Are you a small-business owner looking to expand your sales and profile while also getting your name out there? If so, you should think about harnessing the power of Google. While there are many different ways to embrace Google, in this blog post we address using Google Places and creating a Google Adwords account. Read on to learn more about these two powerhouses.

How Google Places Can Help You
Google Places is a list of all business available on Google, made up of information that Google receives when people search for you. While this information will also be available in the search results, Places will allow you to create a page and then monitor the information on it. You can include things like location, hours, a description of your services, and a link to your site. This way, you can control what information ends up here, and you can ensure that people using Google Places will find you with the right keywords. You can also add your photos, logo and allow for testimonials/reviews to be written about you. For a one-off fee of $50, the team at Small Business Web Designs can set up your Google Places profile professionally with the skill we use to create your site. 

Additionally, you can consider joining Google+ as a local business. This is a social component of Google, much like Facebook, where users can follow individuals and businesses. Here, you can list your business and post updates from the blog, share a cool graphic, or post pictures that you would like to share with fans. It’s definitely a great way to get your name out there. 

Creating an Adwords Account
Google Adwords are keywords that people tend to search for. This is how Google determines which ads to post on your site. Since this is a paid service, it can be financially draining if you don’t have your strategy nailed down. Experts recommend having a sound knowledge of "price your pay, per advert click" and a steady cash flow before you even consider investigating this method. If this is you, our tea

A Final Note
While Google Places and Google Adwords are great ways to make money and get your name out there, neither of them will work if you don’t have an attractive and user-friendly webpage or site. Business web design is a very important factor for customers, and you don’t want to miss out because your site design fails to engage readers or convert them. Therefore, set aside some money and time in order to create a site that people will want to visit when it shows up in Google’s search results!

In this blog post, Chris writes about how far search engines have come in twenty years, and how to make your website rank better in search engines. 

The Early Days of Search Engines
In the early days, Yahoo was one of the first search engines. However, the “search results” given to users were comprised of a human-made, hand-written list which would categorise search terms and give the searcher an general list of sites it pre-established as being relevant. However, with time, these lists of sites did not fit most of the queries made. Yahoo was pushed aside for the next generation of search engines, which looked at the actual words (“content-based search”) that existed on the web pages and the relevance of the content to the search. This was pioneered by the search engine, AltaVista.

The Google difference
Google, when still a tiny start-up, extended this content-based search, and looked at links from other sites to a certain site, so that the greater the number of links, the more “authority” it has and the more relevance it is likely to be to the searcher. This is where Google gained its competitive advantage as it returned the most relevant results to users.

Search Today
Search is hard, and not something to be embarked on without understanding. There are over one trillion sites on the web. Finding the right information can be like finding a specific grain of sand on the beach. Google relies on computer programs and constantly fine-tune to return the best search results.

How to Rank Better in Global Search engines?

1. Make your site “crawl-able” by search engine programs (SBWD ensures this as standard)
   
2. Make sure that your links within your website are valid within your sites, so that your site is complete and not corrupted in the eyes of a search engine. (SBWD reviews all sites multiple times to ensure your website is robust)
   
3. Use standard HTML code, avoiding Flash, ActiveX etc, so that search engines can interpret your results and display in mobile formats. (SBWD is the only Australian developer that ensures all of our sites are HTML and mobile-friendly)
   
4. Make sure the text of your website has all the right titles, such as “Welcome to Bob the Builder, West Sydney Master Painter, Painters and Decorators”. The comparison is like a walking past a shop; if it is boarded up you will walk past it, but a site that has relevant signage, attractive presentation and of course is open for business will get you through the door. Page titles and descriptions are critical and pictures of text are a no-no as a search engine cannot read pictures of text. (SBWD ensures that your site is equipped with the right sales copy and is relevant to user needs).
5. Think about users and what they are likely to type. Google does use synonyms, so a user typing in “thumb drive” will get sites with the words “flash drive” but it works a lot better if you can use all of the most popular user words naturally. For example, if you had a web page and you were selling USB sticks, you would want to use a all the words that describe it, such as thumb drive, flash drive, USB stick. A site should not have specialised terms (SBWD reviews all relevant search terms for your business and location before writing content that pre-empts local search terms).
   
