Promoting your web page: some tips from the desk @ www.rsvp-media.com

Unless your website page is amongst the top search engine results, no one will know your page exists. This is the reality of the www.world. The Internet consists of web pages and millions more appear every day. With emerging countries accessing the Internet with millions of users (China, India, Brazil), it will become even more competitive. This post will certainly open your eyes on page quality we learnt in the last 5 years.  Every day there is more and more to manage and get right and learn. Don't we all feel that way? so here we go:

1) Content
Original Content, please!
All search engines use web robots (spider/crawler) designed to search a website and grab keywords and text for the website to be listed on the search engine. If your site does not have a lot of content, your chances of being found are significantly low. Let's take an example, if your website has 10 pages, and your competitors has 100 pages, it is a lot more likely that your competitor's website will be found first. So do not hesitate to share your list of competitors during the concept brief with your best website agency in Dubai.

2) Add Content Frequently
If your site contains frequently updated texts / contents, visitors have yet another reasons to come and visit your portal and bookmark your site. This is part of the content requirement you need to discuss with your web design company in Dubai. For any clients visiting your website, they should understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

3) Make sure each page have enough content
Individual web pages that only contains a few character do not help  your page or your visitors. Make sure they at least provide 250-300 keywords per page.

4) Publish a creative visual
Users are visual creatures, adding one or more pictures in a slide show help grab visitors eyes / attention, build interest, and make sure they don't leave the site immediately.

Amongst the hundred of websites I browse last month, I wrote on a special post it that URL:
http://www.cma-cgm.com The vessel home page with containers told me right away what types of carrier expert they are.

5) Page Titles
Most search engines use the title of the web pages when displaying your site in their search results. Therefore you may place 4-5 keywords into the title of each pages and make the title understandable.

We share with you a sample not to be done as it mis-use the consumer:

Case Study:
This below hotel is a brand new resort in Dubai Palm Jumeirah. Whoever has done their website has inserted the name of the most popular resorts in Dubai being the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, and surprisingly it does only come on the landing page of that hotel.

As Anantara Hotel is newly open, it may be a marketing tactical, but does not constitute a very smart move. See what does the Meta Tag returns:

I called this a tactical because to the exception of the Home Page, the keywords [Jumeirah+Beach+Hotel] are not part of the title page strategy of the website.

If I was in the Ecommerce Team of Jumeirah Beach Hotel, I would give a courtesy call to the Director of Marketing at Anantara, and ask it to be removed immediately.

According to MOZ, the leader in marketing analytics, titles should be less than 70 characters in length, and it should include a primary and secondary keyword along with the company or brand name.

6) Domain 301 redirects
After you've registered the domain name make sure your domain name is properly forwarding to the address you want. For example, our sister company WS Centre wants to be http://www.wscentre.com and not on http://wscentre.com . Both of these addresses are valid, however when entering http://wscentre.com it is forwarded to http://www.wscentre.com . If we did not forward the URL it could mean that Google and other search engines will treat both domains as different domains and could be a lower page rank.

7) Keep your headers small
The top headers at all your pages should be small one to two inches in height with a clean font. A large header will make the visitors scroll down and prove to be distracting for users who visit the site regularly.

8) Test with other devices
Desktops and computers are not the only way people access the Internet. Make sure your page is accessible and viewable on other devices such as smartphones and tablets.

More information, please get in touch with us at info@rsvp-media.com

Do you make any of these 5 Simple SEO mistakes?

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You decide you're going to invest on SEO for getting traffic, to optimize your business website so that Google and Yahoo send you hundreds of visitors per day, free of charge. Ideally you would have heard this from a fellow business colleague who got super traffics recently. You collect your friend's input, read SEO blog tips online and rush off to do your keyword research, and you find a few phrases that are bringing in massive amounts of traffic. Smelling the opportunity, you optimize your website and get lots of links, expecting to see your website start climbing the search results.

And it does...slowly or not at all.

After working on it for several weeks or even months, it's certainly moved up, but you're still on page two or three. You wonder: what's going on?

