Blog • Low carbon websites

What to expect from a web agency

There are lots of web agencies to choose from. Some are large organisations, some are small; some are experienced in certain types of project, some are more generalist. However, whatever size or shape, I believe that there are certain features that every web agency should possess to help ensure a smooth path to a successful outcome, particularly for new websites but also for SEO work, web security, web performance etc.

To demonstrate our commitment to good business practice, we applied to join the Good Business Charter. I'm very pleased to say that we have been accepted and are now an accredited organisation. Companies large and small have already joined this initiative which aims to improve business practices for the environment, customers, suppliers, tax and employees. This post talks more about the 10 components of the Good Business Charter and how you can become an accredited organisation as well.

Asian woman wearing safety glasses with a sand clock hourglass timer and some dead twigs in front of her

The internet uses around 3.7% of the world's electricity, which is more than the whole aviation industry. Websites contribute to this power consumption and, in turn, contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases. Hosting websites on servers that use renewable energy helps, but unfortunately, many hosting companies are not doing this. The AttractMore website has now been accredited by the Eco-Friendly Alliance (EFWA) as having low carbon emissions after an independent audit. The EFWA is a UK-based social enterprise that aims to make a positive impact on the environment by creating a greener internet. Their goal is 'to build on our global movement for a cleaner and greener internet' with '1 million climate-positive websites by 2030'. In this article you can discover ways of reducing the carbon emissions of your site and show your commitment to digital sustainability.

The internet uses a huge amount of electricity. Here's what you can do to help reduce that.

The data centres and telecoms networks used by the internet consume a huge amount of power, roughly the equivalent of all the electricity used by the UK. If we thought of the internet as a country, then it would be the 7th largest polluter in the world. Clearly, that's not OK. However, if you have a website, there are actions you can take to reduce the power consumption of the internet. Changing one website isn't going to make an impact, but neither is recycling one plastic bag. The impact becomes significant when we all take action collectively. And the effort involved in reducing the energy used by our sites is small. In this article, I'll talk about a number of ways in which you can make a difference.

Everyone needs to use strong passwords to protect themselves against hacking online

Passwords are, at the moment at least, an essential part of our online life both in a work and in a personal context. They are like keys to a door, but instead, they give access to our email, our social media accounts, our bank accounts, our websites. However, many people still tend to use passwords that can be easily guessed or cracked and so put their private information at risk of being discovered by hackers. In this article, I discuss 10 ways in which you can protect yourself on line using simple techniques that can increase the security of your passwords.

Old black and white photo of broken down car with a small crowrd gathered around it

Sometimes, in life, things we rely on don't work out as expected. It's the same with your website, especially with external services that your website relies on. However, there are ways of managing these 3rd-party dependencies so that they don't cause too much trouble. The external dependencies are, for example, fonts, videos, ads, reviews, analytics. The worst case scenario is that, if one of these services fails, it prevents your web pages from loading. I strongly suggest doing an audit of the external services your website uses and find ways of managing these so that if one does fail (or loads very slowly), it doesn't affect the load time of your web pages. Fast loading web pages are important to your users and important to search engines so worth getting to grips with this issue. Find out more here.

White woman using her hands as a way of pretending to be looking through binoculars

Achieving good search engine rankings for pages of your website is not straightforward, especially in the face of so much competition and changes in how the search engines choose to prioritise search results. Along with effective keywod research, content creators now need to understand the concept of search intent and how to use this knowledge when creating content. The search phrase is the 'what' but the search intent is the 'why' behind the search. This is implied rather than being stated explicitly. However, if you can identify the serach intent, then you can create pages that match the 'why' and so improve the changes that the search engines will rank your pages higher as they better meet the searchers' needs. This article goes into more detail about identifying the search intent and how to write content that take account of this.

Moving up the search engine rankings begins with understanding the main SEO ranking factors.

It's pointless having a great site that doesn't get traffic from search engines because it's not been optimised for SEO. In this article I'll discuss the 3 main ranking factors - high quality content, relevant backlinks and a great user experience. All of these need your ongoing attention and I will go into more detail on each one in the article. If you focus your website efforts on these 3 factors, I'm confident that your web pages will start to rank higher in the search engines and that your site will get more visits as a result.

Inbound links from reputable websites help your site achieve higher rankings in Google and the other search engines.

It is very difficult to achieve a decent search engine ranking for a web page without having incoming links from other websites. The search engines need to know that your page is relevant to others and incoming links prove that. In a way, it's like a popularity contest, however, with search engines it's not just the number ofincoming links that matter, it's the quality of those links and quality is about relevance and authority. Links from poor quality or questionable websites will actually damage your rankings. In this article we'll look into links in more detail and see how to acquire valuable ones that help build your search presence.

Pros and cons of SEO and digital advertising (PPC). Make an informed decision about which is best for your business

If you want your business to get noticed in the search engines, there are 2 main approaches. Firstly, SEO (search engine optimisation) which aims to improve the position that pages from your site achieve within the 'organic' or free listings. The other approach is to use a form of digital advertising (called PPC or Pay Per Click) to place ads for your site at the top of the search engine listings. As the name implies, you pay for each click on your ad. Both of these approaches have pros and cons and which one you use will depend on your circumstances (or you may chose to use a combination of both). This article goes into some more detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each approach so you can make an informed decision about which to use.

AttractMore Blog

What to expect from a web agency

Signing up to the Good Business Charter

Joining the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance

Want to save the planet? Start with your website

Password mistakes you could be making

The unreliable other - 3rd-party dependencies

A quick guide to Search Intent and what it means for your website

The most important SEO ranking factors

Everything you need to know about external links and SEO

SEO or PPC? Which is better for your business?