We thought it was about time that we introduced our two newest member to the MakeUsAWebsite team. Kate Random Love joined us on a part time basis around 9 weeks ago. Kate is undertaking responsibility for the core article writing work for our clients.

The main purpose of the articles which we publish is to promote our customers websites and services. By bringing Kate into the team we are able to offer a level of publishing which is almost unprecedented in the SEO industry.

Kate’s background is in the history of art, and she received her PhD on Contemporary Art in New York in 2010. Earlier in her career worked for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, writing departmental Press Releases and editing a weekly interdepartmental Government magazine. So far Kate has enjoyed working on client projects and researching all kinds of topics from online backups and storage, to pet products and holidays. “What I am really enjoying about working at MakeUsAWebsite is the diversity – no two days are ever the same and there is always something new to write about.”

By producing content of the highest standard we are able to ensure that they can be published on the highest quality websites. This in turn helps the customers via direct leads and the positive SEO benefits of having the articles linking back to their website.

Scott Braithwaite has also joined us in the capacity of PHP coder. His core responsibility will be coding content managed websites based on the WordPress platform. Scott is an experienced PHP developer who has been working with PHP since 2002.

Both Kate and Scott are based in our office in Cark In Cartmel, Cumbria. Whilst we are in quite rural part of the country, we are very fortunate to have found and welcomed two highly skilled professionals to the team.

The WordPress app for iOS has been updated to version 1.4. The update introduces new features for authors to be more interactive with the visitors to their blogs. The WordPress app for iOS is for users that want to manage their blog content on the go. With WordPress version 1.4 for iOS users can now: Manage and record comments, post updates, record followers, and more.

All this can now be down from the convenience of your phone or tablet. With the latest update, the company known as Automattic has enabled push notifications for all of the important things you want to know. You no longer have to manually refresh or re-enter the app to find the latest events happening on your blog. Since the WordPress app for iOS is probably the most elegant solution for managing your blog on the go, many users will find this update to be important for the new features 1.4 boasts.

Before the update to 1.4, users were only able to get push notifications for new comments posted on their blogs. If you want to get push notifications for certain events and not others, the new update allows you to customize that too. You can see your event notifications from anywhere in the app. This is important because with how multi layered the app is (you may be doing many different things if trying to edit a blog post or create a new page from the app) you will always want access to the new events happening on your blog. WordPress.com hosted blogs will have access to even more, the same things they have in the WordPress.com toolbar. Including: Likes, Reblogs, Follows, and Badges/Stats Highlights.

One of the other big features offered by this update is the ability to manage comments all from one centralized screen – independent of your blog (if you have multiple WordPress blogs). This means that you can view new comments, moderate them, and reply to them across all of your blogs without leaving the screen you are on. This new comment moderation screen will be helpful for those that get a lot of comments on their posts and want to reply to them in a swift manner.

WordPress 1.4 also comes with new bug fixes for the app. These bug fixes include a fix for the ability to properly view statistics if you have a self hosted WordPress blog. Another problem that has been fixed is the problematic syncing off offline posts and drafts, causing users to possibly lose their content.

WordPress 1.4 allows users to manage their blog from a phone or tablet. Maintaining a blog has never been more elegant or convenient. If you are new to the app and have a self-hosted WordPress blog, please know that in order to get the features offered by the mobile version of WordPress, you must have the WordPress Jetpack plugin. Once you have acquired the Jetpack plugin, users will find the WordPress 1.4 for iOS to be an integral key to maintaining one or more blogs.

Martha Hendrix is a freelance tech and gadget blogger. Whether she’s plugging away at a Word Press blog, or tinkering with a Talis Equipment Portion Scale, she spends her days in a mechanical world.

MakeUsAWebsite Limited have announced the opening of a new office in Cumbria. Based oposite the historic grounds of Holker Hall, the new base offers customers an ideal chance to pop-in for face to face consultations, explains Director David Hamer; “We do look forward to offering customers a drop-in service, where they can feel free to visit us anytime and chat about their website, potential website or online growth.”

Offering a range of online service, MakeUsAWebsite’s rapid expansion over the last year has seen them expanding their customer base into Africa, Mainland Europe and as far as Australia. “We have even gained a customer in the Ukraine late last year, which was quite unexpected”.

However, the new office is focused on delivering a more face to face service, and the company has outlined it’s intensions of more local business and employment oppurtunities in 2013.

