PR Consultancy Bedford

We are really pleased to announce that we can now offer high quality printing services to our clients in St Neots, Bedford and beyond through our partner xlpress. We are able to offer the very best in digital and litho printing and can take on jobs of all sizes and specs. Whether you have got a large catalogue to print or just want a hundred business cards printed we can handle it for you.

The plant list includes:

Pre-press

Studio
Screen 8000 – Ctp Chemical free
Kimosetter – Digital ctp plate system
Epson Stylus – proofing

Press

Heidelberg 74 – 5 colour perfector
Heidelberg QM46 – 4 colour
Ryobi 3302 – 2 colour
Xerox 242 x 2 – Digital print

Finishing

Polar 78 – Programmatic Guilotine
Morgana Digicreaser – Professional crease and perf
Muller Matini – 6 station plus cover feeded, 3 knife trim
Heildelberg Cylinder – Cut & crease
H&H Crossfold – Folding
Duplo Stitching line – small format books
Iran Drill – 4 head Drill
Renz wirobind – Wire binding

More information will be available soon however if you want a quote or require some samples then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us and we will be glad to help.

Keywords tag.

This is the meta tag that looks a bit like this:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Home Cinema, Television, Projectors, Cables, Multi-room Radio, HiFi iPod & Docks, Telephones, Headphones, Digital Camera, Speakers, Television Brackets, Distribution Solutions, Furniture, Clearance, Accessories, Blu-ray ” />

Here is a prime example of how we love to stuff our keywords tag with words we hope to rank for. The problem is that this system has been totally abused over the years by SEO and site owners. Stuff this tag with hundreds of keywords that may or may not be appropriate for the content of the site. As a result Google no longer takes any notice of this tag. now that’s not to say that other search engines to use it at all, although I would be very surprised if they give it much weight or significance at all.

There is little (if any point) if worrying or spending any real time to on this keyword tag, I certainly wouldn’t be worrying about making sure that all your keywords are listed and in any kind of order, it really will be a waste of time.

Description tag

This is the one that looks like this:

<meta name=”description” content=”FREE UK DELIVERY! – Get a huge range of great-priced CDs, DVDs, games and books delivered FREE right to your door” />

Now this one does have a bit of value with Google. Although Google have said that they don’t use the meta description for ranking the page they might use it as summary text on the search results page if they deem it useful and relevant to the content on the rest of the page. If they think that the text in this description looks ‘spammy’ or of very little useful relevance they will just use text taken off your page.

It’s for this reason that I would say the meta description tag is important. Why? Well, the text that you have in it could be the first bit of text the searcher reads about your site and could be the difference between clicking on your link and clicking on the one below you.

Think about having a highly relevant but interesting description, maybe something that catches the searchers eye. You have around 150 characters to do that in so you need to be concise.

Of course, sometimes its ok not to bother with a meta description. Google will pull in some relevant content from your page which will include the keywords that the user has searched for, so in some cases there is an argument to let Google decide what to display.

Does URL Structure matter for SEO?

Simple answer to this is yes it does. It’s my opinion that URLs can make a significant difference to your page ranking however it’s also important to note that it is only one of the many aspects that Google measure when ranking your site so we mustn’t get carried away. A with the majority of SEO, I would say that a lot of this stuff is common sense. My philosophy is always to consider usability and the effects that your decisions have your visitors (and those searching for you). Google’s aim is always going to be, (we hope) to provide the searcher with the the most relevant results and the best possible web experience. We need to work with that,  that is why common sense is often the right way to go. We are not trying to trick Google (other search engines are apparently available). Anyway – rant over, let’s begin.

Dynamic URL’s

If you use a content management or ecommerce package you will have probably already come across dynamic URLs. You know the kind of thing I mean.

http://mydomainname.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=73_75&products_id=234&zenid=b888da4edb833a8a65db4c84378f5kjdo

This URL is generated by the site by using a ‘product’ or ‘page id’ rather than a logical name. Of course this domain name tells us nothing about the content of the page.

URL displaying page Structure

One thing that a lot of people get hung up about is whether to show the structure of the site in the URL. For example:

www.mydomain.com/home-electronics/televisions/sony-24inch-television

or just

www.mydomain.com/sony-24inch-television

There seems to be evidence that I can find to suggest that Google prefers the first example because it gives indication of page structure.  My opinion on which to choose really comes down to deciding on a case by case basis.  I would say that I think the shorter version is probably my preference 8 times out of 10. A shorter URL is more likely to be linked to by other blogs and sites, also, a shorter URL allows you to have your keyword(s) closer to the start of the URL which can be of some benefit. Also, you are less likely to be repeating keywords in your domain name. As you can see from the made up example above the keyword television is listed twice.

On the flip side, the longer URL has some benefits as well. If you have a large site with lots of categories and products, the longer version can help organise and keep things logical. It can also give some indication of where the user is on the site, however a breadcrumb menu would probably be a better place to do that.

URL length

Another thing that we need to consider is the length of theURL. A good rule to probably follow is to try and keep it as short as possible whilst still keeping it logical. The actual physical length that a URL can be is far bigger than we will ever need, so in that sense we can be flexible. (Over 2000 characters for Internet Explorer). However long URLs can have an impact.

