When asking the question, ‘how large a part does domain age play in website SEO?’ the answer you will receive, irrespective of who you ask, will be ambiguous at best. Even Matt Cutts, the most outspoken member of Google’s Search Quality team, remains unusually vague when put on the spot. When asked that very question just recently, Matt replied: “My short answer is not to worry about that very much, not very much at all in fact.”

Most people know that when it comes to performing website SEO, domain age does have an effect, and as far as we are concerned there are two distinct reasons why:

• Older domain names are usually associated with better known, more established sites. On the whole, sites with older domain names are regarded as more relevant and trusted resources, thus boosting the website SEO.
• Spammers are not usually interested in developing the website SEO of a site for a period of over three or four years as traditionally they quickly move onto different projects. For this reason, new domain names are more associated with spam.

It’s safe to say that most website SEO specialists will agree that domain age does have some bearing on search engine rankings; it is just the extent that they find impossible to agree on.

To overplay the affect of domain age on your website SEO strategy is, in the opinion of our SEO team here at Designer Websites, probably a mistake. It is important to acknowledge it as a factor, but not to consider it to be in anyway critical to your website SEO strategy, and below, in our view, are the reasons why:

• Domains can sometimes lie dormant for years
• Established and well known companies are acquiring new domain names all the time, often using a 301 redirect from a more established domain
• Just because a domain is old it does not mean it has been subject to whitehat website SEO techniques.

Some companies will only look at buying old domains due to the importance they place on domain age. However, this is far from a fool-proof approach, as you cannot always cater for the website SEO strategy of previous owners. There may well be some goblins in the system that pose real problems for the success of your website SEO campaign.  

To conclude, we all know how hard it can be during the first six months of any website SEO campaign when working on a new domain, however, stick with it and build your link profile naturally and the results will come. Have a little faith and don’t panic!

With a question that has no definitive answer, experience counts for a lot. This is one reason why the website SEO team here at Designer Websites are the first port of call for so many companies looking to further their online presence.

Hopefully we’ve all seen social sharing buttons before; to be frank you’d have done well to miss them. But just why are they becoming so prevalent and how do they contribute to your website SEO?

Some of the most popular social share buttons are those for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, email and ShareThis. These social buttons can play an important part in the promotion of content you add to your site. The addition of social share buttons essentially allows the visitors to your site to do a lot of the website SEO work for you. However, although there seems to be no downside to such a strategy, recent research shows that about half of the largest 10,000 sites do not display any kind of social sharing link or buttons at all. However, doesn’t this oversight mean such websites are missing out on valuable website SEO opportunities, given that:

•    Social signals are becoming increasingly important in search engine algorithms

Over the past few years the search engines have openly admitted that social signals are becoming increasingly influential factors in rankings. This means that the more time an article or blog is shared using a social button, the greater the impact on your website SEO. By neglecting to include social share buttons on your site, your website SEO will not receive an extra push which might make all the difference.

•    You’re not reaching as wide an audience as you might

The internet is an extremely crowded resource, so anything you can add to your website which increases the size of your slice of the pie should be seriously considered. Social share buttons are an excellent method of increasing your exposure in circles outside of your existing network of visitors. This helps to attract fresh traffic to your website creating new opportunities.

•    User friendly content is more likely to be read

One of the main benefits of social share buttons is the fact that users do not have to leave your site to post your content. With the short attention spans of today’s internet user, keeping them on your site is tricky enough anyway without giving them a good reason to leave; by making your website as user friendly as possible, visitors will stay with you for longer, increasing the chances of a conversion.

If you’re interested in making the most of your website SEO, the team here at Designer Websites have the experience and know-how to help your website climb towards the top of the search engine rankings. For further information call our dedicated website SEO team on 0845 272 6813.

Firstly, what do we mean by the term duplicate content? The web savvy will no doubt be familiar with the term and understand the impact it can have on your website optimisation campaign. But what about the SEO novices ? The last thing you want to do is invest heavily in a website, only for your website optimisation efforts to be hampered by duplicate content.