SEO might sounds cool but it still far more easy to follow a food recipe and get somehow results than venturing into SEO extreme complicated world and methodology. Because SEO requires quite a large team to make it happen, and it's constant daily work.

The great news is that SEO Performance require professional company to optimize website.
SEO requires qualified staffs to make it happen, because it takes time to master it, so that you can generate high-traffic words and phrases.

Here are the 5 most common SEO mistakes I've seen, with some tips to correct them:

1. Not using analytics to see what converts
Hundred and thousands of visits per day is good, but it's better when conversion is high. The only way to find out is to track it. Use an analytics package from KISS Metrics to setup conversion tracking for your keyword phrases, and then compare them against each other to see what's producing the best results. Google Analytics tells you what happened, KISS Metrics tells you who did it. Knowing will help you better optimize your site as a whole and assist you to understand where to change.

Tips: Converting a lead is a talent that the business owner needs to materialize within 24 hours. The SEO company will not be the one handling the potential client. Ideally an entire internal process needs to be identified to answer to that client, because he/she will contact your business with a specific request. You can compare it as a client who browse all your web pages, understand your contents, your services/offers. Be ready for it!!!

2. Not using words people look for
Do your pages use the words people search for? if not, users won't be able to find your website, therefore your business is not visible.

Tips: If you have a page about Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, you would not just put the words "Burj Khalifa Tower", you would want to use words like "how high is Burj Khalifa" because people are going to type that into the search box, since it is tallest building in the world. Or, a spa or beauty salon website should include its menu in plain text, not just a PDF, and include its business hours.

3. Not having unique title tags and meta description
Pay close attention to your titles and descriptions, especially on your home page or high traffic pages. I am still surprise when I see websites that have their company or website name as the title for every page throughout their website. It's such a bad mistake.

Tips: Every page should have a unique title, not only for SEO purposes. Those pages titles are shared on Facebook posts, tweets and used as the text when someone bookmarks your website, hence it s super important.

So looking at the portfolio of a web design company, they could have web development or online marketing services as their main homepage keywords.

Each page on your website has what is called meta data that essentially tells search engines what a particular page is about. Each page on your website should have unique, descriptive meta data. The big mistake would be to use the same meta data for every pages. You need to make it easy for search engines like Google to interpret what your content is about.

4. Not optimizing  your images
This is quite a large one. What we've noticed is that many companies will pass on photos to an outside "Webmaster" or freelance who will upload them without considering how to optimize them. This is a huge mistake. You need to provide the necessary information for each image so that the company can optimize them, or you should be able to upload the images yourself (content management system needed).

Tips: rename the image file to include your keywords before you upload the image to your website. Ex: bmw-car-repair-service-dubai.jpg


5. Abusing of keyword stuffing
With the last week release from Google Humming update, keywords stuffing is considered an old school SEO tactic that will not help you. Google now better understand the content and relevancy of a web page and site. While keyword density may have been a strong signal in the past it no longer carries much weight compared to other signals and ranking factors.

Tips: Clients and website owners need to invest in quality content that reveal an interest for the web user/reader. Google is not going to serve up your web page in their search results if it is unreadable by humans (10 years ago, yes, but not today).

Bottom line for your new website, is to hire the right web design company that has its own in house content writers capable of producing great original articles that you are proud to publish on your website. It certainly has a cost, but if it results in more conversions, it will be a far better investment. Engine optimization is about creating clean and detailed web pages that can be easily read by automated robots.

@ The Desk - Romain - www.RSVP-Media.com

Html5 and Responsive Web Design: some answers for business owners

Have you notice that information is being disseminated faster than ever over the Internet and is being consumed on a large variety of devices. Desktops, PCs, tablets, smartphones, TVs and even cameras...with more in the pipeline (Google Glass...). Consumers on online content no longer view content on only one particular type of device. This dissemination of content to who-knows=what kind of device has resulted in new challenges for managers of online content.

