client login: project status
support documentation
setting up a mail account in Microsoft Outlook
using Internet Explorer for FTP
If you require any information on our services, please don't hesitate to contact us.
client login: project status
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support documentation |
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If you require any information on our services, please don't hesitate to contact us. |
| FKDA 12 Hilton Street Manchester M1 1JF | telephone +44 (0)161 237 1500 | |||||||||||||||||||||
To create a new email account in Outlook, you will need
to: 4. *If you use our mail server for Outgoing messages, you
may find you have to click the Send/Receive button twice before you can
send email. This is because we require you to logon to the POP3 server
before you can access your messages. If you want to avoid this, you can
either use your existing ISP's mail server (SMTP), or you can have Outlook
log-on to your POP3 server automatically. For further information, please
refer to the Help files in the Outlook program. You may also find that due to the increased amount of
spam, your ISP will not allow you to use our Outgoing mail server without
Authentication (using the same username and password). Again, more information
can be found in Outlook's Help files. If you have any queries regarding the above, please
do not hesitate to contact us. Webmail Troubleshooting
In order to ensure that you recieve all the emails sent
to your email account, you need to ensure that your email account quota
is not exceeded. Below is a checklist of potential circumstances that
may lead to your email account quota being exceeded and hence, subsequent
emails not being recieved by your email account: 4. |
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When reading your web statistics you may see a few unfamiliar words and terms. This guide will explain what they mean. The first things you will see are:
These can be a bit confusing so here is a brief explanation.
The stats page then gives you this information for the year so far, as well as a 30 and 7 day perspective. Finally it gives it to you by the hour. Visitors Domains/Countries (Top 10)* - Shows which countries visitors are coming from, starting with the most and working its way down.
Hosts (Top 10) - A breakdown of the top individual visitors to your site. Robots/Spider visits (Top 10) - Here is a great way to see when your favorite search engine has last visited your site as well as how many hits it has made (again, 'hit' can be misleading here). Visits Duration - The time a visitor spent on your site for each visit. Files type - Which files are generating the most hits. Pages URL (Top 10) - Provides statistics of the most visited pages on your site.
Operating Systems (Top 10) - Shows what Operating Systems your visitors are using in order of popularity. Browsers (Top 10) - Like the OS category above, this shows what browsers your visitors are using in order of popularity. Screen sizes (Top 5) - By default, this statistic is disabled, as we would need to add further programming to your website pages. Connect to Site From is a multi-part category -
Search Keyphrases (Top 10) & Search Keywords (Top 10)
Miscellaneous
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As an alternative to using a dedicated FTP program to upload or download files to or from the web space on our server, you can use Internet Explorer, Version 5 or above. Adjust the size of your Internet Explorer window, so it fills about half your screen. Now open a Windows Explorer window (or Finder window if using Apple OS X) and size this to fill the rest of the screen. In the Windows Explorer window, display the contents of the folder where you keep the web pages or content files on your own computer. In the Internet Explorer window, enter the following line into the address box, where you would normally put a website address:
Note the use of the ":" and "@" symbols to separate the parts of the address. IMPORTANT: If you are using a computer that may be used by others, we recommend that you use the following address (so that you are prompted for your password before connecting to the server, and your password remains protected):
You should now see the directory for the website where content is stored. There may already be files here that we have already uploaded for you. If not, the directory will be empty. To upload your files, all you have to do is to use the standard windows drag and drop technique. Click on a file, or group of files in the Windows Explorer window and whilst holding the left mouse button pressed, drag it/them to the Internet Explorer window. Depending on the size of the files it may take a little time for the transfer to occur, but eventually you should see the files in the Internet Explorer window. Note that because the files are being transfered to a different site, windows will automatically copy the files, rather than moving them. So you won't lose the copies on your hard disk. Should you want to copy files back from your website, to your local machine for any reason, you should be able to drag them back the opposite way. If this does not work, Right Click on a file in the FKDA webspace window, you will get a pop-up menu, which includes the option to copy the file back to your local hard disk. When you have files on your website, and are updating them, it can be useful to compare the dates on the files. The View menu in the Internet Explorer window will give you the option of viewing these details, just as you can do in the Windows Explorer window. click here for details on editing text files - to be added shortly
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When adding content to text files, for example, when
updating the news page of a website, it is possible to use HTML tags within
the text to alter the formatting and style of the text that will be produced.
