3 more weeks to go and our offices will be closed for the holidays with a well-deserved break from a hugely busy year. 2014 has been the busiest year we have had with more websites developed than in any year before. Our design studio has also been getting most of our clients onto mobile friendly platforms and we have had an incredible surge in clients opting to have us manage their website search engine optimisation.

With the current queue of projects awaiting commencement we expect a busy January with projects already booked for February and beyond. We want to say to all of our clients that we wish you and your families a safe and happy holiday season and we are looking forward to serving you all better in 2015 - what is to be our 15th birthday.

Our office will be closed from Monday December 22nd and will reopen on Monday January 5th. In this time if you need assistance we will be monitoring emails.

We have a list of projects we are completing over the next few weeks but there will be no more production until 2015 once these last remaining websites, SEO and mobile websites are finalised.

October 2014 was a month of all-time records for us and it is a sign of our business plan for expansion coming to fruition. Early next year we plan to roll out the second phase of our growth project with the move to larger offices and the appointment of new key personnel whom will assist the production department to handle the increased demands of high project outlay.

In October 2014 Allcorp launched 11 new website projects, developed new and exciting mobile websites and applications, completed the finishing touches on 7 search engine optimisation projects and migrated 7 brand new clients into our hosting environment.

While this increased workload has kept everyone working long hours our sales force have also been busy generating new projects in the market place. This means that we are taking a much larger slice of the available work of this kind in the region and while our quality of design and development continues to be class leading we expect this trend to continue with the increases in project request volume from new clients in the area tantamount to this endeavour.

In early January we plan on having an increased production department to further assist us best serve our clients project needs with greater efficiency and turnaround. In the meantime please enjoy the projects we have produced in the last month.

Further cementing ourselves as the leaders in website search engine marketing in the region and progressing our knowledgebase towards highly anticipated Google accreditation was the attendance of key Allcorp personnel to the 2014 Google Master class event in Brisbane.

Our SEO team arrived back from this highly acclaimed Google funded event with a valuable insight into the new trends at Google and how we can assist our clients even further with superior Google search engine marketing management.

With the new information released to the select few attendees to the Brisbane course, and with this information not released to the general public for a few more months, we have some very unique, cutting edge and valuable aspects of search engine optimisation techniques along with some new skills in the world of search engine marketing and pay per click advertising. These insights we have gained will assist our clients with improved search engine exposure.

If you already have us working on your website search engine optimisation we will be applying our newly discovered skills to your program on your websites next round of updates and will as usual report on the changes and influences that have been applied. If you don’t yet have Allcorp handling this very important aspect of your business please contact us today to discuss how we can assist you.

By now many of our clients are using the class leading SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) services that our team have been providing for many years. This SEO service is largely succeeding in maintaining top rankings in Google for all targeted keywords. With the ever increasing threat of competition for Google top spots by your own business competitors it is becoming a more crucial battlefield - one that whoever has the most ammunition usually wins.

We have carried out case studies on applying SEM tactics to further cement the organic SEO listing of a website with extremely positive results.

What is SEM?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is basically a paid approach to listing a website in Google searches using a Google AdWords campaign where money is budgeted and bid to sponsor keyword searches. Bidding high for the keyword or key phrase is one way to get to the top of the list but it isn't always guaranteed that this will be successful as Google still check the relevance of the website content and other SEO factors to only place worthy website candidates at the top of the sponsored listings.

Where a website can benefit with a properly managed AdWords SEM campaign is that the SEM can increase traffic through the website and automatically improve the SEO ranking. This means that a Google AdWords campaign can be run simultaneously with the SEO process to boost the power of the SEO tactics and then be either trimmed down or phased out completely once a strong Google presence is attained.

This process can significantly help high competition keyword websites where there are many other companies vying for top spot in Google searches and providing the SEM is structured in the correct way it can have very strong results towards overall SEO and website organic listings.

If you would like to know more about how we can help you with a proven method for adapting SEM to SEO, or if you want to know more in general about how we can assist you to get your website ranking high in Google searches talk to our specialist team today. Allcorp is the most experienced SEO & SEM provider in the region and we have more case studies of successful projects than any other website development business.

In 2014 Allcorp has fully adopted the HTML5 structure for all of our website development work. Not only is this system a more stable, multi-platform safe language it is also now the definitive standard globally.

What is HTML and why should I care?

Put simply, HTML is the language that is used to tell your computer how to display a website. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, a standardised system for tagging text files to achieve font, colour, graphic, and hyperlink effects on World Wide Web pages.

The previous version of HTML was HTML4 and it was first developed way back in 1997. The shift to the new HTML5 language has made a significant impact on the website development industry. Importantly HTML5 is designed to suit all of the new devices we use to view web content that was unheard of in 1997. You just have to think of what your mobile phone looked like back then to get an idea of how far we've come and why it was important for a new standardised website language to be rolled out.

What's the benefit to me of having my site changed over to HTML5?

Since January this year all Allcorp website development has been structured around HTML5 so if your website was designed this year you're already HTML5 compliant.

