Let’s start with the disclaimer. I am not in favour of a single company, service, product, whatever, dominating the scene.

Now to the ‘but’.

But Google is a very good search engine. I don’t like the fact that it inflates my rankings if I search whilst logged on to my Google account, but I love the fact that this post will appear on Google almost immediately. I realise that part of that process is due to WordPress and its plugins, but quite simply it suits my needs and my customers’ too.

Sarah Treble’s New Website

Exeter’s Design Credo have recently created a website for Sarah Treble, the renowned wedding dress designer now based in the South West. Whilst Sarah already had a website it wasn’t performing well particularly with search engines,

“I can’t even find myself unless I put my name in.”

Well, we are both extremely pleased with the results. Almost overnight Sarah’s ranking for key search terms improved with key phrases such as “bespoke dresses devon” putting Sarah at position two on the front page of Google. Removing Devon from the search string “bespoke dresses” still delivers a respectable third page Google result.

Somewhat surprisingly (for me anyway) “treble” returns a position two result on the front page of Google.

So how do we know this?

Firstly we make an educated guess about what terms people might use to search. We then reverse search and see how we do.

However Google provides some pretty good free tools help to collect and analyse useful SEO data. These tools not unsurprisingly are known as Webmaster Tools.

What these tools do is to allow us to see what keywords people may be using to search for our site. Sometimes there are some surprises such as ‘treble’. More surprisingly the observant may have noticed that ‘trebble’ appears on the list and searching for ‘trebble’ Google prompts us for a miss-spell.

The webmaster tools goes beyond simple keyword analysis though. It enables us to check the site’s HTML and allows us to see whether the SEO aids such as meta descriptions and page titles are all correctly added.

This is all free, you can do it yourself, but at DesignCredo it is very much all part of the Website Design Package that we offer to our customers

Working on behalf of Yorkshire’s Techserv Cutting Systems, Exeter based Design Credo have created a brand for a range of newly developed machines.

More Than a Logo

The scope of the project extended beyond simple graphic design and logo design. Design Credo initially advised on product names creating a ‘brand-family’. Part of this advice extended to researching suitable domain names.

The rationale behind the logo design was to create a simple clear design that would communicate the accuracy and quality of the Techserv products. The logos were designed using simple geometric shapes with reference to the letters a&j, p&j, r&j.

Techserv have already commissioned Design Credo to photograph the first of these machines.

Exeter design company Design Credo is extremely pleased with the initial performance of the WordPress website that they have created on behalf of Topsham’s Nest interiors. The site has well and truly hit the ground running with large numbers of visitors already viewing the site on a daily basis.

The built-in capabilities of this WordPress site enable us to see that within days of going live the site is getting extremely good viewing figures. This is like having hundreds of extra people looking around the shop on a daily basis.

The website is based on the WordPress platform but has been designed to give a strong visual appeal. DesignCredo have undertaken photography for Nest Interiors to strengthen their existing stock of images. The site aims to capture and convey the rich visual appeal of the Nest Interiors shop.

Great SEO results

A great website is of little value unless it can be found. Of course searching on the company’s name puts it top but more relevant search strings such as ‘new + england + style + furniture + devon’ perform extremely well, less than a week from the site being live. Further to this simple search strings such as “Lexington + Devon” provide first page Google results with more detailed searches such as “Lexington + Chesapeake + Cushion” giving a position 1 on a worldwide Google search.

This is extremely important for a company selling quality brand items such as those from Lexington. Putting it simply Nest interiors although based in Topsham near Exeter in the South-West of England are able to create national and international interest.

Add to this the inclusion of PubSubHubbub technology to ensure almost immediate submission of website developments to Google and we have a very search engine friendly site.

However, this is just the start. Design Credo will use various collectable data to monitor where site-traffic comes from and will continue to develop content that will create a good hit with Google searches.

Exeter graphic design company Design Credo have produced new signage to advertise commercial office space in Marsh Barton, Exeter.

Working on behalf of Turner-Locker the Exeter based commercial property agency, Design Credo have used a strong visual impact to promote the office space at Merriot House in Hennock Road Central.

The sign was created using both digital output and vinyl graphics allowing it to be re-purposed at a later date.

If nothing else this election is a lesson in the power of media and I am talking about digital media. Here we see Gillian Duffy an ordinary woman making powerful comments to world news with aplomb, at one point she even takes a mobile call while live on TV.

Just in case you have failed to hear Gordon Brown’s comment you can listen to it here.

Clearly social media has seen it’s fair number of Gaffes, David Cameron’s “Too Many Twits Make a Twat” for one and the sacking of Moray candidate Stuart MacLennan after his “coffin dodgers” comment (amongst others). Lets not even venture into Channel 4 Dispatches sting on Hoon et al.