Below is a list and brief description of the tags that you may wish to use, this is followed by a more in depth description of the tags along with examples of their use:
<br> The following tags can be used to alter the bold, italic
and underline properties in a piece of text: To make a piece of text bold enclose it in <b></b> For underlining use <u></u> To italicise text use <i></i> When writing large amounts of text you may wish to split up the text into smaller parts or paragraphs. Simply pressing the ‘Enter’ key will not have the same effect when the text is published to the web. Instead you will need to use the <br> tag. The <br> tag inserts a line break after a piece of text. You can insert as many of these tags as necessary to provide the required number of line breaks. eg. This is one line of text <br>and this is another. Whereas adding two of these tags will start a new line as well as adding a single line gap between the text. eg. This is one line of text <br><br>and this is another. To alter the color, size and/or font of your text, the following tags can be used in any combination. However, with these tags you should bear in mind that how the output appears will depend on the viewers browser and system. Changing the attributes of the font is achieved by enclosing the text in <font></font> and then following this with the attribute of the font that you wish to change. For example, to change the colour of the font use <font color=”hexadecimal name”> eg. <font color=”#CCCCCC”>Hello</font> To change the size of the font use <font
size=”5”> eg. <font size=”5”>Hello</font> To change the type of font use <font face=”verdana”> eg. <font face=”times new roman”>Hello</font> Finally, you can combine these font tags in any order to produce different results. eg. <font face= “times new roman”
color=”#CCCCCC”>Hello</font> You can also place links within the text using the HTML
tag <a href></a> You can provide a link to
a website by adding the following comments into the initial tag. eg. <a href="www.fkda.co.uk" target="_blank">www.fkda.co.uk</a> will provide a link to www.fkda.co.uk in a new browser window. You can also provide a link to an email address by adding the following comments into the initial tag. eg. <a href="mailto:admin@fkda.co.uk"
target="_blank">admin@fkda.co.uk</a> will provide an email link to admin@fkda.co.uk in a new browser window. Finally, all of the tags described can be combined and applied to a single piece of text to produce a range of different results. For example, by combining the bold, italic and link tags it is possible can create an linked piece of text that stands out from the rest of the body text. eg. <b><i><a href="www.fkda.co.uk" target="_blank">www.fkda.co.uk</a></i></b> will produce a formatted link of www.fkda.co.uk and will open up the link in a new browser window. |
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Although we will optimise the websites we design with all the necessary tags and references, there are a number of aspects of Search Engine Optimisation we are unable to carry out. This is where our clients need to take some responsibility themslves in ensuring their websites are being ranked as they require. This could be simply providing us with the most appropriate keywords and content for your business, or submitting your website link to other sites and directories. We will always give advice where necessary, but if a far more comprehensive approach to search engine marketing is required, we work with strategic partners (such as Adoofa) who are able to provide a more specialised service to meet your marketing budget. Please also note that as it can often take a number of weeks or even months for search engines to start ranking your site, it's usually a good idea to work on optimising your site as soon as possible. We hope the following tips will be of help:
Non Reciprocal Links Reciprocal Links Domain Name Registration & Hosting Site Title & Description Keywords Paid Placement Services Testimonials GoogleAlert |
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| Write Good Content |
Having good, well written content is possibly the best way to achieve good search engine rankings. Not only is good content great for the visitors to your site, but it will also encourage other businesses and organisations to link to your site, which can help improve your rankings.
Search engines have moved beyond simply calculating keyword density and link relevance. More and more, the major search engines are mastering the ability to identify natural human language and evaluate a web page based on how the content is written.
You should try to limit content to a maximum of 300-500 words a page. Visitors won’t read much more than that and by exceeding this, you risk your point being missed. You may wish to hire a copywriter to produce the content for your site, this is something that can be organised by FKDA.
With all of our Macromedia Flash based sites, we place a copy of the content below the main Flash site, further enhancing search engines’ ability to find the important content of your website. FKDA can also produce an Accessible Text Only version of your site. Recent DDA recommendations promote Text Only versions of websites as they work well with electronic readers often used to access websites. A further advantage of this is that a Text Only version of your website can also help with your search engine rankings as it provides additional, more simplified content.
| Non Reciprocal Links |
Other websites can link to your website in two ways; either as a reciprocal link or a non reciprocal link. Most search engines favour the latter. A non-reciprocal link is normally added because other website owners want to recommend your site. There is no mutual benefit or agreement as there is with a reciprocal link. Search engines recognise this and as such give greater weighting to this type of link.
