We offer free initial consultancy with all projects. If you require additional consultancy such as strategic development, site audits, troubleshooting or simply a second opinion on a project, we are able to offer an ongoing consultancy service.

Web Design / Web page production

• Creative design 
• HTML / static template development 
• PHP programming / cms development 
• Database development 
• Consultancy / client meetings
• Project management 

Marketing

The Blue Cube offer ‘off the-shelf’ or a bespoke internet marketing and SEO packages with a view of building your online brand, to increase web traffic, and therefore sales.

Online marketing programmes work alongside web design and development to increase the chance that your audience will find your site online. A well-planned e marketing strategy requires clear goals, on-going site/competition analysis along with a web optimization program. Ongoing e-marketing helps your site to rank higher than your competitors.

We are able to provide the following:

SEO Competitor Report

Competitor analysis is the first stage of a competitive e-marketing strategy. We will investigate your online marketing objectives and benchmark this against your competitors.

Keyword Analysis Report

Keywords and Key phrases are the short terms your web users type into a search engine and hopefully find your website. Your choice of key phrases are crucial to achieving online e-marketing success. This report will analyse any key phrases most suited to your business and target audience. It also includes guidelines for strategy implementation.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Implementation

SEO is the method of applying the combination of keyword strategy along with competitive analysis. This process includes internal link optimisation and external link creation. On-page optimization tweaks will be applied to the main pages that exist on your site.

Further On-Page Optimisation

SEO requires optimized key phrases to be included in as many pages as possible. The on-page optimisation service involves us producing and improving the on page text and meta tags to include your key phrases into the content, and any links on that page.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Management

Managed Email Marketing Campaigns

SEO, or search engine optimisation, refers to the manipulation that can legitimately be performed on the web pages of a web site. Saying that the manipulation should be legitimate does not in any way suggest that it’s possible to do something that is illegal, but rather that organic SEO needs to be done in a way that is approved by the search engines.

The terms, black hat and white hat are often bandied around. The reference goes back to the days of the early western movies when the good guys wore white hats, and the bad guys wore black hats.

You could therefore say that white hat SEO is natural organic SEO, and black hat SEO is the kind that the search engines do not approve of. Back hat methods can get your web site banned, in fact, but it is not illegal in any real sense of the actual law.

There are two basic kinds of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to the things you can do on a web page to help it to rank well in the search engines.

The title tag should include your primary keyword and be relatively short. The description meta tag and the keyword meta tag should be included as well. Many search engines no longer use the keyword tag, but it won’t hurt, and might help to still use it.

The visible parts of the page should start with an H1 tag as the article headline. This should also include the primary keyword. The body of the article should have the primary keyword included in as natural a way as possible to a density of around 1% to 3%.

Off page organic SEO includes gaining external links back to the page. If the anchor of the link, the piece of text that can be clicked on, includes your primary keyword, this is by far the best kind of back link.

You have your web site up and running. It looks great, functions well, and everyone says it’s a work of art. But do you have paying customers? Does your new website pay for itself? Is it the money machine you had hoped it would be? If not, then you need targeted traffic! This article lists 5 benefits of having an SEO consultant.

1. An SEO consultant can critique your web site and discover its strengths and weaknesses. They can then develop a strategy that will lift your web site from obscurity to new realms of visibility, but a proper assessment of the current situation needs to come first.
2. Your SEO consultant will likely develop a strategy best suited to your particular situation. You web site will be search engine optimised before any traffic strategy is put in place. This will help the site to rise naturally in the search engine rankings, bringing in natural traffic.
3. A traffic campaign will likely start through article marketing. This involves SEO articles written by the staff of the SEO consultant to rank high in the search engines, but also to provide good information for potential visitors. There will also be a link back to the web site. This will provide a valuable back link, as well as a means for readers of the article to get to your web pages.
4. Continual monitoring of the situation is another thing you should expect from your SEO consultant. They will provide you with regular reports on how your web site is performing. Expect to see a steady rise in rankings and visitor numbers. If not, ask why not!
5. Your chosen SEO consultant can help to educate your own staff in the ways of SEO. This would not be for the more complicated stuff, but rather for the day to day running maintenance of the site. Understanding basic SEO will save your company a lot of money, and any SEO consultant who is reluctant to provide simple, basic SEO training should be viewed with suspicion.

There are no hard and fast rules, but there are a few things that should be observed. This article will take you through 5 tips that should hold you in good stead when choosing an SEO company.

