Advantec Internet Services

Welcome Melissa!

2012-02-22T15:19:00.000Z

Southampton-based website development and marketing company Advantec has welcomed Melissa Allin as their new Senior Project Manager - based at the company's head office in Swanwick.

Melissa joins the expanding digital agency to head up the management of client relationships and oversee the smooth-running of website design and programming projects.

With over 10 years' experience managing high-value client accounts for computer giant IBM, Melissa's talents in handling clients' requirements, managing and organising projects are already proving instrumental in maintaining Advantec's expansion plans.

Advantec build market-leading websites and marketing strategies for clients across the region. Managing Director Andrew Brittain said: "Even in the first few weeks in her role, Melissa has started transforming the way we manage clients' projects, streamlining the process and improving efficiency and communication, which is vital in some of the complex work we undertake."

Green Superstore Launched

2012-01-12T16:39:00.001Z

Energy-saving and eco-friendly products superstore website now live...

This is a site we've been excited about working on for a while now - and are pleased to see it launched publicly today. Green Superstore is an e-commerce website selling a wide range of environmentally friendly and energy-saving products nationwide.

We have been busy creating a sleek, stylish design which showcases their brilliant range of products - everything from high end solar panels and solar chargers to wind-up radios and electricity-saving plug adaptors.

Take a look at www.greensuperstore.co.uk

New year, new website launches

2012-01-03T10:20:00.000Z

The first day back of 2012 sees two new e-commerce sites launched for Advantec clients. Mott Motorcycles is one of our oldest clients, who have chosen 2012 to launch a superb new e-commerce motorbike shop.

Finishing Touches International is a furniture retail company who, after 25-years of trading offline, have taken the plunge in to e-commerce with their new online furniture shop.

With the year ahead looking increasingly challenging for retailers, the internet continues to be one of the few areas of the economy where growth continues unabated. There has never been a more suitable time to start selling online.

New e-commerce clothing website

2011-12-09T16:51:00.001Z

We're pleased to launch our latest e-commerce website today - for the Vintage Clothes Horse. One of the nicest-looking sites we've designed in a while, it features a wide range of vintage clothing available to buy online.

Along with recent e-commerce projects for Oprah Office Furniture, Chunky Monkey Sweets - and numerous others being built at the moment, the Vintage Clothes Horse site is another that cements Advantec as one of the top e-commerce website providers in the region. To find out more about our e-commerce retail sites, click here

New e-commerce sweet shop launched

2011-11-07T10:39:00.000Z

This week we've launched one of our favourite e-commerce sites for Chunky Monkey Sweets: Take a look at the online sweet shop here: www.chunkymonkey.co.uk.

This is a brand-new startup internet business looking to become the dominant player in this sector, thanks to our market-leading e-commerce services.

We developed a fun, vibrant brand - and carried this through the design of their e-commerce site, which contains hundreds of modern and retro sweets available to buy online.

2011-11-01T11:24:00.000Z

Advantec is delighted to welcome on board Matt Riches - the latest addition to the team as SEO Campaign Delivery Manager. Matt has many years' experience delivering successful search engine optimisation strategies and has been at the fore-front of the search marketing industry. He will be responsible for managing our clients' campaigns for domination in the search engines through development of content, social media activity, link building programmes - and all the other latest search marketing techniques.

This latest addition to the expanding Advantec team firmly cements the company as one of the fastest-growing of the region's web development and marketing agencies.

Major new office furniture website launch

2011-10-25T17:20:00.001+01:00

We are pleased to launch our latest e-commerce project for Southampton-based Oprah Office Furniture.

With thousands of office desks, office chairs and a huge range of other quality office furniture available to buy online, Oprah will be one of the largest online office furniture stores in the UK - and we are delighted they selected Advantec as their e-commerce partner for what looks set to be an exciting and successful foray in to online retail for the already well-established business.

Congratulations Luke

2011-10-20T09:31:00.005+01:00

Congratulations to our Technical Director Luke Sanderson - who has recently become a dad for the first time! Luke's wife Vicki gave birth to their son Alexander last week. Luke returns to work today after his paternity leave for some much needed rest. Congratulations Luke and Vicki.

Welcome Alex and Dan

2011-10-18T08:54:00.001+01:00

Advantec is pleased to welcome on board two new recruits - Alex Adams, our new Senior Digital Project Manager - and Dan Norris, Web Support Technician.

Alex joins us from one of London's largest digital agencies - and brings a wealth of web project management experience. He recently managed the development of new websites for names like Pizza Hut and Hyundai - so is a valuable addition to the team. With more web and programming projects currently underway than ever before, a new senior Project Manager will help deliver them as smoothly as possible.

Dan Norris joins the technical team - helping develop new sites and run the maintenance and updates of existing clients' websites. His exceptional technical skills have already proved a real asset to the department.

New website for Scentsations perfume shop

2011-09-19T18:08:00.001+01:00

Scentsations - a perfume retailer based in Southampton - have been a client for several years, since we designed and built their e-commerce website that quickly became one of the most-prominent online perfume shop sites in the UK.

Now, in time for Christmas 2011, we have re-launched a new and improved website that puts Scentsations back at the forefront of the online perfume shop market. Scentsations are a prime example of how e-commerce websites - correctly implemented - can allow a relatively small local retailer to compete nationally with the big-league retail names.

