Grow your business with a website that works as hard as you do
You are happy to do your own social media marketing and you just want a website that is easy to maintain and add content to.
You don't like paying monthly subscriptions to an SEO service when you are not sure what value you are getting, if any
However, you do want ongoing support, help and advice that you can rely on for your online presence that doesn't cost a fortune
I am Martin Waring, a website designer living in York, North Yorkshire. Wherever you live I am committed to offering a website design and web development service which is affordable for you and delivers websites that are attractive to your customers.
Your new site design can be made both interesting for your customers to read and, as your website is built from the ground up to be search engine friendly, easier for customers to find in online searches!
Most businesses today need a website to stay competitive, to find customers and for their customers to find them. Most people will find your website through an online search and foremost amongst the searches used today is Google so your website needs to be designed from the start, not just to appeal to your customers but also to be Google friendly.
Many small businesses invest a lot of time and energy in their web design but then find that the website disappears without trace in an online search. A website design and build project takes planning and a good awareness of what keyword searches your customers might use to find you. A website also needs nurturing. You don't just get to the top of the search rankings in a few days, and then stay there.
When you do a on-line search yourself, think about where you click first. Research shows that 70% of people ignore the paid adverts at the top and right of a Google search page and look to the first ordinary website listed and the next 2 or 3 listings. This is the sweet spot that I aim for in my web design, website build and search optimisation process.
Read more about how to get found online without paying a fortune to do it.
If you run a small local business (by which I mean that your customers are generally to be found in your town/city and surrounding area) and you need an attractive website to attract more customers or clients, If you are looking to launch a new site, I can offer a service which includes the following:
Identifying what keywords your customers will use to find you. This is usually the most important stage and one that is often neglected.
Photography and videography using professional grade equipment. (I am also a wedding videographer.)
Modern design techniques used, giving a great user experience, optimised for current desktop browsers, including tablets and phones.
Search engine optimisation of your website pages from launch.
On-board, secure, admin pages to easily maintain and add new text and blog posts.
Periodic (small scale) changes to the site are included in the price for the first 12 months.
To succeed in the Google rankings, i.e. to get into the top 3 for your chosen keywords, your site is going to need lots of interesting, well written, easily understandable text. You need to think about what that might look like and commit to working with me to develop it. If your written English skills are not brilliant, I can work with what you produce and work it into a better format for you but you are going to have to do most of the brain work in producing this text.
I cannot simply copy text from another site, well I could, but trust me, this is not a good strategy!
The text needs to be easily readable, so do not use unnecessary jargon. Write as if you were explaining what you do to a brand new customer, not to a colleague. Use an online readability tester to get your text as readable as possible.
Writing the text does not need to be done in one go. We can launch a good looking site and then develop different pages over several months. This is possibly an even better way to approach the site as Google likes fresh content, delivered periodically as it shows that you’ve something new to say.
I have found some people who are reluctant, for whatever reason, to give out personal details on the web such as address or phone number. This can be quite a negative factor in ranking as Google is looking for consistency in NAP data (Name, Address and Phone Number) across many places on the web. If the NAP data is consistent then Google is happier that you are a legitimate business that has nothing to hide. If not and you are not showing Name, Address and Phone number consistently, or at all, then Google may think that your business is somewhat less trustworthy and rank the website accordingly.
Of course you may be ready to be found on-line but you don't want a flood of unwanted phone calls and junk emails. The problem of junk emails is fairly easily resolved by new technologies and now there are better ways of keeping the bots away from your contact form than the old recaptcha technique. The problem of unwanted phone calls is not so easy to resolve however.
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The quality of the website build is a very important factor when Google determines the ranking of any website. A key element of my work is measuring the quality of the sites I build as I know how important this will be.
Google measures all websites and measures performance, accessibility, conformance to technical best practices and correct use of meta data and structured data to support searches. If your website falls short in any of these metrics it doesn't mean that your website won't rank well - the rankings depend on many factors. However you might need to spend more energy and money on other approaches than you would need to if your website is also technically compliant.