Online directories are a good way of actively securing non reciprocal links. With many directories you will have to buy this non-reciprocal link for anything from £30 to £300. There are also directories offering free listings, for example, we have a free weblink on www.cids.co.uk.
However, be careful. Websites claiming to add your site to thousands of directories or thousands of search engines should be avoided, as the only result you will see from this will be large quantities of spam.
| Reciprocal Links |
Reciprocal links are also a good way you can promote your site and help achieve good rankings. However, keep a close eye on your link partners and be sure never to reciprocal link with sites that spam. Doing so can have a negative effect on your rankings. Generally, when you consider a reciprocal link to another site, the higher the page rank of the site the better. Search engines will rate your site by who is linking to your site, so it's important to establish quality, related links. These sites should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed or in the same industry or sector.
| Domain Name Registration & Hosting |
When you pick a domain name, ensure it reflects what your site is about. Also bear in mind the top level domain of your website address. Websites with the ‘.co.uk’ top level domain are likely to be ranked higher on a UK only search on Google than a ‘.com’ top level domain.
If you have your own hosting arranged, then be aware of where in the world your site is being hosted. We have found that many hosting companies in the U.S.A are able to offer cheap hosting with lots of server space. The downside to this is that your site will be hosted outside of the UK. If your company is based in the UK this may be important as the same problem with search engine rankings occurs here as with the top level domains previously mentioned.
| Site Title & Description |
A catchy title will help to bring in the visitors. The title should be used to provide a quick description of your site and ideally should contain some of the target keywords for your site. The title of your site is probably the most important tag on your website.
The site description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines don't use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your page. Try to keep the site description tag as brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible. Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag.
| Keywords |
Determining keywords is a critical step in web design. If your website and meta tags do not contain related keywords, web surfers will be unable to find your website when they conduct searches.
The formula is a little tricky - you will need to locate terms that are popular and relevant to your site. These terms may or may not be terms that YOU feel are relevant. The optimal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for a website with your content. In order to achieve success your website should be optimised with terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches. The caveat, of course, is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.
Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in order to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 10% is a rough guide as to the optimal level. Don't overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or keyword-stuffing, where too many keywords make the content hard to read.
Be aware of the keywords that your competitors are using. In a competitive and often saturated market it may be beneficial to use slightly less popular terms, that are maybe more targeted to you visitor. These are more likely to have a higher conversion rate than a less specific popular term.
The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your product or service. This should be done by a number of people as sometimes people have very different ideas for search terms and by identifying a variety of people and their search terms you may discover words that hadn't occurred to you.
Use the search keyword and keyphrases in your website statistics to help to find how visitors arrived at your site.
Try to work the keywords into the body of your text as often as you can without sounding redundant. Keywords organised in an hour glass shape, as in weighted more heavily at the top and bottom of your site content, are widely considered to give the best search engine results.
| Paid Placement Services |
Consider using Paid Placement Services (Pay for Rank), even if it is only on a very small scale. These services are offered by a number of search engines including Espotting, Overture and Google, to promote your website and in doing so generate additional targeted visitors.
Google offer various advertising programmes which enable advertisers to closely match text-based adverts with their search queries.
Google Adwords Select programme is based on a cost-per-click (CPC) strategy, meaning that you only have to pay when users click onto your ad. This ensures that you have maximum visibility and only pay for it when someone accesses your website.
The Google strategy also involves identifying keywords that have an associated cost. This cost is dependent upon the popularity of the word; the more popular the word, the higher the associated cost. The position of your advertisement is based on the cost-per-click (CPC)and the click-through rate (CTR). Google’s Adwords Select programme also enables you to specify an online budget, allowing you to monitor your costs whilst also achieving the best possible results.
More information on Google Adwords: www.adwords.google.co.uk
| Testimonials |
Testimonials on your site about your product or service can also help give better search engine results. Every time you come across a great website, or have a good experience with a purchase, send a testimonial to the website owner. If they decide to publish your testimonial you may get a link to your website, thus helping improve you search engine rankings.
| GoogleAlert |
One very useful tool we use to see how our website is being ranked is GoogleAlert. It’s an automated search and web intelligence solution for monitoring your professional interests online and tracks the entire web for your personalised topics and sends you new results by daily email. As one of the keywords we’ve included is our company name “FKDA”, we’re constantly informed when our site, or when a page from another site that contains our name is ranked on the Google search engine.
More information can be found at: www.googlealert.com/about.php
