The new website for the 009 Society was brought online on 2nd January 2020. The new site now has several years of back issues of The 009 News, the official journal of the 009 Society, available in pdf format for registered members to download. Settings in the robots.txt and .htaccess and page files prevent search engines from reading these files and showing the contents to the public. Indices of all the back issues have been produced in search engine friendly form so that they will act as 'click bait' to enhance the site's search engine visibility.
Feedback from 009 Society members has been positive and Andrew Jeffcock of Retiarius Internet Design has been confirmed in his appointment as Webmaster to the 009 Society.
Written by admin in: News from Retiarius Internet |
The new web site for the 009 Society, developed by Andrew Jeffcock, will go online in January 2020. This WordPress based system which incorporates a members-only content management system and video headers is the result of an intensive 3 months development and incorporates leading edge web services and facilities.
Now that the official announcement has been made in the December issue of 009 News, the official journal of the 009 Society, an international society dedicated to the small scale modelling of narrow gauge railways. I can now reveal that I have been appointed as theIe new Webmaster.
I will be responsible for all the Internet-facing activities for the Society and I am currently designing and producing a new website for them. I have nearly 20 years experience of professional web design following a 30 year career as a research scientist and I am grateful to the 009 Society for this opportunity and their trust.
Written by admin in: News about Retiarius Internet Clients,News from Retiarius Internet | Tags: 009 Society, Webmaster
Retiarius Internet Design are now offering PAT testing for electrical equipment in business premises. Primarily for your office computer and AV equipment we can also test portable power tools, heaters and extension leads.
PAT testing is not mandatory but it is recommended so that you can prove, a rquirement of the Health & Safety Act, that you are regularly safety testing your office and works electrical equipment. PAT testing provides you with a traceable standard that all your electrical equipment, at the time of testing, was assessed for its safety.
We can do testing within 20 miles of Buxton, Derbyshire, please contact us for a quotation.
Written by admin in: News from Retiarius Internet | Tags: PAT, Safety
Rags for Gypsies
Rags for Gypsies is a new site developed by Retiarius Internet Design to take advantage of the growth in the use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to a business.
Rags for Gypsies utilises the power of the WordPress platform to provide an easy to use and update web site that the site site owners can maintain and expand themselves.
Their website is linked to both Twitter (@ragsforgypsies) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/rags4gypsiesdesigns) and also to their marketing account on Etsy.com (http://www.etsy.com/shop/RagsForGypsies) to provide a comprehensive net exposure for the unique designs produced by Poppy Fields.
Retiarius set up the clients Etsy account to automatically announce new designs simultaneously on both their Facebook and Twitter accounts and any new posts on the main site are also automatically 'Tweeted'
This site shows what can be done to integrate the social media sites into a Search engine Optimised WordPress site.
Fully SEO PHP and blog script-driven site for Elanga International
Retiarius produce a SEO blog-driven site for Ford & Kidd Truck Bodies
SEO companies that use link farms to gain placement – a good or bad idea?
Choosing an appropriate SEO web site design company
Written by Retiarius in: News about Retiarius Internet Clients,News from Retiarius Internet,Search Engine Optimisation Techniques,Web site design techniques | Tags: blog, etsy, facebook, optimisation, search, Search Engine Optimisation Techniques, SEO, twitter, Wordpress
Browser usage trends and the implications for web designers
Browser usage trends – click to enlarge
It has long been the accepted guidance that any web site must comply with the 'standards' that Microsoft use in their Internet Explorer range of browsers because they are the market leader due to it being issued with every copy of Windows.
It may surprise some of our readers that this has not been true for several years! Data collected by the w3schools site clearly shows a continuing downward trend for Microsoft from 86% of market share in 2002 to 19% in 2012!
Mozilla's Firefox was the main cause of this loss of market share for Microsoft but the introduction of Chrome by Google, and its adoption as the browser on many Android phones and devices has now stemmed the rise of Firefox.
There have been rumours that Google, who are currently financially supporting Mozilla through advertising revenue on the Mozilla site, may pull the plug on funding Mozilla (see this BBC report) and this would leave Chrome being the largest browser being used.
I hope that Google continue to support Mozilla but, with Google's predatory and monopolistic underskirts already showing with regard to its continued infringement, and support for infringement of copyrighted material to sell advertising space on their search engines, I think that may be a forlorn hope.
I hope that Mozilla can find alternative funding because I think that if we thought Microsoft were wrong to have a monopoly, Google may well prove to be the bigger evil.
