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.
Your title tag is one of the most important on page elements when it comes to website SEO. Correctly structuring you title tag can have an impact on where the search engines display your website in their search results which in turn has an impact on the number of people visiting your website. Getting it right the first time is therefore important. Here are some tips to help you get started:
Keywords
Make sure the title tag for each page includes the keywords you would like that page to appear for in the search engines. Having a title tag that simply reads ‘Home’ or ‘About’ is not going to make your page unique in the search engine’s eyes, just think about how many sites on the internet have the title ‘Home’. Instead use the keyword that your page talks about i.e. if the page is about ‘used laptop screens’ then call the page exactly that. Having the keyword in your title tag is important for website SEO but it can also help visitors to your site navigate easily between pages, therefore improving the overall usability of your site.
Length
When it comes to title tags size matters. Your title tag should be short and succinct ideally no more than 65 characters long (including spaces). Don’t be tempted to make your title tag 2 or 3 sentences long, anything longer than 65 characters will often be invisible to users as most search engines restrict the space available for the title tab. On the other hand, don’t go for single words either, really make best use of your space.
Spam
Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to simply list all the keywords you can think of or worse, just repeat a single keyword as many times as you can. Spamming the search engine via your title tags is a short term approach to website SEO. Search engines will quickly cotton onto what you have done and either penalise your site or remove it altogether from their index.
Follow the tips above and you should be able to mould title tags that will complement your website SEO and not restrain it.
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.
