How many web design and hosting sites have you seen that offer “search engine submission” (usually to 1001 different search engines)? I took a quick look around and believe me there are thousands.

I’ll let you into a secret, actually it’s all a load of nonsense!

I’ll elaborate a little. First off the biggest player in the search engine game is… go on, guess… yes, that’s right, google. So, you would imagine most of these web design companies would submit you to this search engine, right? Well yes, but what people don’t know is it’s a free service, and you can just add your own site here. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t stress enough the importance of a domain name.

We have many customers who came to us from having a http://jimmyspage.freeserve.co.uk type web address. What people often don’t realise in the early days of creating their web presence is that they are tied in forever to that provider.

Domain names are not expensive, in face we believe in this cause so much that we give one away free with every hosting package! Once you have your own domain name you control your site 100%. You can choose where to host it and you can move your site whenever you want, while maintaining your web address and thus keeping your customers.

So, if you are one of these folks with a Freeserve, Virgin, or (heaven forbid) AOL web address please change it today, or even better still go for one of our hosting packages and get control of your name, web site, and email in one go!

Today I would like to talk about the importance of return visitors. People often talk about the amount of “hits” their website gets, but in marketing terms this is not nearly as important as return visitors, folks who invest time to come back and read what you have to say and look to see if there is anything new. In my experience people will do this once or twice after finding nothing has changed, then they will forget about your site. Don’t let this happen!

One very good way of producing a site that will get people coming back for more is to use a weblog (blog for short) to post latest news, links or comments on a regular basis. If you speak to people who have been using the Internet for a long time they will usually tell you they have a handful of sites they visit every day or two. If you can get people coming back to your site before you know it you will have a community on your site, this is where your special offers or latest product announcements really pay off!

At ThinkSynergy we provide a pro hosting account which includes the installation of an addon script, which could be a weblog. For an example of one of these running you need look no further than this page. You could have a weblog just like this if you sign up for our pro hosting package.

This is probably the biggest rookie mistake on the web. When people start designing websites be it in Frontpage, Dreamweaver or Notepad, they usually design based on how the page looks in Internet Explorer. Most people think that it doesn’t matter, but the following statistics may surprise you:

IE7=13%

IE6=42%

Firefox=31%

So, nearly a third of your potential customers don’t use IE! Read the rest of this entry »

The question I get asked time and time again is “how do I get my site ranked #1 in Google?”. The answer to this can be as simple or as complex as you like. The simple answer is set your sights low! For example, if you are an Audi dealership in Leeds you could aim to be searchable in Google by any of the following phrases:

“Audi dealer Leeds”

“Car dealer Leeds”

“Car dealer Yorkshire”

“Car dealer UK”

Now, to be number one for “Audi dealer Leeds” would be a lot easier to manage than “Car dealer UK” (or even “Audi dealer UK”), as you are competing with Audi dealers just within the Leeds area. As soon as you open up the scope to include the whole of the UK you are competing with the whole of the UK. Read the rest of this entry »