6. Use social media and blogs to spread your site, so that those people reading your site become more interested and in turn share it with other people (SBWD can set up your Facebook page, Twitter account and/or an on-site blog within minutes should you want to use these).

Documented by Chris from Small Business Web Designs - from a presentation by Google's Head of Search, Matt Cutts, speaking at the 2012 Korea Webmaster Conference in January. For a recorded version of this presentation, please click here.

A rather disturbingly high percentage of online sales are never completed! Many online vendors are losing a ton of money by not doing one simple thing when a customer does not complete their order. While some consumers intentionally leave a site with products in their cart, others simply navigated away without ever realizing they did not complete their transaction. In this blog post, the team at SBWD Australia looks for what to watch out for in the world of online marketing. 


The Statistics 
It is roughly estimated that only a fraction of the consumers that visit a site for goods and fill their carts actually complete their orders. As a matter of fact the statistic is 30%. A mere thirty percent of all the people that shop online ever finish their transaction to the ordering point. 

What Is Going On With the Other 70%?
There is a host of reasons why someone may not complete a sale on your site that range from what is perceived over the top shipping charges to simply finding a better deal elsewhere to forgetting to complete the transaction because something else distracted them. 

What Can You Do?
The one thing you can absolutely NOT do is ignore this 70% that is getting away. There is something you can do. You can use Abandoned Cart Module to gently remind visitors that they did not complete their transactions. While the Abandoned Cart Module may not induce all 70% to come on back it may induce some of those customers to come back! 

What Will Help Abandoned Cart Module Do Its Job?
Offer sales incentives or discount rates to customers who register AND provide an email on your sales site. This gives you the necessary components to have contact information and permission to contact if they in fact have left the site without a cart in limbo.

Offer Options - Win Your Customers Back!
One of the most proactive steps you can take is to offer options to your customers. If they are viewing one item than suggest other items that are like items or that compliment the item they are viewing. Offer free shipping on sales over a certain amount, recouping the cost of shipping is easy if your merchandise is priced correctly. Offer discounts and sale events. Don't miss out on that 70% use Abandoned Cart Module and work on your presentation to get customers and keep them coming back! Offer coupon codes, raffles or drawings for little trinkets, offer buy one get one, people love a good deal! Amp up your site! 

Google search results has improved in quality throughout 2015, and it's important to note that small business websites have never been more visible to searchers. In saying this, making your site accessible, and specifically, marketing your site to as many people as possible, is something a site owner has to actively work on as part of his/her day to day running of the business. 

In 2013, if you can complete at least two of the following pointers, your site's visibility will be boosted and you can increase the value of the site to your business!

1. Create a Facebook page!  Link this to your site to grow your network of friends and traffic
2. List in online directories that can boost your exposure
3. Add it to your LinkedIn profile
4. Share your URL with other sites related to your industry so that you can share audiences 
5. Include your URL to your e-mail signature
6. Share your URL with businesses you are associated with
   
7. For increased exposure for specific key searches that you feel are important to your business, consider the option of a Google Adwords campaign or engaging an SEO company for organically higher rankings.
   

And,  if you have a parked/undeveloped domain, we often get asked what should I do first to develop it? 

On advice from Google, once you buy a domain, ensure you enter a few lines of text on the homepage to give some basis/context for your site so that it's not a parked domain. i.e. write about your business's main services and list some contact details. This is to help Google calibrate and become aware of the site while it is being built. If you want further motivation to get online, our team is committed to a 15 day delivery for sites for all new clients. Our numerous happy site owners know that you can go from “undeveloped” to live in less than a week.

Usability is one of the most important features of any site, whether it is targeted at PC users or mobile users. It is all well and good having a really good looking site, but if it is difficult and annoying to use, then users are not going to be revisiting your site any time soon. In this blog post, we will take a look at some of the dos and don’ts of site design for the Australian market. Irrespective of your business, these blunders apply to giant ecommerce retailers and trade services sites alike.