1. Don’t be persuaded by outlandish claims. When an SEO company claims it can “get you to the top of Google in a week or less,” ask them to explain exactly what they mean in complete detail. Anyone can get a number one position in Google for an obscure keyword with no competition, but it won’t help your business in the slightest. The claims an SEO company makes must have highly relevant meaning that can advance your business, otherwise why bother?
2. Don’t be afraid to ask an SEO company to provide some evidence that they have had success promoting other businesses. In fact, any good company will be falling over themselves to show you the evidence. If an SEO company seems reluctant to prove that they have already successfully done what they claim they can do for you, be extremely wary.
3. Determine exactly what you will receive for the money you are asked to pay. Make sure that everything is listed in detail, and that you are happy to pay for what they state they will deliver. Shop around. Don’t be afraid of trying to get the best deal you can, and if an SEO company fumbles about what you will be getting for your money, go somewhere else. In fact, a good SEO company will usually over deliver. You will often get more than you expected as a measure of goodwill, and of their efficiency.
4. Don’t just leave everything up to the SEO company. Keep abreast of what is going on and monitor what is happening. Expect to receive feedback in the form of regular reports. Check for yourself that what is claimed to be happening is actually happening.
5. 5. Only accept an SEO company that offers excellent communications with you. It’s OK to use a company that is remote, but only if you have several good and reliable way of contacting them. It’s probably best to use an SEO company that you can actually visit in person, but this is not absolutely necessary.

The Challenge…

For many people the advent of the internet is a revolution in providing access to the worlds largest resource of information and advertising opportunities, but when it comes to commerce the transition has in fact been relatively slow considering the marketing opportunities that exist on the world wide web.

For some companies however the plunge into online trading, advertising and marketing has delivered incredible results.

Our case study focuses on ‘First Health and Safety’, a company with a reputable name for delivering effective classroom based training in the field of health and safety.

With little understanding of the internet and its effect on their business model ‘First Health and Safety’ soon discovered a revolution in online training was starting to challenge their traditional business model.

Quick to realise there was a real threat to their business environment ‘First Health and Safety’ took the bold but extremely wise decision to create an online presence and join in with the revolution of e-Learning and online education.

The next step was to find a web business that could work with them in creating a new online business model, and developing an e-Learning system with a modern look and feel.

The Solution…

‘First Health and Safety’ were lucky enough to find ‘The Blue Cube’, leaders in web based solutions including Web Design, Hosting, Data Management, Programming, Search Engine Optimisation.

With all of these skills in-house ‘The Blue Cube’ were able to deliver a complete online business solution including:

• A website and web optimisation strategy that means that First Health and Safety appear on Page ‘1′ of Google for extremely competitive keywords. The website usually ranks number 1 or 2 in a list of 60+ million search results!

• A e-Learning platform that has allowed First Health and Safety to dominate the online health and safety training marketplace.

Clients Feedback and Recommendation

“Like most companies we had to trawl through a number of quotations from different web companies to find the right company. The Blue Cube stuck from the rest simply because they talked common sense in a manner we could clearly understand and best of all they could offer all the right skills in-house, rather than us having to deal with different companies”

“We appreciated the fact that having great looking website was going to be no good if we could not attract visitors. The guys at The Blue Cube explained to us how website optimisation worked and exactly what we needed to do to get to the top of Google. Within 12 months our website was appearing on page one of Google for our target words ‘HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING’ and ‘ONLINE TRAINING’. We are delighted with the work the ‘The Blue Cube’ has done for us so far and we know there is going to be a long standing and healthy business relationship moving forward”

1. Optimise your website for your customers. SEO for small business means targeting the right person, which means using the right keywords in your pages. Think about the type of person you will do business with. This is critical, for only then can you discover the right general keywords to target.
2. For effective SEO for small business you need specific keywords, the kind that people actually search for. To uncover them you need a keyword tool. There are many free ones available, such as the free Wordtracker tool, or Google’s free keyword tool. The best keywords are those that are very specific and comprised of several words. These keywords mean that those searching on them know exactly what they want.
3. Using the specific keywords uncovered in step 2, you can now apply SEO for small business to your page content. Assign a single primary keyword to each page. The content on that page should be focussed on the keyword. The content should have a title in an H1 tag that starts with the keyword. For best SEO for small business results the keyword should be included in the content body at a density of 2% to 4%.
4. The fourth SEO for small business tip is optimising the meta tags of your page HTML code. The most important bit is the page title tag. The primary keyword should be included in the title tag. The description tag should briefly describe the page content and include the primary keyword near the beginning. If you use the keyword meta tag, only include keywords that actually appear on the visible page.
5. The final SEO for business tip is to include your primary keyword in all image alt tags, and any links to other site pages. The aim is to leave the search engines with no doubt as to what the page is all about.

SEO for small business owners is not difficult to achieve. Finding the right SEO partner who can work within your budget and provide a cost effective SEO service is simple. Call The Blue Cube on 01527 595595 today!

Search engine marketing involving organic search results means that your website is encouraged to rank highly through natural, or organic, methods. This means that certain search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies are employed.

SEO can mean different things to different people, but at its most basic it is simply preparing your web pages and supporting them in such a way that they will naturally be liked by the search engines.

Search engine marketing preparation means on-page optimisation and off-page optimisation. On-page optimisation means ensuring that everything on the web page, including the hidden bits of the underlying HTML code, is at its best for the search engines. Off-page optimisation means bolstering up the web page by getting appropriate back links to it.

