Vernons Business Web Design Blog

Coastal Chalet

2012-02-03T06:19:00.000-08:00

Coastal Chalets

Another replacement website, once again designed around researched search terms.
This chalet is in a wonderful coastal location above Ullapool and deserves to be full all year. So I have integrated certain search terms into the design so that when people Google the search term, this website will appear in the first results. The primary search term is "coastal chalet" and "coastal cabins" both of which are not necessarily Scottish terms, but hopefully by optimising these terms I can help to draw in some more tourists to Scotland.

Riverside Cottages

2012-02-02T05:03:00.000-08:00

Riverside Cottages
A new website for the three self catering cottages beside Blackaddie Hotel in Sanquhar, sdjacent to the River Nith.
The three cottages have been renamed to reflect the search term I have used to gain more business.
Waterside Cottage, Fishing Cottage and Riverside Cottage. each of these cottage pages are designed to direct new traffic to the website, traffic that just would not have been gained by the old website. Each of these search terms are strong terms, they are statistically strong terms, and suit the accommodation to a tee. This ability to target niche customers direct to their perfect product is what SEO is all about.

Winter Wedding Venue

2012-01-29T02:32:00.001-08:00

Winter Wedding Venues new website for Adam and Jan Moore at Trigony Hotel in Dumfries and Galloway

This is a new adventure for Adam and Jan, they have had a couple of weddings for friends and family over the years, but in discussions last winter about how to add value to the hotel we saw that the hotel had more bookings than most hotels would during the wintwer so to increase profits we had to think of s different way of adding value. So we came up with the idea of a Winter Wedding Venue, then we can add more than the cost of the hotel and thus increase profits. Since the website has been live Trigony have had 4 wedding bookings. The new website has been designed to promote winter weddings for Humanist Wedding Venues, Civil Partnership Venues, and a Winter Wedding Packages calculator to work out the costs of your wedding.

New websites.

2011-09-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

I have not been keeping my blog up to date, I wonder how many people start a blog and then at some point fail to keep it up to date, see it as a burden and then let it go. I have the added value of the effect of some of the links I create to a new website actually point Google to the website for the first time, the effect? I eliminate the sandbox effect. Anyway lates websites I'll mention a few:

Kirkfield Gardens is a very nice pair of self catering lodges set half way between edinburgh and Glasgow. Search terms are Luxury self catering for 2 and Holiday cottages for couples I am going through a phase of letting the website almost disappear, so that the images of the accommodation do all the talking.

Chien Bleu is a really lovely concept of a new guide for pet friendly accommodation. Erin has created a buisness based on creating a database of the best, pet friendly hotels and accommodation in the UK.

Search terms are Pet friendly Hotels and Pet friendly Accommodation

Steading at Nabny

2011-07-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Steading at Nabny is a wonderful accommodation, quite "cosy" in proportions but beautifully finished.

I have optimised it for a few terms like "cottages for 2" and "romantic self catering cottage" and "remote self catering in Scotland" Ideally suited fro couples this is a romantic cottage and I hope the terms bring in many lucky couples.

Fife Bed and Breakfast

2011-04-04T02:28:00.000-07:00

Fife Bed and Breakfast - Greenhead of Arnot is a spectacular, classic Scottish Country House Bed and Breakfast on the outskirts of Glenrothes in Fife. The owners Malcolm and Maggie are perfects hosts and have put a lot of effort into producing one of the finest B&B's in Scotland. The search stats showed that there are plenty of local searches "B&B Glenrothes" or "bed and breakfast in Fife" are two of many searches I am aiming to get this website listed for. I enjoyed creating this website, the photo shoot was interesting as I stayed in the single room overnight and woke to see that it had snowed overnight, I was worried about the lack of sunlight for the photos, but the sun came out and as you can see from the images I had a lovely morning taking photos of all the rooms and especially the glorious entrance hall.