Web design company in UAE are aware of that trends required by clients. At first, the company must analyze the client's existing website traffic by devices. This is an essential metric to understand, in order to propose the most suitable design. If this is a new website, the owner should determine where the contents will be read.

One of the essential goals for any web site owner is to reach as wide an audience as possible. In order to deliver expectations in today's online market environment, it is important to employ a design strategy that supports the wide array of devices in use for viewing online content. Responsive web design is one such approach that has received much attention in the past few years. When executed well, this approach can make your site viewable across the multitude devices on the market.

Let's make a quick test by viewing your website on a Window environment desktop, a 15" Mac Book, a iPhone 5, a Samsung Galaxy, an iPad, a Windows tablet and your TVs screen.

Responsive Web Design is the approach that a design should be flexible enough to adapt to the screen size and platform on the visiting user.

For a design to be responsive, it typically needs the following three attributes:

• Fluid Grid: a fluid grid system uses percentages to define column or div widths instead of pixels. 
• Media Queries: it enable custom CSS based on the min-max width of a browser,
• Responsive images: similar in nature to the fluid grid, responsive images don't have fixed widths but instead have a max-width. This enables images to be scaled down to fit the width of the screen on which the webpage is rendered.

Wed Design Chronological Dates

In 1991, the World Wide Web started to become what we recognize it as today with the use of Hypertext Markup Language (Html). HTML provided a simple way for web developers to place information in a formatted structure on the web and opened the door for actual page layount and information design. In 1996, we saw the first Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which allowed designers to separate the actual information from its presentation, as well as the ability to reuse design elements. CSS continued to evolve, in 1998, CSS2 was released which offered definition for media types. Web standards continued to progress slowly, ad by 2007 smartphone technology was becoming more mainstream for the viewing of online content. The first iPhone was released in June of 2007, android followed in late 2008, and the iPad was released in 2010 which created a new wave of tablets and mobile viewing technology. Developers and designers were finding they needed a better way of presenting web content on these devices and the standards were not keeping up. Since 2010, many tablets, smart phones, android phones have appeared and pushed developers and designers to enter a new era.

Focus Trends

As HTML5 becomes more developed, it offers a number of advantages for businesses that are building and deploying Web content. Here are a few (+) points:

• Deployment across multiple platforms means you can develop once and use the same code in many different markets,
• Widespread familiarity with HTML among developers and web designers gives you a better shot at using your IT resources well,
• It offers more reliable storage options, including the ability to store client-side data temporarily in a true SQL database rather than using cookies,
• The development of HTML5 apps may lead to better mobile access to business intelligence in the future, because all devices with an HTML5 compatible browser will have the same ability to collect, collate and use data. 

RSVP-Media.com is a Website Designing Company licensed and operating in UAE and India as a specialized digital interactive organization for design, development and marketing solutions. Our dedicated in-house team of professionals is always ready with new and unique ideas of promoting your business. Ranging from dynamic, e-commerce, auction website designing to its optimization, we take care of all.

Contact us for your website enquiries or questions at info@rsvp-media.com or enquiry@wscentre.com for assistance.

@ The Desk - Romain Saada, Founder / CEO

S.M.E: Why do you lose your ranking positioning in Google?

You may wake up from the bed, and within minutes run to your computer, and see your ranking popularity on the website. After doing the research, you realized that your website ranking has dropped to lower pages on Google.

Why did you lose your rankings in Google?

Recent updates performed by Google in Q4 2012, on search algorithms (named Panda and Penguin), have caused many website owner to doubt Google thought. Before you start screaming and hating Google for your website's change in rankings, let's take a tour at why Google makes those decisions.

The first point in Google methodology is "Focus on the user and all else will follow". Google spends lot of money with thousands of his staff to provide a search engine that will give searchers the best information available on the web relative to the search terms. It might sounds just like a computer programs, but effectively it's hard working hours made by an entire team of programers. Google is working to serve web users, and not simply web owners. The results are, that Google would adjust its algorithms to bring top quality content to the top of its search rankings.

Here comes the BIG fat PANDA?

