We’re chewing through some serious volumes of web design and SEO work this year!

Increasingly clients are requesting SEO or Search Engine Optimisation at the same time as their web design. This is great as we can build their site, from the ground-up to be SEO-friendly. By doing this, when the search engines first crawl the new site, everything is in place for it to jump straight up through the SERPS.

The combined traffic for sites we’ve produced in this way is staggering. It’s all very well having a great web design, but if your customers can’t find you on the web by searching for the products or services you provide, then it’s next to useless. We  focus on the bigger “Internet marketing” picture, and provide specialist web designs that capture traffic from the search engines, and convert them into actual sales.

We have never been so busy, and there is certainly no sign of recession in this neck of the woods. The demand for web design services in Cheltenham, Gloucester and further afield is on the up. So much so in fact, that Our designers have been flat-out since our first day back in 2010.

We are currently working on web designs for Steck Depositors – a manufacturer supplying production equipment to domestic food producers. This is quite an interesting website design project, as we have a very open brief to work to, and a great portfolio of images and brand marks to use.

We’re also looking at an immensely complex design at the moment for Nexen – a Global Forklift Manufacturer. The client wants an online ordering and quotation system, as seen on many of the global car manufacturer websites, as well as a flash-driven parts ordering system which interrogates an existing database, hosted on co-located server platform. As the company is a global manufacturer, we have designed the website around the issues faced by this company in terms of managing international dealerships and distributors, via a central content management system. Our website content management system ensures that we deliver functionality, ease of use, and customised web design which meets every client requirement.

Frozen Visions is a very creative web design, which has to be functional whilst retaining huge aesthetic appeal and usability. The site will incorporate a light box image gallery and a transparent homepage, behind which sits a background image. The background image can be chosen from a list of uploaded image files, that are assigned to each page. This should make for a very impressive looking site with a large degree of control by the client.

USS, a local PA and Production hire company, came to us for a new design. Their new website will showcase their impressive portfolio of past events, including concerts for Supergrass and Kate Nash. The image gallery also shows a stunning array of conference work they have done, combining branded lighting displays, with AV projection and other effects to create stunning visual impact.

We’ve have plenty more web designs in the pipeline too, and For more info check out our website. http://www.montpellierinteractive.com

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We’ve been busily working away on Web Designs in Gloucester recently.

Staverton Building Supplies and Point Blue are both Gloucester Web Design clients with designs that are either already live, or about to go live – check out the pictures below for some of our recent work.

Web Design in Gloucester and Gloucestershire Web Design specialists, Montpellier Interactive can provide you with a fast, cost-effective web design service. Another destinct advantage of using Montpellier Interactive for your web design is that we use the mi|cms system. This means that once your site is built, you can login and change words, add/remove pages and upload images as easily as using Windows.

The beauty of this is that once you’ve got your site how you like it, you can then make unlimited changes to the site, without paying a web designer to make them for you. This brings speed and flexibility in-house, while saving money, with full support and training provided.

So, with a complete website design and content management system starting at £500, with a low monthly fee that includes all hosting, email and domain services, we can become your one-stop shop.

We also do custom and bespoke web design for clients with specific needs, such as a member login area, social media integration, mySQL  database interrogation, email marketing and much more.

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2010 is all about web design for Montpellier Interactive.  We’ve been really busy not only working with our design team, but also getting their “web design flats” skinned over our CMS framework to make them easily user-editable.

Some examples of recent web site design flats we’ve been working on are below, and clicking on each one will link through to the client’s website (however at the time of writing this, some of these sites are yet to go live) – this should illustrate the process of turning a flat design into a working website.

In the example below, Point Blue Process Servers approved the flat design. Now if they add a new page using their content management system, a new grey tab will appear at the top, or a new link will appear in the red box, depending on the setting for that page.

Process Server - Point Blue

Building sites like this makes life so much easier for our clients – they want a new section to their site? They just login, right click and choose “add new page”, give it a name, and write some copy – it really is that easy!

Another similar example to this is the new Brit Commercial Mortgages Website – The client loved the design which was based on his existing company logo. Our designers created a user-friendly website design with a strong look and feel, from a very simple existing logo.

Brit Commercial Mortgages

One of our most creative web designs this year was for The New Policy Institute – an independent progressive think tank, founded in 1996. Their current website was very functional, so the new design for NPI has gone down a storm and will soon be live on our mi|cms platform:

Our most recent web design project, for Staverton Building Supplies in Cheltenham, is a simple information and brochure website which will showcase their products and services, along with special offers – all of which is easily updated in house by their own staff, meaning no ongoing costs for future changes.

Finally USS Cheltenham came to us for a website redesign recently. They are an AV and PA hire company specialising in Conference Equipment. Their new site, which will be live soon has some incredible picture of their work.

If your website need a redesign, we’d love to hear from you. By putting your new web design onto our content management system, it future-proofs your website by providing a flexible solution that you can change yourself, anywhere, anytime from any PC or Mac with a web browser.

For more info check out our website.