As you may know, we are working with many of our clients with search engine optimisation services (SEO) and we have been tracking all of our SEO client ranking as part of this service. What we have seen firsthand is a significant jump in ranking when the website we are tracking is converted to HTML5.

One example was a business who had their website developed by us in 2007 (HTML4) and has had us as their SEO provider for the last 3 years. Due to the effectiveness of our SEO their website has always ranked well in Google searches, usually appearing in the top 5 results on the first page. As expected this has fluctuated every month, sometimes page 1, 4th listing, sometimes page 1, 6th listing - but always on the front page.

At the beginning of July this company had us develop them a new website which we designed around HTML5. As part of the website redesign we migrated the existing SEO content so that Google could pickup that the site content was the same, only the design and language had been updated. The result of this was that within 48 hours of the new website going live it jumped straight to the top of page 1 of Google for all of our targeted keywords. We have tested this theory on two more of our websites and found the results to be the same.

It seems that Google loves HTML5 and early adopters are being rewarded. Whether your website is undergoing SEO or not, you will find real world benefits in making the change to HTML5. If you love the website design you currently have this can even stay exactly the same. We can use the exact same artwork and content to rebuild the website on a HTML5 platform. You won't notice much of a visual difference but we have seen firsthand that Google will like what they see when they next visit your site to check its worthiness. Not only will the website experience greater Google love, it will also be up to date and current with cross platform compatibility on all devices, browsers and operating systems.

CMS, or content management system, is a way of making your website have content that can be managed internally by you or a staff assigned as a website administrator. CMS websites are very popular amongst businesses who want to regularly promote specials or promotions and even some who have regular newsletters such as this one. CMS websites are a great way to keep in touch with clients and customers and to also keep everyone up to date with what's new with your business.

Indeed, we have setup many CMS pages or even entire websites for many of our clients. The important question to ask yourself is are you going to use it? If you don't make regular updates to the CMS on your website in can really harm your business image. One such example came when we were looking for a business to help us with the supply of tiles for a new office we are building. We came across one website which looked OK. (Not one of our clients) and we were going to contact them to get some samples.

When we looked through their website we saw they had a latest news page which when clicked on had its last update made in 2009. We then decided that they probably were no longer in business and decided not to contact them. How many other people have made this decision? In this instance the latest news page which could have acted as a great tool to entice customers to make contact with them had turned into a negative aspect of the website.

So while CMS websites are a great idea you should really consider the time it will take to properly manage the website content, if you are capable of doing this and if it is actually going to be done. If you don't think you'll actually use the CMS then don't bother with it.

May was an extremely busy month for all of us at Allcorp. In total we produced 7 brand new website designs and 7 new mobile site designs. These were a mix of new and existing clients and with our new expansion plans should signal the beginning of increased production for the coming months.

On top of these web development projects we also successfully completed 3 new search engine optimisation procedures for Batteries North, Motel Ingham and Kings Cakes. These SEO clients are now showing significant Google rankings with page 1 results being reached for all three with significant improvement expected for the coming days.

Batteries North are holding page 1 in Google for searches of Duracell Cairns and Cairns Chargers with other important keywords coming up in the ranks. Kings Cakes' new website launched last month has achieved top of page 1 results in Google searches for Townsville Cake Shop, Wedding Cakes Townsville, Birthday Cakes Townsville, Cakes Townsville and Pies Townsville. The traffic on the Kings Cakes' website shows huge growth in traffic in the last few weeks. Motel Ingham can now also enjoy extended web exposure with the targeted keywords showing the website up in top 5 Google results.

We are also hearing some great reports back from our SEO clients expressing a noticed increase in enquiries to their businesses once we begin the SEO process indicating that Google can be the source of great benefits if approached in the correct way. Have a look at all of our new design work in the below pages and contact us if you want any further information as to how we can assist your business with effective digital media marketing.

Behind the golden hand shake and glossy facade of some of the national companies sales representatives lies a suspect production department of off shore website designers. In order to try and gain market dominance these companies' are usually sending the entire website production work to 'sweatshop' like offices with usually hundreds of staff plodding away tirelessly on one project after the next. All as a way to keep production flowing as cheaply as possible.

We have heard reports from some of our clients who say the desperation these companies are under must be enormous as they try and garnish their mass produced product with the tinsel of free value added services. Examples of this are in the form of offering free testimonial based television marketing spots as a sweetener to prospective website clients. We all know the type, in exchange for the client's business spruiking the services of the host company in a television commercial the client receives some free exposure in the campaign, usually late at night when no one is watching.

Other cases include "Buy a website from us and we'll give you a free phone book advertisement" or "Let's package everything together, multiply the real world price by 3 and then let you finance it every month on your utilities bill." Whatever tactics are being used it is important for businesses to remember that regardless of how it is dressed up, how it is made to look appealing or how it is made to seem affordable, the product itself, the website, is always going to be inferior to the agency equivalent.

Allcorp is a small Digital Media Agency with a staff of less than 10, but even so, our team have more experience in the field of website design and development than all of those people combined in the above photo. We also provide key services that are essential to making your website presence in both mobile and desktop form stand out from the crowd and actually work as a marketing product that these mass production companies will never be able to deliver from their head office in the Philippines or India. Copywriting with a strong grasp of the incorporation of effective selling messages (Not to mention with a strong grasp of the English language), Commercial Photography, Search Engine Optimisation, Custom Website Development without limitation, personal service and a track record of producing a class leading product.