Tip 1 - The Importance of the Search Box
If your site has a lot of content, give your visitors a helping hand to find what they want quickly and easily by including a search box. This will allow users to type in the name of a specific item without the need to search through seemingly endless pages of information.

Tip 2 - Keep Content Readable
Great design is important, however, it is the content that your visitors will be interested in, and in order to make sure that your content is displayed in a way that is easy on the eye there are a number of things you need to do. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you limit your use of fonts to no more than 3 to a page. Secondly, the size of the font needs to be limited also, and finally, paragraphs need to be kept short.

Tip 3 - Keep your Content Updated Regularly
In order to keep your customers well informed, as well as interested, you should endeavour to update the content on your site updated on a regular basis.

Tip 4 - Poor site navigation 
Poor site navigation is one thing that is going to irk a lot of visitors to your site, and people are highly unlikely to return if their overall user experience is poor. In order to optimize the navigation of your site, you need to incorporate certain features, such as easy to use links, highlighted text hyperlinks, and the removal of obsolete links.

Tip 5 - Be Consistent
Although being creative is something that is going to make for a good looking site, however, you need to make sure that you are consistent with your design and layout. Don't have different layouts on each page, alternating image themes, colours etc - our team produces consistent sites first time, every time.  

Tip 6 - Make your Contact Details Prominent

In order to allow your customers and visitors to your site to contact you should they need you, you should make your contact details – email, phone, company address etc – easy to find, as well as making them prominently displayed.

Small Business Web Designs has the experience in building your site to grab the attention needed to attract more customers. Our site designs are clean, clear and effective - offering sites Australian-wide, we welcome you to contact our friendly team to find out how we've helped hundreds of Australian business to achieve a site that exceeds all expectations. 

According to recent surveys, only 10 percent of Australian adults view ads as trustworthy. The other 90 percent choose to get their information from sources they select. This in turn has created the rise in "content marketing" as local businesses, big and small, attempt to provide content over a mantra to transact.

What exactly is Content Marketing?
In short, content marketing is customer focused content that engages an audience and increases a business’s overall brand identification. In contrast with traditional marketing methods, content marketing doesn’t push products. Instead, it is used as a way to directly communicate with an audience and build brand loyalty. This can be done in many ways, via video, via blog posts, via news updates. Content marketing includes more than just blog posts. It focuses on infographics, how to guides, videos, and images. Australia's best businesses implore all of these mediums to achieve the desired result. 

What Does Content Marketing Do?
Content marketing helps establish brands as industry leaders. It creates trust and loyalty, and builds a connection between customers and businesses. Content marketing also provides customers with informative, well-written content that holds value. 

Effective content marketing is also cost-effective. The ROI is also significantly higher with content marketing than with traditional marketing methods. Experts in the field of marketing utilize the following strategies to achieve the greatest results. 

Examples of content marketing accessible to small business includes:

• Blog creation. Blogs give you an opportunity to increase your SEO rankings thereby driving traffic to your website. They also increase the likelihood of people sharing your site with others. Scheduling blog posts is essential to engaging your audience. 
• Powerful Social Media Use. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter ensure that your content is seen by the right group of people. As the word spreads about your website, more people will visit it and in the process your brand will be established.
• Story Telling. Communicate what your company is and what you do through brand story telling. This can be done through blogging and behind the scenes insider looks.

Connect with your audience through content marketing, and reap the benefits along the way.

A large number of people wish to make a mobile app without knowing the advantages of a creative mobile site design over an app. Here we share 10 reasons why mobile designs are much more useful than apps:
1. The users need not download anything. Users loathe downloading content which they will not view more than once. 
2. You can give the users an identical experience with the help of a mobile website.
3. A mobile site too can be bookmarked on the home screen just like a mobile app.
4. Mobile sites bear an uncanny resemblance to apps and users often get confused between the two.
5. Mobile sites are compatible on each and every smart phone and hence you will not have to develop and maintain separate apps for iPhone, Android, Windows devices & Blackberry.
6. You can also use the same responsive website design and optimize it for tablet users.
7. The mobile site does not require a separate CMS (Content Management System). With a single update you can update your main website as well as the mobile website at the same time.
8. You can update mobile sites at any given point of time without having to develop a new version. This is not possible in an App.
9. Mobile sites are not dependent on App markets hence you can easily commercialize your website without having to shell out a percentage to the market.
10. Mobile sites are not as expensive as apps and this should be motivating enough to help you make a choice.
Although there are various reasons for opting for an App, yet in most of the cases, it will be better to create a mobile site.