With their powerful e-commerce site, Scentsations opened themselves up beyond the local market and now sell their perfumes and fragrances worldwide - competing with - and beating - in the search engine listings the likes of Boots, Harrods and Debenhams.

Take a look at www.scentsations.co.uk to see the results for yourself.

New website launches this week

2011-09-09T12:51:00.003+01:00

A busy few weeks has seen launches of three new websites recently: New client ORS Group are one of the UK's leading document management systems providers - working with blue-chip clients to streamline their document processes. Their new website is part of an overhaul of their entire brand.

Pococks Roses have been a long-term client for years - having established and built the most successful garden roses e-commerce site in the UK. We have now revamped the site with a stunning new look.

Shuttercraft are another market-leading company - the biggest provider of window shutters and blinds in the UK - and the second of four new sites we are building for them is live today at www.shuttercraft.co.uk

New website launches this week

2011-08-11T11:36:00.002+01:00

Top Yachts sell and charter multi-million pound super-yachts - take a look at their brand new website that we re-built this-week: www.topyachts.co.uk if you have a spare £20-million lying around - not to mention enough left over to fund the £18k per day fuel bills!

Heating & Cooling Coil Products Ltd have been a client of ours for 7-years - and we have just unveiled the latest version of their website: www.hccoils.com.

Just met the most awesome guitarist

2011-07-22T15:50:00.002+01:00

Just met the most-awesome guitarist I've seen in a long time - one of our clients - Matt from bike shop Hargroves Cycles. Check out the 'Beat It' solo on his YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/mattrg470#p/u/17/6DoYf964TU8

How Much Should a New Website Cost?

2011-07-20T14:38:00.003+01:00

One of the most-common questions we are faced with from potential clients is "how much should a new website cost?" This is often followed by "This is much more than I expected" - and "I have a friend / brother / boss's mate who can do it for five hundred quid"...

To be fair, our clients these days tend to be serious businesses who are looking at making a considerable investment in their web presence - but the issue still raises its head time and again, leaving us constantly trying to explain the huge differences in pricing between web companies for what, on the surface, may appear to be exactly the same thing.

Our answer always revolves around the 'you get what you pay for' philosophy - and the importance of seeing a website as a vital cornerstone of your business - which should generate significant revenues for a company in its own right - rather than just something your brother-in-law might knock together at the weekend.

Here is a useful illustration we used recently for a client who, when faced with our quotation of £7k+, stated that another company was offering "exactly the same" for £1k...

You would generally expect a web agency to employ at least three staff - at the very minimum, as an absolute smallest-scale scenario. This would at least ensure that there is adequate holiday / sickness cover - and enough people to cover the required workload. Three salaries, at an average perhaps of £25k, equates to £75,000 per year
Office premises for the tiniest web firm, enough to accommodate these three staff, might be around £10k per year, probably not including rates and bills.
Throw in a very modest marketing budget - and costs are not likely to come in under £100,000 per year - without even considering any other costs of running the business, such as accountancy fees, hardware, software, costs of sale, etc.
In order for such a tiny web business to cover its costs - charging just £1k for a website, it needs to design and build over 100 websites per year - just to break even.

The economics just don't add up. To build 100 websites in a year with just three people involved would need such a 'production line' process - probably using pre-designed templates, inflexible systems, an extreme lack of client contact (no meetings, very little spare time for consultation and discussion)... And ultimately a very poor, low-quality service that is probably deserving of a client that believes they can get something decent while not prepared to invest the required amount in doing so.

What, then, if you decide after the launch of the new website that you need something extra - perhaps a little more complex than the standard pages of content or information: A quote calculator maybe, or a contact form that integrates with your CRM, or an online database tool. The mythical low-cost web firm is not likely to be able to afford the wages of a programmer that's capable of delivering that kind of solution - so it's either outsourced somewhere, or simply can't be done, leaving the client restricted and held back in what they want to achieve.

And what about e-commerce? Websites that sell products online are infinitely more complicated again - at least when done properly. SSL certificates? PCI DSS compliance? Adequate hosting security? Payment card processing, order process automation, customer database management...? Can this all be achieved by a 3-man band building 99 other websites per year just to keep their heads above water?

How about search-engine optimisation? Once the low-cost site is finished and online, what is this company doing to ensure it gets to the top of Google? To make sure it has an adequate social networking presence? To build networks of links to the site...? While they work their fingers to the bone to churn out 99 other websites, what are they really doing on an ongoing basis to yours to make sure it pays for itself?

Is a website that costs £1,000 - but generates £0.00 in revenue really a better deal than one that costs £5k, £7k, or £10k - but which generates £500,000 a year in revenue?

And then there's the matter of the motivation for this imaginary company to actually work hard, in your best interests as their client - when the financial outcome for them is limited. When the money you're paying them is only 1/100th of what they need just to stay afloat that year, how important to them is the success of your website really going to be?

Web designers are one of the rare breeds of employee that generally love their work and are doing something they enjoy for a living - but it's still their clients' money that pays their bills - and if they're not making a financial profit at the end of the year, chances are they will pretty quickly shut up shop - probably taking your website and its coding and design with them when they disappear.

The only people who can generally make the dirt-cheap website option work financially are freelancers working by themselves from home - or people doing the work 'on the side' of another full-time job for a bit of spare cash. There is nothing wrong with this at all - indeed it's how this very company first started out - but for a business looking for a long-term web partner - and looking for a successful website that's going to generate serious revenue for the business, it's not exactly ideal.

