Fibre Marketing

Year: 2019

Can Website Design Affect Your SEO?

Posted on by Chloe

If you’re asking – “Can website design affect my SEO?” – then the simple answer is yes. Web design plays an integral role in SEO, and you should be aware of how your design decisions can affect your search rankings.

How bad design will affect your SEO

We’ve explained previously how most people use the internet when searching for a product or service and over 90% of those people start by using a search engine. So, someone goes online and searches for an answer, a product, or a service, and it leads them to your website – great! However, if a user doesn’t engage with your content because of poor design, then they’re likely to go back to the SERP to find a better answer to their query. PageCloud add that “this action is known as bouncing or “pogo sticking” and tells the search engines that the user was not satisfied – you weren’t the right answer or solution to their search.” Over time this will cause your rankings to drop, as a high bounce rate shows a low value for that page.

Poor design mistakes to avoid

Poor website design can be due to a number of factors. Here are a few of the main design mistakes you should avoid at all costs:

  • Illegible text – Users are unlikely to engage with your content if your font is too small or difficult to read. You also need to make sure that your content has enough spacing and does not appear crammed. Use a readability tool to make sure that your text can be read and understood easily.
  • Large files – This includes images and videos that may slow down your pages. Remember that not everyone has access to high speed internet, and users are likely to leave your site if pages take too long to download. You should therefore use online tools to check your page load speeds regularly.
  • Intrusive Pop ups – While they can be useful, pop ups can cause frustration for your online audience and affect user experience, especially if they haven’t even accessed any of your content yet. This can hurt your SEO. You should therefore use pop ups carefully, and never in a way that appears intrusive or irrelevant.
  • Distracting sounds / colours – Web Blog PunkChip explain that “autoplay of embedded audio and video clips causes interruption to browsing, and so you should avoid making audio tracks or videos play automatically on your website.” If you do have a clip playing automatically, ensure that it’s muted. Don’t forget that offensive or distracting colour schemes can also have a negative effect on usability and cause frustration for your visitors.

How a great design layout improves SEO

Your website design should be simple, easy, and minimalistic. This will allow users to navigate your website with ease, get the information that they need, and spend more time on your site. All of these will significantly impact on your SEO effects and will boost the usability of your site. Remember that search engines like Google like it when answers are easy to find, and so content at the top of a page will always have more value.

When considering layout, you should make sure that text and images are properly separated using whitespace so that your pages are easy to navigate. This will help focus your readers and increase engagement without overwhelming them. Functional navigation is another important factor. A consistent header and footer is a simple way to improve user accessibility and will help anyone visiting your site access your content with ease.

How the right content improves your SEO

Once you have the perfect layout, you need to fill it with amazing content that makes your site stand out! This awesome content not only increases engagement, but it’s also a great way to get backlinks, as other sites will link to you if they feel that your content will provide their users with additional quality information. Remember that the volume and quality (the latter more importantly) of the content on your website will directly affect your SEO rank.

Your website needs to look good on all devices

 In today’s modern world, most people use a variety of mobile devices for browsing the internet. It’s therefore important to have a responsive website that can consistently perform on all types of mobile devices. If your content isn’t properly designed for every screen size, then your user experience with suffer, and you will have trouble getting high rankings in search engine results. Forbes advise that “mobile-friendliness is an absolute must if you’re hoping to make gains in organic search visibility, and it should be a primary design focus.” Tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can help you determine if your pages are accessible on mobile.

How to check the quality of your web design

To figure out if you have a good design, you can do some user testing. Using free services like Google Optimize is a great way to check accessibility and see where improvements can be made. You can also ask family and friends to visit your site and give feedback on what they liked, and if there were any frustrations or improvements they can suggest.

In summary, bad website design is bad for SEO. Good web design is therefore crucial to a successful SEO strategy, and when done well, the design of your website can help you to rank higher, which will lead to increased traffic, conversions, and profits.

