We have had a quiet week at Ariadne Designs and it has given me the chance to evaluate some of the websites of my competitors and indeed just generically sites I admire.
When I was young I used to work on a farm and the farmer one day told me the story about his neighbour who was new to farming. Because he was a newbie and did not really know how to farm he would just have a look over the fence and see what the next door farmer was doing then he would go away and do the same. This is what I mean by farming over the fence. If the neighbour is out sowing seeds then presuming the guy is a good farmer it means it must be seed time. If he is out making hay then your land will also be ready for hay time – you are after all next door neighbours so your farms are going to be very similar in terms of soil and climate conditions. Farming over the fence makes lots of sense.
Now when it comes to improving your website this is not a bad idea. Say your competitor also makes watches or is a weaver what is working for him or her on Google and Bing can also work for you. What is more if you are clever you can find out what is working and ensure that you do it even better. So this is exactly what I have been doing.
I have been looking at the code and the information architecture of some of my competitors with a view to doing the same. At the very least what will happen is that I end up with a website that is better than my current one and works better for my clients and visitors as well as working better on search engines.
In fact you can learn more from farming over the fence than reading a whole bushel of books. For example if you notice that a certain key words are working for your competitor you can then carry out an analysis of these key words on the web. From this you can begin to work out the gaps in the market.
So my tip for all you web farmers and weavers is to have a look over the fence and see what the neighbour is doing and go away and do the same. Get wise farm over the fence.
Sometimes it is hard to know how well your website is shaping up as compared to other businesses in your sector.
We can help by giving you a report on your website and helping to set you up on Google Analytics.
The report will cost you about £80 and will carefully examine your website against a list of known criteria.
To find out more about this service call us on +44 207 928 9940 or visit our website.
There are also some really good free tools out there that you can use to look at your website
I would particularly recommend:
- Website grader is excellent and free.
- A New Zealand site SEOReport http://seoreport.co.nz/ I have also found very useful.
It is also worth looking at your site ranking on Alexa
Hi Everyone – welcome to 2010,
I have been busy registering with every directory I can find on the web. With this in mind I have created about 40-50 small adds for use in these directories.
This is very hard work but hopefully it will be worth it in the long run and I have already managed to up the inbound link count from Google to above 600 which is great and inline with my target.
One thing I am finding out is that you cannot beat just putting good content on your website but re-writing the copy for an entire site is not done over-night.
If you would like to find out more about our web design work or SEO work – visit the Ariadne Designs website
I have been finding out what a strangle hold Google and the big corporations have on the web.
Yes, OK we are a small business and there are a lot of other web design companies out there:
BUT
- We have been around for 13 years.
- I have continuously done some work on keeping us on search engines
- We have had some really big clients and good sites through our doors in the 13 years we existed
However, if you are not on Google you don’t exist webwise.
So I am working on a new solution to try to defeat the tyranny of the Google engine at least for our site – then if it works for us perhaps it can work for others. Essentially allowing the creation of 100s of links across many domains at a single go.
It is early days yet but provisionally the system does work – there are a lot of new tools out there and Google are hard put it is true to overcome all the science that is now being thown at them.
So where does this leave the little guy. Well in the middle of no-where it must be said.
We are working on quite a few SEO projects and for this I have a colleague who is an expert. But it is very expensive and time consuming.
To find out more about Ariadne Designs visit our website – for clients looking for web design in London
And yes I am into using this to help my SEO too. Anything that helps. It is all in a good cause.
Ariadne Designs Ltd is a web development company based ion Central London we believe that the web is a place for sharing. Our website design is always customised to meet your needs.
