At Sizzle Media our services include basic, business and Enterprise E-commerce sites and SEO services for businesses in the Greater Manchester region. We tend to work around the North West because we like to meet our clients face to face, shake hands, have a cuppa and do business the old fashioned way. Apparently for web design agencies in Manchester this is not the norm, where prices are given over the phone before even fully understanding what you require. As a RAR top 100 Agency we like to spend just a bit of time discovering how we can make a difference to your business, so we can add you to our client base that already generate over £700,000 a day through websites and marketing campaigns we conduct on their behalf.

If you’re looking for a Manchester based web design and Search Engine Optimisation agency, and feel that you’re probably not leveraging maximum results from the internet, you may already be aware that the UK E-Commerce market has been forecast to rise by a whopping 14% over the next year, to an eye watering £50.3 billion. It’s hard to believe that this online market hardly existed 15 years ago, imagine what the internet and business will be like in another 15 years, just the thought gives us goose bumps.

We appreciate that we are surrounded by economic uncertainty at the moment, but one thing seems certain, investing in a good quality E-commerce could give your business the boost it needs. Retail sales and the high street is diminishing before our eyes and traditional sales channels are becoming saturated as everyone is trying to fight for our hard earned money, yet the internet keeps on growing and those that focus on this medium are enjoying growing profits. To be blunt, there has never been a better time to invest in an E-Commerce website to make sure your business is making the most of the opportunities the internet has to offer.

Sizzle Media have been designing stunning E-commerce sites for many years, and have helped develop some very successful projects, from start-ups to blue ship organisation. We pride ourselves in delivering a very high level of customer service that has helped Sizzle Media Web design Manchester achieve the RAR Top 100 Agency outside of London 2 years running

Our E-Commerce websites can be tailor made for you, or you can choose a simple start up package. Once you have your beautiful ecommerce website in place, we will give you full training so you will be able to easily update your products and pages, and if you want you can use our Manchester SEO service too and get to the top of the search results for your chosen keywords, and SEO is something we are also very good with results that we don’t just talk about, but can demonstrate, however that’s another topic altogether.

If and ECommerce website is what your business needs, then don’t hesitate to call Sizzle Media web design Manchester on 0161 820 8577, and we will happily come to visit you, have a brew and do business the old fashioned way J

It’s that time of year when agencies outside of London are rated and ranked based on their performance, growth and feedback from their client base. Last year the Recommended Agency Register included Sizzle Media in the Top 100 recommended Agencies outside of London. We are very proud to announce that this year we have nominated again as an RAR Top 100 Agency Outside of London 2011.

There had been a wave of new entrants in the Top 100 this year as agencies grown and prosper, but we managed to maintain our position and represent a growing a number of Manchester agencies who regularly feature in the list.

The Recommended Agency Register spend months spent collecting and collating the financial data of hundreds of agencies, and compile the results of that research in to a definitive guide to the Top 100 marketing services companies outside London.

Sizzle Media website design Manchester have continued to deliver a high quality service to our client base and as a result; have again been highly rated by our clients through the RAR's ratings programme. The agencies in this select group continue to show improvement within their organisations and have the high regard of their clients, and demonstrated that they have what it takes to be successful in difficult trading conditions.

All agencies in the list must first and foremost deliver a high-level of customer satisfaction, an area that Sizzle Media website design Manchester have always excelled and is in fact a cornerstone of the business.

The full list is usually featured in the December issue of the Drum Magazine, but we are still waiting for our printed copy so we can add it to our list of industry accolades.

We don’t really submit ourselves for any industry awards as it is very time consuming, and we like to think that the results achieved for clients is our best testimony to our abilities, however, it's a great boost for the team to know that we rank highly in our industry and that client satisfaction has helped us to stand-out again in 2011-12.

2011 has been the best year yet for us and our client base, which collectively generate around £700,000 per day through websites we have generated. We would like to thank all our clients for voting for us and allowing us to help them leverage maximum results for their businesses from the internet and look forward to another successful year in 2012.

Sizzle Media have been selected by the Manchester Lieutenancy Office to revamp their online presence by creating a new vibrant design that clearly promotes the role GMLO plays in the Greater Manchester region.

The Lord-Lieutenant maintains Her Majesty’s dignity and seeks to promote a good atmosphere and spirit of co-operation by the encouragement he gives to voluntary service, benevolent organisations, and by the interest he takes in the commercial and social life of his county.

