Websites that are in continuous motion stay alive – the same is true of sharks

A website is a bit like a shark, it has to keep moving to stay alive!

Businesses that are serious about their website working for them to increase business realize that they need their website to be dynamic rather than static.

By dynamic, we mean that you have to keep working on your website, posting new information and news about your product or service.

Getting a website built and letting it ‘sit’ hoping to get potential customers doesn’t cut it. Such websites will surely die. Smart business operators keep their websites alive by posting the right type of information that registers with search engines and helps potential customers find their websites and not the competition.

An example of a website in continuous motion

Captivations, a custom sports uniform and accessory business in Australia, is a company that wants their website to work for them 24/7 and to deliver results.

Since Bold Type built their website in 2010, Captivations has more than quadrupled the visits to their website which has reflected in a dramatic increase in business.

During and directly after the build, the owner, Ben Beard, decided he wanted to know how search engine optimization works and, with the help of the Bold Type team, we now work together to get the best SEO results for the Captivations website.

And because Ben wants to work on his business, he has commissioned Bold Type to write online content: news for the website, enewsletters and content for social media networks and key online directories.

How does SEO translate to increased business?

Captivations comes up no 1 position on page one of Google for the world. Click to enlarge image.

Recently on a trip to Canada, key words ‘netball uniforms and bodysuits’ was searched on Google worldwide – yes, that’s worldwide competition!

Captivations came up sixth on page one of Google for the world. For ‘netball bodysuits’ they came up no. 1 position on page one of Google – yes, no. 1, page one Google.

Not only is their SEO strong in Australia, Captivations is ranking highly around the world. That’s good news for the expansion of their business and for overseas customers who can now access a new source of netball uniforms.

Page one of Google is the goal

Being on page one of Google (and other search engines) means that your website gets visited and not your competitors who may not even make the first ten pages of search results.

To get great SEO, you need to think of the shark – in continuous movement, being dynamic and staying alive.

A website needs to keep evolving to stay on top of the competition

If we use Captivations again as an example, they think about and implement improvements to their website – all the time! The company regularly updates the homepage, revises content, and adds new pages. Recently they added ‘example design’ pages for custom netball uniforms to enable visitors to see what they can expect when ordering. The plan is to roll the ‘design example’ feature out across their range of custom sportswear for other sporting codes.

Not only do their visitors benefit from seeing what they get when ordering, but search engines can see that this business is one that means business – and the website continually ranks highly when people search for their products.

Make your website like a shark

You need to devote time to your website every week. A website needs to interact with clients so you need to create a dialogue and keep it going. News pages about your products, the industry and related fields helps keep your customers informed. Customers also need to speak to you so having well positioned contact forms, contact telephone numbers and feedback loops is important.

Making sure that your website continues to grow and deliver information is a significant part of having a very successful website. Design, easy navigation around the website, simple coding behind the scenes are other issues that we will address in the future.

Bold Type is proud to work with the Captivations team to get such great results for their business. We can do the same for your business. Contact us today.

Keep moving and stay alive!

The latest website built by Bold Type

The latest website built by the Bold Type web development team brought its own challenges with rotating images on the homepage that enhance the visitor’s experience rather than annoy, collection galleries for a range of garments, and building content for the client that will continue to increase the number of visitors to their website.

The secret to a productive website that works 24/7 to bring the right type of visitors to a website is having the right content that is search engine keyword friendly. This is something that Bold Type specialises in.

Call Sue Stevens today on 0410 037 635 for a free consultation about how we can make your website (and extended web presence) work for you.

Find out more about why Bold Type web development can improve your web presence.
See Bold Type’s portfolio of websites constructed recently.

Glitterbox website is a unique design that captures the essence of this hair salon in Newtown Sydney

The Bold Type team – web designer, developer, content editor and project manager – have just completed the unique and quite wonderful website for Glitterbox, a unique and quite wonderful hair salon in Newtown.

Sue Stevens, who managed the project, researched hairdressing websites from salons all over the world including New York, San Fransisco and London, not to mention others in Sydney and Melbourne too. Not that we wanted to copy any, but it was good to see what is happening in the world of hair salon websites. Not much was the verdict!

Armed with the belief that we could set a new standard in devising a uniquely designed hair salon website using the open source software, Wordpress, the design team went to town – Newtown to be exact.

The result is a website that reflects the energy of the salon itself. It is also SEO friendly so that more visitors are finding the salon when searching for a hair salon. Also, it can be managed easily by the team at Glitterbox without having to pay ongoing costs to a web expert. It’s a win-win-win situation. We, at Bold Type, just love to see our clients happy. And we’re thrilled to be able to give them exactly what they want – a website that is uniquely theirs.

Link to Glitterbox hair salon, Newtown

Contact Sue for a free consultation about your website needs.

A static website consists of a number of separate web pages that are individually created and not produced in a database for managing the website. Any time a page is changed in a static website, someone needs to find the page, edit it using a webpage editor, make changes to any other pages implicated in the change and reload the all the pages – this takes time and is costly. And because many people are unsure of the process, they often pay a web savvy person to update pages – which becomes even more costly. The alternative of not updating content is not an option as search engines can assume it is a ‘dead’ site so it virtually disappears from view for organic searches and your potential clients.

Dynamic websites are produced by a content management system or database with template pages that are easily changed or otherwise manipulated without needing specific HTML knowledge. For many content management systems, changes are made or content added using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) and simply clicking on ‘publish’.