Pet Friendly Self Catering in Scotland

2011-04-04T02:19:00.001-07:00

Pet Friendly Self Catering in Scotland - Hope Cottage is a lovely cottage set in the wilderness landscape of Durisdeer in the north of Dumfries and Galloway. The cottage is devoted to pet owners wanting a relaxing walking break in a beautiful location. I took all the images as I normally do for holiday cottages and created a website to really target the primary potential customer. So the Google Search Stats show healthy search terms like "dog friendly self catering Scotland" and "pet friendly cottage Scotland" so I have optimised for these terms and found that is started to work within just a few days. It is not on page 1 yet and the visitor levels won't kick in until it gets to page 1, but I hope it will be very soon.

Simon Winstanley Architects

2010-12-23T05:18:00.000-08:00

As I have said before on this blog, it can be a real treat to step out of my normal customer base of Hotels and self catering accommodation to tackle a different business. This time I have updated one of my previous designs to bring it up to date. As technology advances and screen resolutions increase sometimes our older sites start to look narrow. So it makes sense to change the design and widen the vislual to fill a modern screen. However there are so many screen sizes that its harder to work out what size to work on. So I have constantly changed my default size from 800 pixels wide a few years ago to 1100 to 1200 pixels wide now. This example shows how this can be done without completely redesigning from scratch. I have roughly kept the old site, but now have added a right hand column which has benefitted by increasing the width and by comining this with rollover exchange images it has enabled us to display more images by rolling the mouse over the right hand images.

Of course it is important not to overwright the SEO work done previously and this type of alteration enables you to keep the websites prominance with out risk. So its still found for primary search terms including "architects in Scotland"

Sandhead Cottages - refurb

2010-12-23T04:57:00.000-08:00

The Auld Schoolhouse website has just had a refurb. Elspeth has now had quite a few years of good booking levels from her holiday house, this has led to her purchasing more cottages, the second was Helensdale and now her 3rd property has been transformed and is now ready to let. I have updated her website to account for this change and I have rebranded the website as Sandhead Holiday Cottages which now shows two cottages for rent. They are very close to each other and so share the same benefit os being close to the beach. So it is good to keep optimising the website for her prime terms of "family friendly beach house" and "beach front holiday scotland" and other similar terms. So good luck Elspeth and I hope your new cottage does as well as your old one.

Ghillies Cottage - fishing cottage scotland

2010-08-31T08:45:00.001-07:00

Ghillies Cottage, was prviously known as Loch Cottage, sited just outside Thornhill in south west Scotland.

We decided to change the name to avoid confusion as it is not beside a loch, however the fishing is good in this area and fishing extends the tourist season considerably through the late and early months in the year. This extension exyends the possibility for more weeks booked each year thus higher income levels.

So the terms we are optimising for with this cottage is twofold, it is very comfortable and as it is newly converted and looking petty good we are going to try and target the "luxury self catering scotland" market and the "luxury holiday cottages scotland" term is a natural companion.

However for the extended season I am also goin to work on the terms "fishing cottages scotland" and "fishing holidays scotland"

I would imagine it will take just a few weeks to get to the top for one or more of these terms.

2010-07-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

Craigells has now done very well for its primary search term "self catering dumfries and galloway" however I am now pushing the term "holiday cottages dumfries and galloway" just to make the website more robust in the marketplace. I am very pleased with the progress of the site this year but it still has plenty of room for development.

How hard are links ?

2010-07-29T03:23:00.000-07:00

Some links are very hard, especially deep links - what is a deep link? its a link to one of the inner pages of your website, not the home page. To get a page more prominance for a given search term it is necessary to get websites linking to that deep page, ideally with the search phrase that you are trying to optimise the page for. As an example I have been working on a few websites today and the work I have concentrated on is all about deep links. The Auld Dairy in Drummore is well optimised for "luxury holiday cottage scotland" which is a great term for it, but I have been wanting to get the site further up the ranking for "luxury self catering scotland" which is another great term for it and in order to do this I have made use of one of the inner pages, in this instance the see and do page. Ideally I want the home page to be found for this term but often you need to take a long term strategy. So I intend to develop this strong inner page and then tweak the home page so that it also has this phrase loaded in the text then together these pages will get the site to page 1. As many SEO's know you don't rush things, if you try to force things too quickly you can do more harm than good. In this instance "slowly slowly catchy monkey" is the best approach. Annother term I am working on this month is "luxury cottages scotland" and the more links I can create to this the better. (did you see what I just did? by explaining what I am doing I'm actually creating more links of these highly targetted links - keep up at the back of the class !!!)

