My Site Has Been Dropped From Google!

Don’t Panic Mr Webmaster – Examine The Facts First

Most of us have all been there at some stage, your highly ranking site has lost a load of sales or enquiries and when you check your Google Analytics account you see the downward red arrow of fear and worry and you then break out into a cold sweat and start to panic. The good news is that most of the time the panic is unwarranted and once you have done a few basic checks you can then start to put your worries to bed and start to concentrate on regaining those rankings.

It is important to remember that unless you have done something really, really bad and against Google Webmaster guidelines then it is very unlikely that you have been kicked out of the engine or “de-indexed”. Although it can cause a lot of worry, especially if you are seeing a drop in sales, you do need to take a logical and calmed approach and really sit back to discover exactly what is going on.

Below, we look at our steps to making sure your site is ok and has not been “dropped” or “de-indexed” by Google.

Check Your Webmasters Account – If you don’t have a Google Webmasters account then you really should get one. All three of the search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing have this facility, so make sure you sign up to all of them. If anything happens to your site then you will be notified, things like hacking, unsafe pages and anything else that could lead to site problems. If your site has been hacked then Google will display the “This Site Could Harm Your Computer” on your ranking listing, and only someone who was slightly short of intelligence would then click onto your site, explaining the drop in traffic.

Check Your URL In Google – The quickest way to see if you have been totally dropped from Google is to head to the Google site and search for “yourwebsite.com” and see what happens. If you see results, you have not been de-indexed so you can wipe this worry away, but it can also show you if any pages have been dropped for whatever reason, allowing you to find the source of the problem.

Check Your Website – Have a quick look through your site and see if you notice any problems. Are the pages taking too long to load? Have you got any broken links that are hampering the spiders? Is your code causing problems when displaying the information? There are literally a hundred things or more that could be affecting ranking when it comes to losing traffic, so make sure you have a good look through the site and try to identify any issues.

Think About Any Changes – Many ranking and traffic drops happen after webmasters and site owners change things which really didn’t need to be changed. For instance, if you have changed our page titles, this can cause major issues as Google will then need to pretty much re-rank the page according to the new information. Also, if you have moved your site or gone onto a CMS, maybe the pages haven’t been changed accordingly and this will also have a dramatic affect on your traffic.

Study Your Analytics – Once you have done all of the above, it is then time to log back into your analytics and study them in massive detail. Look at the traffic per page to find out if you have dropped for certain pages and also look at the keywords compared to when you were doing better. This can really help you to identify where you have suffered the fall in traffic and can then help you to understand what has gone wrong and how you can go about fixing it.

Sit Back And Have A Ponder – You do also need to think about any outside factors that could be affecting your traffic. For example, in August, most people’s traffic drops dramatically as people take holidays and there are many examples of things like this that can see a drop in traffic, things like Christmas and other holiday periods and time sensitive events etc.

Google Caffeine – what does it mean for my website?

Google has recently made a major  change to the way it builds its website index with the announcement of Google Caffeine, but what is it all about? And what does this mean for my website search results in Google?

When you use a search engine such as Google you are actually searching through the index of websites they have built, its just a big database. You may have heard of search engine spiders or robots that crawl through websites looking for pages? Well this is the way that the Google looks at the content on your website. Content has long been king on the Internet, the better quality it is and the more that gets added means that your website can see a major increase in website traffic, especially if you are writing about current trends related to your websites industry.

“So how will Google Caffeine affect my website?”
The whole reason for Google changing was to enable them to offer its users the most current content available, what this means that you will now be able to access blogs, tweets, news and videos faster than before. This allows you the user to get up to the minute information pretty much as it happens which will make using the web more of a live experience.

Now more than ever there is a need to provide regular information and news on your own website, social media elements such as Twitter and Facebook will also count towards your search result a lot more. For example, if you tweet on Twitter about something that is current, users will be able to access this in search results a lot easier than ever before. Quality current content is so important so things such as videos are going to be an essential items on your website. Video blogging will now be spidered or found as you upload it so setting up a Youtube channel is of paramount importance.

There are now many websites out there that are ready for this new way of searching by having established blogs, videos and social media accounts, however there are also many that are not. There are still lots of websites that have been stuck in the old ways for a long time, still the same from their original launch, never being updated with new content and just plain boring for users. These type of websites will not benefit from the way the web is changing today.

