Meet Jack Harris of City Mortgage Advisor

Jack Harris is an independent mortgage broker from Bournemouth in the UK. His new website City Mortgage Advisor has been set up to help first time buyers gain access to the Help to Buy Scheme, plus lets them request independent mortgage advice for when buying a home in the area. In this interview we speak about the website launch and his plans for the business in the future.

1. Would you tell us a little bit about your own background and how you came to work in the mortgage broker industry?

I studied finance at Bournemouth University, and after graduation, I started working for a mortgage brokers in the town. As with many people who run their own businesses, it got to the point where I wanted to be independent by myself and believed I could do it better. Because of that, City Mortgage Advisor was born, and I am now my own man so to speak.

2. What kind of services do you offer, and in what way do you differentiate yourself from the local competition. I'm thinking that mortgage advice must be a pretty competitive industry, right?

You are so right. It is ultra-competitive. But, I am firm believer that if you offer a quality and friendly service, then the rest will take care of itself. I am already getting referrals in from existing clients and am growing month on month so can't complain.

In terms of service, I am 100% independent. That means I can search the whole mortgage market to get the best deals for my clients, and am not tied contractually in to anyone mortgage lender. That's why people come to me: because I am a truly independent mortgage broker in Bournemouth.

3. Can you explain a little bit about the Help to Buy Scheme in Bournemouth and what this entails?

Sure, in the UK, just like the US we saw a large economic downturn in the last decade. As a result, people, especially young people and first time buyers, were unable to get enough of a deposit to buy a new home. The UK Government launched the Help to Buy Scheme which means that first time buyers can now get onto the property ladder with as a little as a five percent deposit.

The Help to Buy Scheme in Bournemouth is only available for first time buyers and on new-builds, so I partner up with property developers in the town to open up this possibility for my clients. It's a great scheme and has helped hundreds of young people in the town so far. I offer advice on this and help those buyers get onto the market where otherwise they would struggle. It's the part of my job that I love the most to be honest!

4. So what's Bournemouth like as a place to live and work in?

It's a beautiful part of the UK. It has sandy beaches (award-winning I might add) and great nightlife, and is right next to the forest which means some great days out when not working. I have a young family, and during the summer we spend as much time outdoors as we can, whether that's camping or down on the beach with friends.

5. In terms of the business, what plans do you have for that and your own website, City Mortgage Advisor?

I want to continue the growth. At the moment I am putting the final plans on a new office location which will be more centrally located in the Bournemouth town centre which should make things easier for me in terms of client acquisition.

For the website, I am currently getting my online marketing manager to develop out new pages to target other geographic areas within a 30 mile radius of our office premises. I also plan to begin doing Skype and video consultations online as I feel that this is something that you don't often get in the mortgage broker market. Hopefully this will translate into more business if it means I can work with more potential clients online rather than with a physical office appointment.

Thanks so much for your time today. As a final word, what piece of advice would you give for other people reading this interview who might want to start their own business?

Don't be afraid to take the jump. Without fail, every single business owner I talk to who has done the same has said that it was the best decision that they ever made. Starting out on your own can be a scary concept, but unless you do it, you will never know. I didn't think I was going to be a mortgage broker in Bournemouth when I was a kid growing up, but I sure as heck wouldn't change it!

Thanks, Jack!

Meet Alan Hutchinson, Website Programmer for Real Estate Agents

Based in Bournemouth in the UK, Alan Hutchinson is a website programmer who builds website applications to help real estate agents sell or rent their properties online.

1. How did you first become interested in programming?

I actually taught myself whilst a teenager. The initial interest though was sparked off by a teacher at my school who encouraged me to try and to create my own computer game. After that I progressed into building and programming websites, and now today I am very much focused on developing web applications for letting agents in my home town of Bournemouth.

2. What do you like most about working on websites?

For me it's the results. The Bournemouth letting agents and real estate agents that I work with have all seen great results in terms of web traffic and revenue due to the online systems that I have developed for them--and now that business is starting to go nationwide which is amazing for me.

3. What sort of services do you provide to help real estate professionals with their websites?

I can build a letting agent's website from scratch, but the most valuable part is the property management aspect to it. It allows them to post properties to rent or sell online, where prospective tenants and customers can view and apply for a physical appointment to see the property. In the town I live in, Bournemouth, the real estate and letting agents market is really competitive, so I can give my clients a boost over the competition which is awesome.

