New TLDs and SEO

A lot of new top-level domains have been created over the past year or two, and more are on the way. For example, .lol, .dog and .movie are all launching this month - creators of funny dog videos will soon spoiled for choice!

The popularity of newly-established domains such as .brand, .london and .wales may have you wondering if you ought to get with the times and snap up one of these snazzy new TLDs while the iron is hot. In particular, a lot of our clients have asked if using a more unique TLD will help their website's rankings on Google and other search engines.

Or, to put it another way...

Will a new TLD help my website's SEO?

The short answer? No - Google themselves have said that the new gTLDs (generic top-level domains) do not have any special advantage over the ones we're more familiar with:

"Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search."

So that's Google's position on the matter (the above quote is taken from the official Google Webmasters blog). Unfortunately, it looks like your choice of TLD won't have much of an impact on your website's keyword rankings; for example, your cookery blog won't have any more chance of conquering the foodie SERPs if you change your URL from www.grub-with-gwen.co.uk to www.grub-with-gwen.cooking. Sorry about that.

However, this doesn't mean that purchasing yourself a new gTLD is completely pointless. The really good thing about some of these new gTLDs is that they give users a little more information about your site than the ultra-vague likes of .com and .org. For example, it's impossible to guess what kind of website www.samsonswan.com might be from its URL alone, but we can reasonably assume that www.samsonswan.cymru is owned by a Welsh company, or that www.samsonswan.music belongs to a musician or band.

And that can be useful for search engine bots as well as for humans. Let's say you own a second-hand car dealership in London called Marvellous Motors Ltd. Your customers are Googling 'used cars London' and you want to show up on the first page of results for that term. Purchasing a domain name like www.marvellousmotors.london will make it more obvious (both to human users and to Google's spiders) that you're a London-based business, and this may well improve your chances of ranking locally.

The new TLDs may also come in handy if you share your brand name with somebody else from a totally different field. Imagine, for instance, that you've just opened a new pub called The Branch & Blossom, but - shock horror! - it turns out that there's a popular indie-folk band by that name already. Anybody attempting to Google your new business will end up on TB&B's SoundCloud page or browsing a list of their upcoming gigs, and since they're already using the domain name you wanted (www.branchandblossom.com), you're going to have to pick a different one instead.

So what'll it be? Your instinct might be to simply pick the closest available domain to what you originally wanted (www.branchandblossom.co.uk or www.branchandblossom.org), but it may be a better idea to register www.branchandblossom.pub or www.branchandblossom.bar instead. This will let everyone know that you're a bar, not a band, and people searching for your business will find it easier to spot which Branch & Blossom website is the one they're after. This also works if you're on the other side of the equation; newly-formed bands can use TLDs like .music or .rocks to differentiate themselves from established businesses who share their name.

So while an unusual TLD won't necessarily help you to scale the SERPs, there are other ways in which it can help you. If you want to make your website's URL more descriptive of who you are and what you're about, using one of the many new gTLDs that have been available recently may well be a good choice for you.

Of course, if you already have a website with a standard TLD (such as .com or .uk), it would be foolish to discard your established URL in favour of a trendy new domain name with no history. This will break any links to your current website, and erase the reputation that you've built for yourself with the search engines (they put a lot of stock in domain age and history!)

Instead, we recommend using 301 redirects to ensure that users and bots trying to reach your old domain are automatically sent to the new one instead; this will allow you to switch to a nicer domain name whilst retaining all the positive SEO 'juice' that you accumulated before the changeover.

Need help with registering a new domain name or setting up your company's website? Contact Designer Websites for assistance!
Doctorcall logo
 
Doctorcall Medical Services are among the UK's leading private medical groups. Established in 1989, Doctorcall was the first visiting doctor service in the UK, although they now offer many other services besides (including sexual health tests, physiotherapy treatments, occupational health checks, and cosmetic treatments such as Botox®).
 
