We are proud to announce our partnership with Magento allowing us to gain more gravitas in the community and experience in the ecommerce field, and thank Christian over at Varien (company behind Magento, also now part owned by Ebay) for his support. We look forward to a very busy Xmas & New Years launching a number of exciting websites, and to working with Magento on the next partnerships projects we have lined up.

Typically I’ve always been taught to have agencies that specialise in their chosen industry, and as seo is a very complex agile service, it should in turn be dealt with by a dedicated seo agency that constantly study and optimise your site (both on and off page) to mirror the constantly changing algorithms . Seo i believe isn’t just another service that can be added by an agency to try and make a quick buck, but i believe should be left to the specialists.

Yes at Creative Sanctuary we specialise in digital design and development for web and mobile, of course we build everything with its best chances of being indexed with Google. We ensure that the correct code and tags are in place such as Browser Titles, Meta Tags, H Tags etc. But we are not a pure seo company, nor do we profess to be one. We specialise in making your site look great and function how you want it to. We always would advise that if its Google organic search you are relying on getting your traffic from in an already competitive market, that you work with one of our seo partner agencies.

I do stress that if its a competitive market you’re in i.e. fashion, jewellery etc then most search terms will not show your website in Google listings (at least not on the first page) without dedicated seo from a specialist seo company, however if it’s a niche name or unique product then its easier to get found with the seo that we can provide as part of the website build.

‘I want my website on the first page of Google’ – I’ve never met a client who doesn’t want this, however the reality is unless you work closely with a dedicated seo company on your key words (amongst other factors), and have a budget for the ongoing work, the chances are you will rarely be found anywhere near the first page. That’s not to say you won’t be found for example, you could be called ‘SanctuaryFashion2011’ and be based in ‘Wembley’, in which case these search terms are only relative to you and your company, so if you market yourself and your name, people will search for those search terms  and you will appear on the first page. However its gets more difficult if your selling a ‘Mens Ted Baker jacket in the UK’, as these search terms are very general, and there’s probably thousands of other sites all competing for the same keywords.

Beware Fraud offers! I constantly get bombarded with fantastic offers such as ‘$500 one off fee Google first page guaranteed’. All I can say here is proceed with caution, most these offers never actually make any difference to your site rankings, and the ones that do get a small boost in rankings are usually bad practise and don’t have any longevity. What’s the worst that can happen?.. well if ‘Black Hat Techniques’ are used i.e. bad techniques that Google classes as spamming, then you can get your seo reset or worse still black listed from Google, this is a good road to go down, it’s very long and laborious and have a detrimental effect on you or website in the future.

In short as the old saying goes ‘you get what you pay for’, and im happy to refer you to one of our tried and tested seo partners.

Feel free to leave a comment about your seo experiences both good and bad.

Mobile Web Sites vs. Mobile Apps from Andy Melichar on Vimeo.

There are a number of free sites that you can generate them from, and once you have one generated, you simply need a QR reader / scanner downloaded to your phone (we use QR SCANNER for iphone 4 ) take a photo and voila!! the scanner converts the code into a meaningful message or contact details. Try our one above, you should be able to photo it on screen (or print out), and it will transfer our contact details.

QR codes can be placed on your site, you can also track your visitors by placing a special referral code on your URL. This year is heavily focused on the mobile world, geo location, tablet browsing etc, photo sharing so this is a great tool to be using in 2011.