Icons, logos, SVG icons, and fonts are all incredibly important in properly branding your business and its respective design in the online marketplace. In times past, techniques like CSS sprites were used to optimize webpages and to make them more attractive in the eyes of site visitors. Today, more designers are using icon fonts and SVG icons instead of other traditional techniques. If you want to sharpen your icons, consider the following information. In this blog post, we outline the best approach to icons and formatting when conducting any level of sites.  

Tip 1 - Retina Optimized Webpages and Icons
There really is no excuse for your site to not be optimized according to new retina displays. However, if yours isn’t as of yet make it a point to change this.  Make sure that all of your images and on page graphics are optimized for high resolution displays. 

Tip 2 - Maintain responsiveness with Scaled Styles
If you want to make sure your site looks the same on a tablet that it does on a laptop or desktop, then implement scaled styles within your designs. You can do this with CSS styles, SVGs, and typography. These are, at this point anyways, the best way to achieve optimized designs. 

Tip 3 - Maximizes Your Fonts Correctly
Icon fonts are the easiest way to transform CSS styles in a real text format. These nifty little styling tools allow you to customize your web design anyway you like, all without working very hard to do so. While there is a bit of a learning curve when you begin working with icon fonts, once you get past the initial challenges it is quite painless to maneuver them. 

Utilize these tips to create a better design for your site and ultimately a better user-experience for your visitors!  SBWD serves clients Australia wide - Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide - contact us today!

You’ve probably heard the term once or twice: inbound links or backlinks. However, you might be in the dark about what they are and how they can help your site. Well, we’ve gathered everything you need to know about inbound links and how they can benefit your site in today’s blog post. Read on to learn more. 

What Are Inbound Links
Put simply, inbound links are other sites that hold or highlight a link to your site in their content. So, for example, if you own a construction company and offer free tips for home maintenance, a DIY site might link back to your page. When they do it’s called back linking, and it has a powerful influence on your traffic. In addition to exposing your content to another audience, it also enhances your SEO. 

How it Effects SEO
Inbound links let Google and other search engine giants know that your website is trustworthy and valuable. The more individuals who share a link to your homepage on their own, the greater your ranking will be in search engines. In fact, this sort of organic growth is only possible through natural backlinks, giving you yet another reason to pursue them. 

How to Achieve Them 
The single best way to achieve more backlinks is to offer premium content. Valuable, shareable, and trustworthy content will entice more sites to inbound link your site on their own thereby increasing your visibility. It is also a good idea to put your content in front of your audience on social media, as well as in your email marketing, to increase the odds of achieving backlinks.

Now that you know what Inbound Links are, it’s time to start seeking them. Use the aforementioned tips to begin increasing your SEO today.

Email marketing can be confusing. While most advertising consultants recommend using some sort of email marketing to connect with your audience, you may find the process frustrating to say the least. To help you reenergize your email marketing campaign, check out the following four tips we’ve outlined below.

Develop a Catchy Subject Line
Avoid subject lines that do not clearly explain the message contained within your email. Instead, make the subject line easy to read, direct, and personal. Also, avoid works like ‘free’ or ‘guarantee’ as emails containing these words tend to be sent to the spam folder. 

Test Your Content Structure

If you find that one subject line generates far more click through rates, then use a similar structure in subsequent emails. Additionally, keep track of how your audience reacts to the information inside of your emails. Is it producing the results you want? If not, reevaluate your format.