Advantec employ a team of designers, programmers and marketing professionals - who we firmly believe are some of the best in the business. Their salaries don't come cheap, the offices to house them in don't come cheap - and the technical infrastructure to accommodate the work they do doesn't come cheap. But the results they produce are of the highest quality. The websites they build earn more in revenue than the clients first invest in them. And the service the clients receive is one of a company that is focussed on a set of important, key clients who are as essential to our business as we are to theirs - not on steaming through a production line of templated, 'one size fits all' website solutions. Surely this is a more beneficial relationship all round - and probably the kind of relationship you would want to have with your own clients and customers?

Of course, there is always the opposite end of the scale... Companies that will charge £100,000 when they could achieve the same results for £10k instead. Almost as often as we encounter people blasting the costs as too high, we find people who are quoted five, 10 or 20 times higher than what we'd expect.

Companies who can get away with this sort of fee level deserve plenty of credit - because the quality of what they produce certainly isn't five, 10 or 20 times higher than what a company like ours would produce. But their clients should be aware of the effects of 'value perception'... This type of company is generally London-based, with huge, expensive offices - and a budget for tea and coffee machines that would match the salary of some of their staff. We would certainly question whether clients of theirs are receiving as much value as they would be if the investment in London-central office premises was being ploughed in to additional staff to work on their projects instead.

That's not to say that we wouldn't charge £100k+ on a regular basis if we thought we could get away with it. But our philosophy is based on being able to pay some of the best people - to produce the best work for our clients, make a profit so it's worth our while - and make sure our clients can realistically make back more than they invest with us in a short space of time. In our experience, neither of these two ends of the charging spectrum achieve these goals.

New client wins: Shuttercraft

2011-07-13T12:32:00.002+01:00

We are delighted to have been selected - from a four-way pitch - by Shuttercraft, the UK's largest supplier of window shutters.

We will be building a network of multiple websites for Shuttercraft - a project we are extremely pleased to have been selected for. Shuttercraft are exactly our type of client - a company serious about investing in the web to generate long-term gains. They already have some excellent in-house web marketing knowledge - and we're looking forward to partnering with them for the long-term to ensure their websites are a huge financial success for them.

Goodbye Jake

2011-07-07T16:26:00.002+01:00

We are sorry to see our Web Support Technician Jake Lewis leave this week - but unfortunately we were unable to tempt him away from a year-long round-the-world trip. Jake's been a great asset to us - a hard worker and credit to the company.

He's been replaced by Ian Millard - our new Support Technician, who starts immediately - so welcome Ian!

Our new Front End Developer

2011-06-01T17:08:00.000+01:00

We are extremely pleased to be able to welcome on board a new Front End Developer for our technical team - in the shape of Lee Harris.

Lee's talents have been known to us for some time now, and it's great to have him working here - as part of our growing team of web design and programming experts.

It's a big move for Lee, who has made a complete career change from an entirely different industry, to finally devote himself to web design and development full-time - so welcome to the company Lee!

Daily Echo Hampshire Business Magazine

2011-01-30T17:44:00.014Z

Andrew Brittain - the Advantec Managing Director - features in this month's Daily Echo Hampshire Business magazine! Pick up a copy of the story in February's Hampshire Business Magazine

-- From the Daily Echo Hampshire Business magazine, February 2011 --

" ANDREW BRITTAIN, managing director of Web design and development company Advantec Internet Services Ltd reveals the secrets to his success

I’d like to think the way my business started could be a lesson to anyone considering going it alone and starting their own business.

I had worked for years in a variety of different jobs related to website development and marketing - and had always put these skills to use as a freelancer to earn extra cash on the side of my full-time jobs. It had always been my intention to one day follow the dream of quitting the job and striking out by myself, but the leap always seemed too big a risk - with a mortgage and family, leaving the security of full-time work was always a step too far.

Then one day the decision was taken out of my hands when I was hauled in to the MD’s office and summarily dismissed from my job. It came completely out of the blue and was a real shock to the system. It turned out my employers had found out about my freelance work, which I’d never previously thought was a problem, and deemed it a conflict of interest - so I was out on my ear.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time - two weeks before we were due to move house and my mortgage was about to double. But it was the push I needed to make that difficult jump to leaving the safety-net of a full-time job behind and taking that risk of starting up alone.

When I look back on it now, the sacking was one of the best things that could have happened to me; I’m not sure I would ever have really made that difficult decision by myself. Like so many people who feel they have potential to run a business, but are put off by the risks, I would probably still be sat at that desk today, failing to fulfil that potential.

It felt strange to start with - knowing that when the alarm clock went off, I didn’t have to get up just to please someone else - I was now completely responsible for my own success or failure, but having the extra time to devote to building up a business, which I could only work part-time on before, made a world of difference.

I soon found myself working harder and longer than ever before - but suddenly I didn’t mind, because the only beneficiary of that work was me.

I was building websites for businesses across the region - but was keen to start offering more than just websites and needed to provide a full online business solution to my clients. The decision to recruit my first employee was almost as tough as the decision to start up alone in the first place - but it soon became clear that there was huge scope for the business - and I needed a quality team to ensure it fulfilled that potential.

