You have seen the adverts, had the emails and will probably have been told that you can get cheaper websites online than going to a website design agency … well its all true, with one big BUT!

You will no doubt want to appear in the search results on Google? You probably want the best chance of a high position? Well if you go down the template route from the large suppliers your website will likely be penalised according to respected professionals in the SEO world who test and monitor Google’s search engine algorithms. In recent updates to it’s search algorithm, Google has devalued websites that duplicate content. Fair enough, who needs 27 websites all saying the same thing about the same company … but it now goes further.

Google now devalues websites that duplicate code as well. That’s essentially what a template site is, duplicated code. Nobody knows what percentage of code Google classes as duplicate content, its a well guarded secret.

So, if you want your new website to rank on search engines your first step is to avoid template, automatic or build your own websites. If you have your website built properly, from scratch and individually your foundation is solid. If you choose to use a template site you will be facing an uphill struggle to compete for position now and in the future … and who needs that?

Talk to AsOne on 0161 368 9100 before committing to a template project that you may later come to regret.

There has been a lot of talk about the ‘new’ Google Panda update. This is a change to the Google filtering used to rank sites. The update is designed to hurt the sites that try to cheat or use what is called ‘black hat’ techniques to get to the top. The people it is affecting badly are the sites with traditionally high traffic and rankings. If they have used sneaky methods to inflate their position they will suddenly drop and others don’t necessarily rise, they just don’t drop. The net effect is they appear to rise.

However, a lot of SEO companies are advocating changing the sneaky methods to new sneaky methods to compensate. They fail to realise that the practice is the reason Google introduced Panda and when they see people working around it they will just make a new update. Its’ an expensive battle to keep on top of Google’s attempt to normalise results and keep high quality sites at the top. It’s why AsOne believe that Social Networking and Social Marketing using the power of people is a more reliably long term strategy and the foundation on which your Marketing should be based.

Think of this, Business has thrived for thousands of years based on word-of-mouth. You best clients tell their contacts and before you know it you have a good business. Concentrating on Search engines is like advertising in the yellow pages … time, effort and money getting a good advert, good position. Remember people changing their company name to ‘1st widget company’ so they appear first in the book? Google is the modern Yellow Pages. It relies on people ‘picking it up’ and looking for what they need. 

Social Marketing goes back to the beginning, it’s the modern equivalent of word-of-mouth. People will always trust their friends over an advert. Use that power to encourage and assist your customers to advertise for you.