So to ensure that your own website benefits from Google’s index changes is by making sure you have the following:

An integrated website blog
This must be part of your websites structure and navigation not an external site that just looks the same e.g. WordPress.com, Blogspot.

Social media accounts
Twitter and Facebook are king, these should be linked up directly to your own website. A Facebook page is best for the search engines because there is no login area to block the spiders getting access. Then Search engines find your Facebook page so it gets a greater chance of your content being found and indexed.

Youtube channel
When you create a Youtube channel and embed the videos  into your website, you give users an interactive multimedia experience. Videos are best when they are simple and a little rough round the edges; don’t be tempted to invest lots of money on expensive equipment or on a company making a professional video for you. Users want to see the real you and the real business that you run.

Google Caffeine will change the way users search for their content, letting them find content as it happens. To make sure that your website is ready you need make sure that you have all the above in place, if you haven’t already done it, don’t worry it isn’t too late and also if all of this sounds foreign to you, then contact a reputable SEO or web design company who will be more than pleased to help future proof your website.

Top Five Things To Do When You Launch Your Website

Launching a new website for many people is a really exciting time, usually the completion of many months of designing, managing and then finally testing, ready for your new found fame on the Internet. Sadly, getting people to actually see your site is the hardest thing you will face when it comes to online success, but there are certain things you can do to get things moving in the right direction when you have launched your new site.

Below, we take a look at our top five things that you really should consider when you launch your new website.

Add To Webmasters Tools – Google, Yahoo and Bing all offer powerful webmaster control panels which means that once you have confirmed you own the website, you can start getting information about how these powerhouses see your website and more importantly you can start letting them know that you are out there. The days of submitting websites to search engines are practically over, thankfully replaced with much more methodical methods such as webmaster tools.

Release A Press Release – Press releases are a fantastic way of getting your site indexed quickly, especially if you try a service that can get your release into all of the big news sites like Google News etc. Not only will the engines then start picking up the fact that your site is now around and ready to go, but you will also start earning useful links back to your site from many different news sources, especially if the press release gets picked up by multiple sources.

Tweet And Publish – Start your Twitter and Facebook accounts and begin the journey on the rewarding social media road, by getting loyal followers who will follow you and read all of your content on a regular basis. Twitter and Facebook can provide instant access to millions of people across the world and these are often also relevant and related people, meaning that this is an excellent method to not only getting traffic but also getting specifically interested visitors.

Run A Small PPC Campaign – No matter how small or large your budget, we believe that you really should be running a cost per click campaign, as once again this is a good way of getting the early traffic to your site and to start letting people know about your new offering. If you spend time making sure your campaign is well optimised, you can squeeze a lot of traffic out of any budget, it just takes time and effort and to make sure you keep your eye on it consistently.

Write Some Articles – By writing articles and then going through the article submission process, to sites like EzineArticles and GoArticles, you will start getting links back from powerful and authority sites and at the same time you will also get exposure and visits to your site from people that like your articles and writing styles. Article publishing is a key factor to getting increased traffic and links back, so make sure you spend time writing unique and compelling content to start driving those visits to your website.

Church School Awards Website

The Church School Awards is a new event, launching September 2010, open to all Church Schools, promoting the fantastic and vital work done in the areas of community cohesion and global citizenship. The Award is an opportunity for everyone involved in Christian education to celebrate the unique and vital work that students, teachers, governors and staff do for their local communities, for our country and throughout the world.

Net9design produced the logos, website design  and developed the site in WordPress CMS. The site has a full membership system for user to register, and send thier application for the Church School Awards.

Visit the Church School Awards website – Here

Top Ten Things To Test Before Your Website Goes Live

When you are ready to launch your new website it is vital you spend time testing the final results, even if you have made it yourself or have paid a lot of money for it. Things do go wrong when you go from testing and building to live, so you have to take the time to sit down and test the site in full, asking friends, family and anyone else to also test the site before it gets indexed or advertised.

Below, we look at our top ten things you simply have to test before the website goes live and starts getting traffic.

Menus

Make sure your menus work, especially if they are drop downs or some other interactive type of menu. Go through and make sure all of the menus open and are in the correct order and in the right place.

Fonts

Try to be consistent and make sure all of the text is of the same font, or at least the same family of fonts. Sometimes, if you do not code the page or the CSS correctly, it can lead to having multiple font types on the page, which looks really bad and quite unprofessional unless you plan this.