 In February 2011, Google implemented the first of its major algorithms updates, named, "Google Panda". The main intent of Google Panda was to increase user experience by lowering the ranking of websites with "low quality" or "thin" content.

In other words, websites with high quality, unique content would be rewarded with an increased ranking.

This change affected 16% of all Google Searches. Within weeks, this update rolled out to encompass all English queries and by August 2011, Google Panda had gone international, including all non English queries.

If you're lost in the environment, and you invest heavy dirhams, let's look at what makes a "high quality" in Panda's algorithms, let's have a look at the four pillars:

Is the site trustworthy?
A trustworthy site has information written by someone who knows what he or she is talking about (an expert). It includes facts and figures that people find understandable and would not report to Google for suspicious activity.

Does the site have original content?
In this battle for cheap websites design with 3 digits value, it is highly doubtful that the prices will feature a quality original content. I would recommend that you ask for the content to be first send to you  on word document, to review it. A website should have new information on each page that has not been taken from another source.

Is there value?
The more value the website has, the better rankings Google will give it. Your information need to be simple and comprehensive by all. The website wording needs to be different that your brochure wording.

Does the site has a lot of spams?
Websites with lots of ads and click here banners are not in the listing of "high quality" sites. Too many ads will have big consequence on your website rankings.

So what was the updates new? there is a new sheriff in Google's town

In April of 2012, Google rolled out an update code named "Penguin". Due to this update, various methods of SEO are no longer desirable and can actually affect search rankings. If you are trying any of the followings, you should probably stop right away:

Keyword Fillings
Filling a website page with applicable keywords, hiding text behind images, and going crazy for meta tags. Not only it's annoying to your page's visitors, it will not bring any advantage on any of the current search engines. And your risk that Google will penalize your site in the ranking if they detect keywords fillings. just place this in your mind for the day, it's about quality content and not quantity.

Link Programs
You may received "Link Programs Offer" on your info@companyxyz.com email address, from the so called SEO companies, 500 staffs, accounts directors and almost looking like a company listed on the international stock exchange market. With all generic name, Paul, Stella, John SEO executives offering a link swapping service. In link programs, you post other people's links on your website in return for their posting your links on their websites. It makes me thing when I was a kid exchanging Panini Football pictures with classmates to complete my album. The idea is Google will see that many websites refer to your website, giving you a better rankings in search results. Penguins looks for websites participating in link schemes and penalize them for manipulating the search results.

Duplicate Content
Duplicate content involves posting the same content on multiples pages within a website. The intention of duplicate content is to appear to have a plethora of pages and information on certain topics, and attract high traffic from Google search engines. Again, Penguin identifies sites that have high levels of duplicate content and penalize them in search results. With quality products description however, you can avoid to be penalized.

Exact Match Domain Update
On September 28th 2012, Google released an update of its algorithm that affect "exact match" domains in the search results. The main point in that update is to reduce the number of websites that rank for searches just because their domain is the same as a particular search. For example, if someone Google "Dubai Vet", one of the websites in the search results might be "www.dubaivet.com". And that site may have been ranking in the search results because of its name, but not because of its quality website. This algorithms update has changed that.

So my readers, remember the key to a long lasting presence on the web, is to have high quality content. Don't stop at so attractive websites quotation that is the same price than your Iphone 5. Read all the terms of the proposal with carefully consideration. It still good to include useful links and applicable keywords but do it with the above in consideration. Hopefully those tips are helpful for you. If you have any questions, contact us at RSVP Media UAE!

Cheers RSVP Media Team - United Arab Emirates

Google Analytics - powerful website reporting for S.M.E

Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tool for measuring the performance of your S.M.E business and to monitor your internet marketing.

If you or the best web design company in UAE that made your website did not install it then do it by today. In the words of Google, "it gives you powerful insights / statistics about your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Within 12 hours of installing this small piece of tracking code, you can start analyzing your website traffic.

Main Features

• how many visitors came to my site by day, by week and by month?
• how long do they stay?
• which pages do they visit?
• which links do they click?
• where are they from geographically?

