Many companies believe that a choice must be made between usability and website SEO, with many people believing that one element has to be sacrificed for the sake of the other. Needless to say the goals of website SEO and usability are polarised, but that doesn’t mean they have to be mutually exclusive. With keen eye for functionality an experienced website developer will bring to the table, it is simple to produce a website that satisfies customers and search engines alike.


In days gone by pages produced for the purpose of website SEO were filled with text that contained a high density of keywords which often made the copy a little disjointed. Website SEO has changed drastically over the years, and now, with the assistance of a professional SEO copywriter it is possible to merge keywords with punchy text that attracts rather than deters your customer base.


So what elements should you consider when balancing usability with website SEO?

 

  • Title tags and headings – this is one of the most important factors to get right to strike the perfect balance between SEO and usability. The title tag plays an integral part in website SEO, but it is also the first thing a user is going to see, so it has to be readable and explain accurately what the page will do. A good title tag should focus on only one to two keywords, and still make sense to readers. Every page of your website should have a different title tag.

 

  • Usability testing – this plays an integral part in determining the user experience and how simple it is to navigate your site. Any findings which illustrate the poor usability of your site should be addressed immediately, even above website SEO considerations. If the usability of your site falls below the mark, the amount of traffic SEO helps you to attract will be for irrelevant, as poor usability will quickly lead visitors to look elsewhere.

 

  • Keyword use – keywords should be used in the right places in the meta data as well as throughout the body copy of your page. However, don’t be tempted to indulge in keyword spamming as this not only effects usability, it is also likely to be detrimentally to website SEO as the search engines will regard the page as ‘spam’, which will hinder your rankings for the targeted keywords. Anything around 3% is the sort of keyword density you should be looking to achieve.


This is only a brief insight into the intricate balancing act between website SEO and usability, with many other factors also playing a part. For further information about usability and website SEO, please call the experienced website developers here at Designer Websites on 0845 272 6813

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.

Recent research carried out by the digital edition of The Grocer magazine, has shown the website SEO of the leading supermarkets is a long way from where it should be, leaving some of the biggest names in British retail virtually invisible online.


One of the main offenders is Waitrose.com, which, after a £10million initial investment in their ecommerce website, is nowhere to be seen on the search engines for some key terms. 


The website SEO on Waitrose’s site is so poor that even Morrisons, which at present doesn’t even operate an ecommerce site, currently ranks higher.


The site is being held back by a number of technical issues you would not expect from a £10million ecommerce website. However, it is not only Waitrose who are falling behind on their website SEO.


Having looked closely at a range of website SEO factors which determine the visibility of websites on search engines such as Google, a leading digital agency found Waitrose, Ocado and the big four supermarkets were all underperforming, leaving other retailers such as Amazon to clear up in certain markets.


Simon Hall, retail manager at Google UK, said: “The supermarkets all need to improve – they’re just not getting the exposure they should. If they were to describe their content with more relevant items – such as recipes – then they would win a lot more business online.”


The proof is in the pudding and for the five most popularly searched recipes online: chocolate cake, cup cakes, Yorkshire pudding, pancakes and sloe gin, no supermarket ranked anywhere near the top ten, leaving other retailers that are more focused on their website SEO to clear up.


In a letter to The Grocer, one customer clearly expressed their discontent at the shortcomings of the Waitrose website SEO: “It’s time the operations director stepped in and sorts out this very expensive mess!”


Here at Designer Websites we put years of technical know-how and experience into our website SEO service, ensuring your site is search engine friendly and highly visible to your customers.

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.