If you've never heard of Doctorcall before, here's a brief introduction:
 
 
Doctorcall first contacted Designer Websites in late 2014. Their website at that time was a self-made Wordpress solution, but what they needed was a professional, bespoke business website to represent their long-established brand in the best way possible, and we were the company tasked with delivering this.
 
Here are some of the features that Doctorcall requested for their new and improved website:
  • Fully integrated Qinec booking system
  • Ecommerce system with online payments powered by Sage Pay
  • Mobile-friendly responsive design
  • Blog engine to allow Doctorcall's staff to post news and updates

What happened next?

We worked closely with Doctorcall to design and develop a new website that was tailored to their specific requirements. The new site went live in March 2015, and the impact of our work was visible almost immediately - the site's total traffic for April was almost 20% higher than in April 2014:
 
Doctorcall site traffic
 
An even more pronounced improvement was visible in Doctorcall's mobile stats - total mobile traffic for April 2015 was 41% higher than the same total one year earlier:
 
Doctorcall mobile traffic
 
This demonstrates the difference that a responsive, mobile-friendly website design can make - at time of writing, mobile users make up roughly 40% of Doctorcall's total visitors!
 
It's also worth noting just how well the Doctorcall website has been performing from an ecommerce standpoint. When developing the new site, we incorporated a shopping basket system that would allow visitors to purchase certain Doctorcall products (such as home testing kits and anti-ageing creams) over the web.
 
This approach appears to have worked wonders for the business - site revenue increased by almost 90% between June and July 2015!
 
Doctorcall revenue
 
All in all, our work has yielded outstanding results for Doctorcall's business. Here's what they had to say about the new website and its performance over the last few months:
 
"Designer Websites came highly recommended to us, and we couldn't be happier with the results of what is essentially a huge project for us. From start to finish they guided us through the design, delivery and acceptance of the ecommerce website in a clear and easy-to-understand way.
 
"Thanks to their clear communication and expertise, we now have a product we are very proud of. They continue to help us develop our online platform as we think of more ways to increase revenue through our web presence."
 
Jamie Watkins, Doctorcall Medical Services
 
Would you like us to design a new website for your business? Request a quote now, or give us a call on 01446 339050 to discuss your requirements with a member of our team!
New Broadleaf website

Broadleaf are among the UK's leading suppliers of real wood products. While they mainly specialise in wood flooring, they also manufacture wooden doors, worktops, beams and trusses; all of these things can be found in Broadleaf's many showrooms, which are dotted throughout Great Britain, Ireland, and France.

However, no number of bricks-and-mortar locations can ever compete with the reach and accessibility afforded by an ecommerce website, and Broadleaf came to us because they wanted a bespoke ecommerce solution that would allow them to market their gorgeous wooden wares to an even wider audience.

As usual, the Designer Websites team rose to the occasion, creating a stunning, user-friendly website that's almost as beautiful as the products it was designed to showcase. Each site visitor can now browse high-res images of Broadleaf's range, add items to their own personal 'Favourites' list, and even purchase real wood products online via the secure checkout system (powered by Sage Pay).  The website also has a number of additional features, such as a 'Floor Maintenance' section and 'Project Spotlight' blog that allows the Broadleaf team to show off their latest work.

If this sounds good to you, we strongly recommend that you visit www.broadleaftimber.com to see the new website for yourself. Alternatively, click here to get a quote for your own ecommerce website design project.
Rio Surgery responsive website

With highly skilled staff and a state-of-the-art clinic in one of Portugal's top tourist destinations, Rio Surgery are among the world's top providers of cosmetic surgery treatments. From breast augmentation and facelifts to liposuction and tummy tucks, they offer a very wide range of procedures, all of which are performed by experienced plastic surgeons with superb track records.