Large Holiday Home in Scotland

2010-07-15T06:25:00.000-07:00

SEO - only

The site is not my design but I am currently working on the optimisation of the Rache at Spottes. It is a large self catering holiday cottage in a lovely setting in Dumfries and Galloway. So the terms I am working on are all based around "large" so terms like large self catering scotland and large holiday homes scotland and local terms like large holiday home dumfries and galloway. I am currently building listings and links for the site so we shall see how it fares.

New additions to the 100 BEST self catering guide

2010-05-28T03:22:00.000-07:00

There have been a few more additions to my 100 BEST guide to self catering Scotland.
A lovely studio in Plockton - Self Catering Plockton
One of the most amazing lodges in Scotland - Luxury Lodges Scotland
and possible one of the remotest - Knoydart Accommodation
I am currently working on a few more and they will probably be live in about a week.

Holiday Southern Scotland

2010-05-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to search engine optimise the website developed by Southern Scotland marketing campaign. Now the website has been developed I am working towards gaining more business through the site. I am working its home page for the term holidays scotland which is a good term, the stats show that it is a popular search phrase and built into this term is the secondary (but ultimate) term of scotland. Once we have gained a good serp (search engine ranking position) for the website I will work towards prominance for the secondart term.

The whole aim is to promote tourism in Southern Scotland and I am very keen to do my bit in this excellent aim.

Its not always tourism

2010-03-22T04:39:00.000-07:00

I like my specialism in tourism websites, it keeps me focussed and aware of everything in this area, however thank goodness sometimes I get the opportunity to put my talents to something else. For instance the fine Mr Martin whose excellent hand drawn caricatures make the centrepiece of my latest website.

My project here is three-fold, firstly to show his caricatures and not my website, and secondly to show the great variety of work without making each page a clutter of images and lastly to get the website onto the first page of google for the best terms. Hopefully I have achieved the first two objectives by using a dark background (in this instance the colour of John's favourite mounting board) which forces each image to stand forward and take the limelight. secondly I have used the image rollover technique to display the numerous caricatures that John has in his portfolio. Lastly we have identified 3 primary terms caricatures, caricatures from photos and car caricatures. I am hoping to get the website to the top of these searches within the next 3 months so we will wait and see.

Chipperkyle design

2010-03-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

Catriona and Willie Dickson run one of the finest Country House Bed and Breakfast's in Scotland. Once again my task to design and build a website was very enjoyable, it is always a treat to work with people whose company I enjoy. Their input to the design and content was excellent and made the whole process run well.

I have optimised the website for a very interesting term - Country House Scotland - why is it interesting? well I suppose you could optimise it for terms related to bed and breakfast in the area it inhabits, but I have used Google business listings to do that work and have concentrated on a "National" term. With the intention of attracting visitors who want a quality experience but may not have thought of Dumfries and Galloway. Most of the other pages have also been optimised for instance kirkcudbright bed and breakfast and castle douglas bed and breakfast and bed and breakfast dumfries and galloway. It's funny that when you are dealing with an accommodation like this, situated in the country at first it seems a problem that it cannot be optimised for the town it sits in, however it is actually and advantage because it is close to 3 good towns so when optimised for them all will eventually benefit by this.

I have experience in working with the Trigony Hotel in particular with its primary search term of Country House Hotel Scotland. Its dominant position on the search engines have ensured the continued success for the hotel. This term Country House Scotland for Chipperkyle is very close and was identified by the search statistics as being a very popular search term, I am hoping that when my new website achieves its position at the top of Google searches that it will provide a constant stream of customers for Catriona and Willie.

Self Catering Scotland - The 100 BEST

2010-01-26T11:18:00.000-08:00

My latest website www.self-catering-scotland.co.uk is an attempt to redress the balance for visitors searching on Google for good self catering accommodation in Scotland. I have felt for a long time that there needs to be a website that has a very small selection of the best cottages.

