Jump to content

Baggy

Member
  • Posts

    104
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Baggy

  1. We have a site which is heavily optimised for a specific geographic area and it does OK. We now wish to expand into other locations but are unsure of how best to do this. We prefer not to have to buy new domains and create new sites for each location, particularly because this would mean a lot more copy writing to make each site different. It would also seem that we will have great problems with Google Maps (Google+ or whatever they call it now), as there won't be physical addresses at all new locations. Any/all advice on how we can best move forwards, will be greatly appreciated.
  2. Thanks for your observations, it will certainly help me to do some (basic) work myself but would much rather find the 'right' professional help if possible.
  3. Recently we were advised that having our site designed in WordPress would make it more 'Google Friendly' and help it appear higher in search results - I'm begining to question this - any comments? Whilst I understand somethings about SEO it remains largely a mystery and I would really like to find a firm or individual(s) who are good at SEO and have total integrity. We have had very poor outcomes in the past from trying various 'people' and I've become very sceptical. It would be marvellous if anyone here could recommend someone, having had very good experience(s) themselves or know others who have had good results. Can anyone advise please? I don't know if this site allows PM's but if so, that might be the best (most discreet) way to answer my second question?
  4. Thanks for the replies.
  5. I don't know if this is the correct place to ask these questions - forgive me if it isn't. 1. Is it important (or relevant) to have a UK based website hosted in the UK? 2. Can anyone recommend a good Hosting company please? We currently have a site constructed and managed in WordPress, which has been moved to be hosted by 123Reg and the WordPress Dashboard often stalls or crashes. The person who did the bulk of the design for us says it's a bandwidth issue but 123Reg don't seem to care! Time to move on?
  6. Thanks for the responses. I don't believe I expressed myself clearly enough - I would like to find someone to do this work for us, rather than try to do it all myself. I have achieved some modest success but it is clear to me that it needs a lot more knowledge/expertise than I have, to make any significant progress with SEO. If our sites cannot be 'made' to achieve good results in the search engines, we are left with paying through Google Adwords, which gets rather expensive. It occurs to me that it might be better economics to pay an expert to improve our organic rankings rather than continue to sink money into Adwords. Hence my earlier questions - who/where? Any thoughts folks?
  7. Can I re-open this with another related question please? (if it should be posted fresh or elsewhere please put me straight) I am keen to try SEO on a couple of our sites to boost their traffic in the short-term (hopefully), whilst continuing to work on organic improvements over the longer term. However, we have had our fingers burned more than once with our websites and I wish to avoid a repeat experience with SEO. Can anyone suggest how/where we find a) genuine competence (i.e. proven track record) and fair value? Any/all advice will be much appreciated.
  8. Thanks for the replies folks - appreciated. I recognise that Google doesn't look at keywords any more (or so they say), yet everything one reads about SEO still refers to keywords, so I think we ignore them at our peril. However, Beedev's comment about duplication is of some concern. As I mentioned, in the cms we can set a page name (title) and page title prefix (description) for each page but not keywords, which are site-wide. As Yahoo, MSN (Bing) and others still use keywords, I guess this will be limiting. Anyway, I am working on getting Directory Site listings where I can, as these are the only feasible links in the short-term for a new site. We will see how the rankings go over time. Thanks again for the input.
  9. I hope this is an appropriate place to ask this question:- We have recently had a new site designed for us, as it required php and I have no knowledge of that and didn't have time to learn just now. Part of the arrangement was that we would have a CMS to allow us to work on/develop the site. To be honest, I'm not much impressed by the CMS but can manage with it (just) but one aspect does concern me. The CMS only provides limited access to the meta data. The Description and Keywords are on a site-wide basis not on a per page basis. Only the Title can be set for each page. I am concerned that this will impede SEO and limit what can be achieved in that respect. The designer says not but I'm not convinced. I appreciate this site is about web design and not SEO but I thought this is a design-related question. Would anyone be prepared to express an opinion please?
  10. Unfortunately, the site we are now using is held by a third party who provide the hosting and provide all the templates/designs. As a result, we don't have full ftp access so cannot save the .js files(s) or access the header code. Although we can see the code for some of the site, a lot of the important stuff is not accessible. I guess the lack of total control is a trade-off for the functionality we gain in terms of design flexibility and the cms. I am going to have to re-think this one to see if there's a way of presenting small articles without them having to occupy a full (dedicated) page. Ideas/suggestions are welcome. Thanks for the help folks.
