At Tidy Design we enjoy all things creative, from fine art and illustration to web and digital design… If it involves making things look pretty or thinking outside the box, then bring it on! Below I have uploaded a small selection of photos I took today on the awesome Olympus XZ-1 f1.8, a variety of macro shots that I was pleased with…

Above: Macro shot of a raspberry

Above: Macro shot of a sunflower

Above: Macro shot of a pear / pear tree

Above: Macro shot of an acorn

Above: Macro shot of another sunflower

I think it is great fun taking photos and creating your own stock photography archive, not only does it capture happy memories (like todays trip to Milford pick your own), but it also saves you money! I dread to think how much we have spent on stock photos over the years!

Anyway… one thing’s for sure, I have well exceeded my five fruit a day!!! Hope you like the pics?

The third of our SEO myth blog posts looks at the statement:

Ok, please note all pages within a website are possible landing pages… If your site is optimised, search engine friendly, has unique and relevant page titles, meta descriptions, alt tags etc then all pages should appear in Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), depending on the search term.

Too often I have seen clients insist on re-building or tinkering with one page within a website, neglecting all others! When it comes to SEO there is no such thing as a ‘less important page’, you (the site owner) need to know your site inside out and give every page an equal time investment.

Yes, by looking at stats and site usage data you can identify the more commonly found and visited pages, however you can’t assume a visitor is going to land on your home or products page… The idea that you have one special landing page is not true, quality and consistency needs to be maintained throughout your site if it is to generate enquiries and sales.

Following the launch of Valencia Language College earlier this year, last week Tidy Design launched Urlaub Cornwall, a site targeted at the German tourists who travel and explore the lovely Cornish countryside each year.

Visit Urlaub in Cornwall

Between the team at Urlaub Cornwall and Tidy Design we are now mapping out a wave of intense SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) for the forth-coming months… Below is small testimonial we received today Re the Urlaub Cornwall website:

Lets hope future SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and our SEO efforts will also exceed expectations. A massive thanks to Urlaub Cornwall for choosing Tidy Design, we are very happy you like the site and look forward to the future :)

Ok, we have been blogging lots about SEO and online marketing so I thought now would be a good time to pick up a pencil, jot down some designs, open up Photoshop and get creative.

Recently we posted FREE Hand Drawn Social Icon Set for our awesome readers; today it’s FREE twitter icons!

Download Icons

I hope you like the above twitter icons and find a tidy home for them.

Please feel free to use these twitter icons for both commercial and non-commercial projects. All we ask from you in return is not to re-sell or distribute these icons via any third party websites. Please link back to this page.

If you end up using our FREE twitter icons then please do post a comment below, we would love to hear from you, stay tuned for more tidy goodies!

Ok, lets put things straight… there is no such thing as guaranteed rankings when it comes to your organic search results! The only way you can even come close to guaranteeing page one on set dates / times is if you’re going down the pay per click ads route!

So the second of our SEO statements you don’t want to hear is:

It is important to remember that Google do not endorse or favor SEO companies, no backs are being scratched for organic search results, and if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

The unregulated world of SEO is pretty crazy! I mean it was only yesterday a company phoned us, currently paying £50 per month for no site reports, no stats, no backlinks, no site optimization, no pay per click etc… An SEO campaign (if you can call it that) obtained through a ‘pay us or your rankings will disappear’ business model!

If anyone does guarantee results on set dates then be sure to ask if they are referring to pay per click (AKA Google Adwords) or Google’s organic search results? This is a very important question to be asking before you commit to a SEO campaign or part with your cash!

With so many factors that influence Google’s organic search results, lots of these being top-secret, no one can control them all or calculate the exact time it will take for Google to do its dance and re-jig your results… The fact of the matter is, some SEO campaigns may take three weeks and others may take several months, guaranteed organic SEO results simply do not exist.

Today I decided to create a new category on our blog titled ‘SEO Myth’; each post will touch base on an SEO related statement, the kind that should raise alarm bells for you and your business! Over the next few months I aim to post lots of these SEO Myth’s to help teach / explain the SEO process.

