Tuesday 6 November 2012

Quoakle's BIG Idea brings more good news for UK Businesses!


Just as people are beginning to talk about "coming out of the recession", there is more good news for UK Businesses.  Today, Tuesday November 6th, Gloucester-based Internet Company, Quoakle.com, launches its "BIG idea" and begins giving out advertising gifts to scores of local companies! 
At the start of its 7th year, the Quoakle team wanted to do something a bit special.  Website promotion specialist and boss, Nigel Steele, describes Quoakle's "BIG idea".
"We've enjoyed real success with the directory, getting top positions on Google and we now want to take things to the next level. What better way than by giving something away!"
From this week, Quoakle starts offering FREE advertising for all company websites that fall into Quoakle's 14 diverse topics - from Restaurants to Gardening Businesses and from Wedding Services to Days Out activities.

Since its launch in 2006, Quoakle's online directory has enjoyed tremendous growth through its focus on clear, simple page design, removing the clutter of too much text as well as the distraction of off-putting banner adverts. Designed by an unusual Head Teacher-Former Pupil team, Quoakle has become known for its simplicity and ease of use.  As one of its users commented, "...it's a breath of fresh air!"

UK companies have been pleased with the benefits they have found when signing up to be on Quoakle's topical pages. Chris Snell, owner of Garden Landscaping Business, Greenfields, has been advertising with Quoakle for over 5 years, and is very happy with the results. "For our website promotion and search engine optimisation, we've been using Quoakle and it's been very successful".

 For small companies that don't have their own website, Quoakle has another simple web solution - the QuoakleCard - which is really a glorified business card with smart design, simple page layout and a unique web address.

 And for those businesses nervous about anything that says it's free, Quoakle's catchy video clip gives the clear message, "No Cost! No Catch!"

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Top Ten Listings on Google!

During the last six months, from March 1st to August 31st 2012, the visits to Quoakle from Google's Organic listings have risen by an exciting 91.87% when compared with the previous six months! Going up from 15,603 to 29,745.  This exciting development is largely due to Quoakle's strong performance from its Days Out and Leisure pages in the Google listings .

To take a look at Quoakle's UK Days Out home page click on the link.



Quoakle now has 64 County pages of links to UK Days Out websites! ... Activities for Children, Family Days Out, Adventure and Leisure Activities and Places to Visit. Visitors to Quoakle are now landing on Days Out pages for counties all around England and Wales. The most popular pages are:


However, we are seeing an increasing number of visitors arriving at Quoakle on the pages for Days Out in Somerset and Days Out in Cornwall where Quoakle is placed No. 3 and No. 2 respectively on the Google listings. The Quoakle team is confident we are going to see a continuing increase in visits to Quoakle's Days Out pages in the coming months and Quoakle becoming clearly established as one of the top 5 UK Days Out Directories. 




Thursday 19 July 2012

Quoakle Teams Up With Really Simple SEO!


This week, Quoakle teamed up with Really Simple SEO to provide a great, all-round, website promotion service for all its paying clients.

ReallySimpleSEO.com is the popular website of well-established SEO Consultancy, Search Marketing Services, based in South West England.  Specialising in affordable SEO training, Really Simple SEO provides online training resources to help small businesses learn how to optimise and promote their own website. Resources include downloadable Tutorials, eBooks and Lessons written in a simple to understand way that anyone can follow.

Really Simple SEO is run by website promotion specialist David Howlett and provides lots of freely available resources as well as a very extensive service that is accessible just to signed-up members. When you become a member you get  instant access to over 100 tutorials of SEO training resources.


Really Simple SEO is now offering six months free membership to paying members of Quoakle's graphical directory.

Director of Quoakle.com, Nigel Steele provided a recommendation over a year ago on the Really Simple SEO website.  "What I like about your posts David, are that they are simple!  They just take steady consistent work by readers such as myself on my own website. We have been applying a lot of your advice and our pages are steadily improving Google rank”.

Many other members of the Really Simple training programme have also stated how useful David's posts are and how effective the advice given is when applied on their own business's website.

“Very informative and useful training.” Alex Kennedy Atkphoto.com
“The SEO tutorials have helped me get my website into position 1, 2 or 3 in Google for all of my main keywords”. Tim Evans, MeadowMania.co.uk

So great news all round that paying clients on Quoakle's innovative graphical business directory will now receive all the benefits of  working with two of the South West's leading website promotion specialists, Quoakle.com and Really Simple SEO.com.








Sunday 3 June 2012

Quoakle launches "How to " series of screencasts

The Quoakle team is committed to keeping its reputation as possibly the easiest directory to use on the web.

Not only are we continuing to enhance the simple navigation, but we are also looking for fresh ways to communicate with our users.  We want to make sure they have found the best way to use Quoakle's innovative graphical directory for their particular personal requirements.

So, here is the first in the "How To " series launched this weekend.

Saturday 19 May 2012

Navigation! Navigation! Navigation!

For Quoakle's Web Design team, navigation continues to be our top priority - helping our users go from page to page really quickly ... finding what they are looking for so easily.


Six months ago, Quoakle's graphical directory was significantly upgraded through the introduction of dropdown menus and buttons for Counties and Topics, just below the header on each logo page. The new buttons made it clear especially to new users how to move around the directory.




Today marks the launch of the brand new dropdown menu design!



The new design incorporates changes to the button design and also to the way the dropdown menu works, not to mention the exciting introduction of a new button, enabling users to focus their search more specifically on a town or a city.

Special thanks to Jon Parker from Parkwood Digital for the design and coding of the new dropdown menus and to Jeremy Onion who integrated the new code into the Quoakle CMS.

