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. 

We have recently finished a redesign for the TimberTech website. We have worked with TimberTech for a number of years and they recently asked us to design a totally new look for their composite decking website, which we of course were happy to do.

When we completed the design concepts for the new website TimberTech were absolutely delighted with our proposed layout/design. Based on these new concepts we developed a new, more modern, more responsive website, which also contains some clever tracking functionality and a very good level of search engine optimisation.

Take a look at TimberTech - Composite Decking Website and see what you think.

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.  

We first developed a website for modelmakers back in 2008, at which point we concentrated on getting the website highly ranked within the search engines for terms like architectural model makers, exhibition models, fibreglass models and various other keywords. The site took a little while to get high positions but not outranks all competition and has been on page 1, in positions 1 to 3, for a couple of years now. Having achieved the ultimate goal Steve the owner now wanted to bring the style of the website up to date so that we could not only drive the traffic to the site but also impress the potential clients with an attractive and informative website. The latest version on the modelmakers website can be found here: Modelmakers.

This new website for Modelmakers also includes a blog, which allows the company to show off their model making skills, and gives them the flexibility to add new content anytime they want.

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.