1) By having lots of keywords in the URL you dilute the impact of each one
2) They are more awkward for others to cut and paste and may get cut off.
3) They are harder to remember and therefore might not get used as much

There is a 3-5 word rule which you may find reference to. As far as I can tell this is a guide which was based on something Matt Cutts said when talking about the negative impact excessively long URLs can have.

Let’s look at an example:

www.mysite.com/products/new-products/televisions/Sony-tv-kdl-3029-52-inch-led-television

We can reduce this URL quite a bit by removing unnecessary elements. For example, we can remove the products and new-products elements as they are not adding anything to the URL. We can also look at removing the television at the end of the URL as we already have it earlier in the URL.

This might be more appropriate.

www.mysite.com/televisions/sony-kdl-3029-52inch-led

Keywords

It makes sense to add keywords into your URL, but we mustn’t make ugly or ‘spammy’ looking URLs. Avoid repeating keywords and adding too many in. Remember, too many words and the effect of each one will begin to be diluted anyway.

Changing your current URL structure

it’s one thing to carefully plan your URL structure when you are building a new site but it’s another thing entirely to attempt to change your current structure once your site is already established.  It goes without saying that you will need to set up proper 301 redirects from all your existing pages to your new pages but even if you get this done correctly there is still a good change that your rankings will get a lot worse before getting slightly better.  You really need to weigh up how much you feel your current URL structure is effecting your current ranking and how much of a positive difference changing them will make. The chances are the risk of rocking the boat greatly outweighs the benefits of the potential small gains that are on offer.

ECHO is a Christian charity based in Eastbourne and aim to support and provide housing for the very vunerable and needy in Eastbourne.

It points the finger at two separate reasons.
1) Businesses tightening their belts due current economic climate.
2) The increased competition in the market place.

I would have to agree that times are tough for many businesses at the moment but we still believe that a well-designed, intuitive and informative website is still a vital component in any growing business and should remain a priority for companies to get sorted..

Web designers are certainly not exempt from feeling the effects of the economic climate, however the best way for us to continue to grow is to remain focused on providing a first rate service and working hard on the areas that we are good at. There are always companies that can provide a cheaper product, but I think that the key for us is to retain our high standards as well as making sure that we stay competitive in the market.
By building more intuitive, we designed applications and websites, we believe that we will attract good clients that we can develop long term working relationships with. It is important for us to keep these goals at the centre of our strategy as we develop the business in the future.

I have recently read an interesting article by John McGarvey claiming that everyone should stop using Lorum Ipsum, and to be fair he makes some good points. I will try and expand on a couple of them here as well as try and explain how it might impact on website design and the way we design websites.

Content is design

This is the primary problem with lorum ipsum. You have probably heard the expression ‘content is king’ It’s often thrown around in reference to search engine optimisation. However it must also refer to design. nine times out of ten the purpose of our website is to communicate a message, product or opinion to our users. As the importance of user experience on websites increases so does the need for us to communicate our content in a clear and concise manner, therefore our content should be in the forefront of our design, in fact, it perhaps should be the first thing we think about before putting the graphical layout together.

How should it change our approach to design?

More often than not when we start a new project for a client one of the first things that we start to look at is other sites that the client likes, site structure, navigation and the layout. Content often doesn’t get much of a look in until later in the design process. This is quite often our fault, putting more emphasis on content is certainly something we are going to start changing straight away. Of course, if we are able to communicate our message to our audiences better then it will surely impact positively on SEO as well graphically.

In conclusion I don’t think that we will be able to remove the use of place holder text completely however we will be reducing its use as much as possible as well as re thinking some of our priorities when we are planning new designs.

It;s been quite a learning process really as I haven’t had much to do with Prestashop up until now. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t particually blown away with the software, however it does seem like a decent option for new webstore owners to get up and running fairly quickly.

The shop I was working sells yoga clothing, fitwear clothing, fitness maternity clothing and general gym wear. Its a really nice shop, so it’s worth checking out. fitwearboutique.co.uk

Of course – it is not perfect. One of the most annoying aspects of it is to do with the returns policy (RMA). For some reason when a customer requests to return a product the merchant isn’t notified by email. For the customer to be able to print out a returns form, the merchant needs to confirm that the return is ok. It makes sense but if the merchant isn’t notified by email, the return request can stay un confirmed for ages without the merchant knowing it had been requested.

One option would be to overwrite the need for the RMA to be confirmed. However this doesn’t seem like a viable solution as the merchant might end up with all sorts of returns turning up in the post without being aware that they were being returned.

It seems strange why an automatic email isn’t built into the prestashop core. Having scouted the forums it seems as like a few people are looking for this feature but there don’t seem to be many solutions out there.

Having been asked by a client for a solution for this problem I have managed to find a fix so that when a RMA is filled out the merchant receives an automatic email notifying the merchant that someone has filed a return request.

Until Prestashop release this future in a future upgrade the only way I can see that you can achieve this feature is by writing it into the core code – not ideal for future updates, but it works none the less.

If you would like this feature in your prestashop site then drop me an email and I will be happy to set it up for you.