David Hamer went on to explain, “Dealing with customers over the phone and via email is critical in this line of business. However, we do want the new office to be a hub, where our customers feel they can visit us anytime, and receive the same level of service as we provide to the online customers. We really couldn’t have a more stunning setting for an office, and we really hope customers will enjoy their visit”.
“We have been extreamly fortunate to work with some exciting and dynamic companies over the past few years, including leading online backup provider Securstore, online clothing giant StandOut, as well as some Cumbrian based start-ups looking to launch their online presence.”

The company also hopes to recruit local people over the course of 2013. “We have a couple of team members who work from home, and will be interviewing for an apprentiship position late in January.  We hope to add one more member to the team should we meet our targets for 2013.”

The new office is located at Unit 4, Holker School House, Cark-In-Cartmel.  You can visit the MakeUsAWebsite website at www.makeusawebsite.com or call freephone 0808 189 0914.

If you are looking to market your products, then there are a lot of different ways of doing it. You could open a store where you display all your products and advertise about it. The problem with such a method is that you would only be restricted to the few thousands of people that live around the area where your store is located. You wouldn’t usually find people from elsewhere coming to your store to buy what they need, unless you are selling something unique which they can’t find anywhere else. Therefore, there is a need to look at a better option to get more business.

Nowadays, social media has become a very important part of people’s lives. Irrespective of where you are from, the chances are that as long as you have an internet connection, you would have an account in facebook. This is a very important statistic that you need to keep in mind. Since there are millions of users on facebook, it would make a lot more sense for you to market your product on this platform rather than restricting yourself to just one locality. By engaging with so many people, you would be able to do more business.

Of course, just because you create a page does not mean that you would have people coming in, liking your page and start buying the products that you want to sell. You would need to do some promotion for your page as well. This can be very tricky as there are a lot of pages on facebook that have failed because they did not do it properly or they did not take much interest in promoting the page. There are certain steps that you can follow so that it would become easier for you to get more people to engage on your page.

If you go to the website http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2200985/Facebook-A-Love-Story-Using-Earned-Paid-Media-to-Better-Attract-Engage-Customers, you would find clear steps on what you need to do to ensure that there are more people on your page who would be willing to do business with you and buy your products. They also have a case study which shows how it is beneficial to have a facebook page and promote your product on it rather than trying to sell it from a store. The benefits of online marketing far outweigh the costs that you have to incur by opening a store in a neighbourhood to sell your product.

The recent algorithm update released by Google, Google Penguin is said to be the most significant algorithm changes made by Google till date. The update released in April, 2012 was seen a major step by Google to address the rising concerns of the widespread use of black hat SEO techniques used by the business organizations to promote their business aggressively online.

The Google Penguin update was released mainly with the objective to block all the spam websites that have plagiarised content, too much anchor texts or farm links and provider browsers with better search results. While the Google Penguin updates got rid of the black listed sites, it also affected several genuine and credible websites, which in turn have affected their rankings and also their business potentials.

If your business website has suffered low rankings due to penguin updates, the following tips recommended by SEO experts would greatly help you to regain top ranking and win back your business credibility:

• While using On Page SEO method, you must ensure that you are using the right keyword related to your business. In addition, you must be watchful about the number of times the keyword is repeated in the content on your website; using too many keywords will not improve your ranking, instead, the content would be identified as spam by Google Penguin. To avoid this situation it is better to keep the content simple, unique and informative with primary keywords placed at the right places so that the web crawlers pick the content quickly.
• There are several free tools available online that helps you to track the exact location of your keywords within the content on your website, use any of these tools to ensure that the keywords appear at the right places and are spread through the content.
• Another effective way to keep your website ahead of the Google Penguin update is to integrate Google+ social media tools in your website. Since it is a Google Product it would lend credibility to your website.
• If you are using back linking technique to promote your website, it is important the links are from credible and genuine sites.
• Taping the potential of social media website is a great way to promote your website, you can direct the leads to your business website and encourage them to read through the informative and helpful content on the site.
• Encouraging guest posts on your website is another effective way to improve your keywords rankings.

The search engine marketing has become a very common strategy to promote all the newly developing search engines. Most of these SEM s are usually influenced by Google in their tools, research and data. Google itself being the most highly used search engine has many applications like Google analytics. Google account reps , Google AdMob, Google AdWords professional, etc. the newly launched Google think is an addiction to most of the people  as it can perform all kinds of operations and marketing strategies including math !.

