Frequently Asked Questions on Web Design, CMS and Search Engine Optimisation

Here you will find answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) on web design, content management systems (CMS) and of course on search engine optimisation (SEO) ie how you make your website appear higher in searches. If you have any questions you would like answered here please send details using the contact us form.

How Do I SEO My Website Myself?

If you work carefully through the website checklists and the SEO hints and tips at the bottom of the page and on SEO4all you should soon find your website appearing higher in searches.

What is a Good CMS?

A good content management system, CMS, should allow you to easily edit the page body content so that you can keep your website up-to-date with freshly updated content, and it should be quick to edit the page titles, meta description and main page heading to reflect the content of the page so that your web pages are optimised for both visitors and search engines. Quick and easy production of sitemaps and robots.txt files so that search engines know how to index your website is important and you should be able to easily add pages to your website with search engine friendly URLs and you need to be able to add your own style with easily edited CSS style sheets and page HTML.

Is Website Page Load Speed Important?

The web page load speed ie the speed at which the web page appears in your browser, is I believe becoming more and more important. There is talk on various blogs saying that Google will be taking page load speed into account when listing search results. If you use Google Webmaster Tools you should look in the Labs section where you will see a graph of your website's load speed over time. The graph also shows the 20th percentile mark so that you can see whether your website falls into what they classify as fast or slow. Webmaster tools identifies the pages where there are problems and gives suggestions as to how you can remedy the problem. As Google has added this to Webmaster Tools it is fair to believe that this is a factor that will become increasingly important with regard to your website's position in search engine results. One simple way to ensure your pages load as quickly as they can is to ensure that all pictures on the page are as low in kb as possible without losing quality.

I want a Blog, how do I do this?

The easiest way is to use Wordpress and ask your S3 web designer to add this to your website. It does take some configuring and if you want it set up in a certain style or even to match your own site then it will cost a little more but the cost is well worth it to be able to post everyday your new thoughts etc plus your blog can be used via Digg, Facebook and Delicious etc to drive traffic to your site. To see an example of a Wordpress blog set up by us see Our S3 Web Design Blog in our news section.

If you do not have a website you can set a blog up for free with both Blogger and Wordpress however the blog will be hosted on their servers and so, if your blog becomes super famous, as some people's have, you may have difficulty removing the blog to your own domain but check this yourself as I have not checked and this is just hearsay.

How Do I Work Out My Keywords?

There are many online tools you can use to help with keywords however these are not specific to your particular needs. I would suggest you ask 5 or 6 people what they would put into Google in the hope that your website would come up. Obviously the name of your business is the obvious answer but ask these people to imagine that they do not know the actual name of your business. You will then have 5 or 6 good examples of generic search terms that potential customers might use to find your website. Go through their answers and choose 6 to 8 words or short 2 word phrases that you want your website to perform well for.

Then rewrite your content, alt tags, links etc to use your keywords as much as possible. You must make sure however that the content still reads well - keyword stuffing is not acceptable.

Now the next time Google indexes your website it should find more relevant phrases from your website and your website should appear in searches more often, all of which will drive more traffic to your website.

Good luck and if you should need any more help do email us for a one-to-one appointment specific to your website where we can give you more help to optimise your website.

What are Sitelinks?

This is where Google assesses that some pages on a particular website are useful and consequently it lists those pages under the website's main listing in the search results. This is so that potential visitors can go straight to the relevant page. You can see an example of this if you put "S3 Web Design" into Google. You will see that 3 of our pages are listed as blue links just below our listing.

Is Dreamweaver any good?

If you know nothing about coding then of course it helps but it can never replace properly "search optimised" websites such as those by S3 Web Design. If you do use programmes like Dreamweaver do make sure that you complete the meta tags ie the Title and meta description. For help regarding how to do this read "How Do I Work Out My Keywords?" above.

To have your own content management system,CMS, designed for easy SEO visit the S3 Web Design Blog for details of DESIRE SOLUTIONS CMS our new content management system.

Are Graphic Designers Good Website Designers?

Not necessarily!

At the Norfolk Show we met yet another graphic design company that thinks it can do web design ... so, so wrong!!! Making pretty websites where all the code is bad and none of the website is set up so that search engines can find it is not ideal in my opinion. There is no point having a beautiful flashy website that no-one can find on Google or any other search engine.

S3 Web Design's website is HTML correct, has a page rank of 3/10 after only 4 months and has been given sitelinks by Google. Plus we come up first across the whole of the web for a couple of search terms.

Graphic Designers can do pretty designs but to get higher in search engine results you need a properly optimised website. As far as I can see many Graphic designers do not have the necessary SEO skills to ensure that your website appears higher in searches. So before engaging a web designer check how well their websites perform in search engines. To test this you need to choose a short phrase that relates to the product or service being offered by the website in question, then put this into a Google search box and check that the website appears in the first couple of pages of search results. Remember that if the service is something offered locally then one of your search words should be the town where the business is located. If however the company is national then no location word is required in the search box.

Should I Use Frames on My Website?

My answer would be NO, not if you want the search engines to easily index the content of your website. Frames can stop search engines being able to read your website properly. A website written in HTML using PHP can make your website look just as good plus be easily indexed so that your website appears higher in search engine results. S3 Web Design write easily indexed sites and if you look at our recently launched websites you will see that the majority reach a Google ranking (PR) of 2 or 3 within weeks. Do call us for more information.

Where can I learn more about SEO?

S3 Web Design provide training courses and workshops in addition to one-to-one training in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) via their new website www.SEO4all.co.uk. See our Training Courses page for more information.Where Can I Get an Online Shop?
S3 Web Design can design an online shop for just £750 for one category of product. Your online shop will fully match the rest of your website and there are many payment methods.

What is SEO?

This means "Search Engine Optimisation" which involves constructing websites in a way that makes them easily indexed by the search engines. At S3 Web Design we always construct websites in a way that makes them easily indexed by the search engines

There are also many things you can do off-site to improve your search position including signing up for free listings with free online directories, but only choose well indexed ones like Hotfrog and make sure you update your listings by adding/changing the content every month if not every week. For more ideas regarding moving your website up the search engine results see our SEO Website.

Can I Update the Content of my Website Myself?

Yes you can. All of our websites come with at least one page where you can enter the content yourself.

Where can I get a cheap Business Website?

We can provide 5 page Credit Crunch Business Website for only £250 plus a monthly hosting charge. If you look at Credit Crunch Websites you will find more details. All of our websites come with at least one page where you can enter the content yourself should you wish.

How can I make my website appear higher in searches?

1. Make sure it is well written with clear code, style sheets and alt tags.
2. Work out your keywords? Use them in your meta tags, alt tags, link text and consistently in the textual content of your pages.
3. Avoid Flash and dynamic menus.
4. Submit Your Site to search engines
5. Have a Sitemap and submit it using Google's Webmaster Tools.
6. Have one of your keywords, at least, within your domain name.
7. Make sure your page titles contain the keywords for that page.
8. Never write "Site under construction". Put on the first page some keyword rich description as to who you are plus a method of contacting you.
9. Make sure you have a robots.txt file and that it is properly constructed.
10. Change some of your website content weekly so that the website is indexed more often.
11. Have an FAQ page answering common queries relating to your industry.
12. BAD SEO, Do not ever fall for the "buy...... and we will give you so many fantastic links". The search engines are wise to this and it will now only work against you.

Best of all book on our SEO courses.