If there are lots of links on the Internet pointing to your website, there’s only one direction you’re going in and that’s higher up in Google … right?

Actually no, that’s not necessarily the case. Recently we’ve seen quite a few cases where website owners have gone flat out obtaining as many back-links as possible and in the process have ignored the quality and relevancy of the sites they’re linking from.

The result has been a huge decrease in PageRank value and total disappearance from search engines.

This only demonstrates that back-link building is a highly skilled process and should only be undertaken by a professional search engine optimisation company or someone with search engine optimisation training.

Affiliate marketing is the practice of selling your goods or services through other websites in return for a commission on each sale.

Your ‘affiliates’ place links on their sites to drive visitors to your website and subsequently purchase your products.

Affiliate marketing alone is an excellent way to dramatically increase your sales. However, there’s a huge additional benefit, as we’ll explain.

As you probably know, ranking high in search engines depends heavily on the number of links there are on other sites to your own site (known as back-links). The more links there are pointing to your site the better the search engines think your site must be, and the higher in their search results your site goes.

Therefore, because affiliate marketing results in many links from your affiliates’ websites it’s also great for increasing your position in search engines.

Affiliate marketing can be applied to almost any site selling products or services so if you’d like to increase your sales and at the same time increase your search engine rankings give us a call on 01709-373911.

Well we finally got around to throwing a few new colours and features on the Eye4Design website. (and not before time but then our customers’ sites always come first).

A particular feature of the new site is the addition of our Internet Marketing Training section with online booking facilities for our range of new training courses. Topics include:

Google Adwords Training
Search Engine Optimisation Training
Email Marketing Training
Selling on Ebay
Affiliate Marketing Training
Web Accessibility & Usability Training
E-commerce Training
and
Social Media Marketing

We decided to have a little fun with the Eye4Design team page and we still have lots more content to add over the coming weeks so please check back regularly for latest web design news and updates.

Being able to update your own website in-house has obvious benefits, not least that search engines often list recently updated sites higher in their rankings.

Having the flexibility of being able to log in from any PC in any location and amend page content, product information, latest news, prices etc is becoming more and more important.

Eye4Design build 100% web based bespoke Content Management Systems (CMS) that can be updated by anyone, without the need for web design experience. In fact, our interface is almost identical to Microsoft Word so if you can use that you can easily update an Eye4Design CMS.

Its not just text that can be updated either, in our CMS you full can add images, tables, animations, change font colours, in fact almost anything you could ever want to do to your web page content - even add bespoke Meta Tags which helps with search engine listings.

To discuss our CMS give us a call on 01709-373911, we’re here to help.

Most companies not currently selling their products online were not doing so because they either didn’t have the time or thought it would be too expensive to set up and administer, according to a recent questionnaire sent out by Eye4Design.

Interestingly, in follow up discussions with the same companies 88% stated they were surprised at just how little it does actually cost to set up a professional e-commerce website.

At Eye4Design this is a familiar story, in particular to the amount of time customers think they will have to spend adding their product ranges. In fact, this is far from the truth and in most cases Eye4Design can bulk import thousands of products in just a few hours. Many suppliers are ‘web-ready’ nowadays and often have product images, descriptions, specifications, prices etc available electronically which usually makes adding them to a website very easy.

In addition, Eye4Designs’ state of the art e-commerce software makes processing orders and maintaining products a breeze.

So, the message is clear, if you thought your business couldn’t afford the time or the investment to trade online, please think again. Call us on 01709-373911 to discuss your plans.

For the uninitiated, the term ‘brochure style’ refers to websites built in standard HTML (web design code) and cannot be amended in-house by the website owner. Changes to the site are done by a web designer.

In this age of high tech, fast moving E-commerce the question often arises - do brochure style websites still have a future?

Well the answer is that whilst there’s no doubt that they are drastically on the decline there are still applications that warrant nothing more than a brochure style site. The service industry is a good example of how someone may well just require a showcase of their services as they may well offer bespoke services that quite simply cannot be priced online.

If it was also the case that the site wouldn’t require updating too often then brochure style would almost certainly fit the bill.

If you are looking at a website project and are unsure what type of site to choose, call Eye4Design on 01709-373911 who will be happy to assist you.

In a recent survey conducted by Eye4Design an amazing 74% of companies said that they never (or very rarely) marketed to their own customer base. Considering how difficult and expensive looking for new customers is, this figure is quite incredible.

As you already know your existing customers its easier for you to get a foot in the door. You’ve supplied them before so they trust you and they know you deliver. Added to that, you know they pay their bills so your risk of bad debt is minimised.

Imagine how many of your customers bought a product or service that you provide, from one of your competitors, just because they didn’t realise you supplied it too!

When asked why they didn’t market to their own customers most companies cited time and cost as major factors. The sad part is that the remedy does not require much time, and it certainly doesn’t require alot of investment.

Eye4Design can provide your company with a bespoke email campaign that enables you (or us) to email your entire customer base with your latest news or products at the push of a button.

The cost? Starting from just £25 + Vat per month. Now tell me you can find new customers  for less than that!

To get your account up and running call us on 01709-373911.

Online sales were forecast to increase by 25% over the Christmas period compared to 2007. The peak shopping period was expected to be between 1pm and 2pm on Monday 8th December 2008 (so called ‘Mega Monday’) when £28 million was forecast to be spent online during this single hour.

Research, by polling organisation GfK NOP, said one in 10 online shoppers were planning to have their online Christmas shopping delivered to their workplace.

This contrasts sharply with the High Street where many retailers were bracing themselves for one of the worst festive periods on record.

Many people think that appearing on the first page of Google happens randomly, or that you get there by adding a few keywords to your website. Well, if only it was that easy!

In fact, achieving first page results requires months of dedicated search engine optimisation (SEO) work involving amassing large quantities of high quality back links optimised to your chosen keywords.

Therefore, anyone seriously wanting their site to appear high in search engines MUST run an Internet marketing campaign, without which they will just be another small fish in a huge pond.

Here at Eye4Design we specialise in search engine optimisation and Internet marketing and can help your site achieve the search engine rankings you need.