Google has also gained a lot of credit in areas like mobile, audio, video, display etc. Google Think has an addicting feature to most of its users who are so influenced by it that they even ignore the many errors it can cause sometimes. Most of the time people blindly believe in Google think and other Google applications without cross checking their own calculations, completely relying on Google .Suppose 2+2 = 4, there are times when Google has given out 5 as the answer! Google Analytics also plays a major role in the promotion of Google.

Most o the business men who are into marketing are highly influenced by this Google think. They face a tough challenge in differentiating between genuinely important tools of Google and the other selected ones. Even though there are plenty of other search engines people opt for Google Think. Though Google is such a brilliant company and one of the most highly used search engines, there are several other companies like Retargeted ,Droll etc  which might turn out to be even better than Google itself , web trends, Yahoo, Bing, jump tap or tap joy are also some of the other leading search engines which should be tried. These companies, if given the chance can also be Google leading competitors.

Never the less though Google provides us with all the necessary information and answers all our questions and problems! People somehow are addicted to google, resorting to it at almost all times. Though Google has had several drawbacks, it has still managed to draw everyone’s preferences in being the best and also enjoys excellent traffic, all thanks to the fact that it answers what people have to ask it. It’s the online library! Google has also been one of the greatest search engine companies that makes about billions of dollars every year and also has been providing jobs to millions.

No wonder, it’s hard to imagine life, or the world as we see it today without google!

Nowadays every website aims at producing content that is smartphone friendly. With the increasing use of smartphones today and most of the people opting for smartphone to find information it has become important for a webmaster to create content that is smartphone friendly. One has to hire designers who can design websites that suit best to the design and type of smartphone. Such designers create responsive website design i.e. that serve all devices on same URL or build sites that has separate desktop URL and mobile URL.

One can use Google Analytics to find the number of mobile users using smartphone to gather information about your website. Depending on the operating system, resolution and the type of handset one uses to search information you can gather about the number of mobile phone users for your website in Google. Google webmaster tool filters information and gives complete details on the mobile search for each keyword. This reflects the number of mobile users and the keywords that customers search, basing on which you can design your website.

Customers today prefer use their mobile phones for searching information. Smartphones have made life easy, simple, quick and hassle free. To find information, chat, play games and surf internet is possible over the phone now. A website that fails to provide information to its mobile phone users is losing a big share of market for sure. Creating a separate mobile site configuration that is mobile friendly can attract customers.

With the increasing use of tablets, handhelds and smartphones it is important that a marketer understands the importance of this customer group. It is important to design a website that fits best to the small screen, has fast download, has effective and appropriate images, provides relevant information and does not create any hassle like flash animation because a mobile phone would not have such updates.

With internet being available in phones, tablets and handsets a customer does not like to waste time in searching for each mall for required product. He prefers to search for the product in search engine, get the required details and go to the right place and grab the best deal. In this way one can save a lot of time, money and effort. Now, a marketer who understands how important this share of customer group is should make take every possible measure and make his website phone friendly. Hiring a web designer who can specially design these websites is a must for every firm nowadays.

Most of the websites nowadays are fretting about the words scam and fraud when the word is searched in search engine. Google Autocomplete showing this is surely not good news for them. If your website is falling prey to such spam or scam tag then it is time to focus on online reputation management. Whether a company is big or small it may fall prey to this because of stiff competition, bad experience of customer and the like. It is important to maintain the reputation of a brand so that it instils trust and faith among customers. Word of mouth publicity is the strongest medium of communication. Any bad news may spread like forest fire. To keep things under control and maintain the image of your brand is important. If Google autocomplete gives such kind of result to your website then it is time to repair or build reputation for your company.

Google Autocomplete is a boon. A visitor need not type the entire keyword. With just a few alphabets typed in the search bar it shows a couple of options that may fill your search. Searching becomes easy and quick with the help of this option. But when it shows scam or spam while typing the name of company it is becomes a matter of worry. Depending on the social media mention, keywords, location and search volume Google autocomplete algorithm is based. If you find negative words in Google Autocomplete then it is the time to hire an online brand management firm before the negative publicity causes harm to your brand.

There are online reputation management firms that take care of this aspect. They build or promote your brand and promise to instil confidence among customers. These firms use various tools and control the information related to your business. Using trackers that answer customer’s questions, monitoring alerts, social media these firms monitor, engage and optimize your brand.  By optimizing the search these online reputation firms make sure that the content is well scrutinised and the website is protected from negative comments and remarks.