Today, Advantec is one of the best-known web development names on the south coast. We have a relatively small but very specialised team - including designers, programmers and online marketing experts - all working from our offices in Swanwick, Southampton. Our clients range from new business start-ups to large corporations and government agencies like the NHS and Department of Health.

What excites me most about the internet is how web technology can be used to make a real difference to the way businesses operate. The days of simply having a website just for the sake of it are long gone - and some of our most impressive projects have involved making and saving clients tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds by harnessing the power of the web.

One client’s accounts person was leaving - and we built them a web-based accounting system that completely automated an entire process of invoicing and taking subscription payments, meaning they didn’t have to worry about replacing that person after she’d left. Our online system had taken something that previously required a full-time employee and made the whole process completely automatic. There aren’t many other web companies around with the in-house programming skills to deliver projects like that - and it’s those things that make me really excited about the potential our company has for improving how businesses run.

The other great area of business growth - even throughout the entire recession - has been e-commerce. At a time when retailers are suffering from the relentless downward forces of the economy, online shopping has been a real powerhouse of retail growth. It’s so satisfying seeing a client invest an amount of money with us for an online retail site - and then witnessing how much more that site returns them in sales, even within just a few months.

Of course it’s not as simple as building a website and hoping it becomes a license to print money. E-commerce needs a proper marketing strategy to back it up - which is why we excel so much with our e-commerce services; we have the right mix of design, technical and marketing people within our company to really get e-commerce sites performing. I know our e-commerce sites have saved the businesses of at least two of our clients - and that is extremely satisfying.

Advantec Internet Services is now a real success story - having grown constantly year on year, even throughout the recession. It’s because our whole business is based on return on investment for our clients. It’s a very simple principle - what we do for them makes them money - so they are happy to keep coming back to us, knowing that whatever they invest with us is going to be returned very quickly - and many times over.

When I look at our business now, it makes me extremely proud - and extremely thankful for the twist of fate that seemed so awful back when I lost my job. It’s a feeling that so many people have had to endure over the last couple of years and, when it happens, can feel truly desperate. But it doesn’t always have to be a negative thing - if you can turn it to your advantage, great things can happen as a result!

Office / desk space to rent

2011-01-21T20:18:00.002Z

Having re-arranged our offices we've made room for a couple more desks - one of which is ideal for a freelance web developer or designer looking for a cheap way to rent some flexible office space. High speed broadband and a direct-dial phone line is included - as is use of all our office facilities and meeting room.

This would be ideal for a freelancer who needs their own office space for working and meeting clients but doesn't want to fork out for a permanent office. Plus if you're any good, we might just be able to put some work your way too.

Our office is a smart and modern building in Swanwick - between Southampton and Fareham.

Email andrew@advantec-internet.co.uk or give us a call on 02380 561050 for more info.

Star visitor

2011-01-17T16:24:00.001Z

Just had a well-known breakfast-show radio presenter in to the office for an interesting meeting.

Client review...

2010-12-30T15:26:00.002Z

We've just been alerted to a post about us on the national 'Review Centre' website, which is great to see: http://www.reviewcentre.com/review769137.html - thanks Louise!

New website and branding for 2011

2010-12-22T20:49:00.003Z

We're pleased to today have launched our new website and new company brand for 2011. It means a new website - with an update of our client portfolio, fresh new logo and colour-scheme, a new set of company brochures, case-study books, press adverts and more. Thanks very much to our friends at design agency Bullet London for their help with the printing and brochure design work.

Advantec appoints new Technical Director

2010-06-22T18:26:00.000+01:00

Advantec, the Southampton-based web development and marketing company has appointed Luke Sanderson as its new Technical Director.

Prior to joining Advantec, Luke Sanderson was senior technical developer for the national publishing company Newsquest, where he was responsible for the development of the company's technical web systems. With over 15-years spent working in web development and programming for large corporations and smaller regional agencies, Luke brings a wealth of experience to the company.

Andrew Brittain, Managing Director of Advantec said: "Luke's past experience closely matches the type of work we do at Advantec - and he is a very safe pair of hands to have in charge of our web development operation. I am personally familiar with a lot of his past work - and he is going to enable us to make a serious leap forward in applying advancements in web technology to our clients' websites and systems."

Advantec complete move to new HQ

2010-04-04T18:23:00.001+01:00

After several years based at Southampton Aiport business park, Advantec has moved to a new company headquarters located in Swanwick, on the outskirts of Southampton, Hampshire.

The move is a result of a period of significant expansion for Advantec - and provides a larger, more comfortable premises - with plenty of space for additional staff. Transport links are easy for staff and clients - just 2-minutes from Junction 8 of the M27, 5-minutes walk from the railway station - and the office is pleasantly based on the banks of the River Hamble, opposite Swanwick marina.

The company also has a London regional office in Richmond-upon-Thames, which remains un-changed

Accounts software recommendation

2008-10-29T19:06:00.003Z

I look after our company accounts - invoicing, purchase ordering, etc - and for a year or so we've been using this awesome online accounting software from a company called Kashflow.

It's not often I have the time or inclination to spend time doing a write-up about something as mundane as accounts software, but I feel the need to express my satisfaction for the benefit of any other small / medium sized business-people out there who might also have use for such a thing.

We actually used to use Sage for our accounts - mainly because it is largely considered the 'industry standard' accounting software - but unless you are a qualified accountant yourself, it's tough to master. When I came across the Kashflow system, quite by accident, I was bowled over by how it made such a simple job of all the accounting tasks I do each day.

