All you have to do is to follow @ian_j_young and @iyes_ltd and tweet the following message: For 12 months free web hosting suitable for photography http://www.iyesolutions.co.uk/photography-web-hosting-offer/ Please RT.

We will keep a note of all twitter entries and the winners will be drawn on 31st January 2012

What you will get:

5Gb webspace

unlimited bandwidth

2 MySQL databases

50 mail boxes

WordPress installed

YAPB plugin

other relevant plugins

Reflection theme and customised simple photographic theme

Control panel

Value £65.99

Conditions:

You will need your own domain in order to take advantage of this offer.

You only need to retweet once.

No porn sites – these will be deleted.

Offer will run from 1st February 2012 until 31st January 2013

The changes were not all embracing but rather tweaks here and there. We added a couple of testimonial pages and overall improved how the copy read.

The most important addition was the ‘Call to action’ on each major page. The call to action was to contact the business for further information. In this case that was also linked to the contact page.

It is amazing how many websites, fail to have a call to action.  Your website may be the most visually stunning work but in a business context, if it doesn’t ask the visitor to do something then it might as well not be there at all.

The above example is the simplest. It is a brochure site, advertising its services and giving prospective customers a simple method of finding more information – the fact that the content is informative helps too (See Top Tips for SEO 4 – Content).

If you have an e-commerce site, the objective is to encourage people to visit the e-commerce section and purchase items.

It’s not rocket science. You would not write a glossy brochure without a encouraging its readers to contact you for further information, or to visit your premises and so on, so why would you not do the same on your website.

These are things that you can do so easily to your own website but if you would like to discuss further how to improve your website, contact us now.

Top tips for SEO 4 – content

We have recently been working with a very SEO savvy client, tweaking their content and refreshing key pages. Now this did not require wholesale rewriting but just a few changes here and there to make the pages even more relevant.

This really is the fundamental of SEO and web marketing. If the website isn’t worth reading, no amount of clever meta development or link building is going to convert all that wonderful traffic into enquiries and/or orders.

Content is king. The ultimate SEO tool is your content.  Sound too obvious? Then think about the websites that you visit and why.

It won’t matter whether it is an e-commerce site,  a general interest site,  a photographic site or even a social media site. You visit it because it is interesting. So is your website interesting? Do you have content that people will wish to read? Have you changed the content in the last two months?

Clearly if the answer to any of these is ‘no’ then now is a good time to address that.

Many sites like to include images, – photographs or graphics to enhance the user experience. Graphics can include logos, contact information, highlighted text from the copy. The problem for search engines is that the do not read the text in a graphic.

On the other hand each graphic or photograph is an opportunity to add information – key phrases – which can be picked up by search engines.

And it could be easier.

The code for images in html looks something like <img src=”http://www.domain.co.uk/images/logo.png” height=”100px” width=”250px” alt =” ” />

The key element here is the ‘alt’ part. If a key phrase is added here then that will be read by search engines.

eg Using the same example as in previous posts:

<img src=”http://www.domain.co.uk/images/logo.png” height=”100px” width=”250px” alt =”3D tiles from company name ” />.

This also ties in with the key phrases in the meta headers.

Photographs are handled in precisely the same way – short description using key phrases  is a simple and effective method.

eg
<img src=”http://domain.co.uk/images/wedge.jpg” alt=”Wedge 3 dimensional tile” width=”300″ height=”185″ />

CMS and Blogs like Joomla and WordPress make this easy as when an image or photograph is added there is a facility to add description and tags (alts) to the uploaded image.
This simple step make such a difference to the having your pages indexed by search engines and found for specific searches.

We introduced the meta headers – ‘title’, ‘description’ and keywords’. In this post we will discuss some basic things that can be done to make your web pages visible to search engines.

Firstly – <title></title>. This is the most important element as, whilst there are many other things that the search engine algorithms will measure, the first thing that any search engine will access on a web page is the title. Stands to reason really. What’s the first thing you look at when browsing through a book shop? Title (maybe author).

So with a web page it is no different. The home page (or index) is the most likely first page for all users so that has to be carefully titled.

Think about the service you are offering. Is your name familiar and, therefore, likely to be used as a search term? Do you want to promote the name of your business? It is a rule of thumb that the easiest thing to optimise for is your own name or name of the business.

Even a name as common as my own (over 5 million in Google) is number 3 for one of my businesses and no 11 for another.  IYES e-Solutions is as you would expect No 1 on Google.

Here is an example of what a meta title should look like:

<title>3D tiles | 3 dimenionsal tiles | scultured wall tiles | name of business</title>

You will notice that we use key phrases rather than key words here. These reflect what the business is about and immediately the search engines know what the site is about too.

The web site with the above meta title is no 1 on Google out of 54 million results.

The next important meta header is description.