Duplicate content is content which appears on more than one web page or URL. The problem arises when the search engines attempt to index the site, as they are unable to decipher which version of the text is most relevant to a given search query. This is a real flaw in any website optimisation strategy, as, in an attempt to show only the most relevant search results, search engines rarely show multiple, duplicated pieces of content. As a result, they are forced to determine which piece is most likely to be original, which is far from a simple process.

So exactly why does duplicate content cause the search engines so much trouble, and ultimately undermine your website optimisation strategy?

• Search engines are unsure which version of the content is the original, and as such it is difficult to determine which to index and display in search results.
• Search engines are unable to determine whether to directly link metrics such as trust, authority, anchor text etc to one page, or to separate it between multiple versions.
• Further difficulties are posed when search engines decide which version of the content to rank for search results.

Okay, so duplicate content is not good for an organisation’s website optimisation campaign for the above reasons. But what types of duplicate content issues can arise?

• Printer-friendly versions – versions of content which are printer friendly are more likely to cause duplicate content issues when multiple versions of pages are indexed due to the duplicate content present.
• URL parameters – some URL parameters such as click tracking as well as certain analytics codes may cause issues with duplicate content.
• Session IDs – this is one of the most frequent causes of duplicate content issues and can undermine even the most comprehensive website optimisation campaign. Problems occur when each user visiting a website is assigned a different session ID which is stored in the URL.

If you are confused about any further issues with duplicate content then contact Designer Websites, the website optimisation specialists. Call us on 0845 272 6813 today.  

You’ve just invested in a fantastic new website for your business, but after a few searches you realise it’s currently ranking on page 33 of Google! How on earth will anyone ever find it? Welcome to the world of search engine optimisation (SEO).

Search engine optimisation, also referred to as website optimisation, is the process by which you improve the visibility of a website or page in the many search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Essentially you are jumping the queue to benefit from the higher number of website visits those at the top of the results enjoy. By appearing at the top of the search rankings for the correct keywords your website will benefit from vastly increased traffic, improved brand exposure, and, best of all, a greater amount of enquiries and therefore sales.

If you are a regular internet user, you will know that people are more likely to click on and trust those companies they find at the top of the search engines, and are therefore much more likely to do business with these companies. This is why website optimisation is such a worthwhile investment and popular with marketing managers. Compared to other marketing channels website optimisation provides a very measurable ROI.

Search engine algorithms are extremely complicated and assess a huge number of different criteria to calculate the worth of a website; website optimisation techniques will help search engines to see your site as more relevant for particular keywords, helping you to appear at the top of the rankings.

So How Does Website Optimisation (SEO) Work?

In its most basic form, website optimisation can be broken down into two different types; namely onsite and offsite. Onsite SEO takes place on your website and involves all the different things you can do to make sure the search engines view your website as a relevant result for your chosen keywords.

Offsite SEO refers to those things you can do to benefit your search engine rankings which do not show up on your website. As part of an effective offsite website optimisation strategy you should consider the following:

•    Content and copywriting
•    Guest blogging
•    Link building
•    Social media
•    Video
•    Social bookmarking

All of these SEO techniques will help your site improve your overall visibility online. Once your onsite optimisation is complete, link building should be your next port of call. Every external link obtained acts as a vote of confidence which tells the search engines that your website is a useful resource. The more links you get from the right sources, the higher up the search engines you will climb.

Links constantly send search engines like Google back to your site where they will ‘crawl’ your web pages. This means that they analyse the structure, copy and any links to judge the worth of your site. The search engines then index your site ready to be returned in search results. If you optimise your website well then the search engines will return your website for lucrative, highly sought after keywords.

Website optimisation is a far more complex process than we can convey here, although we hope this article helps you to understand the basics of SEO.

If your website could do with and SEO makeover, get in touch on 0845 272 6813 today.