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At Montpellier Interactive, we’ve gone back to basics this year. Our brand new website design went live at the end of last year, and our SEO has really kicked-in, plus with a range of products and services, from email marketing, content management systems, and SEO, we’ve had a very successful start to 2010.

But we don’t like to rest on our laurels here. And going back to the drawing board once more, we discovered that something we’ve been missing a trick on is telling people that we actaully “do websites” – so if you are looking for Web Design Cheltenham, you’ve come to the right place!

We have an in-house creative design team, a fabulous content management system, and provide internet marketing solutions in the form of Search Engine Optimisation (getting your site on Google) and Email Marketng Software (sending mini-websites to your customers, and entice them out of their shells).

So if you need some website design doing this year, wether you are in Cheltenham of Chippenham, give us a call or email us, and we can get chatting about how we can turn your concepts into a working reality!

With templated website designs from under £500 plus a monthly fee, you can design your own site (or have us design one for you) and have access to our award winning content management system.

For more info click here: Website Design and Content Management System

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Email Newsletters are becoming increasingly important for businesses in 2010 – for those who haven’t already caught onto the email marketing trend, it’s a great way to keep in touch with your customers, improve your brand, reinforce your message, introduce special offers, and track your recipients interest in what you are talking about.

Programs for making email newsletters are available from Montpellier Interactive and you can get started for free! Take out a trial account which comes pre-loaded with 200 free credits, then top-up as required or get even better value from a no-contract pay monthly plan.

You can then personalise one of the free email newsletter templates, upload your logo, change the text and images, and away you go!

If you get stuck, we’ve just intoduced live chat on our site, and it’s coming soon to work within mi|emailer itself. In the meantime, just use the chat button on our home page, give us a call or drop us an email.

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For those of you in the SEO world, you’ll have known for some time that Google has been planning some major new changes, and has recently started to implement them. The full-blown Google Caffeine is coming soon, so this is just the start…

However if you are just a regular user of Google with little or no knowledge of SEO, you may not know that Google now personalises your search results, based on sites you have clicked on before!

Now, in the past, if you’d been logged into a Gmail account, or other Google service which required you to login, then Google would have already been personalising your search results. To stop it from doing so, you could just log out .

However, now the new changes have taken effect, you’ll notice a couple of subtle changes…

1. When you mouse-over the very top of the Google search home page, you will see that there is a menu bar which auto-hides itself.

New Standard Google Search Page:

Screen Shot of new Google Home Page

Now move your mouse:

Screen Shot of Google Home Page with Mouse Over

Okay, not much new here, but now do a search for anything you like, and look at the new option in the Top Right-Hand side…

Google's new Web History feature

Now click on the Web History feature (see arrow above), and you’ll see the following option:

Google's new Web History menu

You can now select: “Disable customisations based on search activity”.

Doing so will (for this browser session only), leave your SEO search results unaffected. If you have a Google account, you can sign in and change the settings by selecting “Web History” at the bottom RHS of the above screen, and logging in. This way, if you have a Google account, then it will mean that you can disable Web History whenever you are logged in.

So what does this mean for me?

Well if you are doing some SEO or having some done, and want to check your Google position, don’t get excited unless you have disabled Web History – you haven’t shot to #1 overnight!

If you are a Google user who finds it hard to remember the URL of your favorite sites, and doesn’t bookmark them, then Web History can be handy. Say you search for Car, and click on a specific site, next time you search for Car that site may appear closer to the top of the results – in a nutshell that’s what Web History does. However this will skew your results so that if a super new Car website appeared that is cheaper and otherwise superior to your old favorite, it could take you longer to notice it exists. It also means that Google knows exactly what you search for, and gathers data from your every move, using it to manipulate the data it provides you with…

So we’ve at least told you how you can opt-out of this service if you want it.

Other changes which have been happening for the last six months or so, are where US, Australian, and other non-UK English-speaking sites appear in the SERPs. For example, searching for Sandwich Shop Cheltenham (despite that fact that Google know’s I’m in the UK), brings up results of Sandwich shops in Cheltenham Australia, amongst those in the UK – oops! How could that be even remotely relevant?

OK, so this could be useful for those of us in the UK for specific information-related searches, but if you are looking for a product or service, then this is highly irrelevant and makes the likes of Yahoo, Bing or another top search engine perhaps preferable?

Google deny there is any fault with this particular change, however the internet jungle drums say otherwise.

Only time will tell as to whether this is a permanent change or a temporary blip, but it’s good to know that with Bing’s popularity on the up, we do have other options, if we aren’t happy with what Google are up to. However for the time being, Google is still THE Search Engine of choice for the masses, the question is, how long for?

And finally, one of the largest factors in the pipeline due to affect the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the forthcoming “Real Time” update. This will heavily focus on breaking news and social media sites like Twitter, (you can already see News results creeping into the top of some searches).

Google used to do it’s update or “Google Dance” monthly. Now it’s getting faster, and is soon headed for real time searches. Ultimately this means that businesses will need to move some of their focus from SEO to Social Media in order to stay ahead of the game.