For each page it is important to write a short description in that meta header that reflects the content. The trick is to repeat the main elements of the title in the description.

eg <meta name = “description” content=” Companyname is a design company based in location, specialising in the design of 3 dimensional – 3D – sculptural tiles.” />

The final meta header is ‘keywords’ and whilst these are not as valuable as they once were due to keyword stuffing and spamming, if done carefully can be made to work to your benefit. As with the description, the key is to repeat the key phrases that are in the title.

eg

<meta name =”keywords” content=”3D Tiles, 3 dimensional tiles, sculptural wall tiles, company name, location” />

As you can see there are also only 3 key phrases apart from the company name and location.  I like to repeat the last two key words throughout the site as they do help in the page rankings.

The key phrases should also be repeated throughout the copy on the page (but that is a different skill and topic altogether).

Finally make sure that each page has something different to reflect the content of that page (‘about’ as a title is a waste of time).

Keep this page bookmarked so you can follow some more of our Top Tips for SEO.

I thought  too, that it may be worth sharing these with you.

SEO or search engine optimisation on one level can be a long drawn out affair (and expesnive if you  are not careful). There are plenty of so called ‘experts’ out there who are determined to part you from your well earned cash.

There is no doubt that for businesses it is important to ensure that their websites are maximising the traffic and hence the potential custom. This involves a whole bunch of techniques that are honestly best left to someone with the knowledge, expertise and commerical nous to do it on their behalf. That last element is the one that most SEO providers lack.

The tips that I am going to outline here are within most people’s capabilities with only a very small technical knowledge required.

So where to start?

1. The basics!

Name pages with something relevant – page1, page2 etc (as generated by some template software) is a waste of time.

In CMS websites, use search engine friendly strings. index.php?page=12 is useless. Tells nothing about the content and search engines tend to stop at the ? mark. WordPress will manage this for you through the permalink function. Just choose the format that suits you best. I personnally prefer the name of the page right after the site name eg ian-young.co.uk/top-tips-for seo. To do this just add /%postname%/ in custom field in permalinks settings.

2. Some elementary page optimisation.

To manage this, you need to be able to access the coding of your website – if a straight forward html site. CMS sites make this easy for you.

Meta headers: These are found within the <head> area of the html page. For our purposes there are three:

<title></title>

<meta name =”description” content =” “/>

<meta name =”keywords” content =” ” />

Of these the first two are the most important and title is the most important of all.

Keywords whilst useful, is less important but if used in combination with the other two can be a powerful tool.

So how do we use these to our advantage? All will be explained in the next post.

There is, of course, the facility at install to have more than one set up, but it is probably more normal to add blogs as you go along and your tastes develop.

Well it is a simple enough thing to do, but there are some things to watch out for.

If you have access to more than one MySQL, then it is even easier. Make a new folder, upload WordPress to it and follow the instructions – just like the initial install. You don’t, of course, need an additional MySQL, and, in my opinion, it is a waste of a good resource – unless your database is going to be very large.

For most circumstances, adding a second WordPress to an existing database is perfectly feasible. All you require to do on install, is change the prefix to the tables on the prompt. Whizz! New blog.

Now, of course some folks are real cool and point different domains at the various folders hosting the blog. It’s a good use of resources, provided that you have the bandwidth to support it.

Most folks will do the domain change after the install and wonder why the blog doesn’t work. WordPress is really quite clever and on install, it determines the URl of the home page and the site itself. If you change the domain that points at the blog, WordPress won’t recognise and you obtain a 404 error messgae at worst or maybe a page devoid of all styling – and you certainly won’t be able to access the wp-admin.

All is not lost and there is a simple step to take before changing to the new domain.

In wp-admin under settings go to general and you will see two fields that have the URl of your site. Change these to the new Url, save and logout.

You will not now be able to access your blog until the DNS for the new domain has propogated which can take 24-48hrs depending on suffix, and, funnily enough, whether during the working week or the weekend. I have had .co.uk domains point almost immediately after changing the DNS details.

If you forget, all is not lost and provided that you can access your MySQL database. Any decent host will have this facility available through the customer control panel. Once into the control panel look for MySQL management or similar, open it and look for table with the suffix wp_ (or whatever you designated this to be at install). Scroll down until you find the table wp-options, click and the click on ‘browse’ at top of page (if required). You will immediately see the Url of the original blog on the first field of the table, click on the edit icon (a pencil) and make the necessary changes. Save. You will also need to page through until you find the address of the home page – around field 40, change that to the same as the site URl. Save.

Your blog should now work.

If you have any problems with this, we are always willing to offer advice and, if all elses fails we can sort it out for you for a very small fee.

So how did it manifest itself and how did it happen.
The first is easy. A line of code had been inserted which called upon a php page class-php.php which had been added to the wp-include file.

On downloading this file and opening with a text editor it was clear that this was bogus as it was had an eval(base64_decode()) function. Deleted pronto.

The good news is that it was only uploded the day before so no great harm done.

In addition, the database had to be searched for rogue commands and a search through wp-options table will highlight the problem.
There an excellent article on the Pearsonified blog on how to diagnose and sort this kind of hack.

