I am watching the BBC news hype over the days local council elections with Jeremy Vine doing his best to spice it up.

Question: if apparently 68% didn’t vote today, of those that had elections. Should a 32% turnout be a valid election?

I don’t think so.

Just a thought.

I got this from Google today:

…”if the sites do not add sufficient value, we generally consider them as spam and take appropriate steps to protect our users from exposure to such sites in our natural search results.”

This is referring to automated website creators running on spam servers that may have been compromised by hackers.

There are two issues here that I find interesting, and to an extent vindicate what I have been warning folks about for many years;

1) Don’t skimp on your website hosting

and

2) Ensure that any website that you publish is worth someone reading, and not just stuffed full of keywords.

1) If you don’t want to pay for your hosting you may find a “free” one out there. This message from Google today was warning specifically about that as they are often compromised by hackers piggy backing with automatic website builders stuffed with keywords to raise someone’s profile in Google. Google are saying “watch out, we are on to you”. Free hosting is dangerous and it always has been.

This reminded me of the battle I have sometimes over charging for quality hosting. We make a monthly charge to host our clients’ websites. This charge goes towards the very large monthly bill that I have to pay to Rackspace for our dedicated servers and the support they provide us (and therefore my clients). In the 12 years that Clickingmad has operated we have had 5 hosting providers. Rackspace has proved to be extremely professional and supportive with excellent levels of support and proactive assistance. Therefore I am prepared to pay for the best, on behalf of my clients who trust me.

Never, ever, skimp on your hosting. Yes it’s unseen and if you don’t have any problems then you will never need any support. BUT what if you do? What if you’re on a shared server that gets black listed by Google? What if your provision is so cheap that it’s not cost effective to maintain properly by your provider?

Hosting: you definitely get what you pay for.

2) I have been long saying that Google wants valuable websites in its listings. Again they are reminding us today. So for those who think that spamming Google will help you, look out… they are on your trail.

A lot of SEO is being offered from overseas at the moment, some of it is OK in terms of being above board in method. Some however is clearly “black hat” and will only result in Google tightening its grip on indexing websites, which of course hurts all of us and also this practice diminishes the importance of “white hat” SEO which is a combination of useability, search engine ranking and website management. It’s not about hits anymore – it’s about enquiries.

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Clickingmad Ltd is a West Midlands based Website Design
Agency. Started in 2000 we now have 11 dedicated full time staff based in
Shropshire and Birmingham offering a wide range of website design, website
promotion, ecommerce advice, hosting, search engine optimisation and related
services to our business clients. All with a consultative approach. We never
sell you something that you don’t need, only what your business needs. Our
advice is often as important as any service we provide you. Our principal Shaun
Carvill is an acknowledged expert in the Internet, having been involved right
at the start of the commercialisation of the web in the UK some 20 odd years
ago. If you mix traditional Marketing experience with technical development and
programming then you get the Internet.

Our services are taken up by companies large and small and
in nearly all sectors. From Estate Agents to Schools, Charities to Engineering
companies. Manufacturing and Service sectors alike all receive the same quality
Clickingmad treatment. As quality mark holders and members of the UK IT
Association (our Principal; Shaun Carvill is also on the board of UKITA)
ISO9001 accredited and rigorously tested by many Government and Public Sector
purchasing consortiums, we have been accredited to be able to create, build and
supply a comprehensive suite of Internet related marketing products and
services for our clients.

We welcome all enquiries as we bring our method to a
business near you. Give us a call on 01746 769612 or email
sales@clickingmad.com with your query. Join the growing Clickingmad family. You
will be made very welcome.

We have all seen high bounce rates, particularly since the explosion of the Internet and myriad search engines all straining to give “quality results”. A bounce is (as I am sure you know) a key figure to monitor on your statistics. It’s when a visitor goes to your home page, or any page they may have landed on from elsewhere, and then they click back or off without clicking on any other link on the page. 

Clearly bounces are indicators of problems, those problems could be;

1) A poor search engine result due to bad database construction/programming within the search engine which results in a lack of knowledge of the target websites’ content and therefore relevance to the search.

Or (and more likely) 

2) Poor search term used. I have found that generally search engine users are mostly lazy (I know I am!) and we often give the search engine little to go on. For example if you type in “shoes” in Google UK you are offered ?….. Potential Results. By potential results I mean the large number that is reported just under the search box. 

This number has no real relevance to be honest as it just shows how many times that specific word or phrase is recorded in the search engines’ database and not the amount of websites that are relevant to the subject matter. The top three positions on the results are paid for adverts, so for the purposes of this discussion I will ignore any paid for advertising or sponsorship.  If for example we then add another word to our original search term, such as “men’s” so that we now have “men’s shoes” as the term, the potential results drop down significantly to ?…… (Women buy more shoes than men? Who knew?)

Still it could be argued that the search has been a waste of time as I actually know that I want a pair of Barker brown brogues size 10. Now should I expect to see good numbers from this search, i.e. lots of choice? No, I don’t want choice yet, I want to find my shoes! So the search term has changed from generic to specific. Guess what, the results go down to ?…. Potential websites and the page is full of websites that CLAIM (more on that later) to have these shoes available. 