So I have started a new guide called the 100 BEST which does as it says, gives the best 100 self catering cottages and apartments in Scotland. each region has 10 properties (or will do in due course). This website is optimised on 3 levels, the primary level is the home page is optimised for "self catering scotland" which is the largest search term in Scottish self catering, the secondary level are the regional pages which will be optimised for terms like "self catering Dumfries and Galloway" which should provide many locality based visitors, then the third level is the individual cottage which will be optimised for its town or village eg "castle douglas self catering"

If it performs the wey I have designed it then it will become a very popular website, so I hope for all involved it works well. I shall certainly be working on it for the next few months to try to fill the guide up to its 100 potential.

Craigadam

2009-10-02T05:18:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy working on websites for nice hotels, it makes my inner aesthetic self happy to take the necessary photographs and then work with them on a new website. The website for Craigaam is no exception, although I had underestimated the ammount of work in creating the website I thoroughly enjoyed the process and I hope the resulting site shows the benefit of this enjoyment. The website can be found by clicking on this link dumfries hotels which is the primary search term that I have researched in Google stats. It is by no means the only term, infact the site is optimised for over 20 search terms and has already moved from an average of 30 unique visitors per day to about 150, which should mean plenty of new customers for Celia and Richard who both run Cariagadam.

Whitecairn

2009-07-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

My last website is for holiday park whitecairn, it is a site developed to gain business from two markets, the first is transoprt of static caravans and timber lodges the other is the sale and hire of static caravans and timber lodges. The site has only just gone live and staright away we are getting results. This site with the url http://www.staticscaravanslodgesaleshiretransportation.com is optimised for a collection of good terms and it is already No 1 in Google for
used timber lodges for sale
and
used timber lodge sales
and has achieved no 2 listing for
static caravan transport scotland no doubt no 1 shortly.
Optimising for Google is happening faster and faster now and results can be working in a timescale unheard of a year ago.

Moffat Town Hall Trust Initiative

2009-06-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

I first met Martin Brown while I was working as a business advisor for Visit Scotland, and helped him gain internet prominance for his bed and breakfast accommodation close to Moffat. Martin is very active in his local community and asked if I would give him tutorials using Dreamweaver so he could develop a website for a new proposal to regenerate Moffat Town Hall. So I have had a few sessions with Martin now, and he has really grasped the fundamental aspects of the construction and together we have developed the new website. Have a look at it and see what you think.
Moffat Town Hall Development
check out the "artists impression" page where we developed a simple flash projection for the hall regeneration.

House "Style"

2009-05-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

There are many styles and types of website design, and any trawl through the internet will reveal styles, shapes colours and techniques. When a customer first asks me to work on a new website I ask them to provide me with 3 examples of websites that they have found which they like. In this way I get a feeling for what they like and I try to create a unique design that will have some common features of the sites they suggest. I try not to compromise my own design and it has been said that I have a "house style" that I wasn't aware of, I try to make unique designs for my clients but in retrospect it does appear that there are 2 predominant styles in my design. The first is the straight table based design exemplified by Glenturk Self Catering the second house style is shown by Craigells Self Catering in Dumfries and Galloway. There are exceptions to this like Gelston Lodge. Of course there is a great deal of logic to this, I don't have to redesign the wheel each time I design a website, and as my latest customers said that when I asked her to give me her 3 examples she gave three of my own sites as her examples. I thought she had misunderstood my request but she said no, her favoiurite 3 websites were mine which is why she wanted me to design the website for her business.
I suppose then that we do have a "house style" but I hope that it doesn't control me and that I am open up to any progressions in design and I love integrating new technologies in my websites. Proof of this is one of my latest websites (which is not yet live) which is a complete departure for me. I will post on this later.

It's not all about getting visitors to your website

2009-04-13T02:51:00.000-07:00

I spend all my time getting new visitors to my customers websites.