Written by admin in: News from Retiarius Internet,Web site design techniques |
Frames and SEO – NO, NO, NO!
Recently I was looking for an email address for a company for which I had the full company name. Easy-peasy you say, use Google!
So off I went and Googled their company name ( I won't say whose, I am not in the habit of 'outing' poor web designs by other designers).
The company website was not in the first 1000 hits on Google.co.uk.!
There were plenty of hits to sites such as Applegate which had brief details of the company, but nothing for the company's own, and probably expensively produced, web site.
And why was this? Quite simply FRAMES!
The company's site, and as I subsequently discovered, all the sites in the group of companies, had been constructed in an identical manner using framesets. There was only the frame wrapper page title and almost non-existent keyword lists for Google to find and index. There wasn't even a valid site description on the index framepage, no <NO FRAMES> statement, or any attempt to use descriptive title and alt statements on the few navigation elements.
A major problem with using frames is that if the navigation elements are in one frame, and the site content is displayed in another, then the site content, even if it does get indexed by search engines following a page-specific link from another site, is indexed as a separate page element totally divorced from the site's navigation elements. This means that the search engine bots cannot crawl the rest of the site.
I don't know when the sites in question where designed but, as the problem of framed sites and SEO has been known for at least 10 years, there is absolutely no excuse for using frames on business sites which should be fully indexed to capture new clients.
In my opinion any site still using frames for its formatting is one that is not maximising its SEO potential, and for a business site that is throwing good money down the drain and any so-called 'web site designer' still advocating frame-driven sites to his/her clients does not deserve the title.
The Rose and Crown at Allgreave
Retiarius Internet Design have just been commisioned to produce a search engine optimised site for the Rose and Crown public house at Allgreave on the edge of the Peak District.
The original site for the pub had been cleared of content by the previous landlord when he left the business and the original domain name (http://www.theroseandcrown.net) offered for sale at what I believed to be a very reasonable price for such an applicable, and already Google Page 1 ranked domain of several years registration .
On our advice, the new owners were fortunate to, via a third party, quickly purchase this existing domain name from its previous owner and they are now having Retiarius produce a brand new site to take advantage of Google's preference towards domain names of some age.
As speed was of the essence to prevent Google losing, or reducing, the position for the domain name in its ranks following its closure by the previous owner, a temporary, fully optimised, index page has been put in place on the same day we received the commission.
This page will be a place holder whilst the final design is discussed, agreed and designed.
It is important in SEO to try and weight the chances of getting good ranking in favour of your client. The purchase of an existing applicable domain name which has a decent ranking can significantly accelerate the SEO process.
Retiarius Internet Design's experience in such matters can be a valuable resource for its clients.
Written by Retiarius in: News about Retiarius Internet Clients,News from Retiarius Internet |
Retiarius Internet Design recently were commissioned to upgrade and redesign the site of alternative-vet.co.uk, London's leading homoeopathic veterinary surgeon Lise Hansen.
A careful redesign, optimising keyword density, meta statements, page titles, page names etc, whilst retaining the look and feel of the original site, has achieved the required page 1 listing in Google.co.uk for the search term "homeopathic vet London" in a remarkably short 14 days!
The page 1 status achieved for this site is a vindication of the methods employed by Andrew Jeffcock of Retiarius Internet Design. Andrew employs a holistic approach to web design which marries, amongst other things, meta statements, page names, titles, keywords and keyword density to produce a site optimal for search engine spidering.
Welcome to search engine optimisation
W3C compliance – is it important for SEO?
Written by admin in: News about Retiarius Internet Clients,News from Retiarius Internet | Tags: alternative-vet, Google, holistic, homeopathic, optimal, Retiarius, SEO, vet
Retiarius Internet Design were approached by local custom truck body builder Ford & Kidd to produce their first web site. Ford & Kidd specialise in producing one-off truck body solutions for both new-build and vehicle conversion projects.
Ford & Kidd wanted a web site that they could easily maintain themselves but one that also would be fully search engine optimised.
We decided that the best, and most cost effective, solution was to build a front end to the site which was fully optimised for search engines, incorporating 'hidden' PHP code into that page that posted resumés of post made in the WordPress blog which comprises the majority of the site.
The blog software was set up to include effective SEO and also permit the loading of individual photographs and galleries of photographs of vehicles that have been constructed by Ford & Kidd that could be displayed within the posts.
Written by admin in: News from Retiarius Internet | Tags: blog, optimised, search, SEO, Web2.0, Wordpress