What impresses me most, beyond the simplicity of use, is its continuous - almost daily - improvement and development. It seems it's operated by a team of developers who must test, take feedback suggestions from clients - and improve the system constantly. So many times I've thought to myself "wouldn't it be better if it worked this way"... only for a week later, to see an announcement that they've made an improvement that solved that very problem. What's more, I've used their 'feedback' channel to make a few suggestions of my own - and have been shocked to actually find they've been implemented shortly after.

Anyway, anyone looking for accounting software for a small or medium sized business needs to try it - a brilliant service and better than any other accounting solution I've ever tried before: http://www.kashflow.co.uk/

A 15% increase in consumer spending in the middle of the credit crunch...

2008-10-29T11:44:00.003Z

British consumers spent £4.8 billion on internet purchases during September, according to new figures.This represented a 14.8 per cent increase compared with the same month in 2007, statistics from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed.

Despite the economic gloom, evidence suggests that UK consumers will turn to the internet in an attempt to search out lower prices in the run-up to Christmas, IMRG said."Online retailers will need to ensure that they are prepared and ready to meet their customers' requirements by providing good product display and availability, with easy to follow payment and delivery information," advised Jo Evans, managing director of IMRG.A

ccording to the latest IMRG e-Customer Service Index, more than two-thirds of online consumers say they are more likely to purchase Christmas gifts over the internet in 2008 compared with last year.

The importance of inbound links

2008-10-28T15:46:00.003Z

David Andrews Internet Services Ltd provide a variety of search-engine optimisation services – including the optimisation of website code and content to improve a website’s rankings in Google and other search engines – and link-building / submission work to further boost a website’s ‘page rank’ with Google. This document deals with the latter of these services – i.e. the building up of links to your website from other, external websites – how it works and why it is so important…

The importance of ‘inbound’ links to your website

Most people know that the vast majority of visitors to any website originate from searches done on Google. As such, trying to manipulate Google’s search results pages to include your website on the first page has become a top priority for virtually any business with a website. Unfortunately Google treats its exact methods of ordering its search-results as one of the world’s most closely-guarded secrets – however, there are a number of bits of key information they do release publicly on how their ranking methods work – and how website owners can build their sites in such a way as to have the best shot at appearing at the top of its search-results listings.

The Google PageRank System

At the heart of how Google operates is its patented ‘PageRank’ technology. PageRank is the overall ‘score’ – out of ten – that Google gives a web page based on over 200, mainly secret, factors. By far the most-significant of these factors is the number of other websites that link to your website – so-called inbound links. It is important to note the difference between inbound and outbound links: An outbound link is a link on your site to another one – something that’s easily done by you or your webmaster, as it’s on your site, which you control. An inbound link is a link from a totally separate, external website that, when clicked, takes the user from that website on to yours. That is something only the other website owner can do – and something you have very little control over.

At the heart of Google’s PageRank technique is this rating based on the number of other websites linking to your site. The theory being that a site with many other links to it from other websites must be a useful, important, relevant website – otherwise no-one would link to it. A link to a website is seen as a ‘vote’ for the quality and usefulness of that website. Put simply, the more links pointing to your site, the more votes it has – and the better Google will treat it in the search results.

An example…

Take, as an example, the BBC website (www.bbc.co.uk). Time and again, when doing a search on Google for almost any subject, somewhere near the top will be the BBC website. Whether you search for ‘property prices’, ‘coal mining’, ‘gardening’… you will almost always find the BBC website featured in the magical top ten results. The BBC website has millions of pages of content and information on a variety of subjects and is seen as an ‘authority’ on most of them.
If I run a web design company – and see a news item on the BBC website talking about the importance of website usability testing – I might well want to link to that article from my own site, as it backs up what I often tell my clients. I put the link to the article on our website – and the BBC site has just had one ‘vote’ from me in the form of that link. Likewise, my next-door-neighbour, who is the head of the village gardening club, sees an article on how to treat black-spot in roses on the BBC gardening website. She thinks it’s useful to her members – so adds a link to the article from the gardening club website. Another vote for the usefulness of the BBC website…

And so this process continues on thousands of other websites across the internet. A useful, informative, authority website builds up many links to it across the web. Then, each month, along comes the Google ‘spider’ – an automated programme that scans virtually every website on the internet – indexing its content and detecting how many links exist to a particular website. It detects that the BBC site has 100,000 other sites linking to it. It must therefore be a great site – so it gets a page-rank of 9/10 – and suddenly every search you do on Google starts showing page from bbc.co.uk.

Getting a piece of this linking action for your own website

Of course, very few companies have the resources to develop a website like the BBC – so there aren’t many websites out there with a PageRank score of nine or 10 out of 10 that appear for virtually every search term in Google. The important thing is to start to develop a PageRank of your own, that gives you the same sort of advantage on a smaller scale. Build up more links to your site than your competitors, and your site will naturally drift above them in the search results pages. You don’t need 100,000 other sites linking to you – as few as 10 or 20 can have a radical effect, compared to a site with none or just a few. As a very general rule of thumb, if you can achieve a Google PageRank score of 4/10 or more, your site is off to a pretty good head-start in the search listings – and this sort of score is realistically achievable for most websites.

How do I know my website’s PageRank?