A well written blog can form an invaluable part of any social media strategy, allowing you to interact with your target market and share industry information, tips and expertise. By creating a regularly updated and informative blog your business will be able to establish a reputation as an industry authority, and in so doing increase your brand awareness. However, no matter how insightful and informative your blog posts may be, if they do not show up in the search results they are only ever likely to attract a handful of readers. So what is the secret to blog optimisation? Here are a few tips:

Use appropriate keywords
As with website optimisation, keywords are all important. Use phrases that represent niches in your market as this will shelter your blog from the more competitive mainstream searches your industry may attract. For example, rather than writing a blog post with the keyword ‘car insurance’ – a highly sought after keyword, try something a little more precise like ‘car insurance for a Ford Focus’. There will be far fewer sites competing for the latter keyword, and as a result, a well optimised blog will have a far higher chance of ranking.

Links
If you have any idea about website optimisation then you will already be aware that the search engine spiders index web pages by crawling from link to link. It is essential you include anchor text links in each of your blog posts. These should link to pages within your website or to other blog posts you have written. This will help not only with the optimisation of your blog but will also work towards website optimisation. It is usually best to include one or two links in each post; anymore and it will all start to look a bit spammy.

Write frequent posts
This technique will benefit human readers as well as website optimisation. Loyal readers will enjoy coming back to find relevant and regular blog posts whilst, for the purposes of SEO, regular posting will keep those search engine spiders coming back for more.

Promotion via social media
Social media is going to have an increasingly influential role in website optimisation as social signals are being worked into search engine algorithms all the time. As well as promoting your blog on your own social network pages, encourage others to do the work for you by including Facebook and Twitter ‘share buttons’. The new Google +1 button should also be used.

By following these simple tips you have every chance of writing a high ranking blog post. For further website optimisation information and advice the team at Designer websites are always happy to help. Call our website optimisation team on 0845 272 6813.

It has been well over 2 years since we updated our own website, so back in March we decided to get on with a new design, however we have struggled since then with our schedule to fit in completing the work, anyway now we are finally at a point where our new design can go live. We believe that the new website is more informative as well as being more attractive.

We have purposely designed our website to provide a more tailored and rewarding experience for our users, depending of course on what they are looking for. We acknowledge that no client will want to read the entire site instead they will likely be looking for a specific service relevent to their needs, so for example they might be looking for an ecommerce website designer, so they hit the ecommerce specific page which provides them with a little information followed by 5 case studies to assist in their decision process. Here's how it looks..

• Website Design -> Website Design Examples
• Website Development -> Website Development Examples
• Website Optimisation -> Website Optimisation Examples
• Ecommerce Websites -> Ecommerce Website Examples
• Content Managed Websites -> Content Managed Websites Examples
• Small Business Websites -> Small Business Websites Examples

We think the design looks great and the examples provide enough information, without going over the top, to assist potential clients with their decision to use us for their next website.

You may have also noticed that we have integrated our promotional products and promotional clothing ecommerce websites, take a look we are very proud of these sites.. Promotional Products and Promotional Clothing

Of course being the website optimisation specialist we have optimised our own website to rank for keyword terms like websites designer, ecommerce websites, website optimisation and many many more. We obviously rank extremely well for local terms like website design cardiff or ecommerce websites Cardiff but now we need to improve our ranking on a national scale.

If you have any opinions we'd love to hear them, but please keep them constructive! Thanks for reading.

Your title tag is one of the most important on page elements when it comes to website SEO. Correctly structuring you title tag can have an impact on where the search engines display your website in their search results which in turn has an impact on the number of people visiting your website. Getting it right the first time is therefore important. Here are some tips to help you get started:

Keywords
Make sure the title tag for each page includes the keywords you would like that page to appear for in the search engines. Having a title tag that simply reads ‘Home’ or ‘About’ is not going to make your page unique in the search engine’s eyes, just think about how many sites on the internet have the title ‘Home’. Instead use the keyword that your page talks about i.e. if the page is about ‘used laptop screens’ then call the page exactly that. Having the keyword in your title tag is important for website SEO but it can also help visitors to your site navigate easily between pages, therefore improving the overall usability of your site.