The point I am making here is that it is usually human error or rather human laziness that results in poor bounce results. 

How can you expect a dumb search engine to know what’s in your mind? You can’t, so give it plenty of detail and it should help you.

I recently needed some new bulbs for my kitchen. The fitment came from Homebase and uses specific low energy bulbs. The usual unfortunate law applied, in that Homebase still sell the light fitting, but don’t stock the bulbs. As it was quite specific and as I am not an expert in low voltage lighting I thought I had better get a direct replacement. So, lazy as I am I typed into Google “low energy light bulbs”; massive numbers, all seems promising, but of course I made the mistake of not realising that the market for these type of bulbs has exploded (got bigger rather than combusted) and every light bulb that you’re offered now is apparently doing it’s best to save the planet. So thousands of bulbs were provided on the various websites. I did bounce back out of the website from the first page but tried their internal search engines to try and find the bulb.

So, minutes later, which of course felt like days when you are searching, having visited some clearly large websites, I could not find a picture of a bulb that matched the one I sought. Oh No! I was going to have to buy a new unit! “No way” I resolved, I would offer the Internet the chance of helping me.

So if anyone has a low energy light bulb in their kitchen fitment, get one out and see if you can read the manufacturer’s code or any distinguishing mark with the naked eye. I defy anyone to be able to read them! 

I wear glasses for reading, but even my fairly new prescription could not make the letters and numbers out having been clearly (in fact not so clearly) printed in Lilliputian by the smallest print head in that whole kingdom. I was stuck.

However my job sometime calls for photographic skills of our clients products, for this I use my trusty Canon D30. Not the latest kit I agree, but combined with some L series lenses gives excellent results. My lenses can do pretty good macro so I stood 5 feet away from the bulb, took my 70-300 mm zoom lens and snapped away. The results of course were nothing to shout about, but by zooming in on the preview on the camera I was able to make out the actual code. Eureka!

So almost shouting with joy, I think I definitely (or should that be defiantly?) punched the air a couple of times in a most un-British like display of exuberance, I grabbed my iPad and typed the code into Google. Lo and behold! There they were waiting for me all this time. And in a Google base listing?……. You know, the little shopping results about half way down the search results as well. The actual bulbs and generic versions to boot, A veritable cornucopia of bulbs (what is the collective noun for bulbs? an illumination perhaps?. Worth thinking about if you have nothing better to do)

So debit card in hand I was off, ok so the website looked awful, the registration process was a nightmare and the cost of shipping was ridiculous. I didn’t care. I had done what they said could never be done; found what I was looking for in a search engine first time. Well, ahem, not the actual first time but it did remind me about bounce rates.

Bounce rates in my experience usually hover around 50% for most business to business websites. Pretty rubbish really if you think that half of all the websites we go to for business are the wrong ones. Business to consumer are usually a fair bit lower at around 30%. Websites that have very specific content, for example an estate agent or a charity that deals with something unusual, will come in at around 20%.

If you’re a website owner, look at your bounce rate. It is an important indicator to how well your website is indexed in search engines. It is also an indicator of how well your home page (usually) is designed and organised. Can folks see very clearly what you offer? You have about 10 seconds to tell them what you do or what you’re selling. Make sure your message gets across quickly. 

So back to bounce. (not the Stephen Sondheim musical of the, originally same name.. Renamed as “Road Show” Zzzzz) 

Remember bounces are bad, work on lowering the figure whatever it is. Ensure your website is SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY. I wrote that in caps because it is one of the main reasons businesses choose Clickingmad. Our websites are all built to allow search engines to record their content. Without that, you’re nowhere.

Not so secret tip…. Google uses bounce rates as one of it’s algorithm criteria when ranking websites. The higher the bounce rate, the lower your website will be because it feels that if visitors think it’s not the right one for the search term they must not show it as often. I guess that’s logical. 

If anyone has any interesting stories about search, let me know.

Cheers.  Shaun Carvill. MD Clickingmad Ltd.

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Clickingmad Ltd is a West Midlands based Website Design Agency. Started in 2000 we now have 11 dedicated full time staff based in Shropshire and Birmingham offering a wide range of website design, website promotion, ecommerce advice, hosting, search engine optimisation and related services to our business clients. All with a consultative approach. We never sell you something that you don’t need, only what your business needs. Our advice is often as important as any service we provide you. Our principal Shaun Carvill is an acknowledged expert in the Internet, having been involved right at the start of the commercialisation of the web in the UK some 20 odd years ago. If you mix traditional Marketing experience with technical development and programming then you get the Internet.

Our services are taken up by companies large and small and in nearly all sectors. From Estate Agents to Schools, Charities to Engineering companies. Manufacturing and Service sectors alike all receive the same quality Clickingmad treatment. As quality mark holders and members of the UK IT Association (our Principal; Shaun Carvill is also on the board of UKITA) ISO9001 accredited and rigorously tested by many Government and Public Sector purchasing consortiums, we have been accredited to be able to create, build and supply a comprehensive suite of Internet related marketing products and services for our clients.

