Pay per click (PPC)

Pay per click (PPC). Is it worth it? The effectiveness of PPC is debatable. On the one hand you can clearly see how much each click as cost you. On the other hand you don’t always seem to get the best value for money. One thing is for sure with PPC, if you choose highly competitive terms then you’d better have a big budget. At Computer Coders Ltd we do offer to manage Adwords accounts but we don’t really consider this to be our bread and butter. This is more organic search marketing.

We refer to offer our customers organic SEO services over and above PPC for a number of reasons:
1) We believe that, long term, you will get great value for money from organic SEO.
2) It could be argued that good SEO breeds good web design. So should PPC but we see too many cases where those who offer PPC solely do not advise or consult about landing pages and general good web design practice. Afterall, the most successful organic SEO campaigns involve targeted traffic being driven to professionally designed, usable web pages.
3) Click fraud with PPC really bothers us. Some say that this is a necessary evil and all part of the process but it still bugs us.
4) Why does it need to be pay per CLICK? Why can’t the providers only charge us for actual leads? They could only charge if so many pages are visited and the clicker stays on the web pages for specified duration. Reasons why they don’t (besides the obvious) are the costs. Surely the cost per LEAD would be much higher per LEAD than per CLICK. Afterall, would your printing company only charge you for leaflets or flyers that you actually got business from? Would your networking event provider only charge you if you actually found someone to do business with during an event? This would get too difficult to keep track of and would probably open a whole new area of fraud in the opposite direction – from the consumer to the provider.

Web design Yorkshire

Web design Yorkshire is a growing market. Most business owners have now realised that web design is no longer just a nice to have, it’s a business essential. Your prospects are online so you should be, it’s as simple as that. However, many of the websites that we see can be improved. Even the large corporate websites have room for improvement. So you’ve had a web design for years but it just isn’t reaching your expectations? Well, you need to start thinking about how it can be improved.

Website performance

One was of improving the performance of web design is search engine optimisation (SEO). But wait a minute, you’re not seriously considering spending lots of time, effort and money on driving lots of traffic to a website that hasn’t changed in the last few years right? Look at Amazon, they change bits and pieces of their website on what seems to be a daily basis. They keep it fresh and up-to-date for their returning customers. I know you don’t think you’ve got the time to change your website and add new bits and bobs each day but what about twice a week? A couple of new blog posts or a new web page using your content management system (CMS)?

SEO Services

One prospects asked us to provide SEO services to a website that looked very old and, frankly, unprofessional. He thought that there was no point in redesigning a website until it was better ranked on Google. We disagree, we think redesign first then SEO. You wouldn’t arrive to a fancy dress party in your gym gear would you? And then quickly nip into the loo to change your clothes? First impressions count in web design too. Besides, Google takes into account the duration and number of pages that a visitor views on your websites so how can you expect to get ranked well for competitive keywords if your website isn’t usable and asthetically pleasing.

Web design for companies in Yorkshire

Web design for companies in Yorkshire is often done to a tighter budget than say London. Ok so I’m stating the obvious but my point is that if you have say £500 to spend now then another £500 in 3 months and so on for say 2 years that’s £4000 to spend on your website. If you can’t spend all of that £4000 now then you need to prioritise. The first thing I would recommend is sort out the Information Architecture. Imagine building a house without plans. If your original web design company just gave your a 5 page website with a content management system (CMS) and no Information Architecture plan (i.e. how your web design will look when it’s finished and how it can be scaled) then you will need to start thinking about this if you want to rank well in search engines.

Information Architecture

If you don’t understand Information Architecture then think of it in terms of the blueprints for a house. You can’t have the upstairs rooms if you don’t have the downstairs room and you can’t get upstairs without any stairs! I’ll use an example of a website about fruit. You have the typical Homepage, Types of Fruit, About and Contact. These are your main navigation pages. Then Types Fruit links to Apples which, in turn, links to Green Apples, Red Apples and Pink Apples. Green Apples then links to Granny Smiths and Golden Delicious. You get the picture.

A web design plan

So now you can see the importance of having a plan in web design. This plan is equally important to search engine optimisation (SEO) because it helps the search engine spiders move from one page to the next. If your original web design in Yorkshire did not include a clear plan then it is best to start thinking about it before you pay for SEO services. This is what we mean by the difference between a cheap web design service and an affordable web design service. Cheap web design rarely includes Information Architecture it is just about getting a product out to a customer asap. The customer is usually happy with this initially but problems come later on when an SEO expert comes in and tells them that their page layout makes no logical sense in terms of their subject area. Afterall, a website should become a complete resource for your visitors. They shouldn’t need to go anywhere else for information about your subject once they’ve found you. Cheap web design usually means paying more later on. Whereas affordable web design just meets your current budget and the scope reflects that. You might not get a blog now but you can had one in the future. You might not get RSS now but the web design is scalable and robust enough to add it in the future. Web design should be flexible enough to grow with your business and your requirements.

Why web design?

What is the reason that you originally decided to have a website designed for your company? It is because your competitors have one and you think you need one too. Well, you do need a website but not just because your competitors have one, this is a bad reason is invest in anything. Do you buy an Audi family estate car because your neighbour has one or because German cars are robust, value for money and comparatively less likely to let you down?

Web design for effective marketing

Think about the reasons why you should have a website. What are you in business for? To make a profit. If your business is working to capacity then you need to think about reducing your costs. Web design and internet marketing are too cost effective ways to promote your business.

SEO seems to mean different things to different people these days. Our definition is organic, unsponsored search engine listings. Internet marketing is taking more and more of the market share of traditional marketing. SEO is taking the place of advertising. A bold statement I know but think about it – people see lots of banner adverts and TV adverts each day and that is how adverts work – over time. SEO is different. Your prospects are on Google, Yahoo and Bing and are searching for your product or services. They are warm leads already. You just need to be in their “consideration set” (the three or four websites that the searcher will visit).