Length
When it comes to title tags size matters. Your title tag should be short and succinct ideally no more than 65 characters long (including spaces). Don’t be tempted to make your title tag 2 or 3 sentences long, anything longer than 65 characters will often be invisible to users as most search engines restrict the space available for the title tab. On the other hand, don’t go for single words either, really make best use of your space.
 
Spam
Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to simply list all the keywords you can think of or worse, just repeat a single keyword as many times as you can. Spamming the search engine via your title tags is a short term approach to website SEO. Search engines will quickly cotton onto what you have done and either penalise your site or remove it altogether from their index.

Follow the tips above and you should be able to mould title tags that will complement your website SEO and not restrain it.

We have just launched a new website for a company called CBC or Cheapest Branded Clothing, these guys provide embroidered clothing and printed clothing for the business market. With an extensive range of clothing from T-Shirts and Shirts to Aprons and Towels these guys offer a superb service to businesses from small to very large.

The cost of the branding is built into the garment cost and the VAT is also included, so that the price you see on screen is the final price for the order you make. You can even use the website to build your branded garments and get a quote; then if you like the price, which you should in theory, you can buy your branded clothing online!

We love the site and have even used it to buy branded clothing for our own company. If you are in the market for embroidered clothing for your company then I would urge you to look no further than Cheapest Branded Embroidered Clothing

Many individuals new to the world of online marketing have no idea that their website’s name can impact greatly on the results they can expect to achieve from search engine optimisation. For this reason, it is an excellent idea to consult professional online marketers before deciding on the domain for your website. This can make the whole website optimisation process a lot more effective.

As you may already be aware, links to a website are incredibly important to high search engine rankings. The text associated with these links – known as anchor text – is one of the main SEO factors when it comes to optimising a site. Getting this text just right is of the utmost importance.

If you have picked the website name badly, i.e. very few people use that name to find your products or services online, then the SEO impact of the links bearing your website name will be minimal. For example a link to “Designer Websites Ltd” contains our keywords “Websites Designer” or “Websites”.

Traditionally, the branding of a business was critical to its success. Whilst branding is still very important it is obvious that it has become more important to be found on the Internet than almost anything else. These days the most appealing or witty business name is of little use unless you have a particularly large advertising budget and people are using the search engines to search for your specific business name.

When deciding on the domain name for your website some compromises may have to be made. In the majority of cases, the perfect domain name for your business will already be owned by a competitor. For this reason, it is essential to carryout keyword research into your market to find out if you can identify a niche that has been missed by the other businesses in your market. A perfect keyword to base your business and domain name around would be one that has a large number of searches, but a low level of competition. This will make it far easier to appear high up in the search engines, as there will not be such a large number of businesses battling against you.

For more information on any element of domain name choice or website optimisation contact Designer Websites Ltd.

Of the many methods a company can employ to optimise their website, we’d recommend you give text cloaking a really wide berth. SEO specialists’ views on the effectiveness of different SEO techniques differ greatly depending on who you speak to. However, text cloaking is a technique which is universally regarded as black hat and definitely one that reputable online marketers would stay well away from.

Text cloaking refers to the practice of showing differing content or URLs to users than is presented to the search engines. Serving up different results based on user agents is deemed dishonest, and can cause your site to be perceived as deceptive, resulting in its removal from Google’s Index.

The penalties for cloaking are severe and you will be caught, it is simply a matter of when. The first step will be your immediate removal from the major search engines, and often many of the less popular ones as well. And depending on the severity of the text cloaking, you may well be blacklisted. Blacklisting is as bad as it gets as far as search engine penalties go; not only will you have to begin the marketing of your site from scratch; you will also have to purchase another domain name.

This is why it is so important to be 100% sure of the intentions of any external party you pay to carry out your website optimisation. You should always use an ethical SEO organisation, as sustainable white hat methods will always outweigh any quick gain you may experience from unethical practices. It’s simply not worth the risk.

So why do people still use cloaking to improve their website SEO? That’s a good question actually, one to which we really don’t have the answer. With so many ethical methods to employ, we really don’t understand why anyone would run the risk of trying to cheat the search engines.