Professional tactics, creativity and experience are needed to build brand reputation. Hire a firm that offers you these aspects. The reputation firms adopt tools and techniques that help in protecting your brand from infiltration, unwanted comments, unwanted interference and the like. They would publish press releases, build content and spread positive word in the online world. Cleaning up the reputation online is necessary and hiring a professional firm is the only solution to this problem.

Search engine optimization has been a game changer for many companies, big and small, who can now take their products to millions of users online. Without spending huge amounts on traditional advertising means, you get much wider attention thanks to SEO. You also can make sure your business reaches far corners of the world and don’t have to limit your business growth to the local market. Given the enormous benefits of optimization, many companies want to make the most out of them and some SEO professionals will do anything they can to help companies achieve those results.

White Hat SEO v/s Other SEO techniques

When it comes to SEO strategies used by professionals who handle the task, White Hat or ethical, above board methods make a world of difference to your page ranks. Black Hat SEO methods have been used by professionals who want to take the short route to higher rankings in search pages. But over time these websites get penalised because search engines detest such optimization strategies. Many big names in the industry have invoked the wrath of search engines like Google, which has demoted websites of these companies for using such underhand techniques.

It’s understandable that it’s very tempting to cross the thin line between White Hat strategies and other SEO means but you need to beware of the repercussions if your website gets into trouble with search engines. There’s a firm belief amongst many experts that there’s no need for such techniques especially when some popular White Hat strategies are easy to follow and bring sensational results to your website.

Popular White Hat SEO methods that bring good results:

• Providing quality content on your website is the first and probably the most important constituent of White Hat SEO. Users coming to your website are looking for informative content; that’s the only way to keep them interested in coming back to your website. It will not only boost traffic to your website but will make an impression with search engines as well. Frequently updated websites help you immensely in your goal too.
• Another important element of White Hat SEO is appropriate use of titles because they give a fair idea about what the content is about to search engines. Hence all and mighty search engines attach a lot of significance to use of titles
• There is no alternative to detailed keyword research and their use in the right manner. You cannot even think of keyword stuffing as it will instantly lead to trouble with search engines. Multi word keywords that are relevant for your products hold the key today.
• White Hat SEO is an ongoing process and building quality inbound links will help you achieve your goal of maintaining your rank with search engines.

White Hat SEO techniques are hugely important and should be paid due heed to.

SEO can help you get your website and thereby your products the attention it deserves. Today you can sell practically everything under the Sun online and millions of users are looking online to buy all sorts of products, from niche items to their everyday household goods. Optimization of your website ensures that is seen by a large number of users and you can then lure them into buying your products. But as any SEO professionals will tell you, optimization is an ongoing process and resting on high page ranks can be your biggest folly.

It’s one thing to achieve high page ranks, it’s quite another to maintain them and stay one step ahead of your rivals. You can only do that by consistent optimization effort and evolving your SEO strategies if need be and stay at the top. It also keeps your users hooked on to your website, which will help you generate repeat audience, which is crucial for SEO benefits.

Website Content management through SEO and how it works.

As the oft-repeated saying goes, content is the king when it comes to your website. Users today are looking for relevant content to sate their craving for useful information. And that’s why content management on your website assumes great significance. Needless to say it’s a time consuming process and you have to put in consolidated effort to ensure that the content on your website hits the spot with your users, but it is well worth the effort in the end.

By creating content that is rich in relevant keywords, which are used appropriately on the page, you will be able to attract your target users. Making sure that your custom landing pages are up-to-date as well will ensure that your users get everything they are looking for on your website. Updating the content on your website on a regular basis will keep your users engaged. Reviewing performance of your website content is another important aspect of SEO that cannot be overlooked.

Blog maintenance through SEO.

Today blogs are widely read by online users and many of them have a strong fan following. Writing blogs that make a mark with users and appeal to them is an art, which cannot be taken lightly. Having a voice of authority writing the blog helps build credibility about it. At the same time no user likes to be talked down to; the blog should be able to connect with your users. If you are able to achieve that goal, you will ensure that you generate word of mouth publicity for your blog and its following will increase manifold. Coupled with SEO strategies, it will yield rich dividends for you.

Managing content on your websites and blogs can lead to significant gains in the long run.