Visits: the visits tabs allow you to breakdown your sites visit by individual hours, days, week or months. This is a great help than manually switching the date box to individuals days. This data will also display what percentage of traffic that day offered.

Average Time on Site: average time the visitor spend on your website. A low average time less than 45 seconds, will be a poor results if you have lots of contents on the website.

Time on Site by Country: if you are targeting UAE clients, and majority of your traffic comes from USA, then you need to re-align your contents and search engine optimization. Something is going wrong.

Mobile Visits: it measures how many page views were access from a Mobile, and it also help you to design your site to accommodate both mobile and computer traffic, or whether the traffic justifies a separate mobile site.

Talk to the S.E.O company in UAE about Google Analytics, and you will surely enjoy the talk.

These are just the first steps, and you can discover the powerful functionality.

Cheers,

RSVP-Media Team
+971505893011

Some best practices for Hotel Website Design

Hotels go to expensive research to provide the perfect ambiance and atmosphere for their customers. These areas could concern a better scent fragrance in the hotel lobby, a premium toilet paper roll in the toilet facilities, a satellite music system to play 24hours musical program, a unique uniform design by a famous tailor in the city, high end quality of linens and towels, there are really many ways for hotels to be unique.

However, most hotels overlook the importance of having an accessible website that serves as an alternative getaway to draw customers interest in staying at the hotel.

Hotels mostly cater to an international crowd. Other than the frequent business executives or the cabin crew who practically live in hotels most of the year, majority of their clientele have never stayed at their hotel before. The only thing these hotels can do to attract online customers to make a reservation with them is to ensure that they have offer an online booking experience that differs from the others in a positive way. Don't be afraid to spend because the return on investment is far more a hotel booking, as it will create a customer review and many recommendation to other known or network travelers.

What makes an excellent hotel website?

There are many factors to consider when creating an excellent hotel website. It must not only have an attractive design, but must also contain simplicity of navigation, provided relevant information and, above all else, easy functionality. All these work together to help to create a pleasant experience for the user which may very well be the deciding factors customers consider when making a reservation.

• Visual Attraction

A picture paints a thousand word. Photographs of the hotel grounds, reception, lobby lounge, business centre, rooms, parking, wellness facilities, and even location maps will allow your customers to get a better idea of what to expect at the hotel. 

Relais Margaux

Relais Margaux has a large gallery of photographs that allow customers to look at what they are paying for from various angles. This will help customers to get a sense of security when deciding if it is the right place to spend their money on.

• Social, Social, Social

Not everyone you know gets to travel around the world, as such, the best way to get feedback regarding where to stay on your travels is through reviews from satisfied customers. 

Reviews are the modern day word of mouth recommendation that can be a big factor customers consider before making any hotel reservations. Social media and viral marketing are a must to consider in your hotel website budget, because it's a powerful tool and you get full analytics/insights through any actions you engage. 

Facebook is king of hotels and social media, and is currently the best opportunity to directly improve your hotel's online bookings with social. The key to facebook is creating a compelling and interactive Facebook experience for your guests that encourages guests interaction.

Starwood Hotels

Starwood hotels chain is a pioneer in integrating his customer reviews to his website back in 2005-2006, and this has largely contribute to the success of their online booking program followed by the best rest guaranteed practice. Starwood is investing millions of dollars in its website creativity (design and online marketing jobs at each hotel property). 

• Functionality

The website of a hotel needs to attract customers visually, but also ensure that it is not the hassle to get the basic information they seek while deciding which hotel to make a reservation with.

The loading time of each webpage should be fast if not customers might get frustrated. And appealing to more than one of your senses can help customers get a taste the quality of service the hotel offers. While customers scroll through pretty photographs of the rooms and hotel's services, they can be treated to pleasant and soothing music as well.

Having an online booking system is important as it allows the busy user to quickly make the necessary reservations without the hassle of waiting for a phone operator to attend for them. A powerful internet booking engine will ensure that it can handle large numbers of booking traffic without any problems. Many small independent hotels choose recently the development ot IT/E-Commerce platforms, but let's be realistic it can only work with a single pricing strategy and limit the possibilities of the hotel for revenue management solutions.