Sizzle Media will be developing a bespoke content management system that allows Deputy Lieutenants across the county secure access to contribute to the system, creating a site that is up to date with regional news and events. Furthermore the system will allow the administration team to make full use of Social Media to help raise the awareness of the services available at GML to a much wider audience.

Based out of the Sharp Project, Sizzle Media web design Manchester have developed a series of high profile projects with GMLO being the latest win. Recently they were selected to develop the site for the GB British Bobsleigh Team Deen, skiing sensation Daisi Daniels and professional footballer turned pro boxer Curtis Woodhouse. Last Year Sizzle Media designed the Amir Kahn official merchandise outlet ecommerce store. Existing regional clients include Great John Street Hotels, Suzuki, Evevee, Blacks Business Brokers, Astra Signs and Marilyn Comrie OBE.

http://www.manchesterlieutenancy.org/

We’re on the lookout for a junior .NET developer that knows good coding practice, is comfortable around humans and has good telephone manners. We will teach you the business end of making websites, how to deal with clients, pressure, deadlines, support etc, and make you in to well-rounded developer that will be at one with .NET and solving technical problems.

Happy to consider Uni leavers, people looking for part-time positions, and vegans. You will find no discrimination against vegans here just because we’re called Sizzle Media I’ll have you know!

Email your C.V’s with a bloody good letter as to why we should take you on to jobs@sizzlemedia.co.uk
NO AGENCIES PLEASE – we will be rude to you if you call us.

Official Bumph:

Due to a period of organic growth we are looking to expand the Sizzle Media family and are looking for a skilled C#.NET Developer, with a strong web development background. The role will involve support development on current projects as well as full development on new projects, in addition to acting as the front line support for our clients, ensuring that any issues are dealt with swiftly. Your core programming language skills on a day-to-day basis will be in C#.NET, SQL Server, Javascript (JQuery), HTML and CSS.

You must have a good IT related degree and have to be comfortable in a client facing role. Studio or commercial experience would be advantageous, however if you can prove you’re up to the task we will consider it. You must be able to work from the Manchester office, as well as attend an interview there and be eligible to live and work in the UK.

STRICLY NO AGENICES

Required Skills

• IT related degree
• Excellent HTML & CSS programming skills.
• Experienced coding skills with ASP.NET, especially C#, with AJAX.
• Experienced with database structure and the implementation of MySQL/MSSQL Database Systems.
• Experienced in working with Visual Studio/Visual Web Developer
• Knowledge of Windows Server and IIS Administration and DNS records.
• Understanding of Web Standards
• Superb knowledge of good programming practices and how to develop for SEO
• Excellent client communication and management skills
• Excellent ability to work with the client as the first level of support; dealing with requests where possible, escalating issues where needed and responding back to the client.
• Good time management skills

Bonus Skills

• Experience working within a studio environment
• SEO
• Multi Media
• Mobile App Development
• Classic ASP

September has been an extremely busy month at Sizzle Media and our design team has been somewhat overwhelmed with the sudden surge of work. It appears our long term marketing strategies are now coming to fruition as having won a string of high profile contracts, and as such we are now moving in to a new phase of business development.

At Sizzle, we specialise in eCommerce web design and corporate websites. We require experienced; creative front end freelance designers, with a strong portfolio of work who can prepare PSD files in record time and be on the end of the line should we need to have corrections made. We do not require any agencies - PLEASE do not see this as an opportunity to contact us, we require independent designers who we can work with and build a personal relationship with.

At Sizzle Media we consider ourselves totally customer focused and pride ourselves in delivering an exceptional service; that goes beyond just the creation of a website. Our team are experienced developing long term relationships with everyone we encounter and you will be no different. As a 'member' of our team, you can expect to be treated with respect, promptness and have a laugh along the way. In return we expect to be treated with respect and the service you offer to be second to none in all areas.

If your a local freelance front end web designer, then please submit examples of your work and rates too info@sizzlemedia.co.uk.

See examples of our work at our web design portfolio.

When embarking on the humongous task of promoting your website and lending visibility to it, you should keep in mind that there can be literally millions of other websites in your market. It is super important to keep your website up to scratch to keep it firmly ahead of the competitors. There are a number of ways to gain success in your marketplace, the most immediate being a great eye catching website design. Having a visually appealing well-built website, coupled with good results on search will go some way towards your websites popularity and success.