With a newly designed website there are no problems. However much in the way of the cobblers children not having any shoes I have been aware that my own website for my property The Old Exchange had not been updated for about 4 years, and it was looking a bit tired. I put it off for a while but my statistics were showing me that something had to be done. How were the statistics showing me that ? well I am getting lots of people to my website, and a few years ago each visitor would look around the site, looking at many pages, but recently they were arriving at my website (for good terms like self catering scotland ) but the bounce rate was high. (they would arrive and leave again without looking at many pages) So it was time for a change, I have now completed the site and in a way of speaking my children now have shoes. Within the first week the stats show a dramatic change, by bounce rate is now down from 55% to 30% and my visitors look at 3x the number of pages. This should lead to increased bookings.

Getting web sites onto google maps

2009-02-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

I have had some success in getting websites prominantly displayed in a short time by creating google map entries. At first it was very simple, especially for local searches. However it is getting harder. Some of my original successes have gone and I am now researching how to get them back. One of them is for Royal Mile Apartments in Edinburgh. I created a google map entry for the term Edinburgh Accommodation and the entry initially was the only business listed in the google map listings. Howver, by creating a google map beside this phrase, the listing has now been filled with other edinburgh based accommodations, mainly hotels. So this entry is to see if this link Edinburgh Accommodation will have an effect, we will see the results in due course.
a similar map might be for an accommodation in st ives cornwall. 8 Bellair Terrace, I have just created a google map listing, it is currently on page 5 of the google map listing for "self catering in cornwall" So hopefully this will push the listing up to the page 1 listing.

10 days to get a new product to page 1 on Google

2009-02-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

My previous post describes the way a link works to promote a particular web page, in this instance it was a page on motorparty's classic car hire website regarding a page devoted to an e-type jaguar. Well you can read that post to find out more, but the result was faster than expected.
10 days was all it took to make this link push this web page onto the page 1 Google search for "e type jaguar hire" the power of an effective link is dramatic and can make a real difference to the profitability of your business.

How Imoprtant is a link ? to Motorparty

2009-02-02T03:57:00.000-08:00

Here is a live Experiment on the importance of links.
I had a chat with Martin of Motorparty for whom I have done some SEO work in the last 2 years. Martin has a background in Mechanical Design, with major car manufactureres such as Rover, Porche and Aston Martin. He now runs a business restoring and hiring classic cars from his base in South West Scotland called Motorparty. Classic Car Hire
This experiment is related to one of his cars an E-Type Jaguar. Martin has just completed the renovation of a lovely E-Type Jaguar and now the car is ready for hire. He has created a webpage on his website for this car and the page is well optimised for the term E Type Jaguar Hire and it can be found on google if you search for "e type jaguar hire" however it is listed on page 6, and is not moving higher up the results, so I have just created a link to this page, and the test of this link is to see if it will push the page up to googles first page position for this search.

Now this blog is likely to be scanned by Google within 2 weeks, and the effect of the link will take perhaps 5 to 20 days after that. So hopefully one month should see Martins webpage on page 1 for the search E Type Jaguar Hire . So the experiment is the effect of 1 powerful link on a web page.
Why is this link powerful ? This blog has a pr of 2, the link text includes the phrase "E Type Jaguar Hire" and it is linked to the single page on Martins website which advertises an E Type Jaguar for Hire, also the text on this page around the link includes this search phrase. These things all make the link powerful. So ...... watch this space and see what happens.

The fastest booking in the West. (for a new self catering accommodation)

2009-02-02T02:50:00.000-08:00

Donal Bell of Gelston Lodge Cottages asked me a question in an e-mail this morning.

Donald and Charlotte have 3 lovely self catering cottages located close to the coast between Gelston and Auchencairn in Dumfries and Galloway. I created a website for them early last year, and they have had a very successful first year. They finished their 4th cottage a few weeks ago and asked me to add this to the website. Long Barn self catering in Dumfries and Galloway

So the question ?

2 bookings within 12hrs on the site. Is that a new record for Site Web Design?

Well I put a new website online for Helensdale in Drummore - Luxury self catering Scotland - , and the owner, Elspeth told me that she had 2 bookings within a couple of days, which I thought was very fast.

I hadn't thought of a contest, but I will from now on. I believe Gelston Lodge is the record for now. But each website I create or change will be entered in this new competition.