Pages

If you have 10 or 100 pages, you need to click through ALL of them and make sure they work, because everyone one of these pages could become a landing page in some way so its vital you do spend the time checking all pages and just making sure everything is ok.

Images

Depending on the browser being used, you may or may not be aware of images not loading when you test your site. Firefox manages to hide non loading images very well, but Internet Explorer will give you the red cross of death, so make sure your images load and are property alt tagged up, which helps people with limited vision to use your site better.

Videos

Check the videos load quickly and completely, as a slow video will drive people away and an incomplete video will just leave users frustrated and quite annoyed that they spent time to view something that is simply not finished.

Links

If your site contains outgoing links or a lot of internal navigational links, make sure they all work by testing them before the site goes live. It is also sometimes a good idea to have a paragraph in your terms and conditions to mention that you have no control of what is contained on the site they follow the link to, as if the outgoing site gets hacked you do not want it reflecting on your business.

Contact Form

Producing a contact form is one thing, producing one that works, sends the email to you and also tells the user it has been successfully sent is another. Make sure that you test all of the contact forms on your website, which might be a time consuming exercise but a vital and definitely necessary one.

Text Details

Does your site have a phone number on it? If so, dial it and make sure it connects to you. Such a simple thing to say but there have been a few instances that we have seen where people mistype the phone number and do not spot it for a long time after, imagine how many calls you might of missed!

Browsers

It is crucial to make sure that you try your website in all of the major browsers, which include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and for Mac users, the Safari browser. Even though the two most common browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox, Chrome and Opera have quite a loyal following so you need to make sure the site works the best it can in all browsers.

Speed

Speed is a vital aspect for any website, especially as it is now one of the ranking factors in the Google algorithm. People will not want to spend ages waiting for a site to load so its vital you make sure the pages load as quickly as possible and as fluidly as possible as well.

How To Choose The Right Web Design Company For You

Taking the step of employing a web design company to design your new website can sometimes be a daunting one, especially with hundreds of web design firms in any one area or radius to choose from. Therefore, it is vital that you do your research and make sure the company you are going to hand your money to are the best you possibly can find and ultimately will deliver you something you can be totally happy with.

Below, we look at the most important things that we believe are essential that you take into account before choosing your web design company to deliver your new website or project.

Think About Location – We believe that using a local web design company is a must if you really want to make sure that your website is delivered on time and to a very high quality. We speak from experience when we say that by using a local company you can remain on top of the project much more efficiently and having someone your can physically go and see if there are issues really is worth its weight in gold.

Ask Them For A Quote – Everyone has a budget so make sure you set yours from the outset and then contact a few web design companies for a quote. If they are well outside of your budget then it is often not worth making yourself bankrupt just to afford it. In this situation you have two choices, reduce your specification or choose a web design firm that fits your budget a bit better than the others.

Check Out Their Portfolio – A web design company should have a portfolio of work; a good web design company should have a great portfolio of work. Look at their website and then spend time checking out their previously completed projects. Make sure you like what they do and that they have a good variation of projects and good design skills, but just because you do not see something you would choose does not mean they are not any good, you need to concentrate on how good their previous designs are and how well the sites work.

Read / Request A List Of Testimonials – People love to tell the world if they have found someone good and worth working with, a web design company is no different. Check through their testimonials and request permission to contact some of the previous clients directly, many firms will allow you to do this and it is absolutely vital you do so. NEVER be embarrassed to check out how good they really are by making that phone call.

Optimised Or Just Good Looking? – A good looking website does not equal a successful website. Having something pretty and flash does not mean you will have loads of visitors making enquires and landing on your site. A good website is an optimised and ranking website, just like a high street shop is only successful if you have the visitors making the purchases within.

Meet With Them – And finally, where possible, go and meet them. There is nothing you can do that is more important than sitting down and meeting the people who will be in charge of your website. Whether you are spending £500 or £5000, you need to trust the people that are ultimately in charge of making sure your website is going to deliver something you will be proud of and above all, be successful.

Website Design Company

Website Design Company Net9design, Gloucester, Gloucestershire UK. You have found the right site for internet web site design and high quality graphic design services.

Based in Gloucester, we offer design studio services including multimedia flash, illustration, website design, photography and training.

We have an outstanding reputation for giving business innovative design solutions for the last 18 years.