Here at Designer Websites we specialise in the production of high-end, functional websites which support ethical SEO techniques. For further information or for a quote from South Wales’ premier website developers, contact us today.

Importance of internal linking and site architecture for SEO

Meta tags are one of the first considerations in any website’s on-site SEO efforts. They are amongst the easiest on-site elements to change, and in the case of the meta-description, can influence what searchers see in search engine results. There are more meta tags than just those for the ‘keywords’ and ‘description’, and although there has been much debate over the value of such tags, skilfully written meta tags can greatly help with your website SEO efforts.

Which tags should be included in website design?

There are many types of meta tag, but those you should concern yourself with from an SEO point of view are:

Meta Content Type

This tag allows you to control how your site is rendered in a user’s browser. Failure to include this meta tag can result in an illegible page or faulty design. Web designers will normally use such a tag in the design process, but incorrect usage have a detriment effect on SEO as broken pages lead to high bounce rates.

Meta Description

The meta description tag is one of the most important, allowing you to describe your page to the search engines. More importantly however, many search engines use this description in their SERPs. This tag should therefore contain your targeted keywords and entice searchers to click onto your site; this is effectively your sales pitch.

Robots

The robots tag allows you to dictate whether a search engine follows links and indexes pages on your website. Although, this tag isn’t necessary for search engines to follow a link and index a page as they do so by default, even in the absence of a robots tag. You only need to concern yourself with this tag if you do not want a link followed or page indexed. It is also possible to use specific bot tags if you need a specific robot to perform an action.

Language

This tag can be used to dictate the primary language in which your site is written. This is rarely used in domestic settings but can be useful if you expand abroad or relocate to another country.

Source

This is a relatively new meta tag introduced by Google in a bid to identify the source of the news stories it ranks. Similar to social media where the authority of the author is considered as a ranking factor, we can expect source authority to become an important element of the search algorithm in the future.

Keywords

The keywords meta tag has long been discounted as a ranking factor mainly due to its abuse in the early days of website optimisation. This said, best practice dictates the keywords meta tag should still be included as you never know exactly which factors the search engines will deem important in the future.

Refresh

If your site is using this tag you should change it to a 301 redirect; this tag will have a negative effect on your website optimisation.

Used effectively, meta tags can reward your website with a real SEO boost. On the other hand, if you ignore the tags you can expect a negative effect on your website SEO.  A good website designer will optimise your met tags for you. Here at Designer-Websites.co.uk we can ensure your website optimisation works for, and not against, your website.

We have been working very hard on a new website for Access Training Wales Ltd, a specialist trade training company based in Cardiff, South Wales. The website is very large and contains detailed information on the various trade training courses offered by the company, for example plumbing training, electrician training, plastering training etc. The company have been delivering trade training courses for many many years and have a fantastic facility in Cardiff, which is purpose built to deliver these types of training courses.

The owners came to us with the requirement to completely redesign and rebuild their old website with a particular view to optimising the new site for the search engines. The trades training industry is very competitive and as such their are many large training companies like these guys who are spending lots of time, energy and money on getting their websites to the top of the search engines for the particular courses that they deliver, so this is a pretty tough ask, however we live to prove that we can do this and although we have only recently launched this site our client is already seeing improvements on the number of enquiries, and this will significantly improve over the next few months, of that I am positive.

Working with this company it was easy to see how passionate they are about delivering high quality training to individuals who want to learn a new skill or even develop a new career. They really get a buzz out of seeing their clients/students complete a course and become a qualified trades person, and that is admirable in my book.

The site is pretty large and contains over 160 pages, which was very hard to write and convert into a website. I think there really is a training course for every trade and every trade related qualification possible! Anyway take a look at the site.. trades training and if you have stumbled upon this page because you are looking for trade training courses then you've definitely found the right place, get yourself on one of these courses and you'll be qualified in no time!

