Mr Site News - July 2009

Website

Twitter

Tips

To celebrate Mr Site’s arrival on Twitter, we’re going to explore the social networking revolution and how it can help you get your website to the top of those all-important search engines!

Website of the Month:

We found lots of fantastic Mr Site websites that are using blogs to help keep in touch with their visitors. But father and son team, Jon and Pete Graham, not only have their own news page for the Fleur de Lys country pub, but they also have Facebook, Twitter and FlickR groups AND blogs on eBlogger and WordPress! Jon told us:

“Having a blog allows us to add a more personal touch to the site so visitors feel like they are reading the words of a real person rather than 'a website'. In our business of customer service and hospitality, the personal touch is what customers are looking for and what makes us stand out from the crowd. Facebook and Twitter have been interesting experiments – Facebook allows people to become 'fans' and share the page with their friends, which has been extremely useful for communicating information about the pub. It also comes up in search engine results for the pub, again boosting our exposure.”

How can social networking help YOU?

Getting yourself onto Twitter or Facebook, or even adding a blog page to your Mr Site website could help you more than you think! Have you ever wondered how to get your website to the top of Google, MSN or AOL? Customers using Takeaway Website Pro will already be using its unique ‘SiteBoost’ tools to help get their website higher up the search engines, but there are lots of things to try… whatever package you’ve got.

Get blogging

Websites that never change are a real let down – not only will it kill off repeat visitors but you’ll also be penalised by Google and other major search engines for having stale content. By adding a news page or Mr Site blog, not only will provide some interesting reading for your visitors but you’ll also be rewarded for your efforts and see your website move up the search engines. Update this as regularly as possible; every two weeks will be just fine and enough to get you lots more repeat visitors.

Socialise

Google loves linked pages and will push you up the listings the more and better quality links you have. So ask friends or colleagues to link to your website in return for a reciprocal link. The same applies for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia, so create a page for yourself and link back to your site. This will push you right up the search engine listings…you can add a Mr Site Twitter widget to your website to let everyone know where to find you. And don’t forgot to follow us

There are lots of other things you can do to help your customers find you amongst the 30 billion+ web pages on the internet. Given that over 80% of internet users find websites via search engines like Google, it is vital that your website is well positioned on the search engines results pages. ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ (SEO) is a way of making changes to your website to boost its chances of appearing higher up in search engines. Web marketing companies can charge hundreds, if not thousands, to undertake this ‘SEO' process, but here are some tips to help you can start optimising yourself:

Images

Flash animation, video and images cannot be read or indexed by search engines as there is no text for them to pick up. Code inside JavaScript is also harder to read. Pages containing only images are likely to get either a low or no listing at all. It’s best to avoid images on their own or otherwise balance them with a reasonable amount of text describing each image.

Competition

Do a search on your keywords/phrases and see which other companies are listed. Are they in the same category as you? Which keyword/phrases have they used? Use your browser to view the source of the page and look at their search words. Look at their content, images, meta-tags and titles. What can you learn from them? If you need a hand, Takeaway Website Pro’s SiteBoost tools have a special built-in Keyword Boost kit which provides all the above in-depth analysis and information for you. To find out more click here.

Sitemaps

Create a sitemap which will encourage search engines to revisit more and give your site higher results page listing. If this sounds confusing remember that Takeaway Website Pro has an easy-to-use Sitemap tool. It analyses all the pages on your website and does all the complicated and confusing work for you by automatically creating your own Google-friendly Sitemap at the click of a button. To find out more click here.

Growing Pains

To enjoy steady growth avoid making sudden changes to your website. Organic optimisation is slow and takes commitment but it’s definitely worth doing. You’ll soon see your site move up the results page.

Keywords

Try to build each page around one or two keywords or phrases. On the homepage, situate the most important content at the top of the page. Takeaway Website Pro’s SiteBoost tools have a fantastic built-in Keyword Boost kit which does an in-depth analysis of every page on your website for you, suggesting which keywords and phrases are most fitting for you and how best to use them. To find out more click here. Remember to include your keywords or phrases in the page titles, meta-tags, image ALT-tags and filenames. If this all sounds a bit too tricky, remember that Takeaway Website Pro provides you with the tools to do all the above quickly and easily with no technical knowledge required. To find out more click here.

Cheating

Don’t ever try to cheat search engines, e.g. white text on a white background or repeating the same words over and over again. Most search engines now have strict policies about this and you’ll find your site penalised and slipping down the results pages.

The award-winning Takeaway Website Pro has a fantastic array of jargon free SEO tools to help boost your website up the search engines. To find out more click here. If want to advantage of the Takeaway Website Pro ‘SiteBoost’ tools, you can upgrade your Beginner or Standard package by simply logging into your account and clicking the ‘Upgrade Your Package’ link at the top of the screen.

www.mrsite.co.uk has had a lick of paint!

After lots of hard work by our design and development team, please visit the brand new Mr Site website - launched this week. Have a look around at all the new features...especially if you’re one of our happy customers on the sample websites page. We hope you enjoy!

Want more Domain names?

Have you got a .com but fancy the .co.uk equivalent as well? Or maybe you have .com.au but always had your eye on .net too? Do you want to make sure that no-one else can register a domain name similar to yours? With Mr Site, you can buy additional domain names and set them up so when its typed into the internet, visitors will be directly forwarded to your current website. Mr Site has now reduced the cost of additional domain names from £15 to £10 for a year(see currency conversions here) so now is the perfect time to snap up those extra domains!

If you want to register a new domain name, log into your Mr Site account and click on the "Buy" button located in the top right hand corner of the page.

Enter your current domain name and select the option "Register a New Domain Name" from the “What type of purchase would you like?” drop down list. Your new domain name should be set up within 24 hours and we will send the new account details to the email address you signed up to Mr Site with (so don’t forget to keep your email address up to date in Main Options > > Extras > Perform Admin > Personal Details).

Your sporting websites:

Thank you to everyone who submitted their sports club stories over the last month. From football to archery, flying to netball – we’ve seen lots of brilliant Mr Site sporting websites. And the winner of a luxury hamper is Stuart Powell of Harvington Cricket Club:

www.harvingtoncricketclub.co.uk

“Since having our website, lots of other clubs have signed up to Mr Site because they have been so impressed. It is a great way to communicate events, results, fixtures, pics, etc. to our members, other teams and the general public – and we’re always updating our news page! We’ve also had a lot more attention from sponsorship deals because of our website.”

Competition: Are you a networking king or queen?

This month, we want know if Tweeting, Facebooking or blogging has helped your business or website. Tell us all about how you choose to socialise and we’ll feature your story on the Mr Site website and in the next newsletter. Winners will receive a fabulous luxury hamper, so please get in contact by emailing: stories@mrsite.co.uk And remember – we’re always looking out for interesting stories…so don’t stop sending them through.