Try it out now! Go to Quoakle's UK Directory and choose your topic. If you live in Gloucestershire and are going out for the day, you'd choose Gloucestershire, then Days Out to look for local attractions and leisure activities. What a great selection! However, you're also willing to travel a bit, and live close to Worcestershire, so now you can click on the new Counties button at the top of the page. First you need to choose the region (good for your Geography skills) ... West Midlands, and then choose the county ... Worcestershire by clicking on the bar. Instantly available is another page of Days Out Activities to look at ... Days Out in Worcestershire . Simplicity itself!

...and if you're not sure which region your county is in, go back to the Quoakle home page and try starting again!



The third button is the topic button enabling users to stay within their county and go from topic to topic very easily.


The image shows a user on the Gloucestershire gardening page clicking on the Topic button and choosing the link to the Gloucestershire Restaurants page.


We're really excited about how much better the new Quoakle search experience will be for all our users! 


Please let us know what you think of the new dropdown menus and enjoy Quoakleing!

Sunday 13 May 2012

Quoakle's Simple Navigation Gets Even Better!


Quoakle's reputation as the innovative, graphical website directory, providing quick links to local websites, continues to grow.


The simple page layout and easy-to-use navigation with attractive colour-themed buttons has few rivals for user-friendliness and yet the Quoakle team continues to look for ways to improve user experience.

For Quoakle, navigation is a high priority - helping our users go from page to page quickly and easily, so they and you can find what you're looking for with the minimum of effort and in as intuitive way as possible.


At the bottom of each "logo page", you will have noticed links to other topics in that county, and also users have been able to move for example from our 'Days Out' page in one county over to another 'Days Out' page in a different county using the simple dropdown menus.

The latest development is the attractive, new home button in the top right-hand corner of each topic logo page. 

The new home page button helps to make it clearer particularly to new users how to get to the Quoakle home page. The majority of first time users of Quoakle arrive on a topic logo page from a Google organic listing due to Quoakle's growing success in optimising the website for literally thousands of keyword phrases.

Friday 13 April 2012

Record number of visits to Quoakle on Easter Monday 2012 - 508 visits!

The holiday weekend was always going to bring lots of visitors to Quoakle's graphical directory as internet users were looking for Days Out activities on Quoakle's popular Leisure Directory. However internet traffic coming to Quoakle was even higher than expected. Visits to Quoakle on Easter Monday April 9th 2012 set a new Quoakle record of 508 visits in one day beating the previous record set just 2 days earlier. Director, Nigel Steele, commented, " Our Days Out pages have been the most popular part of the directory for some time and this weekend's visits have underlined this fact and mean we are looking forward to the 2012 Spring/Summer holiday season with great excitement."

Monday 9 April 2012

Quoakle Home Page Gets a New Look!

Last August, the Quoakle team began taking major steps towards the aim "to spread right across every county in the United Kingdom". The first phase saw the launch of 14 new counties, from Cornwall in the south-west to Cheshire in the north-west. The first topic within these counties was Days Out and Leisure which is beginning to feature highly on Google across England and Wales. Quoakle users are now able to flick from county to county looking for great places to visit, days out and family activities, and finding hundreds of websites with just a couple of clicks.

In the last few months, Sean Cresswell, responsible for Client Development, has been expanding the whole directory across England and Wales so that there are now pages for all 14 topics across all 64 counties. The only region not covered currently is Greater London which awaits careful strategic planning.


For Quoakle, the original graphical directory, navigation is very important indeed. Fulfilling the strapline - " a quick link to local websites" - means helping Quoakle users go from page to page quickly and easily, so they and you can find what you're looking for without getting lost or wasting time in the wrong part of the website. Development has been under way for some time to improve user experience on the home page as well as on the classic Quoakle "Logo Pages". The first phase to be launched was the new home page which users were able to navigate through for the first time over the weekend of 8th-9th April 2012.

Visitors to the Quoakle home page looking for a UK Web Directory of local businesses, will find on the page some simple instructions:
Select your region, then county, and view local businesses by topic
and will then find clickable regions on the UK map.

Users looking for businesses in Gloucestershire will need to:
Select the region South West by clicking on that part of the UK map. A box will then appear to the left of the screen listing the various counties in the South West region in alphabetical order.



Gloucestershire is listed 5th on the list. By clicking the link on the word Gloucestershire, users are taken directly to the home page for the Gloucestershire Directory.



The same simple process works for all 64 counties across the 9 active regions of the UK.
The Quoakle team remain committed to keeping Quoakle's graphical directory true to the meta description seen on the Google's listings ... " an amazingly simple search solution"

Enjoy the latest bit of simplicity at www.quoakle.com !

Friday 6 April 2012

Quoakle Visits Up 82.32% on this time last year, from Google Organic Listings !

During the last three months, from January 6th to April 5th 2012, the visits to Quoakle from Google's Organic listings have risen by an exciting 82.32% when compared with the same period last year! This is an exciting development and is largely due to Quoakle's strong performance in the Google listings from its Days Out and Leisure pages. Take a look at Quoakle's UK Days Out home page.


Quoakle now has 64 County pages of links to UK Days Out websites! ... Activities for Children, Family Days Out, Adventure & Leisure Activities and Places to Visit. Visitors to Quoakle are now landing on Days Out pages for counties all around England and Wales. The highest numbers of visitors are landing on the following pages:


However, it's great to see an increasing number of visitors arriving at Quoakle on the pages for Days Out in Somerset and Days Out in Cornwall where Quoakle is placed No. 3 and No. 2 respectively on the Google listings. As we are only just at the beginning of the main holiday season, the Quoakle team is confident we are going to see a massive increase in visits to Quoakle' Days out pages in the coming months and a significant raising of the profile, nationally, of Quoakle - the graphical directory.