Schedule Emails at The Right Time
Scheduling your email or newsletter might not sound productive, but it could make all the difference in the results you achieve. For example, most people are on their laptops or computers from 9am to 6pm during weekdays. That is the time you want to shoot for with your email delivery.

Produce a Strong CTA
Your call to action should be just as strong as your subject line, if not stronger. If you want people to visit your website, check out your services, or take additional action give them a reason to do so. Offer free information or a discount on your services to experience better click through rates. 

Building an email strategy is the key to better marketing, so use these tips to enhance your business. 

If you live in Australia, and are an avid internet user, then we have some bad news for you. According to a recent report from the National Broadband Network (NBN), Australia has one of the slowest internet speeds in the world. This might not come as a surprise to those who live and work online, but for the rest of us this puts our problems in perspective. 

Fast Internet = Happier Web Surfers
The report from NBN goes on to show that South Korea has an internet speed of 25.3Mbps, compare that with Australia’s rate of 6.9Mbps and you can easily see where the differences lie. For web owners hoping to reach out to their client base, these numbers are critical. After all, the rate their website downloads and is accessed by customers makes a huge difference in their sales. Of course, there is little one can do to adjust this rate, short of moving to South Korea.

The Top 10 List 
The rest of NBN’s report states that second to South Korea, Hong Kong holds the fastest internet speed. Up next is Japan, Switzerland and Sweden. These rates really aren’t surprising considering how much their citizens use the internet to create websites or to access varying depths of the interwebs. 

Regardless, these are interesting facts that none of us should overlook if we would like to maximize the tools at our disposal. 

Your business is nothing without effective SEO. The experience in the field of SEO differs by design agency and can be employed at various stages of the development process. What is essentially is that your designer knows what SEO fields and content is critical to your business.

When you prepare content, one of the things that you need to think about is the stuff that can’t be seen by the website visitors, such as the Meta tags for example. These tags are essential when it comes to the proper functionality, and thus they need to be prepared accordingly if you want the best possible results in the end.

Title Tag
The development process needs to instil a title tag, is very important since it shows the topic of the page and thus it helps search engines understand how the whole content needs to be ranked. Depending on keyword integration and other optimization that you make, a title tag can do a great job when it comes to improving the overall SEO of your business web design.

When it comes to the length of the title tag, you need to keep it as short as possible, with around 70 characters being more than enough most of the time. However this is just a guideline, because there are situations in which you might need more, but keep in mind that search engines usually read the first 70 characters, so create a shorter, appealing title tag if you want to obtain a good ranking in search engine.

In regards to keyword placement, it’s important to place the most important ones at the beginning of your tag. In other words, the higher the importance, the better the placement. Your development process may involve a discussion about keywords, or you can leave this to the experts! 

Of course, when it comes to the meta tags copywriting, you need to keep things simple and short, so try to remove the common words and stick with the essential ones. You need to include the company name in the title tag, and try to stay clear of any duplicates, and these can generate problems. Instead, each title tag needs to be original, so try to make good use of the remaining keywords and integrate them into the other title tags. Try to bring relevant content for your tags as well, and connect them with the content on the page if you want great results!

Description tag
The description tag is similar to the title one, although the description appears in the search engines and it’s one of the major incentives when it comes to making people visit your site. Because of that, you need to make it relevant and write a separate description for each of your pages, not to mention that you should keep it short as well, around 155 characters are more than enough to create an appealing, good description. Any agency can suggest good copy for these fields.

Make sure that the description tag is filled with the proper keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing and instead make it readable for humans. The way you use words is crucial here, so try to write a proper description that sells the content of your site! Don’t leave empty description tags, because search engines will fill them automatically for you and they won’t exactly provide the necessary content!

In conclusion, both title and description tags are very important when it comes to selling the content of your page, so make sure that they are enticing, grammatically correct and accurate, as this is the only way to get more visitors for your site in an organic way!

So, you have a small business and a website too, but you are wondering if your site gives a professional appearance and has appeal to your customers? As you already know, technology has totally changed people lives and they smart devices are more and more popular. The questions is, do you have a site that is upgraded to be Mobile-friendly?