An essential tool for anyone with an interest in their website’s performance is the Google Toolbar. It’s a simple bit of software, provided free by Google. Download and install it on your machine and it sits at the top of Internet Explorer (or whichever browser you use) – enabling you to carry out a variety of Google-related activities directly from your computer and without needing to go directly to the Google website itself. The best part, is that it displays a PageRank ‘bar’ indicating the PageRank of whatever website you happen to be looking at at the time. Get the Google Toolbar from: http://toolbar.google.com (note how, when this document gets added to our own website, that will be another link – i.e. a vote – for the Google toolbar).

Quality over quantity

There is another factor Google throws in to the mix, just to complicate life further for webmasters (but consequently improve life for those doing searches – the whole point of its existence). Different websites – and types of websites – that link to yours can have a more positive effect than some others. It’s largely related to the relevance and quality of the ‘link neighbourhood’ of your website.

Imagine the example again of the BBC gardening website. The next-door-neighbour (Margaret) with the gardening club website, puts a link on her site to the BBC gardening site. Google is sophisticated enough to automatically ‘know’ the subject of one particular website – and how it relates to the subject of the site it links to. Google knows that Margaret’s site is about gardening – and it’s linking to the BBC site about gardening. Therefore, that counts as a ‘relevant’ link for the BBC site.

If I link to the BBC gardening site from our web design site – it’s still a vote for that site – but not quite as powerful a vote as Margaret’s one – because she knows about gardening, her site is about that subject – so her link is more valuable to the BBC site than mine. Likewise, if she – and five other people in her gardening club – put links on their websites to my web-design site, I’d be grateful, yes, and Google would see it favourably – but Google would look far more favourably upon one link to our site from the UK Web Designer Association – because it’s from a site on a more relevant subject to the content of our site. It’s not just about the number of links you build up, it’s about their relevance to the subject of your site too.

And it goes further…

And it’s not just relevance of the sites linking to yours either – another great factor is the PageRank – or perceived importance – of those sites with the links to yours. If you get a link to your website from one with an already high PageRank of its own, that site’s PageRank ‘rubs off’ on your site. Imagine the BBC decided to link to Margaret’s gardening club website. The BBC site has PageRank of eight or nine out of ten. For a site of that importance to link to Margaret’s site – to actually make a recommendation that its readers leave its own site to go and see Margaret’s; well, Margaret must have something pretty special on her site – and Google would promote it accordingly. She may go the whole year picking up links from her friends and colleague’s websites – all with PageRanks of one or two – and see comparatively slow improvement in her own site’s performance in the Google search listings. But shortly after getting linked to from the BBC site, her own site’s PageRank goes up a notch or two – and suddenly she’s showing up in the Google top ten for all sorts of searches. Visits to her site go up, club membership numbers rise… all as a result of the ‘vote’ her site got from a ‘big hitter’ website with a higher PageRank than her own.

The importance of ‘anchor text’

Another essential part of link-building is the matter of what the link to your website ‘says’. You are probably familiar with links on websites – very often appearing within text on a web page, usually a different colour and underlined to show the text has been made in to a ‘link’ which, if clicked, will take you to another web page or site. More often than not, it is the word ‘click here’ that is the link – i.e. the ‘anchor text’ and is what the link itself says. However, ‘click here’ – that most common of phrases on the web – is beginning to disappear, because of Google’s favouring of descriptive anchor text – that is, link text which describes and is relevant to the page that is being linked to.

Here is an example of a piece of text that might appear on a website linking to Margaret’s gardening club site. The text in blue is the ‘link’ bit, which would be the clickable part taking the user to her site…

…. Another excellent site we found with some useful information on treating
Black Spot in garden roses is the Bursledon village gardening club website.

Compare this with the following example…

…. Another excellent site we found with some useful information on treating
Black Spot in garden roses is the Bursledon village gardening club website.
Click here to visit the site

Note the descriptive anchor text in the first example, compared to the non-descript ‘click here to visit the site’ text in the second. If Margaret wants her website to appear high up in Google for the search terms ‘treating Black Spot’ and ‘gardening club website’ - she would be delighted to see that first example appear on another site – but less pleased with the second. If you can build your desired key words and phrases in to the link text itself, your search engine performance will be greatly enhanced. This also applies to the ‘title text’ that is coded in to the html of the link (and is seen in a yellow box that pops up when you hover your mouse over a link on a web page).

The flip-side of the link-building approach…

Anyone in the web industry knows all about the PageRank system and the importance of building inbound links – and as a result, a whole industry has grown around trying to influence Google by enhancing websites’ PageRank.

Google didn’t get where it is now by not keeping somewhat ahead of the game. They understand the general clamour around the web to build links and improve listings – and they know the techniques some people use to gain such links artificially. The mission of Google is to ensure that when a user types a search query in to its engine, the results it returns are relevant, useful, quality websites. If they are, that user will go back to it time and again – and won’t bother thinking about its lesser rivals – like Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, etc. It therefore does not take kindly when an owner of a poor quality, irrelevant website suddenly has a high PageRank and starts showing up all over its listings – despite not containing information relevant to its users. But how did that poor website get its high PageRank in the first place?