The first SEO statement you don’t want to hear:

Google’s Matt Cutts posted on his blog sometime ago:

So… If Google does not use ‘meta tag keywords’ to help calculate SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), and you hear “We can help you optimise your website by improving your meta keywords” then what should you do? You guessed it, tell them not to waste your time! When it comes to marketing your business online, money and time would be better spent developing other key areas within your website. Changing your meta keywords tag won’t make your website rank higher.

Please don’t get meta keywords mixed up with meta descriptions and page titles, after all, Google doesn’t disregard all meta tags! To help improve your clickthrough rate and lower your bounce rate, meta descriptions and titles should all be unique, relevant, and truly represent the content on a page.

If you have any thoughts or feedback on meta tag keywords or SEO then please feel free to post them below, as always it is great to hear from our awesome blog readers… Until next time, keep it Tidy!

Morning all, it has been another early start for Tidy Design, lots on the agenda and plenty to keep us busy! Hard to believe this is our 100th blog post, being published just a couple of weeks after our blog celebrated its 1st birthday! How time flies when you run a business, work hard and enjoy what you do!

I am not going to lie to you and say blogging is easy, or that we do it because we have lots of free time on our hands to write SEO and web related articles… Yup, like most businesses out there, the main reason Tidy Design added its blog was to boost organic search results AKA a spot of SEO!

Prior to setting up and managing our own blog we had preached to various SEO clients about the benefits of blogging. Having a blog is one thing, but being disciplined enough to add unique and quality content on a regular basis to expand on your SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) is in fact the hard part.

However, if a company like ours can average two blog posts a week, then I am confident every business (regardless of size) could blog at least twice a month and see the benefits!

Another thing to consider about blogging is its impact on your site, I mean if your blog is up to date then wont this show potential customers that your business is alive and kicking? SEO is not only about having more visitors this month than last month; it is also about converting traffic into enquiries… If you last blogged or tweeted about 15 months ago, wont this ring alarm bells?

So to conclude, did a blog boost our SERPs and was it worth all those late nights and early mornings behind a desk typing away? The short answer, Yes! I think if you are serious about SEO and growing your business online then it is simple, you need to ‘find time’ for SEO or delegate.

Based on our own experience, blogging has without a doubt helped increase web design and SEO enquiries, in fact yesterday a lady phoned and spoke to Rosie about a website, this after reading an article on our blog! How awesome it that!

Lets all raise our mugs of coffee and make a toast to the mighty business blog! Here is to the next 100 blog posts, I hope you continue to read them and re-visit our site again soon…

With no shortage of SEO companies across Portsmouth, Hampshire and the web, Tidy Design though we would list our top X15 SEO questions business owners should be asking! This FREE online test will calculate your individual SEO score and send you the results by email, along with some tidy SEO tips and suggestions to market your site… Why not give it a go!

Although we could have asked many more questions, and SEO is not just about the 15 we have asked, we feel they cover the basics of any new SEO campaign. Bespoke marketing solutions, link baiting techniques and website analysis / improvements can get pretty involved; so time spent on this will vary with every SEO campaign.

We hope our online SEO test will get you asking new questions and thinking much more about SEO and how best to grow your business online. If you have any thoughts or suggestions then why not post them below!

Just a quick post to wish our Tidy Design News Blog a happy 1st Birthday!

Hard to believe it is exactly one year today that we configured Word Press, created a Tidy Design blog theme, and started to blog the nights away in an attempt to further boost / expand our organic search results!

Lets face it, most businesses today will be blogging to generate business or increase brand awareness… In todays competitive world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) it is important to not only have a blog, but also maintain and update it to the best of your ability!

A blog that is not being updated on a regular basis, not delivering unique and valuable content to its readers, is not going to benefit your business or search results… Yes, it isn’t easy and blogging requires a certain level of discipline, but the long-term rewards are potentially awesome!

Over the past 12 months it has been great fun posting info on web design, SEO and our Tidy Design brand. We hope you have enjoyed reading our posts and taken away some value or inspiration from them?

So… Here is to another year of blogging! Our goal, to continue finding time amongst our busy schedule to publish informative and helpful articles about web and marketing stuff! Please stay tuned…