We welcome all enquiries as we bring our method to a business near you. Give us a call on 01746 769612 or email sales@clickingmad.com with your query. Join the growing Clickingmad family. You will be made very welcome.

I am pleased to report that Clickingmad has experienced a brilliant start to 2012 with many new websites going live in December and January and some great new projects brought in to get our creative teeth into;

How proud are we to have landed Volunteering England as a new client? For a small niche agency based a long way from London this client acquisition is big news for us, and what’s more it came about from a happy client referral! Can’t be better.

As a national Organisation funded by Central Government they have recently undergone a drastic downsize. They needed to use the Internet more efficiently so they invested in a bespoke intstallation of a  content management solution: Joomla. We are acknowledged experts in Joomla and there is not much that we can’t make it do.

We made 5 sites live in December 2011 all for Volunteering England, their main website is on this link: http://www.volunteering.org.uk/ and looks like this:

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Another one that we are very proud of is a make over and new Ecommerce installation for this very popular Lighting Retailer; Lighting Majestic. They are existing clients of Clickingmad and it makes us really happy when clients come back for more, hopefully this is because we were so brill previously!

This website is an “Aladdins Cave” with many thousands of lighting products on offer and also offers a unique advice service for those who are not quite sure what to have.

The advice is given by the owners of the website and store and importantly they are qualified electricians, which I think is fairly unusual.

Magento is the Ecommerce platform chosen and those who know will realise that this is a serious piece of software when it comes to selling online.

Magento is not easy to manipulate and program, so you need a lot of technical experience to make it sing.

But when it sings, it sounds (and looks) very good indeed. CHeck it out on http://www.lightingmajestic.com/

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Another recent one has been showing off my video skills (!) I filmed and edited Stephen Flynn the Commercial Manager at Bradley Environmental, an Asbestos Testing & Health and Safety Consultancy based in the West Midlands.

Take a look: http://www.bradley-enviro.co.uk/

More and more clients are asking for video work as YouTube is a great way to talk directly to your website visitors and of course YouTube is owned by Google so you can draw your own conclusions about the validity of that.
When we advise clients on their websites we always talk about the promotion of a website as a key part of the overall strategy. Bradley Environmental is following our advice and has taken up our SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) service. This service whilst widely available now used to be fairy scarce. The best level of advise on this subject is based on an in depth knowledge and not silly promises.

To put it into perspective, when we started offering SEO in the year 2000, we were the first (to my knowledge) to offer a guaranteed result of our efforts. We do not now guarantee our work because well frankly, anyone who does is simply not being straight with you.

There is no way you can guarantee that Google ranks your website high in the natural results day in, day out because it wont. Google themselves state that they rework their results regularly to give everyone a better chance of being listed based on their search criteria.

Just make sure  you use someone who knows what they are doing so you don’t get your website banned by Google. That would be a problem! Need advice? Give us a call.

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Finally how about this one for an unusual School Website?

If you want to get behind the scenes of a School, how about Video Interviewing the Head Teacher? That’s what I did for this avant-garde style website. She kindly agreed to be interviewed about what it’s really like to run a School of this stature.

Queen Mary’s High School is a very popular and successful School based in Walsall in the West Midlands. Many of the students go on to be doctors and professionals etc.

Our brief was to make them look different, because they are. I think we have achieved this very well with a brand new styling and a full Content Management System through which they can control everything the website shows.

No more boring School websites… at least not from Clickingmad! Check it out here: http://www.qmhs.org.uk/

I hope you’re 2012 is a great as ours has started out to be. Maybe we can welcome you to the Clickingmad family? Give us a call and see if we fit your organisation.

All the best, Shaun Carvill. MD.

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Clickingmad Ltd is a West Midlands based Website Design Agency. Started in 2000 we now have 11 dedicated full time staff based in Shropshire and Birmingham offering a wide range of website design, website promotion, ecommerce advice, hosting, search engine optimisation and related services to our business clients. All with a consultative approach. We never sell you something that you don’t need, only what your business needs. Our advice is often as important as any service we provide you. Our principal Shaun Carvill is an acknowledged expert in the Internet, having been involved right at the start of the commercialisation of the web in the UK some 20 odd years ago. If you mix traditional Marketing experience with technical development and programming then you get the Internet.

Our services are taken up by companies large and small and in nearly all sectors. From Estate Agents to Schools, Charities to Engineering companies. Manufacturing and Service sectors alike all receive the same quality Clickingmad treatment. As quality mark holders and members of the UK IT Association (our Principal; Shaun Carvill is also on the board of UKITA) ISO9001 accredited and rigorously tested by many Government and Public Sector purchasing consortiums, we have been accredited to be able to create, build and supply a comprehensive suite of Internet related marketing products and services for our clients.

We welcome all enquiries as we bring our method to a business near you. Give us a call on 01746 769612 or email sales@clickingmad.com with your query. Join the growing Clickingmad family. You will be made very welcome.

Please note the Office will be closed from the 21st December 3.30 p.m. until 9th January 2012 9 a.m.

The usual emergency contact number is still the same 01746 769612.

I would like to wish all our clients past, present and future a wonderful Christmas and safe New Year.