It seems that Google is rolling out changes after changes, and the latest one is related to the local results – the Place Search. It is not unusual that they put a lot of emphasis on local searches while we all know this type of search is getting more and more popular these days. Whether we are looking for a plumber, website design firm or restaurant, we are trying to search for those that are located as near as possible to where we live, and guys at Google are aware of this.

Place Search organises all kinds of information around places.  Search results will be targeted around specific locations therefore comparing services, products or reviews becomes an easy task for everyone. There are two types of results as you can see in the uploaded images, the results for “London flowers” and “Trowbridge plumbers”. As we may see in the first image, it is like the organic results do not count anymore, the first page is filled with all local results.

This can be a good thing for one, but a bad thing for others that were ranking on top organic searches. Every listing has a description for visitors to know exactly what it has to offer, they reveal reviews from different sites. Basically, all the information is grouped for folks to easily find what they are looking for locally and compare the results.

A new add-on would be the link to “Places” in the left of search results page. So let’s say you are in London, searching for restaurants. To trigger the Places results just click on the link and there you have it. Tech guys at Google claim their new technology connects hundreds of millions of sites with over 50 million locations and this new Place Search will save people about two seconds when searching for local information. Place Search is due to bee available in more than 40 languages worldwide.

The website designers at WebCreationUK are keeping an eye on this subject and will update this news as soon as something new is released online.

With the multitude of website designers available on the market (whether we are talking about freelance web designers or web design firms) it is already a difficult task to find other clients to add to your portfolio. However, there are some mistakes in this industry (some applying in other industries as well) that can make you lose the client you’ve worked to get.

Quality services and respect for the client, these are only a few things any web designer should be aware of. Here are some causes that can make a client “firing” his website designer and sign the contract with another firm.

No services variety

Even if your major service is web design, be aware that more and more clients are searching for companies that can provide along with website design also SEO, content writing, blogging, social media and so on. If you don’t offer what they want they will  move to another firm. Tip: a lot of them can be outsourced in case you need them for a special project.

Under client’s quality expectations

Clients want best value for the money they are paying but this does not mean someone with a lower budget will be satisfied with lower quality. Lower quality means the customer will not be satisfied and we all know that one unhappy client can be overcome with 10 happy ones.

Respect your promises and deadlines

The best example to describe this situation is from the website SEO area: “We promise you number 1 in Google in 2 months”. Nobody can promise that, no matter the amount of expertise the company has. This usually becomes a negative point for the company and again, the risk of losing the client is high. Also, when you promise a date for the project to be finished and delivered always try to respect it.

Bad customer service

This is one of the biggest concerns for clients. They always look for professional website design firms that can respond to emails/calls in time with people able to solve even the slightest mistake in a short time. Almost every time bad customer service occurs, clients will look for another web design firm that can handle their requests/questions in time.

Nowadays it is such an easy task for anyone to create and launch a blog in the online environment with hundreds of weblogs launched daily worldwide. However, blogging is not only adding a template to WordPress and start creating posts but also optimising it for a better positioning in search engines. Higher ranks translate into more visitors and in the end, that is what every blogger needs, right?

Content was, is and will always be the king, that phrase should guide your entire blogs creative process. Many webmasters still go with the old-style keyword stuffing where the actual post is filled with keywords they want to rank for but nowadays this method, instead of helping your rankings, can definitely hurt them. Content should be well documented, written for both search engines and for visitors as well. In the end, fantastic content is the one that drives links to a site or become so viral that in one day a website can get a flood of traffic that can then become loyal readers.

Watch out for duplicate content. Though there is no penalty for duplicate content, as Google stated in the past, it is advisable to use a duplicate content generator like bots. Although, duplicate content can result from misusing the blog’s functions, these can be solved easily. Use Google Webmaster Tools to setup your primary address first, whether it is with or without www and also make use of 301 redirects.

Do a proper keyword research. Do not aim for hard-to-get keywords, instead use the long tail ones that get a decent amount of searches and are easier to rank for. A great tool for this is Google Related searches. When using it bloggers will find interesting new long-tail keywords Google considers “search-able” so try to use it as much as possible.

Optimise your images. Best practices tell us to give them descriptive names (instead of image03847.jpg use keyword.jpg. Also, never forget to add a description to the image containing the keyword again. People do not only search for text but also for pictures and videos, so try to optimise those two as well.

Make use of meta titles and meta descriptions. The most important one is the meta title while it appears in the search engines’ results so create an appealing one, one that will make the people click through your link to read more. Also, create an SEO meta description, always use your primary keywords at the beginning but again, do not do the mistake of stuffing it with keywords.

Always create an XML site-map. XML site-maps are easy to create and once they are live, submit them to the major search engines available.

Internal link structure has a major importance. Always link back to your homepage when using keywords and also make use of internal linking to create deep links to your inner pages. A major mistake one might do is to use the wrong anchor text for the link (instead of “blue widgets” they use “here”). Try to avoid this mistake.

