So, you've got your nice, brand new, shiny website - it's launched and you're waiting on the edge of your seat for it to appear in Google's results... and there it is! Time for celebration!

But hang on, something looks a little... different. For a minute you can't put your finger on it, and then you realise, all the other results are displaying their URL (aka domain name or web address) with 'www' at the beginning, and yours isn't. It makes yours look kind of - stunted.

So, what's going on?

Well, if you've been configuring your website in IIS on the server, then you'll know that you set up a www and a root domain. If you didn't, then go ahead and do that now, and if you didn't configure your IIS, then you'll need to check with whoever did.

This is good practice, because if you don't define it both with and without www, then is anybody tries to go to your website without the 'www', then they will get a flat fail, which is a jolly bad show.

The problem is that when you set both of them up, for some reason best known to themselves, Google treats them as two completely separate URLs.

Luckily, Google offers you the option to sort this out by merging the two and deciding which one you'd prefer to display. You do this by setting your preferred domain. Simply go into Webmaster Tools, Configuration - set preferred domain. It gives you three options:

• Don't set a preferred domain
• Display URLs as www.mydomain.com
• Display URLs as mydomain.com

 

Unfortunately, as is often the case, things are not always so straightforward. When you try to choose one (display URLs as www.mydomain.com, if you're sensible) Google gives you an error that says:

'Part of the process of setting a preferred domain is to verify that you own http:/mydomain.com/. Please verify http://mydomain.com/.'

Great - but how do you verify that you own it?

Luckily, it's not that hard (once you know what you're doing - natch).

Simply go back into your Webmaster Tools overview and 'Add a site' with the domain without 'www' (or with, if you initially added without).

It will take you to the verification page. If you're left the original verification details in place, then all you need to do is click 'Verify' and hey presto, it will be verified. If you've removed the code, you'll need to go in and add it again.

Once this is done, you can go back to the configuration settings, select your option, and finally, Google will be happy, and will start displaying your URL correctly.

Comments and improvements on this post are welcome!

Choosing a web designer is hard. You want to get someone professional and skilled enough to build you a good quality site, but you want to pay as little as reasonably possible. But how can you tell if you're paying peanuts for monkeys or if you're getting ripped off?

Well, experienced web designers are unlikely to just say 'Yes, I can make you a website' without finding out a bit more about the project, the objectives and the client's expectations.

Below is an example list of questions a good web designer will be asking very early in the process - probably in the first conversation, or certainly at consultation. The answers to these questions will help a web designer get a good grip on the project and get an idea of timescales and development effort involved.

If they haven't asked any of these questions, it's possible that either they don't know what they're getting themselves into (and therefore may not be able to meet demands) or are picking a number out of the air, instead of honestly estimating the amount of work involved.

Critical

 

1. Can you describe your business in a few sentences?

2. Do you want mostly an information site, or do you want extra functionality, e.g.

· Ecommerce

· Social media integration

· Private login areas

3. Do you currently have a logo / branding?

4. Who will be responsible for the website’s content? Text and Images?

5. Do you have any websites you’ve seen that you particularly like?

6. Where are you based?

7. Do you have a specific budget and deadline?

Additional 

 

1. What’s your USP (what sets you apart from you competitors)?

2. Can you name a few of your competitors?

3. Can you describe your target customers?

4. What search phrases would you like to be found for?

8. How did you hear about us?

For more advice and tips on choosing a web designer, check out our resource bank.

Search Engine Optimization is the technique of getting a website as high as possible in the Google and Bing rankings (among others), for terms that are most likely to bring the most useful visitor. Read our complete guide to search engine optimisation here.

What's the SEO secret?

Many dodgy SEO 'companies' claim to know secrets ways to get good rankings, but not even Google can guarantee specific placements, so that should be a clear sign that they're talking nonsense. Wild claims that seem to good to be true: are - and should be filed in the same place as any other spam or con artists.

There are no magic secrets to success - just like anything else it's a balance of skill, experience, understanding of the concepts, keeping up to date with new developments - but mostly just a lot of hard work.

How to improve your website's Google rankings

These are the things you need to do to get your website to the top of Google:

• Ensure your site structure is logical and straightforward
• Focus on highly efficient keywords
• Provide lots of good quality content
• Use a high quality fast server to host your website
• Get lots of other trustworthy sites to link to your website
• Have a keyword rich domain name
• Make sure the content on your site is correctly tagged

If you do all these things better than your competitors, then you'll get to the top for the searches you want. But if your competitors are working harder than you in the areas above, they are likely to be ahead.

Read the full article on SEO here.

Below is a summary of the five most important elements of great web design.
For the full article about great web design, click here.

1.     Simplicity

Simplicity is at the core of everything from visuals to usability to code.
It’s much harder to create a beautiful simple design, or write elegant simple code, than it is to cobble together a complicated mess.

2.     Beauty

Whather it's fair or not, looks count for a lot. A well designed, calm, elegant site will make people feel at ease, and as if they can trust the owner of the website. A badly balanced, fussy, clearly homemade website will give the impression that the company is unprofessional.

3.     Usability

It takes a great deal of thought to pre-empt how visitors will use a website, but doing so and making sure they feel comfortable and dopn't get lost, will make the difference between a call and a back button click.

4.     Clear objectives

Objectives need to be defined early on, and the appropriate strategy and tactics applied. Are the calls to action in the right place, has enough been invested in SEO? How many customers does the website need to find for the business?

5.     Search Engine Optimised

You can have the most beautiful, usable web design in the world, but if it’s not indexed by the search engines, it’s not going to do you one jot of good. Search engine optimisation is not an area that can be summed up quickly and includes multiple on-page and off-page elements. Read our intro to SEO here.

Read the full article about 5 elements of great web design here.

August is always a quiet month, so we've taken the opportunity to refresh our own website. It's had a complete (late) spring clean, with content updated, over ten new pages added, and our resource bank expanded.

To better reflect our evolving business, there are now separate sections on web design, web development, SEO, software development and web apps. Each of these sections gives information on the kinds of services we offer, as well as general information on what these things mean to modern business.

We've reinstated out Frequently Asked Questions section, with answers to all the most common answers we get asked on the phone, from how much does a website cost, to what is hosting and what is a domain name.

Our resource bank of articles now has 28 articles, covering general web and internet related topics, as well as SEO, domain names and internet and email scams.

We've also added over five case studies of our software development and web development projects over the past few years, where we've worked with everyone from British Gymnastics to Emerson Climate Technologies.

Finally, we've included lots of lovely shiny new pictures of our apps and software interfaces!