My aim is now to get the fastest booking in the West.

How do you get 21,296 unique visitors to your website in one day ?

2009-01-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Black Clauchrie

I am currently working with Caroline Goodall to redesign her website and help with search engine optimising for black clauchrie holiday homes based in Ayrshire.

Caroline and her husband have been taking part in a documentary for channel 4 called "country house rescue" and as a graphic designer Caroline asked me to help her get her design converted to a website and uploaded on the net.

So we have had one personal meeting and lots of telephone tutorials together and we had the deadline of 6/1/09 as this is when the program was aired. It kind of worked, Caroline was happy with the results and is empowered in her new ability to design websites. The deadline was tight and I was still loading the email address and statcounter to the website as the program was running.

What a deluge !! the total for the evening was 21,296 unique visitors. So if you want to dramatically increase visitors to your website - its simple - just star in a TV documentary !

No. 1 msn listing in 6 days - SEO

2008-12-24T13:45:00.000-08:00

You will see from my earlier blog that I put up a new website on the 17th of December, and Now on the 23rd it is listed No. 1 on MSN for my chosen search term "luxury self catering Scotland". Although I always aim my campaigns at Google searches it is good to optimise for the other main search terms.

You can click on this link to take you to a live MSN search and you will find http://www.luxuryselfcateringscotland.com listed as No. 1
click this link http://search.msn.co.uk/results.aspx?q=luxury+self+catering+scotland&FORM=MSNH&mkt=en-gb

It is also listed on Yahoo on page 4. Google will follow in due course (it is always the slowest to rank) but it is interesting that if you get the optimising right with a website that a No. 1 listing can be imediate.

Luxury Self Catering Scotland

2008-12-18T11:57:00.000-08:00

I have just finished a new website for Helensdale in The Mull of Galloway.

luxury self catering scotland

I have used a new technique of suspended blocks of text or image over a panoramic background. As usual, I have taken the images for the website which was a case of taking a sunny oportunity when it presented itself. This is a lovely cottage in a stunning location and I hope the website reflects this.

As far as SEO (search engine optimisation) is concerned, I am going to try and achieve 2 main search terms. The first is "luxury self catering Dumfries and Galloway" and the second is "luxury self catering scotland". The first term should happen first as it is less competetive than the national (scotland) term. The advantage of these terms (besides being well researched terms that have high search numbers) is that they each contain bigger terms "self catering scotland" and "self catering dumfries and galloway". These second terms can be worked on after the success of the primary terms.

It is now the 17th Dec 2009, I anticipate page 1 on Google for "luxury self catering Dumfries and Galloway" by 17th February (2 months) and for the national term "luxury self catering scotland" a month later 17th March 09.

So we will see what happens !!!

Optimise your website ?

2008-12-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

What is there to be gained by optimising your website ?

Getting your website on page one for a Google search is often seen as the key to success for your business. Is this the case? If you sell a product or service and your website is found when people search on-line for it will this change your business ?

The answer is Yes Yes and Yes.

Being found on the web is incredibly important to any business. I am sure we have all done it, last week I wanted a table tennis track suit for one of my sons. So I went onto Google, typed in "table tennis track suit" and found the webshop that gave me what I wanted. It wasn't the first or second one listed, in fact it was the 7th. But I didn't need to go further than the first page of Google results to find what I wanted. I made my order and am now looking forward to giving it to my son as part of his Christmas present.

So the question is this - if you sell table tennis track suits and your shop wasn't on page 1 for my search you didn't get my business. What did I think of the website when I found it? I don't remember. I didn't care. All I wanted was the track suit, if the website offerd me what I wanted then that was all that mattered. In retrospect it could have been better layed out, better colours and more interesting, but it got my sale because it was the first site on Google that offered what I wanted.

So whats more important, getting your website to your potential customer or have a pretty and cutting edge website ?

I always try to create a really attractive website and I get a great deal of satisfaction if I achieve that aim. But ............ it is still more important that the website is found by the potential customer. It needs to be found on the web and this is why I get the customers I do. They know that they will get a marketing missile thats is targetted to their customer.