Someone going on a link-building ‘spree’ – suddenly getting 50 new links in to their site in one day, by posting spam comments on a load of forum sites, paying for links on directory sites, setting up ‘bogus’ websites of their own purely for the purposes of linking to another… So-called ‘black hat’ techniques used to build up a link network falsely and give a website a PageRank it doesn’t really deserve. In theory, I could set up a gardening website this-evening and build 50 links in this manner tomorrow morning. Suddenly I’ve got a PageRank of 4/10 and I’m beating Margaret’s site in the search results hands-down, even though I know nothing about gardening, my site is hopelessly bad quality and contains a lot of misleading and made-up information…
When this sort of thing started happening, Google swiftly clamped down, building in mechanisms to its indexing to detect these techniques and penalise – even ban – websites in its listings. Any sort of un-natural sudden growth in the number of links to a site, or a lot of links appearing on other bad quality sites, can have a negative effect on PageRank and see your site suddenly disappear from the search results altogether. It is therefore important to be careful that any link-building attempts appear natural and ethical and do not have a negative effect on your site.

The death of the ‘link exchange’ programme

One final point to note, related to those above about negative link-building, is the increasingly futile nature of ‘link exchanges’. In the past, website owners would busily approach other site owners requesting links on their site in return for a reciprocal one on their own site. Both webmasters knew the benefit, so would happily ‘trade links’ between themselves. Of course, Google became wise to this – and has built in a further mechanism to its algorithms to dampen the effect of reciprocal linking.

If Google sees a link to my web design site appear on Margaret’s gardening site, that’s great – our site gets another notch on the PageRank score. But then, on visiting our site, Google sees a link back to Margaret’s site. It detects the ‘two way’ link, suspects we’ve colluded between ourselves over the garden fence to try to influence its rankings - and the effect of the linking is dampened. Note that the effect is not completely cancelled out – a reciprocal link is better than no link – just not as good as a link that is one-way – i.e. not returned.

Bringing this all together for your benefit

So how can you use this information – and this undoubted technique for improving website listings in Google to your site’s benefit? There’s no doubt about it, it’s a tough job to do. Getting other websites to link back to yours is hard enough – add to this the fact that you want similar sites to your own doing it - and for those sites to be high-quality – and to not link back to them in return for the favour… Oh, and you’ve got to ensure the rate at which the links build up is not ‘un-natural’ and that Google doesn’t suspect anything untoward going on – and that the anchor text is relevant and appropriate… To do this effectively can be a full-time, long-term job.

It’s important to start taking every opportunity possible to get links from other websites to yours. Techniques for doing this include offering a ‘testimonial’ to your suppliers in return for a link on their site to yours, finding ‘blogs’ on subjects relevant to your industry and leaving comments with a link to your site, posting on forum sites with a link to your site where possible, submitting to directories like Dmoz and Splut, simply requesting friends, family, colleagues and associates link to your website from theirs… The benefits of proper link-building are enormous and can result in a rapid rise in your website’s rankings in Google – particularly if you can beat your nearest competitors’ PageRank scores.

It’s important to note, however, that it is not completely clear cut. Very often you will find a PageRank 3 site way above a PageRank 6 site for a particular search term. Unfortunately this is the unpredictable nature of Google – and although link-popularity is well-known and Google releases the information in to the public domain, there are many other factors in its calculation - most that we will never know and can do nothing about. The fact that link popularity makes up about 60% of the factors influencing Google’s search results means it cannot be ignored by anyone serious about improving their site’s performance.

How we can help...

You won't be surprised to see that we offer a fully-managed link-building service as part of our overall search engine optimisation offering. Click here for details or call 0845 1651 039 for more information

Telecoms company recommendation

2008-10-01T15:27:00.002+01:00

We like to use this blog whenever possible to make recommendations of suppliers or services we've used and are happy with. One such company we've been dealing with recently has really excelled itself and is worthy of a mention.

Our telephone system had, over the years, become a complete disaster area. Several office moves, plus remote-working staff and a desire to keep the same phone-number throughout had equalled a real mess of call diversions and multiple telephone accounts with different providers. All attempts to resolve the situation with the previous telephone companies ended in pointless, frustrating conversations and mix-ups with clueless call-centre operators who had little interest in what we needed and the problems we were having.

Then, through the South-East-Hampshire Chamber of Commerce, we were introduced to Uniworld Communications. Based near to our head-office in Southampton, they were able to send an account manager out to see us, assess our situation and make recommendations for how we should sort it. An immediate improvement on the situation you get with the big providers like BT, etc. They had a variety of business telecoms solutions - and we signed up to the best one for us.

The quality of their service became apparent when things started to go wrong with the transfer of numbers from our old providers over to them. Three times it all went wrong and we were left without any phone system at all for a day each time. Hardly cause for a recommendation - but it wasn't their fault - and very often the true test of 'customer service' is not the avoidance of problems, but how they respond when something does go wrong. These guys were on the ball the whole time. We had one single account manager dealing with us the whole time - not a different voice in a call-centre each time. She went way beyond the call of duty in sorting our account and systems out - and now we have an awesome business telecoms set up, perfectly tailored to our needs - and saving us a great deal of money to boot. If you need any sort of business telephony solution, give them a try: http://www.uniworldcomms.co.uk/

Economic downturn and how it affects us

2008-08-22T16:36:00.005+01:00

The news today is full of yet more doom and gloom about the economy and inevitability of recession. As a small-to-medium business ourselves, working primarily with other SMEs, we could be pretty exposed to the damage a recession or slowdown can do - and we've been watching the state of affairs closely over the last year or so that it's been brewing.