DA Update – Here’s What You Need To Know

Posted on by Chloe

Moz announced that they will be releasing an upgraded and improved version of their popular SEO tool Domain Authority, or DA, next month. For those of you that don’t already use it, DA estimates how valuable a certain domain is in terms of how well it ranks in Google or other search engines. According to Moz, the upgrade will create a more accurate and trustworthy measurement through its improved ability to catch link sellers and other spammy links designed to cheat the metric.

Why is DA so important?

A website’s DA score allows marketers to gauge the strength of their websites compared to their competitors. They can then use that information to make smarter, data-driven SEO decisions. As we’ve explained before, creating a website, or developing a social media presence, is only the start. In order for your digital content to produce results, you need to be visible and for people need to engage with your brand. SEO is the art of understanding how your business can optimise its online presence, to engage with its customers, and to attract high rankings in organic search results.

Since so many SEO professionals rely on DA to evaluate the effectiveness of their website, the announcement of a change to the core algorithm of Moz’s popular tool has certainly caused some concern. But don’t worry! Here’s everything you need to how about the new update and how it will affect you:

So what’s changing and why?  

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist at Moz described how the company has made several technical changes to how they calculate DA – “We can remove spam, improve correlations, and, most importantly, update Domain Authority relative to all the changes that Google makes.” Moz has done this by switching from a complex linear model, to a neural network. This offers several benefits including a much more nuanced model which can detect link manipulation. What’s more, they are reestablishing the components of what gives a website a high DA. Usually, DA is determined by link counts, but now, they are focusing more on links based on quality and traffic, along with a range of other factors.

What does this mean?

Focusing on quality, rather than just using the amount of links to determine a website’s DA, means that the system will deliver an improved, more trustworthy metric, as well as refining the users’ experience. This should reduce spam, and improve connections between sites and users.

What should I do?

Remember to use DA as a relative metric, not an absolute one.

Don’t forget that DA is meaningless on its own, and is only effective when you compare it to sites that matter. It doesn’t matter if your site’s DA increases or decreases – what matters is if it increases or decreases relative to your competitors. You shouldn’t think of DA as a grade. Instead of aiming for a DA of 100 (the highest possible score), you should be aiming for a score that is higher than similar sites that appear in search results for your target keywords. You should therefore make sure to check competitors’ DA scores as well as your own.

Expect some disruptions, and communicate changes to people that matter.

With change, there is always some level of disruption. It is therefore essential that you communicate these changes and improvements to DA with clients, colleagues, and stakeholders before any concerns can arise. Perhaps create a flyer with information about the update, and answers to any potential questions you may be asked. Have these left around your office for staff to read.

Have a refresher on Domain Authority.

This is the perfect time to have a refresher on the basics of DA, to look at what makes a great website, and reaffirm your strategy on increasing DA, so that you can make the most of the update. Here are some simple ways to increase DA on your website:

  • Interlink to your old posts when writing new content.
  • Ensure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
  • Have an active social media presence.
  • Remove any bad backlinks to your website.
  • Post good-quality, engaging, and relevant content regularly.
  • Only include high-quality links that will generate traffic.

Expect Domain Authority to make future changes.

Google makes hundreds of changes to their algorithm every year; Moz intend to keep pace with Google and make DA responsive to any changes. This means that DA will remain relevant and up to date. You should therefore expect DA to make continual changes and be prepared for these future improvements.

We hope that our guide has assured you that this update should not be a cause for concern or panic in your business. You will most likely see fluctuations in your DA, but remember that this update will result in a better, more trustworthy metric than before, which will allow you to make smarter decisions about SEO strategies going forward.

 

How Will SEO Help My Business?

Posted on by Chloe

SEO might sound like something other people think about. Why would you want to know about this when you run a business in a different sector? How will it help your business?

The truth is, if you can get your SEO practises right, your business will grow. In today’s world in which more people search for goods online than ever before, you need a website, and if you have a website, you need it to be noticed – particularly in you are working in an area that has a lot of competition. Getting noticed is all about SEO. Here’s how it can help your business grow, be noticed, and thrive.

Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

When you search for something online, the likelihood is that, unless you know exactly which website to head to from the start, you are going to use a search engine. The most used search engine in the UK is Google, so much so that ‘to google’ has become a verb that we all use with hardly a second thought.

