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.

Here are designer Website’s top 5 onsite conversion tips:

1.    Focus on your call to action – firstly, make sure you have a call to action; any webpage that leaves the customer thinking ‘now what?’ has failed and is costing you sales. Make sure every page has a crystal clear call to action, or even better, make sure the call to action is visible even as the visitor scrolls down your page. Test the wording of your call to action; would ‘send me information’ work better than ‘send query’? Use different call to actions based on the stage the visitor is at in their buying journey; someone who clicks ‘send me information’ will only just be starting out on their buying journey, whereas someone who clicks ‘request call-back’ is ready to buy.

2.    Un-clutter your message – is there too much noise on your page, is your message being drowned? Ask yourself, what is the purpose of this page and what do I want those who visit it to do? Now make it as easy and clear as possible for visitors to complete that action. If you place too much information or too many options in front of people they will freeze or get lost.

3.    Make use of images – images can be incredibly powerful for instantly conveying your message. Images can be highly emotive and help position your service or product in the visitor’s mind. Test where you place the image and what image you use. People connect with images of other people better than inanimate objects.

4.    Match intent with content – potential customers will have found your page for a reason; they want something and expect your page to provide it. If your marketing funnels are set up correctly, those people landing on your product page will expect to see information relating to that product, so ensure all content on that page speaks to the visitor’s need, if it doesn’t then remove it.

5.    Make no assumptions, test everything – this is the key to onsite conversions; whatever you decide to do test it first. Testing is the key to onsite conversions. Just as you would test new PPC ads against a control ad you must test one call to action against another to see which performs best. Once you have a winner come up with another version and try to beat it.

Improving your onsite conversions is an ongoing and timely process but if you are serious about making it big through the web, it’s an essential part of your online marketing package. Here at Designer-Websites.co.uk we can provide you with a head start as all our website designs take into account proven onsite conversions factors, ensuring your new website instantly outperforms the competition.

The South East Wales IPG tasked us with creating a new website for their group. The website had to be easy to update in terms on notices, announcements and meeting updates; we accomplished this with a simple brochure site with 3 separate integrated blogs, which makes the updates very simple and quick to manage.

The SEWIPG website can be viewed here.. South East Wales IPG.

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 carry out 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.