One thing we're struck by is the difficulty in getting a realistic view of things. What is clear is that the constant obsession by the media with the economy puts a huge downward force on economic confidence. Remove the media coverage over the last six-months and it's unlikely anyone would feel any different about their job security, their sales figures or their house prices. As a company director, ultimately in charge of our marketing budget, it's difficult to read such stories in the news and then happily sign off £xx,000 in marketing spend for the year - when you're feeling scare-mongered in to locking that money away in the bank for the inevitable rainy day/months/years ahead. It's this pressure that knocks on from one company to the next - in the business and consumer worlds - and perpetuates the downward economic spiral.

From our point of view, we have always kept low overheads - and thankfully have a good backlog of work from before the good-times started to go bad to see us through any major drying up of clients and their online budgets. The other benefit to a company like ours is that we primarily offer our services as a cost-saving and sales-increasing one. A high street store seeing a reduction in customers coming through the door can open up their trade to the whole world with a new e-commerce website for instance. A company experiencing a reduction in trade can bring in thousands of new sales leads simply through having a better-optimised website and higher listings in Google.

At the moment, online sales and activity seems to be the only area of the economy that is actually growing - and doing so at a phenomenal rate. Consumers looking to save money turn to the web with its unbeatable capacity to enable them to shop around. Being part of this industry and current boom, we're happy to turn the economic situation to our advantage - and find ways we can shore up our clients' sales revenues using the web.

Of course, most business managers know that to cut back on marketing spends at a time when clients or customers are getting thinner on the ground is the quickest way to oblivion for their companies - so for our part, we'll resist the scare-mongering and maintain our own spending plans. No company ever really saves their way in to profit and growth - that only happens through smart and reasonable spending and investment - something we'll be focusing on helping our clients do with us - and we'll be doing with our own suppliers; the quickest way to bring the economic cycle back in the right direction.

Image utility inside the right-click menu

2008-08-07T09:29:00.007+01:00

You often find, working at a computer all day long, that there are loads of little tasks you repeat over and over again. One of them, in this line of work anyway, is image re-sizing and converting. There's plenty of ways of doing this in bulk - batch jobs in Photoshop, Windows Powertoys, etc - but as a one-off thing, it's usually opening the file in Photoshop and doing it that way.

This useful application sits in the right-click context menu and lets you re-size and convert an image with one click from within Windows Explorer. Need a JPG turned in to a GIF? One click of the menu does the job. Very useful.

There's a variety of other tools too - like preview within the context menu itself, image size/file data instantly displayed. For anyone working with images day in day out, it's a really useful tool.

Mobile Broadband

2008-07-22T13:39:00.002+01:00

The mobile phone networks have all recently been moving in to the 'mobile broadband' game - offering USB modems that just plug in to your laptop and supposedly give broadband-speed internet wherever you are, via 3G. Having used a 3G phone as a bluetooth modem on a laptop before, I've not been convinced of their usefulness - as my previous experience has been frankly rubbish.

We were offered a test-run of the Three mobile broadband, so gave it a whirl and it's a completely different kettle of fish. My main uncertainty - connection speed - has been totally blown out the water. Very little difference in use to our office broadband connection.

It's not something we use often - but is very useful now and again, whether it's in getting a broadband connection at a client's premises, or just working on a train, in the car, etc. We've signed up for a batch of them for all David Andrews staff. So far, basic web-browsing and e-mail is a total breeze. We've even managed some pretty heavy FTP usage and SQL Server administration - all via laptop, connected to the web just by the little white modem plugged in to the USB. Really useful especially for a business like ours, where we try and build in as much freedom and flexibility to work hours/location, etc as possible.

If you're thinking of signing up for a mobile broadband plan, we can vouch for it being pretty much as good as a home PC fixed-line broadband connection. A few mobile networks are offering it, but the one we've tested and are using is here:

File / PC Encryption Software

2008-07-01T19:12:00.003+01:00

This is an awesome way to secure all the data on any sort of hard-drive, be it a PC hard-disk, an entire server of data, a USB memory stick / external hard-drive etc...

Any person or organisation with sensitive data stored electronically needs to think hard about data protection and security. If you had a break-in and had PCs / memory cards stolen - what sort of information would the thief have access to? If it's details and information relating in any way to your customers/clients, you're in big trouble - not just with them but probably the law too.

We use this great bit of software to encrypt everything on any of our electronic storage media. It effectively enables you to create a secure virtual 'drive' within your actual drive - which your PC will treat exactly like a mapped network drive. The difference being, everything inside it is encrypted and, when you 'dismount' the drive from the software, it becomes a useless text file totally inaccessible without the passwords. Really simple, military-grade encryption - and best of all, it's free open-source software.

We have a few reservations - like the fact it's so good, that if the password was forgotten, you'd lose all the data inside it. That's highly unlikely though.

Because it turns everything inside the encrypted drive in to a single file, there's the worry that it might get corrupted - again losing everything. We've been using it for over a year though and no problems have occurred as yet. Needless to say, we have a pretty rigorous backup procedure so are covered if the worst happened.

It's the type of software every organisation should use. Just ask the Inland Revenue. Something as simple as this could've saved a heck of a lot of trouble for them. If you have any kind of sensitive information stored anywhere - at home or work - give this a try: http://www.truecrypt.org