Using SEO correctly means that you will be seen higher up in the search engine (and particularly Google) rankings. You may wonder why this matters, but it is actually hugely important for the success of your business. People don’t have a lot of time – when they are searching for something it’s because they want to find the answer. The first page of search engine results are where they will concentrate their ideas, clicking on the top few links. They might, if nothing useful has come up, venture to the second page, but it is unlikely they will go much further – they will change their search terms instead.

Being on that first page of results is crucial, and being as near to the top as possible is something to aim for. SEO can get you there.

Conversion Rates

The number of people who visit your website compared to the number of people who buy when they are there is your conversion rate. Clearly, the more people who buy, the better your conversion rate will be, and the better it is, the more profit you will make.

Properly targeted, well thought out SEO campaigns will help to increase that ratio and give you a better conversion rate. This is because targeted SEO will bring people who are genuinely interested in what you are selling; they have already half decided that they want something from you, and you simply need to finish the process. This saves time, money, and effort, and all stems from the correct usage of SEO.

Brand Awareness

Every business needs to be more visible if they want to be more successful. This means working on ‘brand awareness’ so that, even if people don’t need what you are selling right now, when they do need it they will immediately think of your brand and your business.

Again, SEO will help with this. It links back to getting better rankings on the search engines, as this is certainly a good start. But it is also about using SEO to place your website and your ads in other places so that they begin to be noticed all around. A great example of this is social media and your blog.

Engagement

In order to become more successful, you need to ensure you have good customer engagement. SEO can ensure that this is possible. The more people who see your website, your social media posts, your blog, and your adverts, the more people will get in touch with you. This gives you the perfect opportunity to find new customers and to engage with them.

Social media is particularly good for this; people can see the questions that are asked, and your responses (assuming they are made public). This will show that you care about your customers and that you want to work with them and help them wherever possible. In some cases this caring side of your business can be the reason that people turn to you rather than a competitor, and therefore it is imperative to get it right.

It isn’t just the public forum of social media that counts when it comes to engagement, of course. Even if no one else sees the question or the answer you provide, it is just as important to answer any question that comes your way. You should also acknowledge any feedback, pay attention to reviews – positive or negative – and always remain professional at all times.

5 Reasons Why You Need Mobile SEO

Posted on by Chloe

Recently, we have been seeing changes in how search engines are treating desktop and mobile websites. Specifically, there is now a clear divide between what kinds of people use desktop computers for, and what people use mobile devices for, (aka. location-based and voice-searched content is very popular on mobile devices). Thinking of your responsive website in terms of it being a single website is fine, but if you want to improve your chances of drawing in more viewers, you need to optimise your website to appeal to mobile users as well.

  1. The Sheer Popularity of Mobile Internet

Since the use of mobile Internet is now so popular, it demands that you allocate more of your marketing budget towards improving your mobile SEO, and part of improving your website is improving its SEO so that it is more usable, more user-friendly, more useful, more easily available, and more prominent on search engines.

There are currently 3.7 billion unique mobile data users in the world, and that doesn’t count the people who have two phones or have family plans where numerous people use mobile Internet data under the same plan. Worldwide, mobile devices accounted for 49.7% of worldwide web page views, and that doesn’t count the people who are connecting to the Internet use their social media apps. Plus in Asia, mostly China, using a mobile to connect to the Internet is the highest in the world at 61.09%.

  1. Local SEO Draws A Bigger Footfall

People use desktop and mobile devices in equal measure when buying larger items or items of high value, but people tend to buy smaller things with their phone (such as dog toys, replacement fuses, bicycle pumps, etc.) Add to this that when people are searching for business/products near them, they will often use their phone to find what they’re looking for. If your website has correctly optimised its local SEO, then people who are nearby will be easily able to find your store, and, if it has high-quality content, there is then a higher chance of search engines favouring your site over others, resulting in a higher page ranking. When people are out and about and looking for you services or your products, it is imperative that they find you over your local competitors.