If your answer is No then it is wise to upgrade to be smart device friendly on all platforms to avoid being at a great disadvantage for your business. Your business message would not be displayed around on smart devices in a way that is more appealing to your customers and your competitors, whom have proper mobile designs in place, would take the lead to reach the customers and get their business message to them.

Mobile friendly is a very important aspect for any business that has its presence online.  

Ready to become mobile friendly?
Our team is ready for your business! We have expertise in mobile development and have built over 1000 unique business sites across all industries including plumbers, psychologists, dietitians, homeopaths, dentists and countless more!

Please browse our extensive range of designs and tell us which ones you like. We will create yours to be just as special and make sure it reflects your unique business edge.

As Australia's leading designer, we are frequently approached by clients looking for affordable options for their business, as well as effective Mobile friendly functionality. 

A large number of people wish to make a mobile app without knowing the advantages of a creative mobile site design over an app. Here we share 10 reasons why mobile webs designs are much more useful than apps, and why an app isn't the answer when you have the web!

1.            The users need not download anything. Users loathe downloading content which they will not view more than once.

2.            You can give the users an identical experience with the help of a mobile site.

3.            A mobile site too can be bookmarked on the home screen just like a mobile app.

4.            Mobile sites bear an uncanny resemblance to apps and users often get confused between the two.

5.            Mobile sites are compatible on each and every smart phone and hence you will not have to develop and maintain separate apps for iPhone, Android, Windows devices & Blackberry.

6.            You can also use the same responsive design and optimize it for tablet users.

7.            The mobile site does not require a separate CMS (Content Management System). With a single update you can update your main site as well as the mobile version at the same time.

8.            You can update mobile sites at any given point of time without having to develop a new version. This is not possible in an App.

9.            Mobile sites are not dependent on App markets hence you can easily commercialize your site without having to shell out a percentage to the market.

10.          Mobile sites are not as expensive as apps and this should be motivating enough to help you make a choice.

Although there are various reasons for opting for an App, yet in most of the cases, it will be better to create a mobile website.

Our clients often take time to consider the content they should place on their website. The issue around length and relevance always comes up - is this content of interest to my client? We outline 5 questions to ask yourself when making content updates or overhauls - engagement is everything and after publishing 1000+ client sites we are still learning!

1 .Does your content neglect to promote your business?
This is very easily done. With everything you can share, sometimes the obvious is missed. Start with a homepage that gives love, engages and doesn't mess around with long intros. Just get to the point - what is your business in 5 sentences. 

2. Do you focus too much on the "team" rather than the "product"/"service"?
It's tempting to focus about the team, often as a way to promote your established reputation. However, it's easy to start including everything from CVs to musing - be careful to avoid unprofessional words and general over-sharing. Keep some mystery to your magic :)

3. Is your page 1000+ words?
NO ONE likes to read a magna carta when succinct text is everywhere. If you need to paste thousands of words across your pages, you are probably turning off customers. Keep it light and direct, not paragraphs and sub-sections, to engage!

4. If you close your eyes and think of your business, what 3 things come to mind?
This is a fun test - if you can list customer focused aspects of your business that you believe in, you have some ideas for what to include. Too often the core ideas are lost - go back to basics and flesh out what you love about your business, and how that appeals to your customers. 

With these questions diligently answered, your content can only be reshaped for the better!

As we reach a mid point in 2008, Australian SEO companies are buzzing buzzing with new ideas, speculation and strategies for the next big search engine "thing". 

With Google traffic surging from new iPhone purchases, we can expect mobile to be a BIG thing in the future. Google's current search engine marketshare is 77-85%, and is expected to keep rising as its popularity grows among mobile devices. Only Microsoft, the software behemoth, is said to be challenging the position with a yet-un-named search engine in development. If this proves to be true, it's likely the company would steer clear of pre-setting IE with their search tool - the anti-trust issue that plagued Microsoft when it pre-installed Internet Explorer on Windows in the mid 1990s is best not forgotten. 

With all these developers, web designers have there work cut out making client designs both mobile friendly and possibly Microsoft friendly!