It still hurts 16 years on

Gerald Ratner reveals the pain of becoming a national laughing stock in this Times Online article

Despite the fact that I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t do anything illegal and I didn’t even say anything that I hadn’t said before, that speech caused me to lose my business, my reputation and my fortune.

It says something about our society that people like to list what I lost in monetary terms: a £650,000 salary, £500m wiped off the valuation of my company, and a billion-pound turnover slashed overnight.

Oliver Sacks made the following observation in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

“The President’s Speech”,[3] about a ward of aphasiacs and agnosiacs listening to a speech given by an unnamed actor-president, “the old Charmer,” presumably Ronald Reagan. Many in the first group were laughing at the speech, and Sacks claims their laughter to be at the president’s facial expressions and tone, which they find “not genuine.”

The point here is that we are all part of these new media and although some of the forms are relatively new our ability to see through them develops with our ability to use it.

This is why I found David Cameron’s running along Exeter Quay video slightly incongruous, where were all the people? Yes I know, busy man, up early, before the rest of us… that’s what we were meant to think. I’m not certain what we were meant to make of a recent shot of Gordon Brown sitting in a kitchen with a yogurt on a dinner plate and a chinese take-away in the background.

There are lessons to me learned here for many and anyone using any form of public media could do to consider the maxim,

Don’t talk unless you can Improve the Silence

Or put it another way:

“If you like, I am a penitent sinner. Sometimes you say things you don’t mean to say, sometimes you say things by mistake and sometimes you say things you want to correct very quickly.”

G Brown

OK so he’s got a geeky American accent but there are some good suggestions here, listen and absorb.

OK so I have spent a lot of time talking about search engine marketing and its various aspects. However this is all of limited use unless we understand the value and importance of text, particularly keywords.

Let me make it clear from the start when I say keywords, I am referring to text that appears in the

1. Page Titles (Meta Tag)
2. H1 tags
3. Body text (in particular text toward the page top)
4. Meta Tag Keywords
5. Meta Tag Descriptions

At Design Credo we have a number of hats available to wear, graphic design, photography, website design and of increasingly greater prominence SEO or search engine optimisation particularly for companies in Exeter, Devon and the South West. So, when we write for our own websites we need to mention these creative skills.

In essence we are trying to pre-judge what our potential clients might type on when using a search engine, particularly Google, when looking to access the services that we provide. Google still has the strongest market share but this doesn’t mean that we are oblivious to the likes of Bing and Yahoo though.
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This is a development of the reply that I made the other day about getting a good Google response to your blog.

Search Engine Marketing is a must if you are to going to get people to view any website. Nowadays everyone seems to be an SEO specialist, at least they do in Exeter and Devon, I imagine it is the same throughout he UK.

I am more aware of the abilities of WordPress than other blogging platforms so this is what I will use as my reference point. I have to say that I am totally enamoured with WordPress, I think it is great, but first a bit of general knowledge.

WordPress comes in two distinct flavours

1. .com Most people start with a free WordPress blog which you can start straight away and I would recommend you to go and sign up. If you blog a for a while and chose to migrate to self-hosted this can be easily done.
2. .org If you have access to hosting then self-hosted blogs open up a world of possibilities. You will need hosting with a database which is necessary to store all of the posts, images, comments and information about the site. My hosting supplier now throws one in with even the starter hosting package. You don’t really need to understand about databases (MySQL) but it can be quite interesting looking around, seeing how all of the data and information is organised.

WordPress can be thought of as a modular entity.

1. Core
   The site itself, everything that is needed to make it work. This includes a user friendly interface that will allow you to update the site without knowing about web deign.
2. Themes
   There are a huge number of available themes that make the basic WP blog look different (1 column, 2 column, colours styling etc.)
3. Plugins
   These add to the functionality of the blog, they make it do more things, (display images in galleries, add contact forms, etc. )

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Although based in Exeter (sorry Topsham), DesignCredo are getting great SEO results for their northern customers.
Techserv, the plasma cutting machine company from West Yorkshire continue to get good Google results with their new website designed by Design Credo.

Mike Cowley of Techserv says:

Good to note that if I search for plasma machine in the uk we are number 1 and number 6 everywhere else

Techserv have previously used paid campaigns to improve SEO (search engine optimisation), but with Design Credo we are looking at ‘organic marketing’, basically, ensuring great search results through good website design.

Through ensuring appropriate page design and content DesignCredo create websites that perform for our clients. Techserv has a machine suitable for schools and colleges, so it is sensible SEO practice to ensure that a Google search of ‘plasma+cutter+education’ will put Techserv on the front page. This of course is what happens, currently they are top of the page which is an added bonus.

All round we are pleased to report that even in these early weeks the Techserv site is producing the goods, there have been a number of solid sales enquiries through the site and this is what it is all about.

If you didn’t go to Specsavers…you may have seen this

Eye-catching shop display seen in Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich. The clothing was made from large paper posters.