Shangri-La

Beautiful images that don't require any re-loading allows the visitor to enjoy the visual treat on the website. Shangri-La also has a comprehensive booking system that makes it very easy for visitors to use.

• Multi-lingual Websites

Hotels hope to target the international market and although English is widely spoken language, hotels should cater to the needs of their customers whose first language isn't english. If the same information given to English speaking customers is also provided in other languages like Arabic, German, French, Mandarin/Cantonese, Japanese etc without having to exit the website, it will greatly increase the chances of the customer choosing to make a reservation with the hotel.

Luxury Corinthia Hotels

Corinthia Hotels, the Malta international hotel operator, is one such examples in which their website allows the customers to choose between languages like English, German, Italian, Russian.

• Choice of Colors

Colour schemes used in hotel websites play an important role. Warm and sensual colors are often used as they create a homely and comfortable feeling for their web visitors. After all, a hotel stay is one home away from home. Hotel websites usually have a color scheme of white, blue, black or green because of the symbolic connotations of these colours. White is associated with elegance and purity. Black adds a sense of mystery and Zen like feeling. 

Hotel Missoni

Hotel Missoni website designs stand out from the others because of its unique concept and excellent use of colours. Those 2 colours are also very used in the hotel design, checkin experience and in the rooms.

10 Beautifully Designed Hotel and Resort Websites

Aman Resorts

Banyan Tree

Chedi Muscat

Hotel Universo

Saman Villa

One & Only

El San Juan

Ananda Spa

Harbour Rock Hotel

Leonia Hotel

For your hotel website design and online marketing development, contact us at info@rsvp-media.com 

Web Design Companies in Dubai

Anything and everything that is attractive easily draws the attention of people towards it. This fact has been well understood by the business firms; hence each one today tries to give their products and services a unique and distinctive appearance, so that it easily holds the attention of customers and visitors. Today with the advent of online marketing, the concept of designing attractive and unique website are gaining prominence. In the earlier scenario the importance of professionally designed website was not fully recognized, hence make website owners designed web sites using their in-house technology. These web sites soon found it difficult to compete with the attractive websites designed and developed by the professional web designers.

Web design company Dubai is numerous; they provide their clients with professionally designed web sites that easily stand out from the rest. The benefits of getting web pages or websites designed by professional firms are that, the professional firms with their years of experience and professional knowledge are able to fully incorporate the customer’s ideas and opinions into the actual website design. Thus they help to convert your dream web site into actual reality. Web design company UAE provides all the aspects of web designing required by the clients. At first the company collects the requirements from the customers and then their team of professional qualified staff, making use of the latest web designing techniques converts the requirements of the customers into a full fledged aesthetically, appealing and user friendly web site.

The web design company Dubai is thus not only concerned with the appearance and layout of the website but give equal prominence to the functionality and usability. They ensure that the websites designed by them are highly user friendly and the navigation tools are all functioning properly. For those who require assistance or any clarification regarding the website design, the service of dedicated customer services personnals is available round the clock.

With the huge demand for web designers, the number of web designing company UAE has also increased. Some of them specialize in a few activities whereas some others provide all the services. Hence, while selecting the web designing company, it is very essential to find out if the company is providing the services desired by you. Some of the services provided by the web designing companies include;

1. Content development
2. Web hosting
3. Graphic design
4. Web promotion and development
5. Website maintenance and technical support
6. Redesign of old websites etc.

Thus, the web designing companies UAE help to develop websites that are eye catchy and this creates a better image in the minds of visitors. The maintenance of the website are also undertaken by these companies, hence the owner can concentrate on the other important aspects of the business.

The internet is the best option for those who are on the lookout for the different web designing companies. Before selecting a company, it is very essential to consider the reputation of the company, years of experience, customer ratings, services offered and the prices charged. Considering these basic factors will help in selecting the best web designing company that will easily convert your ordinary web site into an extraordinary one.