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.
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.
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.
It has been well over 2 years since we updated our own website, so back in March we decided to get on with a new design, however we have struggled since then with our schedule to fit in completing the work, anyway now we are finally at a point where our new design can go live. We believe that the new website is more informative as well as being more attractive.
We have purposely designed our website to provide a more tailored and rewarding experience for our users, depending of course on what they are looking for. We acknowledge that no client will want to read the entire site instead they will likely be looking for a specific service relevant to their needs, so for example they might be looking for an ecommerce website designer, so they hit the ecommerce specific page which provides them with a little information followed by 5 case studies to assist in their decision process. Here's how it looks..
We think the design looks great and the examples provide enough information, without going over the top, to assist potential clients with their decision to use us for their next website.
You may have also noticed that we have integrated our promotional products and promotional clothing ecommerce websites, take a look we are very proud of these sites.. Promotional Clothing
Of course being the website optimisation specialist we have optimised our own website to rank for keyword terms like websites designer, ecommerce websites, website optimisation and many many more. We obviously rank extremely well for local terms like website design cardiff or ecommerce websites Cardiff but now we need to improve our ranking on a national scale.
If you have any opinions we'd love to hear them, but please keep them constructive! Thanks for reading.