  11. Carmen007 - appreciate your comment but I want to try it (not live) to see how it looks/works and then decide. Virtual - I have downloaded it - no instructions (sadly). I have created a hidden page to experiment but it's not working right. The >>more and < I should add that the site I'm trying to use this in has a CMS, which might be having some effect?
  12. Ben, thanks, I like the 'show me more' particularly now it's got the 'less' button - http://www.stunicholls.com/various/more.html However, I'm not at all sure how to install/use it though, can you/someone kindly tell me where I can find instructions please?
  13. Stef, thanks for your response. I know a lot of people are anti pop-up, but I feel really uncomfortable having a web page with very little content - just doesn't look right. When you say 'just have the article appear in the main window', what do you mean please? Are you referring to something like Accordian?
  14. Thanks, that looks like a possible solution, I will have a thorough read about it. much obliged.
  15. I've been having a look around and quite like the way this works : http://sandbox.leigeber.com/tinybox/ Would this or something like it do what I want?
  16. Thanks for the reply. Can you please explain what this means :- "More accessible seems CSS snippet but many JS lightboxes and accordions scripts also decently degrade if JS is off."
  17. We have a News page on our business website and frequently we wish to add small articles that might only run to a couple of paragraphs. Currently, we put the title(s), followed with a one sentence (or part sentence) introduction to the topic, then 'read more ....' as a link to another page where the full article resides. The problem, as I see it, is that a brief article doesn't a) need a full web page and doesn't really look right if the page is largely blank. I have been thinking that the links to short articles could produce a 'pop-up' window in front of the current page, showing the article. Is this a good idea? If so, can anyone kindly advise me how to do it please? Apologies if I am using the wrong terminology for this question.
  18. I have made some progress: I can now change and save the meta data, so that's positive. Apparently there is no CMS for the site, which is a shame. We have recently subscribed to a web design company for our business site, which provides a CMS that not only makes working on the site really easy, it provides a library of web designs which allows us to change the entire design of our site with a couple of mouse clicks, whenever we wish - great! To be able to acquire the easy functionality of a CMS on my sons site (the one written in php), would be marvellous but I have been given to believe that adding a CMS to a 'flat file website' (whatever that means) is a considerable task. Any thoughts/comments on the last points please?
  19. Thanks for that, I will try to ascertain what (if any) CMS is being used, if I can reach the original designer (not easy!). If I have no success, I may have to take you up on your kind offer. cheers
  20. Sorry for the absence - can I re-open this thread please? For the moment, we are content to make some minor changes, whilst considering the best way forward. One job I wish to do is edit the meta data (as it's really poor). I have discovered that this (and possibly others) function can be effected by logging into the site as an Administrator, in a web browser. Having done so, I can go onto each web page and click on 'page setup' and see the meta (Title, Keywords and Description). If I hover over each, it says 'click to edit' and it allows me to make changes BUT I cannot see how to save the changes. Can anyone kindly advise me how to save any changes please?
  21. Hi Ben, email and PM sent. cheers
  22. Falkencreative - that's extremely kind of you. Do you mean zip the whole site to send to you, as that's 458mb, even when zipped??
  23. Oh dear! did all that - uninstalled wamp (again). To be sure I went into windows explorer and removed the wamp folder after using Add/Remove Programs for the uninstall. Then used CCleaner to clear any wamp Registry entries. The re-installed wamp - selected Firefox as the default browser. Went back into windows explorer and copied the website folder and pasted it (as a 'master folder' in which all the site structure resides) into wamp www directory. Opened wamp in localhost (in Firefox)and there was the website folder in Your Projects. Clicked on it and the same index appeared as I have previously shown here, with the www/ folder - clicked on that and ... Same as before, instead of expanding the www/ folder to show all the other folders and files, it opens the web homepage live on the internet not in localhost. Back to square one - going mad - on the point of giving up!
  24. Dreamweaver is just the editing/design program I have. I do have Firefox as well as IE on that PC and will try what you suggest.
  25. Hi Stefan, thanks for the response. I had seen the first video but not the second. They are/will be useful but I have to overcome the problem with getting wamp to display the file/folder structure first. I have tried so many variables of how I load the downloaded site into wamp (www folder) but none of them work and I am completely stuck. The site file/folder structure looks fine in Dreamweaver and if it would display the same in wamp, I might start to get somewhere.
×
×
  • Create New...