A Biography of a Sheffield Web Designer and SEO'er

Hello, my name is Mark Anthony Dalton; I am the owner and head search engine optimiser/web designer at U4D Web Design and SEO Sheffield. I'd like to take a few moments to share with you, how my skills and U4D came to be.
It all began back in 2001 with the desire to design and the eagerness to follow in my Father's footsteps of running a successful business. I had put much thought into designing websites for a living. I had many talented graphic design friends who had commented on several occasions on my graphic design and Photoshop abilities. The only problem was I had no clue what the heck all the weird code meant when it came to websites.
Initial Solution; Purchase some easy peasy drag and drop website building software, sell websites for £50 and offer the best customer services the world has ever seen. Yep, now I am kind of ashamed to mention it! But we all had to start somewhere, right? Website design, graphic design and running my own business was what I wanted to do and nothing was going to stop me. I didn't have the skills to just simply attend college or gain employment in a web design company. As the years past, the easy peasy web design software was great at creating good looking sites 'fast' but the code it created was not search engine friendly in the slightest. The more and more I learned HTML and the laws of Google the more and more I realised enough is enough, then came the next step of my journey, getting better!
Advanced Learning
Next solution; Purchase a professional web design program called Dreamweaver, learn it and be the best. More years past, I redesigned my existing client's sites in Dreamweaver for free. I had learned a lot in terms of HTML and CSS code by this time. Next, time to attend collage! We'll by this time I had the skills and experience I needed so why not? Hmmm, well, this more like a life experience, rather than a learning curve. To be honest, without the intention of wanting to sound big headed, I felt I knew more about the world of website design than the tutor.
Expert SEO, Wordpress, eCommerce, Forums, PHP
I could read the code, I had experienced first-hand on how websites worked and I had a fair idea how Google ranked websites. Knowledge is power or so to speak; Time for even more learning, first on the top of my to do list.. Learn how to get my clients sites at the top of Google? I focused mainly on the website optimisation side of learning rather than the link building side.
If you want to be the best you have to learn from the best, now I cannot tell you all my trade secrets but what I can tell you is that by getting involved in forums, watching videos, trying new tactics for yourself and learning from books by 'one man' who optimised one of the world largest, most popular websites, I now knew after years of studying how to achieve natural first page positions for competitive keywords such as; Wind Turbines, Solar Thermal, Solar House, Solar Water Heater, Solar Hot Water, Solar Panels, Solar Panel Installers, Solar Photovoltaic.
I know many SEO'er out there that cannot create a website to save their life's, read code or know how to make the relevant changes to a website to make it more search engine friendlier. All they know what to do is build links, which anyone can do given the time. Are they Search Engine Optimisers or Link Builders? Well I'll let you be the judge of that.
I love Wordpress! It's very easy to use blogging/CMS software; make simple changes to your website's content in seconds. Prestashop eCommerce is as simple for the client use and the same goes for Vbulletin Forums. I knew how to set up and make changes to the design, but what about the functionality and making complex/further developmental changes to these more advanced types of websites?
PHP code is what runs these types of websites, for anyone who has watched the Social Network film about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook may understand what is required to do complex changes. The time learn more about PHP; My desire to learn is still overwhelming, again if you have the internet and time to learn as I do daily, anything is possible. Learning from employed professionals, books, forums and videos was my method of learning PHP code.

So I am Mark Anthony Dalton from U4D Web Design and SEO Sheffield, this is my Biography. I am one man with too many roles, not a jack of all trades but a dedicated learner who can do almost everything needed to make any website work. I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for taking the time to read it.

Posted in: web design