So how did it happen? Difficult to say. I can say that it wasn’t through the internet host as their ftp access is very tightly controlled. As the above article points out it is likely to have been through WordPress itself.

Plugins are potential traps for the unwary and, interestingly enough, ASkimet, which is a plugin designed for anti spamming is a source of rogue code.

Not sure how this hack broke through but as a precaution we have downgraded the admin to subscriber and added a new user with admin privileges.

Additional top tips on how to improve your WordPress security include moving the wp-config file and changing prefix of tables. Neither of these is worth the trouble I feel as, in the former you could experience trouble with your theme (and it it would be obvious to hacker where it was located anyway) and in the latter, it is not difficult to search for the relevant tables. You could also block all IP addresses except your own via the htaccess file but that will only work if you have a static IP address.

So my top tips are:
Update all your plugins.
Keep WordPress up to date (although that wouldn’t have helped in this instance).
Deactivate plugins not required.
Only use the very best plugins.
Downgrade admin to subsciber and add a new user with full admin privileges.

You ain’t going to beat the hackers but you will keep them at bay.

Thing is, you have to be subtle about it. The quickest way to lose followers is to fill up their timeline with tweets about your marvellous product/services/articles etc. You need to be interactive too, and engage with Twitterland, talking about subject relevant to your area of expertise and nurturing a following that actually might just be interested in what you have to say and your offering.

It is also a great way of publicising your blogs to a wider audience. Don’t, however, just limit the notification of the new post to the auto – update on WordPress. It is worth remembering that folks’ tweeting habits differ and you may need to tweet notification of the blog over a couple of days (without spamming) to get the best coverage.

Twitter is a great way for folks to ask questions and isn’t it just great how many folks respond with cost of doing the thing? Well no actually.

In these instances, I believe that bit of free advice is better received. The funny thing is, it can and does lead to business or a new contact which in turn can lead to a new business opportunity, whereas the blatant “for £xxxx we can do for you” is a turn off.

The strength of social media is the potential to engage with your audience in a way that was not possible even 5 years ago. It is imperative, therefore, to embrace the medium, market to it sparingly and when you have something to say, people may listen and, you never know, may even use your services

It really all depends on how what you see is the purpose of a blog. As I use WordPress for all my and my clients’ blogs, the content of this article will be aimed at WordPress users.

WordPress can be one of two things, I guess. An add on/subdomain to an existing website or a standalone site in its own right. In the latter, WordPress can be used as a blog, a content management system, an interactive tool for disseminating information or as a quick and simple way to manage news and views.

WordPress.com, offers a cheap and simple way to get started and for individuals this is a convenient way to start. For businesses, however, no matter whether a one man band or a much larger enterprise, it is paramount that you have a dedicated site.

The cost of hosting is a negligible business expense – much less than the your Broadband connection – so it is really a no brainer.

If a UK company, the choice of hosting is wide, but do ensure that you use a UK based company with servers in the UK and one where technical support is at the end of a telephone or 24/7 online. My hosting company offers terrific technical support and I can guarantee a response within a few minutes and always with a speedy resolution.

Having chosen your provider and, if you are lucky, you will have the capability of installing WordPress via your supplier. The process is really user friendly and will only take a few minutes.

Once installed you may be asked to update to newer version – do so at this stage and then you can get down to business of customising your website.

A major benefit of WordPress is that there are hundreds of templates from which to choose and, even if you know nothing about web design, you can have a professional looking site up in no time. Indeed, the current default theme ‘twenty-twenty’ is neat, professional looking and simple to customise.

The look and feel of WordPress is almost infinitely variable – you can limit the number of blogs per page, the number items on the sidebar, if you want comments, and through the addition of plugins the capability of WordPress can be enhanced greatly.

Some of the plugins that we install as part of our package include; All in One SEO package, My Page Order, WP-> Twitter, Recent Posts.

If you are a photographer, Gallery is a must and the really exciting YABP plugin (which needs specific themes )– see Dark Edinburgh and Dark Fields which use the Reflections theme. A real improvement on Flash based photographic sites.

Lightbox/Fancybox plugins are great for displaying photographic portfolios.

Clean simple themes can be very effective and Dene Happell’s mynest blog is a prime example of a how a blog can be used to good effect in business as is Workwear Plus and Ancient Egyptamania

If you need something a bit fancier, it can be more cost effective to have someone do the installation, and customising on your behalf. This need not be prohibitive in costs and we install and customise WordPress within 2-3 days and usually a lot quicker than that if hosted on our servers.

One small word of caution, WordPress has issues with Windows servers, so when ordering your hosting, make sure that you specify, Linux/Apache. Although we can offer both Linux and Windows, we advise all our clients to use Linux and we have had no issues with any of our websites – whether they be WordPress or straight html sites.

We would be delighted to discuss your WordPress requirements with you and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at our fees and hosting costs. Do please get in touch with us now for a no obligation chat about your WordPress requirements.