Organic on-page search engine marketing begins with the title. A web page should be focussed on a chosen keyword phrase, and the page or document title and the page content title should share the same keyword that the page is focussed on.

For example, if the keyword phrase for a particular web page is “Car Insurance” then the web page could be saved as “car-insurance.html” and the document title in the HTML title tag could be something like, “Car Insurance – All You Need To Know.”

The article that is visible to the visitor on the page could have a title like, for example, “Car Insurance The Best Deals.” The article following the title could be around 500 words and the keyword phrase of “Car Insurance” would be used within the body of the article between 10 and 15 times. This represents an acceptable keyword density of 2% to 3%.

Off-page search engine marketing means getting appropriate websites to link back to your site. This increases the importance of your website in the eyes of the search engines. You can create your own back links by having a blog where you post complementary articles about your website, or you can use social media sites. The best back links, however, are those you get from other sites who link to you naturally.

There was a phase a while back where people realised that any old kind of junk could send a web page rocketing up the search engine rankings. Software was produced to make it easy, scraping content off already published pages and regurgitating it, and for a while it worked great. Using some form of advertising on the pages, such as Google AdSense, many people made a lot of money while it lasted.

It didn’t last long though. The search engines got wise to the trick and changed the way they operated. They made a big effort to clean up the Internet, which in turn forced everyone to create better, more meaningful content. Of course, there are still those who spend all their time trying to trick the search engines, but proper SEO content will always perform better than anything else.

SEO content is content, or articles that are written in such a way that the pages they are placed on perform well in the search engine rankings. This in turn means that the pages get a lot of traffic. With a lot of traffic the page can sell a lot of products that are highly relevant to what the page content is about. And it all starts with SEO content.

Because of the need for fresh SEO content, a whole industry sprang up to supply it. Writers who had been paid commensurate to their skills for writing articles suddenly found that the price was being driven down. It wasn’t long before $2 or even $1 per article of 500 words was considered good.

It wasn’t good though; neither the quality of the articles or the price paid to the hard-working writer. More recently it seems that things are moving back to where they should have stayed. Writers are being paid more to create real SEO content of genuine quality. The demand is still there and the writers are more than willing to supply. SEO content is finally here to stay.

Contact The Blue Cube for help with website copywriting services.

Knowing how to choose the best SEO services will not only save you money, it will also give you the best results for your web site.

This article offers you 5 tips to help you choose the best SEO services for you.

1. Be wary of exaggerated claims. Yes, getting your web site to number one in Google can happen in less than a week, but will it do anything for your business? You see, targeting an obscure keyword that has little or no competition means that you can get to number one in Google in days – hours even. You won’t get any traffic though, so why bother?
2. Make certain you fully understand what you will get for your money from the SEO services you choose. Have them give it to you in writing, preferably with a laid out schedule of what will happen now and what will happen next. Read through it carefully and make sure you really understand what it entails so that there are no surprises.
3. Expect to receive regular reports about everything the SEO services do in their promotional campaign for your web site. You should get everything explained in clear, easy to understand language. Ask for this before signing anything. A report is something you can refer back to if anything goes wrong, or if there is a disagreement about what happened.
4. Don’t leave the monitoring up to the SEO services alone. Do your own monitoring. Check the results they claim should happen. Don’t expect miracles overnight, but do expect to see an upward trend throughout the campaign. Things should keep moving forwards, so look out for that happening.
5. When the SEO services have completed the agreed campaign and you web site is doing well (it should be doing well at least), this is the time that your staff should receive some basic SEO training. All that is needed is for several people to understand the daily running of the web site – nothing too fancy. Any good SEO services should agree to that.

It could be that your shiny new web site that the web development company built for you (costing a proverbial arm and a leg) is not performing as well as you had hoped. In fact, it may be ranked at number 2,479 in Google, and not appearing at all in any of the others. You need an SEO consultant!

Your chosen SEO consultant will start by doing a proper assessment of your web site. Your site’s strengths and weaknesses will be highlighted, as well as all the things that need to be changed or optimised. This initial assessment report is important as it will outline what needs to be done to get your web site doing business.

Your web site may need to be re-focussed around more relevant keywords. This could involve writing new SEO web copy, the text of the pages that visitors land on. In this way the visitors will get better information and the search engines will better understand what your pages are all about.

You web site will need to be helped by having links from other sites. Your SEO consultant can achieve this very successfully by having SEO articles specially written that can be submitted to article directories. These articles will have useful information pertaining to your website as well as a link to allow visitors to get there.

Expect your SEO consultant to issue you with regular reports about the progress of the project. It may be a staged project with predetermined goals set out at certain intervals. You should get detailed reports from your SEO consultant telling you what is happening as it happens.

An SEO consultant is your friend if your web site is not performing as well as it should. Choose carefully though, there are some disreputable ones around. Ask for past satisfied customers, check out the quality of their own web site, and expect the SEO consultant to answer all question candidly. Be suspicious of any one who tries to evade questions.

Contact The Blue Cube if you would like to discuss SEO today!