The latest addition to Google’s SERPs is their new Instant Preview feature. This allows searchers to “preview” a website or landing page prior to clicking through to it. Searchers can preview any listing in the organic results by either clicking the description, or the small magnifying glass icon to the left of every listing. The overview is displayed in a pop up window which shows a snapshot of the destination page, highlighting where the relevant search term appears on that page.

Through the preview pop up screen, searchers can get a feel for the site on the other side of the link; images, headlines, colour and general layout all have a major impact.  With relatively small size of the pop up window, prominent design features are more likely to catch a searchers eye as small text is difficult to read. This will make the first impression, or snapshot of your site, vital to traffic generation much like an advert in a magazine. You will only have 2-3 seconds to grab the searchers attention.

Some factors to consider when designing for instant preview:

Images

The prominence of images which are product or service specific will become even more important in your web design. Larger images allowing a clearer view of your offerings should be used to communicate instantly the thrust of your site. Smaller images or cluttered images will have less impact than a clear, large image in the new preview window. Pages containing long, text heavy content will look very dull and uninviting, whereas an image will allow you to make best use of the 2-3 second exposure.

Headlines

With small text so difficult to read in the preview window, anything in a larger font or bold will stand out as a headline. The searchers eye will be drawn to these sentences first, so make good use of them. Ensure your keywords are present and that the message you are trying to convey is clear and legible within your headlines.

Page load time

Page load times are an important factor in SEO as well as web design, but speed will be even more important with instant preview. If your images fail to render in the short space of time a searcher is hovering over your listing they will very, very quickly move onto the next. Combine this with the need to have bold images on your site, and a balance will need to be struck between image size, quality and load time.

Flash

As usual, Google has a problem with Flash, and Instant Preview is no exception. Flash sites or page elements are failing to display in the preview, making sites look broken or incomplete. This will deter searchers from clicking through to your site, especially if that flash element was critical to your product/service offering. This will result in fewer clicks, which will in turn lead to lower rankings and fewer sales.

Introduction pages

A good website designer will avoid introduction pages altogether, but there are still a great deal of sites out there using intro pages. Again, we have seen issues with these pages failing to display in previews, making your site appear broken and unattractive. This will have a serious impact on your click through rate and your rankings in the search engines.

So overall, instant preview presents new challenges as well as opportunities for web designers, both in design and SEO terms. Greater consideration will need to be given to what is legible and effective within the smaller preview window as well as on the site itself.

Here at Designer-Websites.co.uk we can ensure you have the edge over your competition with website design which takes advantage of Google’s new instant preview feature.

Ask any SEO professional and they will tell you JavaScript can be a double edged sword when it comes to website development, specifically in terms of design over SEO. Why? Well let’s take a look.

First things first, search engines don’t crawl JavaScript, so any keywords present within the script will be ignored, which is not good for SEO. You might think that this is not so important but actually one of the most important aspects of a website is the navigation and many websites utilise JavaScript for the menu or primary navigation. Many sites appear to use comments within JavaScript in an attempt to alleviate this problem; however the search engine robots will ignore any comments within script tags, so this will not help.

Another problem which arises with the use of JavaScript in website design is the search engines may see it as an attempt to mislead their bots because this has been a black hat method used by some poor SEO companies to display different information to bots than that which is displayed to the website visitors.

These issues are especially prevalent in navigational links where unscrupulous coders will hide redirects to different URL’s through JavaScript coding. This can actually result in search engines not indexing an entire section of your site as they ignore your top level navigation. Best practise would be to remove JavaScript from navigational links altogether and rely on HTML links instead.

If you’re website design does rely on drop down menus or other dynamic navigation then our advice would be to scrap it and adopt the use of CSS instead, you can get fantastic effects and probably the same appearance by using CSS.

Loading time is another issue affected by JavaScript. The overuse of JavaScript can slow down your website’s load time which not only affects the visitor experience, but also has an impact on your SEO. Load time is just one of many factors search engines use to rank your website.

How can JavaScript be used positively in Website Design?

JavaScript is best used to provide quick user interaction and help make the website more attractive to the end user, so using it to draw attention to call-to-action boxes, speeding up form submission and generally improving the visitor experience will help the website seem less static and more engaging for the user. This can be done without compromising the SEO by ensuring that the JavaScript is used on non-structural and navigational sections of the website.