More and more Britons have been opting to go abroad for plastic surgery of late, and Rio Surgery's bosses were keen to capitalise on this increase in so-called 'cosmetic tourism' by promoting their services to the UK market. To do this, they needed an English-language website on a .co.uk domain, and that's where Designer Websites entered the fray - we designed and developed Rio Surgery's entire website from scratch, creaing a professional-looking online presence that the company can now use to reach a whole new market.

In addition to the sleek, responsive design and the user-friendly enquiry system, the Designer Websites team also supplied much of the copy for this website, ensuring that English speakers would find it easy to navigate the website. While Rio Surgery are based in Portugal, everyone at the clinic speaks fluent English, and it was important for us to make sure that potential clients weren't worried about language barriers getting in the way of their treatments.

So, if you want to combine your plastic surgery procedure with a luxurious holiday in Portugal, visit www.riosurgery.co.uk now. We can't recommend them highly enough; they've been a joy to deal with, and we hope that they're as proud of their new website as we are!

Want our professional web design team to create a website for your business? No matter where you're based, we'd love to hear from you! Click here to request a quote.
Do I need an ecommerce website?
 
We specialise in ecommerce websites here at Designer Websites, and so we often receive enquiries from business owners who are wondering whether or not ecommerce is the right choice for their company.
 
More often than not, the answer is a resounding 'yes' - ecommerce is a fantastic way to grow your business, reach new customers, and increase your profits. However, we do occasionally come across clients for whom an ecommerce website simply wouldn't make sense; sometimes, it's better to have a simple brochure website that drives lots of enquiries than to have an awkward ecommerce website that makes life difficult for potential customers.
 
So which side of that line does your business fall on? Read on to find out whether or not an ecommerce website is the right choice for you...

An ecommerce website is ideal if:

  • You sell a wide range of products. Websites are capable of showcasing far more products than a bricks-and-mortar shop, and if you have a lot of different items on offer, an ecommerce site will probably be the single most efficient way for you to sell.

  • You wish to market to a wider audience. If you're only selling from a physical location at present, you're only reaching a tiny percentage of the market (i.e. those within travelling distance of your shop). Even if you have multiple locations, that's still nothing compared to the reach of an ecommerce website - imagine what could happen if you made your products available to the entire country, or even the entire world!

  • You already have a non-ecommerce website that gets a lot of traffic. If you have a website that doesn't allow people to buy your products, chances are you're missing out on a lot of sales. Many internet users now expect the option to purchase online, and if your website doesn't offer this, you'll lose your customers to a website that does. The solution, of course, is to upgrade your site with ecommerce functionality - you'll be improving user experience, and since your website already has some history with the search engines, it will likely rank much higher than a brand new website would.

An ecommerce website probably isn't right for you if:

  • You aren't equipped to deal with a large volume of orders. Opening up your business to the whole country (and possibly beyond) will almost certainly result in a lot more orders. This is great news if you can handle the demand, but if you can't, things will very quickly turn sour, especially if customers aren't receiving the goods they've paid for. In the age of the internet, disgruntled consumers can ruin a company's reputation astonishingly quickly!

  • You only want to target a small area. Want to keep your business local? If so, ecommerce may be the wrong choice for you, particularly if you don't have the means to fulfil orders from outside your chosen territory. That said, we have produced ecommerce websites for a few region-specific businesses, and they've done very well indeed - just make sure that visitors know right from the outset that your site only caters to one location!

  • Your products are too complicated for ecommerce. Some things simply can't be sold directly over the internet. This is often the case for companies who specialise in bespoke items; it is possible to integrate some customisable features into an ecommerce website (for example, we have built sites that sell things like personalised clothing and customised labels), but after a certain point, it just becomes too complicated for the end user. Alternatively, perhaps you'd rather get people on the telephone instead of selling to them online - giving your customers a phone number instead of an online checkout allows you to speak to them personally, provide a better solution for their requirements, and perhaps even upsell your products and make more money!
Click here to get a quote for your own ecommerce website, or - if you're still not sure - feel free to email info@designer-websites.co.uk for more information.