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Web development covers a wide range of activities usually focused within, but not limited to, the coding aspect of creating websites and other similar projects.

What Web Development Services Can I Offer?

Over the years I have gained experience in many coding skills in scripting languages such as PHP, JavaScript, ActionScript, SQL and ASP. Not only am I able to create intuitive projects from scratch, such as AffiliStore, I am also adept at modifying existing code created by other developers or used by popular content management systems. I have had much experience in developing custom applications for e-commerce websites and understand the necessity of usability when it comes to converting sales.

For examples of my recent work please view my portfolio. If you are interested in hiring me as a web developer please contact me to discuss your requirements.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of increasing the popularity of your website within the natural (organic) listing results in search engines such as (but not limited to) Google, Yahoo and MSN. My SEO services will increase your visitor traffic through relevant search terms and help improve conversion rates.

Web Design

When creating an online presence for your business, it is essential to create a website that matches your needs and provides your customers with a clean structured design and clear call-to-action points to promote conversions. My web design services include everything you will need to successfully promote your brand online.

Web Development

Whether you are interested in developing a small custom code for your website or a complete online store, I can provide you and your business with a solution that meets your needs. My web devlopment services can add functionality to your website that will benefit both your business and your customers.

Listed below are some of my search engine ranking achievements for competitive search terms within Google, Yahoo and MSN (Live Search). Some clients are projects from previous employment which I no longer run and rankings may have since changed.

Position Gold Ltd.
Top 10 in Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk and Live.co.uk for a selection of search terms including “Search Engine Optimisation”, “Search Engine Optimization”, “Optimisation”, “SEO Company”, “SEO Specialist”, “Search Engine Optimising”.

Glass Block Outlet
No.1 in Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk and Live.co.uk for popular search terms such as “Glass Blocks”, “Glass Bricks”, “Glass Block” and “Glass Brick”.

New Football Kits
Top 10 in Google.co.uk and Yahoo.co.uk for highly competitive search terms such as “Football Kits”, “Football Shirts”, “Football Boots” and other popular terms like “Soccer Boots”, “New Football Kits”, “New Football Boots” and “New Football Shirts”. Also high positions for thousands of long tail search terms.

MoneySolve
Whilst in previous employment I achieved top 10 position in Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk and Live.co.uk for the highly competitive search term “IVA” plus top 10 rankings for “Debt Management” and “Debt Consolidation”.

Rullion
Whilst in previous employment I achieved top 10 position in Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk and Live.co.uk for the competitive search terms “Recruitment Agency”, “Employment Agency” and “Computer Jobs”.

AffiliStore
No.1 in Google.co.uk, Yahoo.co.uk and Live.co.uk for the search term “Affiliate Marketing Websites” and top 20 for the search term “Affiliate Marketing” in Google.co.uk.

Contact Me About SEO

For more details about my SEO achievements or information on how I can promote your website in natural search engine listings, please contact me.

Here is a list of websites I currently own:

• AffiliStore
• Cheap Fishing Equipment
• Cheapest Mobile Phones
• Kids Toy Store
• Mountain Bikes
• New Football Kits
• New Golf Irons
• New Perfumes
• New Watches
• Sports Exercise Equipment

The majority of these website are created using the AffiliStore PHP script.

Developing these websites gives me an inside knowledge of what works, experience that a lot of Web Designers fail to gain when working solely on client websites. The stats from this collection of sites also helps me see trends in search engines and gives me an in-depth knowledge of what is required to push for top search engine positions within mixed industries.

Here are a selection of designs I have created whilst working for various clients and companies. Click on the thumbnail images to view a larger image.

Website Design

Logo Design

If you wish to contact me and further discuss the services that I can offer then please complete the contact form with details of your query.

To allow people with disabilities to use your website it is important to abide by accessible guidelines set out by the Web Accessibility Initiative. These guidelines allow people with various disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with your website which would otherwise not be possible due to website or software barriers.

Creating accessible websites can also benefit people without disabilities, such as people with slow internet connections, people using low spec PCs or people with temporary disabilities such as a broken arm.

What Accessibility Services Can I Offer?

All websites that I create are developed to best practice standards and automatically include many accessible standards. The Web Accessibility Initiative has a set of checkpoints that allow you to gauge how your website meets the assigned priority levels. The Web Accessibility Initiative states:

• Priority 1
  A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.
• Priority 2
  A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.
• Priority 3
  A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents.

