I'm sure we've all seen this - or even done this!  It's that old story about the car mechanic who was so busy, because he was a good mechanic, he didn't have time to fix his own car.  A mechanic will often have smoke pouring out of the back of his car!  It's a similar story to the shoe-mender's children with holes in their shoes

Or the web designers site with some major holes in it!!

Time to ring the changes I thought.  I thought it was a good time to try out a new look for the web site. 

The time it took to actually change all the pages on the site was about 30 seconds.  OK a lot more time went into the design but it's interesting to think that you could easily change any element on your site within moments.

Are there lessons for you?  Well I'm lucky that I can use this site for some experimentation with Google because nearly all my work comes from word of mouth.  After I wrote the previous article, about 10 days ago, I tried some new things, changed some key words, and did some "clever" SEO stuff.

The result was that I dropped from No 1 on Google to page 13 - where nobody is going to find me!!

That tells me, and you, two things: firstly websites are dynamic and their changes are picked up by search engines.  Just because you've got a first page position on Google today doesn't mean you can open the champagne and wait for the customers to roll up.  Other people are optimising their sites, and are looking for your place on the front page.

The second thing is that "clever" stuff doesn't always work with Google.  Nobody knows how Google works - otherwise we'd be the billionaires and they'd be reading this!  Google has got more PhD's working for them than you can imagine and all those guys are working on ways to rank your site... and make more money for Google!

A "cold calling" company is essentially just that.  They are a company that sells stuff over the phone.  Today it's SEO, if there's no money in that they'll move on.  Double glazing, cheaper utilities, personal loans, or some Amazonian plant extract that will lower your cholesterol, cure baldness and make the dog clean up his own mess. It's all the same.

Do it yourself, or find a way of doing it more effectively, but don't waste your money on magical cures and potions.

Are these people any good?  Do you need them?  Do you need to spend this money?

Usually the truth is... no, no, and no.

How do I know this?  Well, try typing Isle of wight web design into Google and (today at least) you see a link to this site - at No 1!!  I haven't used any SEO "expert" charging £200 a month; I haven't spent a fortune with Google; but I have spent a bit of time on my site, optimising and enhancing.

These are all things you can do yourself, and it only cost you a bit of time.  What else would you be doing?  Watching Britains got Talent?  Let me save you some time with that... no it hasn't!

I think this sums up our approach to web site design and use.  You should be able to do stuff yourself without relying on an expensive designer or SEO guru.  Get it touch, start using the power of the web to improve your business.  You need a website, because nobody really calls those 118 numbers any more they just check Google or Bing.  If you've got a website you might as well have something that works well for you.

And, if you do nothing else, don't believe the claims of cold calling SEO gurus.

Well that's logical for us. If I'm looking for a holiday cottage or villa, I don't want to spend 10 minutes looking at every last nook and cranny.  It's a flavour - if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth even more.

The really great thing about YouTube is that you can take the video and embed it into your site.  The visitor never leaves your site, which means they might just click on the book now button!

Have a look here for an example of how you can embed a video - www.westwight.net/video

Be careful though.  I picked a video at random on YouTube but I saw some terrible examples.  I saw a villa in Portugal with the wind whistling across the pool, making it look like the North Sea.  I also saw a video, apparently to promote a villa, and there was an ironing board complete with pile of washing in the sitting room!  Not much of a lifestyle statement is it?

It's all possible!

I've just had an interesting couple of days trying to resolve a mess with a big domain hosting company.  It's not the company I normally deal with, and to be honest I wouldn't deal with them at all except I have one client who insists on using them.

I must have spent hours on the phone and sent off lots of emails.  I eventually escalated the problem to the UK Managing Director (don't you just love Google!)

I've just rebuild my clients website and I wanted to to do something fairly standard to point towards the new site.  If you want to know more you need to look up DNS at Wikipedia.

I don't think, for one moment, that there was anything malicious involved but the website and email just stopped working.  They were in the middle of a big system rebuild but instead of being honest in the beginning (we could have waited a week to make the transfer) we were just plonked in the middle of a big mess.  No web site, no email.

To be fair to the company they were trying their best but they just didn't have the resources to deal with the hundreds (or thousands?) of similar support requests they were getting.

Whether it's domain name registrations or even web hosting, it doesn't always pay you to go with the cheap option - there is always a catch.

What?  A blog can improve your place on Google?  Really?

Well, yes and no.  First off, let me confess something.  I don't really know how search engine optimisation (SEO) works.  Now not many web developers will say that to you.  SEO is the holy grail of web site designers and something that we're all supposed to be able to guarantee.

Can I? Yes, I can but clearly there should major caveats in there.

Any company that tells you they can make you No 1 on Google is either lying, deluded or planning on charging you vast sums of money.

Google is an immensely successful company and has a lot to protect from its competitors.  Therefore how it indexes sites is a closely guarded secret.  We can all have a good idea of how it works but in reality there are things we just don't know for sure.

In the olden days (the 90's!) you could write some web pages and virtually forget about them.  Now, with so much more competition clamouring for attention, it seems Google and others, give preference to dynamic content.  The more often I change my site, the more frequently Google will visit.

If you've got a rental cottage in France, write a journal once a week.  It can be the current weather, what's on in the local towns, how this years vintage is, anything.  It won't guarantee that you're going to do better with Google but you might list higher than your neighbour.

I've got all the facilities of the CMS.  I can change the look of the site instantly using another template.

I'll add more and more features over the next few days.  It's fun, and it's easy.