4. How did you come to specialize in programming for websites focusing on selling or renting properties?

I have an aunt who knew I could program--and she was running a letting agents in Bournemouth. She was on a budget and needed to get her properties online, so I worked with her on the development, and it worked so well that I started re-badging the application and selling it on to other real estate and letting agents companies in the Bournemouth area.

5. If you could give advice to real estate agents regarding building a strong online presence, what would you say?

For me it's about the search engine rankings first and foremost because people need to find you! After that, you need your website to stand out from the crowd and let visitors view properties in an easy to understand way which presents the properties very well visually. Nowadays social media is becoming more important, too.

Thanks, Alan!

Meet Will and Mark, Commercial Photographers

Will and Mark are two commercial photographers from Dorset and Bournemouth based on the south coast of England. They offer a range of photography services including lifestyle, people, food and drink, interiors and architecture, plus products and pack-shots. Below they share with us about how they work and how they came to setting up their commercial photography business.

1. Why is it important for businesses to hire a commercial photographer?

Images are so important when it comes to first impressions, and also actually selling something. Our commercial photography services are predominantly for clients in the Dorset and Bournemouth area of the United Kingdom, although on many occasions we are required to travel throughout the country.

Our clients range from property developers, restaurants, watch manufacturers, and large retailers. All of them come to us because we manage to capture the moment which places their product or service in the best possible light--and that's our job at the end of the day as commercial photographers--you can see some examples on our commercial website.

2. How do you decide where to take photos for a shoot for a particular client? In other words, are there criteria that help you decide, for example, when to do interior photos and when to go outside on location?

Many of the clients we work with are retail businesses or are manufacturers. Because of that we need to take shots inside the studio. When we shoot in our studio, then the real trick is in the lighting. Any commercial photographer will tell you that you need to understand how light works in order to get the best photographic results. There's also a need to understand the composition and form so you can make the client's product look as good as it can be.

We also do need to go out on location, but this is primarily for clients where their product is used in an outdoor scenario, or our architectural clients. Many of them need great images of their property to help with the sale, so half of the shoot will naturally be outdoors, and the rest will typically be interior shots of the building.

If we can do a plug here, then please head on over to our website and check out the interiors and architectural page which has some of our most recent work examples.

3. What is your background in photography, and how did you decide to become a commercial photographer?

It's at university that we actually met around 10 years ago, but before then had both been keen photographers. Whilst we both had differing methods, styles, and types of photography equipment, we had a connection and thought that we would look at setting up a commercial photography company together.

Since then it's been a successful partnership for both of us and has turned into a solid commercial photography business and partnership that is creative and brings in a profit. We work hard to achieve that.

4. For someone who is looking to hire a photographer for a project, what advice do you have to help ensure a good partnership?

Make sure that it's someone you can get along with! We pride ourselves on our communication and two way approach. We listen to what the client wants from their photography project and take on board their requirements. It's then up to us to impart our professional opinion based on our years of experience as commercial photographers. Any prospective clients can check out a video we've just placed on our YouTube channel about how both of us work as commercial photographers in Dorset. Hope you like it and thanks for the interview!

Thanks, Will and Mark!

Meet Marc Heighway, Entrepreneur and SEO Expert

Marc Heighway is the owner of SEO Expert Bournemouth, one of the leading SEO agencies on the south coast of the UK. His company offers SEO services to Bournemouth businesses and companies that want to achieve higher search engine rankings and improve their online visibility. Learn more about Marc's services in the following video.

You can also watch this Expert SEO Bournemouth video directly on YouTube.

1. In your career, how did you first get into working with SEO?

I first started building small websites back in 1998 when the Web was a very different place. Google didn't even exist, and the search engines that did were quite easy to manipulate to make your website get listed high in the rankings. When Google came along a few years later, things began to change, and suddenly it became a more of a science to get your website ranking high. With more and more businesses coming online, the competition for search space increased which meant the theory and strategy behind SEO became much more specialist.

As I continued to build websites in my early twenties, it became clear to me that if I wanted these websites to succeed, then I would need to become very proficient in SEO myself. Over the years, I worked with a network of fellow SEO enthusiasts who shared new ideas and strategies on search engine optimization, continually testing new approaches as Google continued to roll out their incremental algorithm updates.

