We were approached by iola who are a leading supplier of beautiful and functional indoor and outdoor rattan furniture earlier this year when they wanted a website to represent Iola in the United Kingdom. We launched their United Kingdom website in April 2011 and they were really pleased with the results and subsequently wanted a website for their New Zealand business. As with their United Kingdom website they wanted it to look good and perform well in the search engines. Iola’s all weather rattan furniture creations are exclusively from Australia and New Zealand and are hand crafted by their team of master weavers, originating from Cebu in the Philippines, and produced in their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, with exacting standards for quality.

So if you are looking for great rattan furniture for your conservatory or garden then you simply will not find better quality or designs and a more professional service.  We are certain you will be impressed with Iola.

The New Zealand website is located here..
Iola Rattan Furniture New Zealand

Remember they also have a United Kingdom website
Iola Rattan Furniture UK

Of the many methods a company can employ to optimise their website, we’d recommend you give text cloaking a really wide berth. SEO specialists’ views on the effectiveness of different SEO techniques differ greatly depending on who you speak to. However, text cloaking is a technique which is universally regarded as black hat and definitely one that reputable online marketers would stay well away from.

Text cloaking refers to the practice of showing differing content or URLs to users than is presented to the search engines. Serving up different results based on user agents is deemed dishonest, and can cause your site to be perceived as deceptive, resulting in its removal from Google’s Index.

The penalties for cloaking are severe and you will be caught, it is simply a matter of when. The first step will be your immediate removal from the major search engines, and often many of the less popular ones as well. And depending on the severity of the text cloaking, you may well be blacklisted. Blacklisting is as bad as it gets as far as search engine penalties go; not only will you have to begin the marketing of your site from scratch; you will also have to purchase another domain name.

This is why it is so important to be 100% sure of the intentions of any external party you pay to carry out your website optimisation. You should always use an ethical SEO organisation, as sustainable white hat methods will always outweigh any quick gain you may experience from unethical practices. It’s simply not worth the risk.

So why do people still use cloaking to improve their website SEO? That’s a good question actually, one to which we really don’t have the answer. With so many ethical methods to employ, we really don’t understand why anyone would run the risk of trying to cheat the search engines.

Here at Designer Websites we specialise in the production of high-end, functional websites which support ethical SEO techniques. For further information or for a quote from South Wales’ premier website developers, contact us today.

We have just completed an ecommerce website for promotional products. The ecommerce and content managed website was developed for Sunbase USA Ltd, a well know promotional product agency based in Cardiff. The website sells all manor of promotional product from Pens and Mugs to T Shirts and Umbrellas.

This ecommerce website was specifically developed to allow rebranded websites for other promotional companies, for printers and for stationers.

If you are interested in purchasing promotional products take a look at the site here: Promotional Product

Many people are in the dark about what exactly is the disability discrimination act (DDA) and what they need to do in order to be DDA compliant. The actual laws themselves surrounding the DDA are a little hazy although some points can be highlighted as meaningful such as:

• From 1st October 1999 a service provider has to take reasonable steps to change a practice which makes it unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.
• For people with visual impairments, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include... accessible websites.
• For people with hearing disabilities, the range of auxiliary aids or services which it might be reasonable to provide to ensure that services are accessible might include ... accessible websites.

Furthermore an example of what is meant by 'service providers':

• An airline company provides a flight reservation and booking service to the public on its website. This is a provision of a service and is subject to the act.