An Innovative website design can make you stand out from the hordes of sites that are fighting for the same customers, and the same SEO positions as you. Even very slight changes to your existing site can make it site stand out and make a huge difference in your website’s overall success. Seeing your website pull away from your competitors on search engines is great and works wonders for generating new business enquiries. Updating your site and adding something new to it frequently is also something that you can do yourself to keep ahead of the pack. Good quality content and frequent updates will always help your website succeed online.

Something that you should not fall for is the tendency to do exactly what others are doing. Following your competitor blindly is a common mistake. Let go of the fear that you must do as they do! Even if you do, learn to identify what exactly it is that works for your business, and ultimately - have the changes resulted in any new business. You will find that what works for your competitor may not work for you, or that keyword you have been so desperate to get to number one for has not resulted in any new business.

Take a holistic approach to your website, it’s always good practice to keep all elements of your website up to date, especially areas such as ‘latest news’ pages, if you have the feature on your site, make sure it’s kept up to date. Out of date news can actually work against you.

If you have any images on your website, make sure they don’t feature any outdated styles, unless you are specifically demonstrating a particular era of your business. Making small ongoing changes to your site will keep it fresh in the eyes of your customers and search engines, and as such you will be rewarded with valuable business enquiries.

One of the issues most businesses face when commissioning a website, certainly if it’s there first website, is creating content for the various pages. So to help you understand the importance of good content on your site, and the value this can bring in both a good user experience and Search Engine Optimisation, I have put together a brief guide to help you get started with writing content.

Contrary to what you mind might be telling you, there is no easy way to do this, so don’t waste time in finding a shortcut, it will most likely waste time and put you off making a start. It’s just a case of making a brew, rolling your sleeves and getting on with it.

Many companies have tried to create dictation software that saves you time in typing by allowing you to speak in to a recording device and it works out what your saying, and presents it on a screen. I’ve not had much luck with these kinds of programmes; as the set up time required to train the system on your speech is a pain and ultimately frustrating, and we don’t need any more excuses to put us off the task at hand, right?

There are services now available where you speak your message on a voice mail service, and someone types it and emails you back. These are more successful and save you much time in correcting grammer and spelling, but you will need to make further corrections yourself. Unless you have absolutely reems of content you want to create, it’s essentially the same as above, an exercise in correcting content.

Personally, we prefer to just do it the old pashioned way and that’s simply taking the time to structure your page and then start typing. It might take a bit longer but in the end it’s a far more rewarding experience and allows you to really get the key points of your business across.

The average webpage needs around 500 words of good quality content for it to tick most of the boxes search engines look for, and this is not difficult to write if you take the time to plan your page. Simply break your content in to 4 areas and then work through them, much like a normal conversation or presentation. Starting with an introduction, followed by your USP, followed by the benefits, and followed by the ‘close’ or ‘call to action’. Always finish with a call to action so the site visitor knows what to do next, and a good paragraph dedicated to each section will be sufficient.

Once you have created around 500, 5-6 paragraphs of content, you can then begin to introduce your ‘keywords’ in to the senstences. Keywords are the words you want your page or website to be found for.

If you read through our blogs, you will see that we refer to ourselves as Sizzle Media Web design Manchester, and we always put web design Manchester in bold. For our business; this is one of a handful of very important keywords that we want to be found for on Google, and we are found. So for example - if you are writing about Skip hire, then make sure that you mention the words skip hire in bold, atleast once in every pargraph, but don’t over do it, Google is very smart and it will pick up on the fact that you are trying to fool them, and they will penalize your efforts.

So following the above method, you should be able to knock out around 500 words of content for a web page in around 15 minutes, and this effort will bring your website closer to completion, put you it good stead with Google, and your customers. The better you become at writing good content, the better your website will be received by search engines and visitors alike, and that will mean more business. They both appreciate good content and recognize the effort that you have put it to writing relevant content.

So don’t put writing content off any further, just get down to it as soon as possible and start typing.

It’s been another great month at Sizzle Media. The weather has been improving and we have noticed a distinct upswing in people’s willingness to invest in their businesses. Recently we have been harping on about the benefits of SEO, and more so what you can do yourself to improve your chances of getting found on Google.

One of the many little things that you can do to improve your search engine rankings, is to conduct some Internal Linking from content in your site to pages that describe the service in more detail. You will see examples of this across the Sizzle Media website whenever we want to emphasis a service we offer to Google to help us rank better.