From a professional perspective, I was working full-time for an American company called Garmin; they are the leading GPS and satellite navigation company globally. I was their Online Marketing Manager for Europe and was living and working in Switzerland for a few years, managing a European web team. This gave me some excellent opportunities to test various SEO techniques with the team in what is a very competitive market. We were able to do this across multiple languages and countries which really gave some invaluable insights into SEO.

2. What are the benefits to companies when it comes to working with a SEO company local to them?

A local SEO company, such as Expert SEO Bournemouth, has an advantage over larger SEO companies because they know local business and local people. They should also have a good network of local contacts, all of which can be invaluable when it comes to finding relevant and local back-linking opportunities which are all part of the mix when it comes to achieving better search engine listings.

Also, you can't beat face to face regular contact with a client. Most of the clients Expert SEO Bournemouth work for, and also those of the FIMA Digital parent company I manage in Southampton, were first met over a coffee for an informal chat. My team build solid relationships with our customers--the ethos behind Expert SEO Bournemouth is that it serves as a strategic partner for clients rather than a traditional outsourced SEO company.

3. Why does SEO keep changing so much?

Unfortunately there are also some very unscrupulous people working in the search engine optimization business who try to play the system to get results. This kind of approach to SEO is known as "black hat" in the industry. The culprits tend to find a loop-hole in the search engine ranking calculations, and then abuse that. A couple of years ago you could rank a website by sending thousands of back-links to it, no matter what the quality or relevancy. This of course, meant that spammers could easily rank a website above a genuine business which offered a visitor true value.

Google has thankfully caught on to methods like this, and because of that is continually updating how search engine listings are calculated. This means that even for reputable SEOs, the way the search engines rank content is changing regularly.

Not only that, but the way in which users expect to find search results are changing. Social media is a very relevant factor nowadays, and over the coming year users will probably start to see search results based on social factors as well--so for example, if your friend recommends a business, then it might have some preference in the listings that you see.

In truth, there are many current factors influencing the current state of the search engines and SEO. As technology advances and the way in which we demand and view online content changes, then the landscape will continually shift. Expert SEO Bournemouth are thankfully at the coal-face of those changes and are constantly adapting working practices and strategy to benefit our clients.

4. What particular specialties does your company offer?

As a search engine optimization company we perform all the typical functions you would expect from an SEO agency. What I believe sets us apart from the competition is the expert level of knowledge we have and also the fact that we focus purely on SEO. SEO isn't part of larger portfolio of services that we offer--it's the only service we offer. It's not diluted with other digital marketing disciplines. The reason is quite simple: SEO is what our staff are trained in and they only use the most cutting-edge and advanced SEO techniques. I genuinely believe that you won't find a more dedicated and knowledgeable group of SEO people on the south coast of the UK which is why I am so proud of the team.

For local businesses we become an extension of their company and a real trusted asset. A lot of the companies we are currently working for are very focused on local listings. Google now offers up more relevant search results based upon where a user is located. As an example, this means that if a user searches for "web design," then they will get results including local web design agencies. This means more of our clients want us working on getting their local search engine rankings optimized, including influencing factors such as Google Places, business listings, and physical address citations.

5. If you could give just three pieces of advice to small business owners when it comes to working on their website and developing good online content, what would you say?

Firstly, try to think inside the mind of the customer. Try to think about what they need and what they might be searching for. Do your research, because once you know that the customer wants, then it becomes a lot easier to develop content for them. If your online web content reads like it's been developed for a search engine, with keyword stuffing, and over optimized SEO content, then it's not going to read well to a customer. Search engines are now not as easily fooled by this approach either, so keep it natural, keep it compelling, and make sure that it is unique quality content.

Secondly, I deal with so many businesses who developed their website and simply cut and pasted their corporate brochure online. Whilst of course this is going to be a far quicker and cheaper approach then developing bespoke web content, it is a huge mistake. From a user experience perspective, the way in which users read on-screen content and the way they read a printed page is vastly different. Online web content needs to be broken up with headings, smaller informational chunks, bullet points, numbered lists, and so on. This enables the user to scan for the information they need and read the web page a lot easier without the dreaded "click back" when you might lose them to a competitor.

Finally, invest in SEO. That should encompass on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and a social media strategy. The old adage "if we build it, they will come" could not be further from the truth when it comes to the highly competitive world of the Web. Your website needs to be optimized so it stands the best chance of beating the competition in search.

Thanks, Marc!