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September Newsletter
Dear Newsletter Subscriber
Welcome to the UKFast newsletter!
September has proven to be a very exciting month for us at UKFast. We have welcomed three new staff members to our senior management ranks. The appointments represent a milestone for UKFast as we embark on the next stage of our successful growth plan. Read more about the new team members in our spotlight section below.
We have also been named as a finalist in the prestigious MEN Business of the Year awards. We are now preparing for the next stage of the evaluation process. Read more about this in our news round-up.
Meanwhile, our Tech Tip this month promotes the virtues of Virtual Private Servers, while the Marketing Minute will help you to optimise your website pages. We also have our usual news round up that covers everything we have been doing this past month. And the second part of our video interview about the UKFast - UK Grid alliance is included.
We hope you continue to enjoy reading our monthly UKFast updates and as always we look forward to your comments.
In this month's issue
September@UKFast
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It is becoming a tradition of this newsletter roundup to find a theme and this month we concluded it was 'people'. This is because we have both welcomed three new members to our senior staff and have been out meeting guys and girls in our industry.
However, first we have the second part of the video about our new data centre tie-up with UK Grid that we promised you. In this instalment our IT director Neil Lathwood speaks with UK Grid's Rob Garbutt about the positives of using a totally modern data centre and how the new agreement will benefit UKFast's clients.
Returning to this month's news, at the start of September we welcomed Andrew Gibbens as Head of Sales, Neil Clarke as Director of Operations and Kerry Gill as Commercial Financial Controller. We are delighted by the arrival of these three hugely talented individuals and they are all already contributing to our ongoing growth.
Also helping us to grow are the many exhibitions we attend around the country. This month we attended Remix UK 08, a Microsoft run event about the future of the internet, for which we were the principle sponsor. Our Remix team travelled down to Brighton and spent two days meeting many potential new clients.
At the event we launched our Channel Partner Programme. The programme is designed to deliver a value-added hosting service to our partner organisations and their clients, bringing financial rewards for the partners, which we know will be welcomed by many at this time of economic downturn.
Business continues to be strong for UKFast despite the challenging times so we are keen to give back. In addition to unveiling our new Channel Partner Programme, we have teamed with clients LeaseHoldersUnited to promote awareness of business rates relief. Small businesses throughout the UK are eligible for rate relief from the Government however many are not aware of this.
In the Greater Manchester area alone approximately 25,000 businesses are missing out on £16m of relief money. We have been speaking with local press to get the word out that LeaseHoldersUnited.com has all the details small businesses need to make a claim.
Finally, we have included the video that accompanied our successful presentation to the MEN Business of the Year Awards panel. Please click on the image to view. This week we were delighted to learn that we had made the shortlist of three companies to win in our category. Our presentation team will now meet again with award judges in early October before the final decision is announced on November 6.
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Cost-effective and reliable testing environments
We've talked recently in the Tech Tip about ensuring you have development and testing environments to ensure smooth delivery of upgrades and/or new features to your online presence. This doesn't require a separate server for each role or even for each client that you might want to do this for. It can be done on the same server as the live site.
This however isn't a recommended practice so to bridge that gap between full dedicated servers and hosting on a single server, we offer the same physical security and segregation for your testing area, that a dedicated server would provide via our Virtual Private Servers (VPS).
If you would like further information on this subject have a look at the UKFast website or feel free to contact the UKFast Communications Team on 0870 421 1585 or stephen.mcnamara@ukfast.co.uk
Optimising your web pages
This month we've gleaned expert knowledge to give us the low down on successfully optimising web pages to hit the target on search engines.
Primarily there's the page title. It's the first piece of information that the visitor will review in search engine results and when landing on your webpage. It should contain two pieces of information, the main keyword or phrase from the page and the brand. It's arguable as to whether the brand should come first or the keyword, either way they should both be there.
Using UKFast as an example, these are the sorts of word combinations you need:
Get dedicated server solutions from UKFast
Or
Get managed hosting from UKFast
Next consider your META tags. Search engines don't put as much weight on these as they used to, but they are still considered, and more importantly they provide the searcher with a chance to receive a reaffirming message that just may sway their decision to enter your site.
For example:
In need of dedicated hosting? Loosing valuable uptime? Find out how UKFast can help your business now.
[Note: Getting the right entry on a search engine results page is of crucial importance. The few words that appear on the search results for your website are all that the surfer has to go on when deciding to click through to you. ]
Finally, it's important that the language you use creates a sense of urgency and plays on primal business urges, so make the searcher think that they could be losing money to their competitors by not dealing with you.
UKFast welcomes three to management team
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This month we are breaking with tradition to focus our spotlight on UKFast. September saw the arrival of three new senior management employees and we would like to take this opportunity to introduce them to you.
Andrew Gibbens is our new Heads of Sales. Andrew's arrival is a major coup for us as we have enticed him away from our main rivals Rackspace. In fact you could say that he is a star transfer. You can watch a short video regarding this transfer window signing by clicking on the image.
With a decade in the hosting industry Andrew has become an expert sales tactician. For example, over three years at Rackspace he was instrumental in taking the US company's European sales from £5m to £60m. Andrew's remit is to apply his considerable experience and proven track record to deliver a first class account management service to all of our existing and new clients.
Neil Clarke comes to UKFast from the British Army, where he honed his organisational skills during nine years as a commissioned officer. Neil takes on responsibilities for co-ordinating our internal operations with a focus on efficient and effective communication. Neil will also be heading up staff training, including leading outbound events at our Snowdon training facility.
Kerry Gill is our new Commercial Financial Controller. Kerry is in charge of maintaining a firm grip on company finances in order to keep UKFast financially healthy and primed to maximise returns from all areas. Having previously worked for a company that experienced significant growth during her stewardship, Kerry is perfectly placed to oversee our finances as we continue to expand our business.
Please get in touch with us if you would like more information on any of the articles mentioned above.
Until next time, we hope you enjoy the start of autumn and we look forward to speaking to you at some point soon!
Best wishes,
The UKFast Communications team
For more information on the range of UKFast products and services go to http://www.ukfast.co.uk
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