We recently had the owner of an ecommerce website (see what we did there) approach us with site optimization problem. They already had a SEO consultant optimize their site, but they still weren’t acquiring any Keyword rankings what so ever. Did the SEO consultant ruin something? Or was it just bad luck? Whatever the problem was – they needed help, Quick! We jumped in and to my surprise the site was actually optimized very well.  The site was certainly search engine friendly. In addition, the site had an excellent amount of well written and unique content (you will surprised how rare this is for an ecommerce website). Even ‘URL structures’ and navigation were neat and. Besides, the website was indexed accurately on all the search engines, now why isn’t the site still not ranking?

Well, the SEO consultant whilst doing a fantastic job overall, had actually missed a key building block – internal linking. With proper internal linking, there is simply no reason why your site shouldn’t rank well on your set primary keywords.

Both internal and external links hold immense importance in SEO and it’s imperative that you link choice keywords to pages within your site, it really could make a massive difference, and is very easy to with a content managed website (there it is again).

Internal links should always be directed to a “target URL”.  The “target URL” will be your webpage that you would want on top of your search results. The idea is to boost up your internal site traffic, giving your visitors pathways to reach more detailed information pages; increasing movement within your site. The “Target URL” must always contain keyword-rich content and not just waffle. Goof quality content equals good quality traffic.

Using internal Linking, we helped this ecommerce website company bind pages together within sub categories, categories and product pages and the results we near instant, better search results and increased traffic. The bottom-line really is internal linking is easy and in most cases free to do and it all stacks up to an extremely powerful SEO tactic.

To find out me about our SEO services, call Sizzle Media on 0161 820 8577

By now you already know the importance of good content in on-page search engine optimisation. Keep in mind that a thorough research for keywords should be conducted before writing content for your web pages. As a business looking to leverage the power of the internet, you should realise just how important keyword research actually is – it is one of most important tools which can help your website get indexed by the search engines for the terms best suited for your business. Correct Keywords attract ‘relevant’ traffic to your site and help in achieving a steady growth both in terms of popularity as well as level of enquiries. Good keyword research is the backbone of the on-page optimisation process.

For any kind of search engine optimisation campaign, it is necessary to single out the search phrases that your website or blog is to be optimized for. Three basic things should be looked for- the keyword should be relevant; they should encourage the inflow of traffic; and they should be comparatively less competitive than high traffic keywords. Being less competitive than the others secures higher chances of acquiring top rankings in the results. You need to put in a bit of effort in finding the right keywords for your business, but it is worthwhile all the same.

Sizzle Media’s guide to SEO

As the owner of Sizzle Media, a successful multi-award website design and search engine optimisation company, we offer efficient, affordable web development and web design services to business across the UK.

After a very successful run designing and building ecommerce websites, we are now offering a cost effective search engine optimisation to businesses wanting to leverage maximum results from the internet.  SEO is still considered a business luxury and maybe even a ‘black art, certainly many SEO companies will want you to believe that it’s something beyond the average business persons understanding - It’s not!

SEO has become the most significant part of everyday online business, and over the last couple of years I have met hundreds of people and owners of a wide variety of enterprises who are still in the dark about SEO, and are willing to learn about the secrets of SEO, so they can get the maximum benefits of online marketing for their businesses.

Understanding how SEO works is key to helping your business succeed. Ofcourse you may not have the time or skills to conduct an SEO campaign, but having an appreciation of the process will help you, the business owner – understand what this ‘dark art’ is all about and maybe have a dabble yourselves.

Sizzle Media – SEO Manchester are helping several companies and individuals achieve online success, and we have a library of case studies to back up our claims! Not only are we helping our clients get the website they need and helping them achieve top rankings for their websites, we are also helping them to establish a solid online reputation.

These days SEO has gone to a completely new level and it is not just restricted to optimising your website. Rather it is about optimising a plethora of assets such as websites, forums, blogs, micro sites, press releases, videos, social media marketing and a lot more. It’s for this reason I have decided to develop a short book about SEO, to give you a complete understanding about search engine optimisation, the terms used and how they can benefit your business.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will be releasing snippets and industry secrets that will help you understand the benefits of SEO, and allow you to get involved with easy tips and tricks that can be applied at no cost to promote your business online.

Watch this space as we release teasers for each chapter. If you want this information sending direct your inbox, sign up to our newsletter and we will keep you updated.