Simon Winstanley Architects

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

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

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.

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 ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.