Back-links can be created in various way, from social bookmarking to link-baiting, what matters most though is the quality over quantity. Always, a homepage link from an authority PR6 website will be more powerful than maybe 100 links from blog comments. Also, link diversity plays a major role in Google’s eyes.

Stay tuned with UK’s best web designers’ blog for new interesting tips and tricks related to online industry.

Who would have thought years ago that in 2010 tens of millions of worldwide Internet surfers will go online from their mobile devices, whether for everyday browsing or just for checking an email and so on? With mobile Internet getting more and more popular nowadays, it is a must that each and every website design firm create mobile-friendly websites in order to grab a piece of this market, whether we are talking about US companies or UK website design firms.

This article will showcase the best practices developers should use when creating a website that can be accessed from mobile devices as well.

1.      iPhone is not the only mobile device used for browsing

One of the biggest mistakes website designers are making is to check only with the iPhone if the website is perfectly viewable. they forget that the iPhone is not the only mobile device used for browsing. Forget about online emulators and check the website with  5-10 different mobile devices in order to get a perfect picture of it.

2.      Use sub domains for mobile version

Before creating the mobile version you might consider asking the client what visitors really search when they are on your website. When browsing from mobile people usually want to browse fast and find the exact information they are searching for, so it is imperative to clean the unnecessary content and keep it simple.

3.      Use small images

The smaller an image is the faster the site therefore better visitor satisfaction. Again, mobile users usually do not have the time to wait too much for an image to be downloaded so keep in mind that optimising images when creating a mobile website is a priority.

4.      Frames, cookies and Flash

While the iPhone has cookie support and so on, as we said above, not all people will use an iPhone for browsing favourite pages. Try to avoid using Flash, cookies and frames and also avoid fancy fonts that most cell phones cannot read.

5.      As always, WordPress

WordPress users always had an advantage over other platforms and it seems mobile sites compatibility issue can be easier solved with a plugin, the WordPress Mobile Plugin. As most plugins this is available for free and in a matter of minutes it will make a blog/website mobile friendly. But in the end, it all depends on the clients’ needs and if he would like a more fancy website then he will probably need a professional web design firm that can handle his requests.

As we wrote a few days ago, Bing and Facebook have partnered for what some are saying to be a new search results era: the integration of social networking from Facebook to organic search results from Bing. It was just a matter of time for Google to strike back and display their search results details from a social sharing “environment”.

Basically, Google seems to test the waters by adding a “Shared by number+” next to number of related articles, in their news section. This move from Google will show how popular a story is on Twitter or other social sites and it seems to perfectly respond to users’ demands, in simple words: if a story is so popular it really is worth clicking and reading it.

For now, the results come only from Twitter but it can become very helpful while trying to see which Twitter users are quoting or making comments on a particular link in their tweets. When clicking on the “shared by” link the user is taken to a window displaying real-time sharing activity from Google Updates.

This experiment showcases a great feature that every Google News’ user might use and we look forward to seeing how this will evolve in time. Latest signs from social networking and search engines world reveal that sharing becomes a very important part of the search engines results, the web designers from WebCreationUK are keeping an eye on this particular subject as it might be a new step forward for the online environment.

Are there any companies out there with no writing on a corporate blog? As odd as it might sound, yes there are, and there are plenty of them. This article will show you the benefits of having a corporate blog and why, in our opinion, every company should have a blog.

1.      Blogs are relationship builders

You will quickly find out that most of your blog readers are in fact your customers. Whenever a new product will launch or a new service will be improved, they will find out first and many times dialogues through the comments section will give you some brief thoughts about what they might think, what can be improved, what they would like more and so on. Another point to take into consideration would be to use comments for answering customers’ questions and solve whatever problem they might have related to what you sell.

2.      Press releases? Who needs them?

It’s a fact: almost all online surfers read blogs nowadays. Whoever reads your blog with regularity will definitely subscribe to your feed in order to stay updated with your announcement. Interesting blog posts, new discounts, new products are spread all over the Internet by social bookmarking and social networking ways, way faster and targeted then by the means of press releases.

3.      Competition has no blog, why should I create one?

The answer is in fact, in the question. Because it doesn’t have one, it’s as simple as that. Being one step ahead of the competition has always been seen as a great advantage, whether we are talking about online or offline businesses. This way when competitors create a blog you will have already created an established online presence with loyal readers and a larger social presence. They will only try to catch up with you…

4.      Traffic, traffic, traffic

Nowadays, Google loves blogs way more than static sites while they provide fresh and unique content for users, with regularity. Also, blogs are a perfect way to target related long tail keywords that can literally skyrocket your online presence and as well the number of visits you receive each day. In time, along with ranking for those long tail keywords you will see how through your blog even harder than target keywords is ranking higher and also other phrases/words you did not expected bring visitors. And what better way to increase sales/conversions  might you find instead of steadily increasing the traffic your website receives?

There they are, four great reasons why any business should create a blog. If you like our website design blog subscribe to our daily posts or follow our tweets on our Twitter page.