We pride ourselves on producing high quality websites that fully conform to the highest web standards. Our sites are accessible and search engine friendly, making sure that all our sites have the best possible chance of succeeding where so many others fail.
Part of our commitment to working on web design for Hertfordshire businesses and setting up small company websites, we are also looking to work with community groups to build easy to use, accessible and simple web sites to allow them to talk to their members. If you represent a music group, society or other community group in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire or Cambridgeshire and feel you need to update your website or even talk about your options to get online for a low cost but high value, please contact us.
We have various options for non-profit organisations in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire that would allow you to have a high quality website with a content management system so you can update your web design and content without needing to get involved with the HTML or other coding on the site.
Apart from web design we can also discuss how best to use social media such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to get people involved and talking about your group or society. We would love to hear from anyone interested in getting their local community group online especially in the Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire or Cambridgeshire area.
For a lot of people looking for a web designer, especially for their first company website or blog, it can be hard to know who to trust, what to look for and how to cut through all the jargon!
Best Served Cold are based in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire and we understand that not everyone knows what SEO, social networking, SEM, IP addresses and A-Records are so we talk our clients through the process of creating a site. From start to finish we will discuss what’s needed and come up with a few ideas that we think will help to market the new site. And if you need it, we are happy to talk through the latest ideas in search engine optimisation, social networking marketing and usability and accessibility.
There are a lot of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire based web designers but just like any other service you need to talk to a few of them to get an idea of what’s on offer. The quotes for the work can be wildly different but that will often reflect what you’re getting for the price. We like to offer a complete service: designing a new website, working within the confines of a brand, setting up a content management system and ensuring any new site gets indexed by search engines quickly and efficiently. We don’t make exaggerated claims about SEO but we will promise to design any new site with search engines in mind and follow the highest quality guidelines for coding and accessibility.
If you’d like to find out more about sites we’ve designed for businesses in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire please contact Best Served Cold and we will talk you through our work and what we can do for you.
Over the last year there has been a lot of discussion in the news about Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and Myspace and other social networking sites. In the wake of this there has been an influx of new businesses calling themselves Social Media Consultants. Is Social Media the new SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)? Should you be paying someone to tell you how to promote your site on social media?
At Best Served Cold we like to keep up with new trends and ideas – over the years we have signed up to hundreds of new sites – and we’ve been using sites like Digg, Reddit and Mixx for a number of years to help promote our new releases. Recently we’ve been experimenting with Twitter and Plurk and have a couple of clients who are trying YouTube as a way to gain traffic and interest.
SEO vs. Social Media
Well, that’s a bit of a leading title. It’s not a case of versus, it’s more a case of what to use and when best to use it. There is still and will probably always be a need for good SEO on a website. Along with Accessibility (the two go hand in hand) it’s one of the building blocks of a good website and needed to ensure your site gets indexed and found on search engines for the topic you want.
Social media is a broad term for a lot of different sites. It started with social bookmarking sites such as Delicious and social rating sites like Technorati. Closely followed by social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace the term has finally come to include all sites that allow communal interaction around a topic, personal accounts or news.
Modern websites are often built around a Content Management System (CMS) and as such will often have some from of social media built in – usually comments or a rating system – but to get the best results you need to look at other websites to see what they can offer you.
To take full advantage of the social media revolution a company has to consider how to get people talking about their products and services on other websites, do they write a blog, set up a YouTube account, do they Twitter, create Social Media News Releases or need a FaceBook page? There are a lot of options and it’s not always easy to understand the advantages one site has over another.
That’s where Social Media Consultants come in, they can advise about what’s best for your company and which sites you need to be joining. It’s not rocket science and with a bit of time most people would be able to figure it out themselves but, like SEO, it’s much easier to get someone else to do it!
Best Served Cold have been working with social media for a number of years and have a wide knowledge of what works and doesn’t work on various websites. If you’d like an introduction to social media and SEO for your site why not contact us. We can review your site and business and work with you to improve and build a social network of your own and, if needed, give advice on how to improve your SEO while you’re at it.