In general, it is possible to attain priority 2 and 3 accessible websites without compromising on design and layout.

Contact Me About Accessibility

If you are interested in hiring me to create an accessible website or rebuilding your current website to accessible standards then please contact me for more details.

I have been working as an affiliate for a few years now and in that time have developed several websites that successfully earn regular commission payments from a variety of merchants.

Through the success of these websites I decided to create AffiliStore, a PHP and MySQL program that generates content managed affiliate websites from multiple merchant product feeds. This has been a great success and is available to download for free at the AffiliStore website. It has allowed not just myself but other affiliates (some of who have no web skills at all) to quickly create multi-page affiliate websites that perform well in search engines and are fully customisable through the CMS and simple HTML template editing.

What Affiliate Marketing Services Can I Offer?

AffiliStore Install
AffiliStore is available for you to download and install for free. Though if you require help then I am happy to set up your AffiliStore website for a fee of £100 (Service currently unavailable). This service can include setting up hosting with a chosen domain name (+ £20), setting up a MySQL database and assigning a user, installing and uploading up to 5 of your chosen merchant product feeds then generating your sitemap.xml.

AffiliStore Skin Design
AffiliStore is currently installed with two default skin templates. For a fee of £350 I can tailor you’re AffiliStore skin template to a custom design suits your needs (Service currently unavailable).

Contact Me About Affiliate Marketing

If you require any of the services above or wish to discuss hiring me regarding any affiliate related projects then please contact me.

Good web design is essential when setting up a successful website. Everyone has their own aesthetic opinion to what good design looks like but there are some basic structural requirements and usability issues that must not be overlooked. This includes:

• Structured navigation which is always available and simple to use.
• Always allow visitors to search your website
• Clearly displaying your call to action, whether it is a buy now button or a contact details form, providing quick access to visitors will only help conversions.
• Highlight your unique selling points, it is what set you apart from the rest and will increase interest in your website.
• Make sure your website is accessible to as many visitors as it is possible. A visitor should never be turned away because they have arrived at your website and find it unusable due to the fact that they are using a certain web browser or are visually impaired etc.
• Focus on your content and provide visitors with the information/product/service they are looking for.
• Fast loading pages. Even with the broadband speeds of today some attention should still be given to the file size of your websites individual pages to reduce visitor bounce rates.

Once the structure of your website has been considered the look and feel can be developed to your own unique tastes or to an industry standard that has evolved either through a successful model or a governing set of design guidelines.

What Web Design Services Can I Offer?

Bespoke Web Design
Whether your website is to be professional and business focused or simply based around a personal hobby I can provide you with a service that will suit your needs. During my time developing Internet projects I have created websites for clients within many industries and can boast to have worked with Liverpool FC, University of Liverpool, Knowsley Council and Merseytravel.

Online Stores
An online store today is essential to any business that sells products. I have the advantage of previously owning my own online business which allowed me to gain valuable inside information that not many other general website designers would have access to. I have the skills to work with your current online store content management system or to develop your store from the ground up.

Blogs, CMS, Forums
As blogs, content management systems and forums become ever more popular and easy to set up there is also a need to personalise the template design to suit your needs. I have had constant exposure to most of the current popular systems that are used to create these websites (this website you are viewing has been created using a WordPress blog) and can quickly create design templates that either match and integrate with your current website or have a look and feel of their own.

Logo Design and Banners
Brand awareness on the Internet is essential. Is your logo instantly recognisable, is it still legible when resized, does it convey the message that you are trying to send out to your target audience? A good logo can drive the design of all your online and offline marketing material.

Banner advertisements come in many standard shapes and sizes and can help drive traffic into targeted areas within your website. Banners can be animated and should contain short advertisement that instantly catches attention, encouraging visitors to click.

Contact Me About Web Design

For examples of my recent work please view my portfolio. If you are interested in hiring me as a web designer please contact me to discuss your requirements.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of increasing the popularity of your website within the natural (organic) search results in search engines such as (but not limited to) Google, Yahoo! and MSN. This in turn will increase the number of visitors finding and using your website and help generate sales/leads/conversions of the products or services your website is offering. For a further detailed description see Wikipedia’s description page.