You can find our more about Google Caffeine here…

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I was forwarded an email recently, which made me think “wow, we really do offer what is possibly the best SEO package for a local business”.

The email was entitled “Cheap SEO For £75/£150 Per Month” which is also listed on a blog site where a number of other SEO’s have all chimed in agreement. However as the author of the blog is able to disallow any negative comments it could paint a pretty biased picture.

The context of the email implies that people are idiots if they only have a small SEO budget. Okay, so we can’t cater for people with £75 per month to spend, but if you have £150 per month to spend, we can GUARANTEE you Top 10 Google results in 3-6 months for local keywords.

By local, we mean your trade, followed by your area, for example: “Plumber Basingstoke” (rather than just “plumber” which would naturally cost much more).

So here are some excerpts from the email we were forwarded below…

I appreciate it’s a recession, and small businesses haven’t got cash to spend, but there’s a problem here

I’m not trying to be mean, I know some small businesses will go on to conquer the world. I just don’t have a business model that takes that amount of money and gets you the rankings YOU WANT and the ROI you need while giving me a profit to make it worthwhile (after spending ten years learning this)

Someone just emailed me and said:

I emailed before about SEO service pricing…and mentioned I would “like” to pay around £75/£150 month, however I would like to know your prices anyway if it is higher than that.

I appreciate it’s a recession, and small businesses haven’t got cash to spend, but there’s a problem here

I have an office I pay rent for, computers and software to buy, equipment to rent and service, staffed with web designers, web developers, managers, copyriters and seo folks.

It took me 10 years to learn and practice what I do, and I spend hours every day learning new skills, just like everybody else in this office. It’s a skilled practice.

For SEO to work, you need to do site audits, keyword research, onsite reconstruction, onsite optimisation, content analysis, site tests, industry and competitor analysis, and link build (through, essentially, article submission networks )while attempting to identify real authority links, and more….. constantly, and repeatedly, in some instances…

The author then tries in vain to justify their extortionate rates further, as well as their attitude towards smaller clients. How on earth does him employing “web designers, web developers and managers” affect what he charges his customers paying for SEO? If you ran a business selling cars and airplanes, you wouldn’t charge double for a car because the airplanes weren’t making you much money at the moment!

…we went back and forth with someone recently who mentioned (about our prices):

Cash is a problem for me at this time

I saw a £10,000 100 inch television recenlty. I thought it would be cool. Fact is, that sort of cash is a problem for me at this time, so I won’t be getting that television anytime soon.

I’m not trying to be mean, I know some small businesses will go on to conquer the world. I just don’t have a business model that takes that amount of money and gets you the rankings YOU WANT and the ROI you need while giving me a profit to make it worthwhile (after spending ten years learning this)

It was also be pretty cool if this page ranked for “Cheap SEO For £75/£150 Per Month” or something similar to educate you a little so you won’t get, frankly, scammed out of your money.

Read more:

So if you’d like to pay someone £75 per hour to do the boring, mundane, repetitive work that is SEO – then try these guys. SEO doesn’t take 10 years to learn either – if you got in a car with someone who took 10 years to pass their driving test – how comfortable would that make you feel?  If you believe their spurious claims that spending any less than they charge must mean that you are being “scammed out of your money” or that you need “educating” by them, give them a go…

However, if you have some local keywords, and want to guarantee you’ll appear in Google’s top 10 results within 6 months, then fill in this form and we’ll get back to you. We help small businesses get listed on Google, by providing an affordable keyword package with a money-back guarantee. We also help large businesses get listed in Google’s Top 10, and while more expensive, their national keywords deliver massive levels of traffic – also covered by a money back guarantee.

Now don’t get me wrong – we aren’t into giving refunds and haven’t refunded anyone to-date – we just don’t make promises we can’t keep. We only guarantee your keywords if we’re 100% positive we can achieve these positions – which is good for most businesses as every day that goes by where they aren’t in Google’s top 10 is money down the drain.

We provide flexible SEO solutions, so that businesses of any size can get a package that suits them, their budget and their target market, without them EVER feeling as if they are “taking up too much of our time”, “can’t afford us”, or that they are not good enough to be a customer of ours.

Yes, SEO is vital for growing businesses in this day and age, however it needn’t cost the earth and certainly needn’t cost over £75 per hour! We have offices, computers, staff, etc – the usual overheads that any business has, but we don’t use this as an excuse to overcharge large clients, and belittle smaller ones.

One recent success story is Brit Commercial Mortgages. We’ve nailed down some killer page 1 results for them for both local and national keywords, within budget, which have already doubled their site traffic:

= one very happy customer, in a very short space of time, and well within their budget (which would have been scoffed at by the guy who wrote the email above).

Need some SEO that does what it says on the tin?

Get in touch with us; we’ll work with what you have, not what you haven’t…

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Interesting article on Magento CMS:

“I’ve been working with Joachim Houtman on creating a guide to Magento SEO, much like my definitive guide to WordPress SEO. In the process we’ve created two modules for Magento, and an optimized blank theme!” Read more…

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