This is why “Web Safe Fonts” are most commonly used, and while they can be a little boring because most sites use the same ones, there is a reason for them. This is because they are found on pretty much every computer be it Windows, Mac or Linux, which means that when a site is viewed the user is guaranteed to see the site how you meant for it to be seen because they will have the right font.

Why not just use images for the text, that way any font could be used?
While images are fine to use for small amounts of text, like for headings and sub headings, it is not a good idea to do this for a lot of it. Here are just a few of the problems you might encounter if you did use images for all your text:

1. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will see all this text simply as an image which will mean that indexing a site that uses just images will be hard as the search engine cannot pick up on keywords and place your site ranking in a high position is unlikely.
2. Some visitors could have images switched off when viewing sites, which means all they will get is a blank page.
3. Some visitors will use screen readers and rely on the text being spoken to them, which can’t happen if it is all an image.

So while your site might not have the fonts that you want to use on it, you will get the most out of your site by sticking with a fonts that everyone has. This way you know your site is being viewed correctly, it is user-friendly and search engines will be able to see what your site is about.

While having a blog can help with SEO, just having one on your site purely for that reasons is a bad idea, as it does need to be updated regularly for you to get any benefits from it. Also having a hardly used blog on your site could give a potential customer the impression that your site is no longer being used, especially if your last blog was a year before they visited. So make sure that you do have the time to update a blog regularly with relevant content before you place one on your site.

If a blog is something that you are interested in here are some reasons why blogs can help your site and its SEO:

RSS
Rss feeds are heavily crawled by search engines, it can also be added to your visitors RSS readers meaning that when ever you update your blog they will be notified and could return to read it.

Structured content
Blogs have a natural structure to them which will help search engines make sense of the content. By having categories and placing relevant content within these categories it helps give your site structure and makes it easier to establish important keywords to your site.

Updated content
Search engines like new content and it encourages them keep coming back to crawl you site to see what’s new.

Could lead to one way links back to your site
By writing interesting articles not only would you be giving people a reason to visit your site but it could also lead to other promoting your site because they want to share what you have written with others and post links to it on their sites. The reason why this is useful is because often search engines give more value to one way links then reciprocal ones.

Promotion, promotion, promotion
Blogs are a great way to promote events, competitions, open days and keep visitors to your site informed of all the latest news about your company. With the RSS feeds this means that those following your blog will automatically be updated with your latest promotion, as does anyone visiting your site or anyone who visits one of the many sites that show latest blog posts with certain keywords in them.

Newsletters/e-newsletters
Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you should stop any printed or e-newsletters that you send out. A printed newsletter could easily take information from the blog posts as not everyone who reads the newsletter will read the blog, it would also be a good promotion tool for your site and encourage people to visit to get more information. An e-newsletter again could simply take articles from the blog and link back to your original post to drive traffic to the site as it serves and as a reminder to visit your site.

Getting people involved
A blog also gives your visitors a chance to get involved and share their opinions on what you have written. While this is great for customer relations, it also can keep your website fresh with new content when you aren’t updating it yourself if others get involved in a discussion you posted. As comments are managed by you, anything questionable can quickly be removed if it hasn’t already been caught by the automatic spam catchers.

If you would like some more information or a quote to implement a blog onto your website then please contact us by email or by telephone on 0191 487 1834.

How long does it take for a site to be indexed?
Indexing of a site can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, there is no exact time period for when your site will appear on any search engine. Even submitting a site to them won’t make your site appear instantly, it really is up to them when they start displaying your site.

How do I know if a site has been indexed on a search engine?
Type in the full website address of the site into a search engine (example www.sleeky.co.uk), if your site show up that means that it has been indexed.

Remember your site being indexed is very different to your site showing up for a keywords, as keyword optimisation takes a lot longer and depends on what words you want to show up for.

Should I keep submitting my site until it is indexed?
No, be patient, it does take time but once you have submitted the site once you don’t need to do it again.

Should I keep submitting my site to a search engine once it has been indexed?
No once your site is indexed, the search engine knows about it and will keep checking it on a regular basis to see if there have been any updates or changes.

Again it is worth pointing out here that your site being index is different to your site showing up for your chosen keywords.

Do companies that offer to submit a site 1000s of search engines really work?
Most of these are too good to be true; a lot of search engines don’t guarantee a listing and also smaller search engines look to the larger ones for results. These companies also rely on automated systems to submit the sites rather than doing it by hand, which a lot of search engines reject instantly anyway. So while it may sound like a good idea, you only really need to submit your site to the larger search engines and over time it will appear on the smaller ones without any work needed.