Not only are dynamic websites easy to manage and therefore cost effective for ongoing maintenance, there are many free open source content management systems to produce dynamic websites to suit any business’ needs. Small to medium sized businesses as well as very large businesses (think the BBC in England) use open source software to run their websites. Whether you need a few pages or a thousand pages, your website can be dynamic (using open source software) and working for you as your business grows.

And because the business owner or a staff member can put up new content regularly, dynamic websites are cost effective to run and, importantly, search engines know that the site is ‘active’ and rank it highly for organic searches.

Bold Type specialises in helping businesses set up dynamic websites that are:

• keyword content rich for search engine optimisation
• designed to suit the business and look professional
• put together by a professional web developer using the appropriate open source web application
• include gallery pages that can be updated with little effort
• include contact and request forms, internal search function, sign up for newsletters and specials and online shopping pages.

Our website designers and professional website developers can build your website ensuring that it has all the content needed to show your business in the best light and deliver on ROI. And because open source built websites are easy to use, you will save money down the track.

Email Bold Type today for an appraisal of your existing website or a quote for website design and development that will have your new website working for you 24/7.

Read about why dynamic websites work for our clients in publishing news.

Back to publishing tips.

Dynamic websites are good for SEO

Firstly, dynamic websites are those websites that are connected a database or data source and changes to the database change what is shown on the dynamic pages. There are many open source web applications that are free, extremely functional and search engine friendly as a result of the many, many web developers who contribute to the source code – and they are extremely easy to use.

The main difference between a dynamic website and a static website is that a dynamic website is much easier to maintain as it has only a few template pages and a database to update rather than having to manually update pages and links on each static page affected by loading additional web content and links on a static website.

This is a primary benefit of an open source website application ie. dynamic website development. The admin console of an open source content management system (CMS) is so easy to use that people can manage their own websites without the need to understand HTML or other IT-speak language. If you can send an email, purchase a product online, add a comment to a web forum or just simply type a letter on your computer, you have all the skills you need to maintain a dynamic website after it has been configured for the business’ needs.

Dynamic websites are also search engine friendly. These days dynamically generated websites are easily indexed by search engines. Using search engine friendly urls is also a bonus for SEO. Google spider searches can find dynamic websites and new content that you have added more quickly and easily thus helping to keep your website content alive and active and your website search engine friendly.

Another bonus is that dynamic website applications allow your website to be built the way that you want. Once you have your website designed to suit your business needs, it can be ‘skinned’ onto your open source dynamic web application. Add keyword rich content, and your website is up and running.

As your business expands or your website needs change, dynamic websites allow you to add extentions or ‘plugins’ very easily. Not sure what a plugin is? Check Wikipedia’s definition [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plugins].

Dynamic websites can have standard content pages, image galleries featuring products, shopping carts, contact forms, search features, directories, forums, blogs and many more web pages that can enhance your visitor experience.

Best of all, because there are many free open source web applications available, the cost of putting together a well-designed dynamic website is reasonable and accessible for small to medium sized businesses. And because dynamic websites can be easily managed, ongoing maintenance costs are either non-existent or minimal.

Let Bold Type web development professionals help you to build your business website. By enlisting our website content writers and editors, web designers and web developers, you will get a dynamic website that will look great and work for you to drive traffic and new customers.

We at Bold Type pride ourselves on building fully-operational, search engine friendly dynamic websites at affordable prices.

Contact Sue at Bold Type today for an appraisal of your existing website or a quote to build a dynamic website that will be your best marketing tool working for you 24/7.

© Bold Type, 2009

Bold Type is a web publishing company located in Balmain in Sydney, Australia. We can work with you wherever you are located in Australia. Currently we have clients and partners in Sydney, Brisbane, and Regional New South Wales and Regional Queensland.

Read about the differences between static websites and dynamic websites in our publishing tips.

Back to publishing news.

• Project managed the development of affordable, individualised, dynamic websites that give proprietors complete control over their primary marketing asset: their website. See website portfolio for recently developed websites.
• Produced a non-fiction list from conception to market – series of 45 full-colour illustrated books
• Developed a business website with 3000 pages of quality online content that had exceptional search engine optimisation (SEO) – keyword search results that consistently appear on page one of Google (the world) – the website included an online directory, resource centre, ecommerce shopping facility and Web 2.0 community interactivity
• Project managed the development of online policies, processes and procedures for a state government department – included training sessions for writers, and structural and copy editing of online content
• Produced educational books, CD-ROMs and webpages for students and teachers from K–12 for Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australian education departments and educational publishing houses
• Written publishing style manuals that incorporated print and online publishing standards to ensure consistency across all business communications and publishing products
• Production management of print and electronic resources including substantive editing and copy editing, and developing art briefs, copyright schedules and print specifications

Publishing network

Bold Type has an established network of publishing professionals including writers (online and print), editors, graphic designers, illustrators, indexers, typesetters and proofreaders.

If you need someone to manage a team of publishing professionals to meet your website or print publishing needs, contact Sue at Bold Type.

Academic record

• 2005 Doctor of Philosophy, University of Sydney
• 1997 Bachelor of Arts Humanities, first-class honours, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
• 1994 Bachelor of Arts, Australian and Comparative Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

Sue’s academic career includes tutoring in the sociology department at Sydney University, writing academic papers and presenting papers at academic conferences.

On completion of her undergraduate degree, Sue won one of six Griffith University Scholarships for Women which enabled her to complete her Honours program with first-class Honours.

For a free consultation and quote for your next web publishing or print publishing job, contact Sue Stevens.