  1. You Need To Deal With Your Mobile Website’s Usability

Part of a website’s SEO involves fixing the mobile website so that it is more usable for users. It means eliminating things such as loading errors, broken links, and screen-compatibility issues. The design of the website itself also needs to be considered here. By improving your mobile SEO, you are also helping to make your website more usable and less frustrating. A broken link can ruin a customer’s progress down a sales funnel, and it is a SEO expert’s job to find and fix broken links.

  1. Voice Searching Is Becoming More Popular

Optimising mobile websites to leverage voice searching is a relativity new field that is being dominated by Google and Apple. They decide which rules apply and which do not. As a mobile website owner, it is up to you to stay on-par with the curve. If Google change the rules tomorrow, then you may lose or gain a significant number of voice-searching customers. Keep in mind that Google are aligning their Mobile First technology with their voice searching technology because both are elements of mobile web searching, which is another reason why you cannot treat your mobile website and your desktop website as one-in-the-same.

  1. Leverage Cookies To Help Improve Your Sales Funnel

Cleverly designed websites will balance the processing power used to read and leverage cookies, with the help they offer when creating dynamic websites. Websites that wish to use the power of a dynamic website will need correct SEO, otherwise the web master will make incorrect assumptions and damage the effectiveness of the sales funnel.

For example, a website may sell Grannie’s home-make biscuits, but the mobile website’s SEO has been set up in a way that it attracts people who are looking for dog biscuits. Some people may buy because they also fancy Grannie’s biscuits for themselves, but most people will click away and find another website. The web master then sees that people are leaving the primary landing pages in massive numbers, so starts to change the landing pages without realising that website’s mobile SEO is causing the problem.

How to Know if You Should Outsource Your SEO

Posted on by Chloe

Any business that understands the importance (and potential) of digital marketing knows that getting your SEO right is one of the most crucial elements. After all, if potential customers cannot find you via the search engines – or worse – if they find one of your closest competitors first, the rest of your hard work seems pretty pointless. Being found online by the right people at the right time is vital and this is where SEO can help.

It might be possible for you to manage your SEO yourself, and many people do – if they have the time and passion to do it. But some businesses benefit from out-sourcing it. So, how do you know when the time is right to be outsourcing your SEO?

1. If it’s not your ‘thing’

At the end of the day, some people enjoy doing SEO and some don’t. But if you want your business to have any sort of web presence, SEO is essential. Although a lot of the concepts around SEO are straightforward, it can be time consuming and involve a lot of analysis, keyword research and trying things out (and changing things), meaning that it can be tricky to fit in around everything else that you have to do. Good SEO requires dedication, and this isn’t something that is possible for everyone.

So, if SEO just isn’t your ‘thing’ or you simply don’t have time, don’t neglect it, it’s time to outsource it. Let somebody else spend the time and give you the results that your business needs.

2. The ever-changing world of SEO

Whilst the concepts around SEO generally stay the same, the world of SEO is always changing. Search engines like Google are always changing their algorithms (the set of rules which decide which results come top of their search rankings) with the intention of giving their `searchers` the most accurate results for what they are looking for. This, however, means that businesses need to stay on top of their SEO and local SEO, to ensure that they are ranked up there in those all-important search results.

3. The have the skills 

Basic SEO, is, well, pretty basic to get your head around. But just like anything else in life, unless you’re prepared to spend time and energy learning about SEO as well as dedicating yourself to practice, it will be difficult to get the best results. A specialist SEO expert, however, will be able to jump straight in with the skills that they already have fine-tuned and get your SEO up to scratch.

4. You can’t afford to pay a full time SEO-er

As businesses grow, it’s not always possible to pay someone who has both the expertise and time to dedicate to SEO, so by outsourcing your SEO, you will get someone with the skills and talent, who you only have to pay for when they are working for you. You don’t have to worry about paying holiday, pensions or how productive they are, but can expect them to work closely with you to get great results that properly reflect your business.

5. You’re struggling with your existing SEO

You might feel like you’re doing everything right with your SEO, but still not ranking near the top of those searches. It might be something that you hadn’t even realised that you should be doing, or something that you aren’t quite doing right, and this is where outsourcing your SEO can help. By letting the experts have a look over it and make the changes that are needed, you can ensure that the SEO efforts that you are making are productive and effective. They can also help you to plan long and short-term marketing strategies to ensure that you get the best results now and in the future.