So if you are going to use JavaScript, here are some tips to reduce the SEO negatives:

• Stick to HTML links where possible
• Do not use JavaScript for menus or indeed any primary navigational elements
• If using JavaScript with images or video make sure you use <alt> and <noscript> tags to offer a text alternative which is placed in the HTML markup
• Move your JavaScript to an external .JS file
• Place the actual script at the bottom of the page code i.e. just before the end body tag

If you are worried about making such changes to your website yourself then it’s probably time to call on the services of dedicated website developers.  Designer Websites provide high quality search engine optimised websites for businesses. Contact us today to discuss your website needs.

It’s difficult enough to say, let alone understand; getting your head around canonical issues is a must if your website optimisation is to yield the results you desperately seek.

In SEO and website design terms, Canonicalization exists where you have more than one URL address for the same page. For instance:

designer-websites.co.uk
www.designer-websites.co.uk
www.design-websites.co.uk/home

All three of these URLs will be pointing to your homepage, which means that the search engines will view these as different pages, indexing each page and allowing them to compete against one another. What’s the issue you might say, well the problem is that this generates duplicate content in the Google search engine results (SERP’s), which Google heavily penalises; which in turn means that your pages will likely be pulled from the search engine results, or will be pushed back in the SERP’s, leaving your site out in the cold.

You should use at the very least either a rel=canonical tag, or appropriate 301 redirects, however we recommend using both of these methods.

Why is duplicate content bad for SEO?

Search engines aim to provide the most relevant content to a search query, so when they come across two pages which are exactly the same they are forced to choose one over the other, as displaying both would represent a flaw in their service. Sometimes choosing one is not realistic or possible and so a penalty is placed on the website or page in question. This is obviously an issue for SEO as duplicate content will inevitably lead to some of your pages disappearing from the index.

Define your canonical URL

The rel=canonical tag allows you to dictate which URL the search engines should consider the ‘master copy’, the one you wish all SEO benefits to revert to. The rel=canonical tag is placed in the HTML header text similar to the meta description and meta keywords tags:

<meta name="description" content="Site Description/>
<meta name="keywords" content="Site Keywords" />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.designer-websites.co.uk/" />

It is important to understand that this simply informs the search engine bots of your preference, but it does not actually redirect the content, thus a human will be able to see the content via the canonical urls if you do not force a redirect. This can sometimes lead to links being developed to urls that you do not want indexed.

So what is a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect, allowing you to move one URL to another automatically, so for example if you try going to http://designer-websites.co.uk it will automatically redirect you to the proper url which is http://www.designer-websites.co.uk.

A 301 redirect should be done from the webserver and not in code. Setting up a redirect is relatively easy but often done incorrectly.  It is imperative that the ‘status code’ sent to the search engine bots upon redirection is a 301, not a 302 or any other code. Getting this correct is critical so check your results with a tool like this.. http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers

Can I still just use a 301 redirect?

Yes you can, in fact the safest way to deal with the canonical issue is to have appropriate 301 redirects in place for your website.

However the reason we recommend having both is because some search engine bots will actually look for the rel=canonical tag now, so having it there deals with the issue quickly and in the way they are looking for it to be dealt with. If a search engine does not look for the rel=canonical tag then at least you have the redirect to fall back on. Most importantly if you 301 redirect properly then no one will be able to see your content under any other url than the one you choose.

You should understand that there are many search engines on the Internet and not all are as sophisticated as Google, so it is safe to assume that not all search engines are sophisticated enough to work with rel=canonical tag, so by not 301 redirecting your url’s properly you run the risk of other search engines issuing duplicate content penalties and the like.

This and many other website optimisation factors are essential for successful websites. At Designer Websites we will ensure your new website is properly 301 redirected and contains the appropriate canonical tags, as well as dealing with many other technical SEO factors. For examples of our work visit www.designer-websites.co.uk\case-studies.