What SEO Services Can I Offer?

SWOT Analysis
The first step is to analyse your website strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Through the details gained within this report a clear vision of the way forward will be presented.

Keyword Research
Every industry is different and provides unique challenges when trying to research which search phrases are popular and will convert well. Although common and competitive search phrases will be the focus of a long term strategy, short term goals should be on long tail search phrases which can provide quick returns due to being less competitive.

Strategy Document
Within the first month a strategy document will be created to provide a clear detailed structure of the SEO process. This will include a month by month plan and strategy details unique to your website, helping you fully understand the work that will be undertaken on your behalf.

On-Page Optimisation
Each page of your website provides a unique opportunity to target a related search phrase and obtain a ranking in search engines. It is therefore important that your website pages are optimised and provide clear and easy obtainable call to action points which will help increase conversions. Subtle changes in the structure of the page content and coding can provide massive positional increases in search engines.

Site Structure Optimisation
The linking structure of you website and how pages are found by search engine bots is crucial in the optimisation of you website. By equally spreading the importance of pages within your website you can help increase rankings and maintain freshness of deeper level product/service pages. It is a common misconception that visitors arrive at your website homepage and work their way down to the products/services. If your website is structured correctly the majority of visitors will find it through long tail search terms and arrive at targeted product/service pages which usually have higher conversion rates than your homepage or category pages.

Link Building Strategy
Once the on-page optimisation and website structure are complete it is then important to build incoming links to your website targeting the researched search phrases and pointing in to optimised landing pages. Search engine results are heavily influenced by links as they see them as ‘votes’ for your website. The more incoming links (with keywords rich anchor text) gained to a page on your website the more popular that page will be for the targeted search phrase. There are many ways to build incoming links to your website some of which are more beneficial and have less risk of penalisation by the search engines.

Monthly Reports
It is important in any long term campaign to provide regular reports on how your website is benefiting from the work that is being completed. The monthly report can provide statistical developments on information such as total visitors, conversions, traffic sources, search engine positions, total incoming links, website pages indexed and other reports based on each individual client.

Weekly Positional Reports
A weekly report will be generated on positions within search engines of a selection of targeted search phrases. This will provide an opportunity to view important trend data and help show how the search engine optimisation is benefiting your website.

Contact Me About SEO

This is a basic outline of the SEO services I can provide for you and your website, but the process can be a lot more fluid depending on each individual case and the ever developing world of search engines and website marketing. To discuss how to hire my SEO services please contact me.

Hello and welcome to my website. My name is Steven Balfour and I have been working on Internet based projects for over 10 years. My education was focused around Graphic Design which helped me originally gain a full time position as a Web Designer for Connect Internet Solutions.

Connect Internet Solutions established an unrivalled reputation for developing total business solutions for a wide range of private sector clients, from small to medium sized businesses to blue-chip companies.

During my time in this role I designed, developed and worked on a variety of websites for both SMEs and larger organisations/companies. Some of the more well know clients I worked for include Liverpool FC, University of Liverpool, Knowsley Council and Merseytravel.

In 2003 I created an online business selling Glass Blocks and related products and founded the company Darker Limited. This was my first step into building online stores, Pay Per Click and Search Engine Optimisation. Within a year the Glass Block Outlet website was profitable and holding top positions in the search engines for popular industry search terms such as ‘Glass Blocks’, ‘Glass Block’, ‘Glass Bricks’ and ‘Glass Brick’.

It wasn’t until 2005 that I really started to look into Affiliate Marketing. With the skills I had developed I knew I could easily generate sales through setting up affiliate website which looked and worked like online stores. After developing several websites and taking advantage of merchant products feeds, I quickly realised that there was a need for a software script that quickly generated affiliate websites from multiple merchant product feeds. The result is AffiliStore and it is currently available for free download.

Again SEO played a big part in the development of all my websites and in 2007 I took the position of a Search Engine Optimisation Executive for Latitude based in Warrington.

Latitude is a world leading search marketing agency and have one of Europe’s largest teams of search specialists.

The industries of clients I worked with included IVA/Debt Management, Recruitment Agency, Computer Products and Car Insurance.

For further details of the services I can offer please view the other sections of my website or contact me and I will reply to your query asap.