It makes sense for some businesses to outsource their products to countries where labour is cheaper. Some products are identical regardless of where they come from. But your business advertising needs, a most important part of the overall advertising repertoire, is not an off the shelf product. It needs to be managed by a competent team of qualified and experienced individuals. Fortunately we have found the 10 best people to handle this project and assembled everyone at one studio right here in Queensland and you can contact us for a personal one-on-one obligation free appointment to discuss all of your digital media needs.

Love them or hate them, review websites which give people the ability to review your business are dominating internet space and chances are there are reviews out there for your business that you may not be aware of. What these websites have achieved is to give people a forum which they can use to express their opinion and share good or bad experiences of dealings they have had with a business so that everyone can see it.

The reviews are sometimes good and positive and they are also sometimes poor. They may be recommending that other people stay away from a business because of a bad experience they may have had in the past. While it's easy to just ignore the reviews the unfortunate part is that these review websites can sometimes show up when people Google your business and if there are many bad or negative reviews about a business it may hinder business progress.

Now more than ever before it is important to deal with reviews of your business appropriately. All it takes is a response from the business owner to professionally explain things or remedy a situation to neutralise the bad publicity that negative reviews may bring. If a business replies to a negative review in a well thought out and rounded way and points out implementations that the business has taken to remedy a situation that caused the negative review in the first place a third party who reads the review may be less inclined to allow it to retract their buying decision.

Same too goes for positive reviews. Be sure to respond to these reviews as well. By doing this people who are reading the reviews see a communicative and progressive thinking business that understands the needs of their clients and also knows how to manage a situation professionally. By responding to every review with well written phrases it can also assist in boosting your business search engine recognition. Use words in your reply that relate to your business and it can sometimes go a long way to assisting with any search engine optimisation strategy you have in place.

To find out what reviews there may be out there on your business just Google your business name followed by reviews and any reviews that are out there will be displayed.

As the leading internet design agency in Queensland we make it a habit to stay ahead of the eight ball and ensure all of our design work is produced using the most cutting edge tools. This year we have invested a lot of time and money into upgrading all of our design software across the board. We are now using the entire suite available in the 2014 Adobe Creative Cloud from conceptualisation of design to development of the finished product.

This new software means that our production remains ahead of the game and with the latest software technologies enabling the processing of more vibrant and rich colour formatting, better compression values and more vivid imaging the Allcorp name will remain synonymous with only the highest quality visual appeal into the future.

Other new advantages of the new software options are behind the scenes with coding now in the latest HTML5 which, among other benefits, offers a more Google friendly website language and better nested table design formats that provide the ability for us to produce fluid design layouts for a more ‘one size fits all’ design strategy.

Of course all of these tools that we are using are only as good as the people who are using them and Allcorp remains focussed on surrounding ourselves with the most creative and marketing savvy designers, copywriters and photographers to ensure all of our projects stand apart from the crowd.

Have a look at our portfolio of January projects below. If you would be interested in redesigning your existing website and bringing it up to date with the latest design trends using the latest design software talk to us today for an obligation free quote.

Allcorp would like to wish all of our valued clients the best from 2014 - a year which we're sure is going to be a year of advancement for all business. If 2013 is anything to go by we're all on the right track to picking up the momentum being experienced before the GFC.

With our recent acquisition into new markets and expansion of the Allcorp brand to the Wide Bay region last month we ourselves are looking forward to new prospects throughout 2014. We already have irons in the fire for new products and services to roll out to all of our clients in the coming months which will ensure all will have the right ammunition to best market their business. With the fast changing technologies in the internet marketplace it is more important now than ever before to make sure your business is heading in the right direction and we are at the forefront of this industry.

We have seen this first hand over the last 4 years with hundreds of Allcorp clients approaching us for assistance with enhancing their website presence and targeting efficient Google optimisation results. Regular readers of this newsletter will know that we have been speaking out about this market change and inevitable decline of Telstra/Sensis in this country for many years.

Sensis Chief executive David Thodey said now was the right time to sell Sensis and refused to dwell on the lost opportunity to cash in a decade ago.

"After the GFC life changed and we can't go back before that period," he said, adding weight to the market shift that occured ten years ago when savvy businesses started focussing their efforts towards internet marketing rather than phone book print advertising. This economical refocussing by business owners has only increased in support over the ensuing years and really ramped up in support in the last 2-3 years.

IG market strategist Evan Lucas said even at the lower valuation, the sale was still in Telstra's best interests given the ongoing decline in revenues, especially from the Yellow Pages arm of the business.

"It has just been hemorrhaging money and there's no reason to hold on to it any longer," he said.

If you haven't explored your options when it comes to having a professional and cutting edge website presence developed for your business and also having it marketed efficiently so it ranks high in Google searches your business will benefit greatly from talking with one of our internet marketing specialists today. As the largest website design company operating in Queensland we are in key position to work with your business now and into the future.