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.

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 new Access Trade Training site 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.