Social Media such as Twitter & Facebook. Whilst these definitely have unique advantages, they also suffer on some levels. RSS Feeds from posts tend to provide a post in complete form to the recipients, or requires multiple clicks, which doesn’t require directing them to the website; Social Media still alienates a lot of people who find it intrusive or overly public.

Email marketing on the other hand provides an opportunity to utilise a medium most people are now comfortable and familiar with; email. At webSEOlive we provide our clients with the capacity to generate regular e-newsletters in an easy, convenient and reliable form, guaranteed as much as possible not to be blocked by spam filters!

Amongst the advantages of sending your customers e-newsletters are:

Usability of format – everyone, even your granny, is familiar with how to receive and read email these days…
Traffic – synoptic link-thrus to your website’s posts drives traffic to your website and increases chances of incidental reading on the site
Stats & Reports – e-newsletters can provide a fascinating and convenient insight into your customers’ level of interest in your product and what elements they find
most interesting. Reports can be produced to allow you to focus on your clients’ strongest interests.
Personal – Email newsletters are more personal than other forms of communication, allowing you to for example maintain colour-schemes and layout consistent with that
of your website, maintaining the brand familiarity, and customised text. The flexibility of the medium allows you to provide content rich, visually oriented
newsletters. Or for those who prefer, simple plain text with hyperlinks.
Affordability – webSEOlive offer a one-off fee of £400 for html design and programming; £150 for each newsletter mail-out to include content and image placement.
Additional fees would apply for content creation and statistical analysis & reporting.

There are many ways currently available to remind people of your brand, including RSS feeds and Social Media such as Twitter & Facebook. Whilst these definitely have unique advantages, they also suffer on some levels. RSS Feeds from posts tend to provide a unstylised post in complete form without any imagery to the recipients and without direction to the website. 
newsletters

You can restrict the number of words viewed and provide a link to the website for the full post in the case of Feedburner, but that involves another click which can be off-putting. Often Social Media still alienates a lot of people who can find it intrusive or overly public, that it puts their personal information at risk.

Email marketing on the other hand provides an opportunity to utilise a medium most people are now comfortable and familiar with; email. At webSEOlive we provide our clients with the capacity to generate regular e-newsletters in an easy, convenient and reliable form, guaranteed as much as possible not to be blocked by spam filters!

Amongst the advantages of sending your customers e-newsletters are:

  • Maintaining brand awareness – in case not everyone remembers to view your website regularly…
  • Usability of format – everyone, even your granny, is familiar with how to receive and read email these days!
  • Traffic – synoptic link-thrus to your website’s posts drives traffic to your website and increases chances of incidental reading on the site
  • Stats & Reports – e-newsletters can provide a fascinating and convenient insight into your customers’ level of interest in your product and what elements they find most interesting. Reports can be produced to allow you to focus on your clients’ strongest interests.
  • Personal – Email newsletters are more personal than other forms of communication, allowing you to for example maintain colour-schemes and layout consistent with that of your website, maintaining the brand familiarity, and customised text. The flexibility of the medium allows you to provide content rich, visually oriented newsletters. Or for those who prefer, simple plain text with hyperlinks.
  • Affordability – webSEOlive offer a one-off fee of £400 for html design and programming; £150 for each subsequent newsletter mail-out to include content and image placement.  Additional fees would apply for content creation and statistical analysis & reporting.

Photography – Visually Engage for Increased Conversions

By On 03/03/2010 In Blog Permanent Link to Photography – Visually Engage for Increased ConversionsPermalink

Photography provides a very simple way to increase the success of your website and develop your conversion rate.  How often have you visited a location website and seen a clutch of images that even your Granny could take better with her new digital camera (if of course she knew how to resize)? A quick glance at a poor photograph and we click ta-ta as we leave the site, under the impression that the retailer or hotel owner is trying to cram everything into one shot, in affect losing out the all important details which are what generally sells and keeps us on a page or a website.

In a world of super-tight purse strings, to try and sell online without investing in good photography is a way of kissing goodbye to potential customers. It undermines your brand’s image by either appearing amateurish and shoddy, or indicating a lack of genuine interest or investment. This is applicable to nearly all online sectors, but especially for hotels and holiday destinations, as well as regional product shots and similar.

Such investment in quality photography is crucial for those that want a sticky, content-rich site that has a high conversion rate. We find it almost tragic that this is the most neglected advice that we pass on to some of our clients.

Buy in Skills to Complement Your Brand

Unless you are a competent photographer, or excellent at post-capture manipulation of second-rate images to still engage the viewers’ imagination enough to convert & sell the product, we strongly recommend looking to bring someone in with the skills to properly complement your product/brand. A fresh eye and a professional perspective, and equally importantly an understanding of resizing & cropping images to the sizes you need without losing essential detail, can hugely boost your site’s appeal. A point & shoot camera, let alone approach, won’t do your brand any favours.

There are a number of choices available:

  1. Employ experienced photographers like ourselves who do have DSLR cameras, tripods and a variety of lenses to make your product work from various angles & perspectives, and have a full understanding of image editing and production;
  2. For those feeling cash-rich employ a freelance professional photographer, making sure that you look at their portfolio, agree a style and instructing them on the required sizes of the imagery for your website;
  3. look on Flickr and other similar image hosting online services for local amateur photographers & networks -   everyone loves to see their work on other sites with a link, but always ask the owner of the image don’t just steal, the extra profit that good photography can bring to your website should be rewarded by the minimum of a link back to the ‘photographer’ who is helping create that for you.

Learn the Basics of Photo Editing

If you have a website that you are planning to update yourselves, you or a team member MUST learn how to crop and resize images.  Editing facilities are offered via : Picnik.com  & Picasa or alternatively, invest £47 and buy Photoshop Elements, and try some of the free online video tutorials offered on YouTube.  If you don’t like online training try a 1-day course, there are plenty out there and it’s an inexpensive skill to invest in yet with it can bring such high rewards.