You’ve run out of ideas

Whether it’s what to do with your website, content or blog post ideas, it can be difficult to be continuously creative, even when it’s something that you feel passionate about. Outsourcing your SEO can bring a fresh perspective on things. By letting the SEO experts analyse what you already have and build on that, they can come up with new ideas in terms of general marketing strategies as well as content which will rocket you up the search results.

For any growing business it can be difficult to let go of certain aspects. There comes a stage though where it is better to let the experts take over and bring the best results for you. Whilst SEO is something that is manageable to certain size businesses, it can be difficult to keep on top of, and effective, especially as your time becomes taken up with other things. By knowing when it is time to outsource your SEO, you can ensure that you get the most effective outcome for your business.

The rise of voice search optimisation: what you need to know

Posted on by Chloe

Voice search is becoming increasingly significant in terms of SEO, as right now, 20% of search queries on Android devices and Google’s app are conducted by voice search. It’s changing the way businesses need to think about their SEO, indicating that they will need to apply voice search SEO if they want to succeed.

 

Voice search allows users to find out what they are looking for without actually loading up a search engine and typing in keywords to generate results. People who use voice search prefer it because it allows them to multitask and they can get information immediately, which is handy for when you’re cooking or driving.

 

And so, due to the increasing amount of usage, search engines are beginning to emphasise voice search optimization.

 

One of the many advantages of voice search optimisation is that it’s a great way to gain brand awareness. When someone asks a question in voice search, the answer usually begins with ‘According to…’, thus informing the listener of your brand.

 

Voice search SEO is different from traditional SEO. For example, voice search uses long tail keywords and a conversational tone, as they are often questions instead of exact keyword searches, like ‘What is the weather like today?’ instead of ‘Cheltenham weather.’

 

It is therefore vital that you should know how users speak about your business and its products. Your content should be written for people, not search engines. Answer questions directly and try and make it obvious that a paragraph is an answer to a question. An example of this type of content is blog posts – many article headings’ feature a question that the post itself then answers.

 

And, of course, you must know your audience and what they are likely to be asking.

 

Making sure that your site is optimised for mobiles is just as important – this is where voice search comes from after all. Mobile SEO needs to be good and page content needs to be high-quality, as your content should be as relevant to the desired search query as possible. Using sections with lists, bullet points, and heading tags can be read easily by Google and thus perform better, and are more likely to be used for voice search.

 

Local SEO is essential as the most popular types of search queries for voice search are location-based – users want to know things like opening times, locations, and what products are available where. So if a site and its content are optimised for local searches, then it’s more likely to succeed in the voice search industry. One way to work out what sort of local content you ned is to think of the popular search phrase ‘…near me.’ Most voice search queries are essentially that but in question form, and that’s the type of information your website will need to provide.

 

In conclusion, voice search optimisation is making changes to mobile SEO, making it something that business owners need to consider when designing their websites. It is speculated that voice search will be a huge trend this year, proven to improve brand awareness and purchases. It’s usage is still on the rise, so by optimising your site for voice search now, you are sure to see results that will help grow your brand in the long-term.

 

See more thoughts about this voice search optimisation here.

Google bug shows up to 14 ads on mobile search pages

Posted on by Chloe

If you follow us on Twitter, you would have seen that we recently posted a video showing a Google mobile SERP that features up to fourteen ads:

As you can see, there are four ads on the top of the page, followed by two organic listings.  Seven more ads appear followed by six organic listings, and then the page ends with three final ads. That’s twice as many ads than usual, and our video kick-started a backlash across Twitter.

We believed that this was another test by Google concerning its search engine results pages, only this one focused solely on mobile searches.

From what we have seen, the SERPs are not still like this, but the discussion on Twitter is still ongoing:

It has been predicted for a while that Google would push its Ads, and the founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin, recently reported that, in 2018, there had been a decline in click-through rates yet an increase in no-click searches. This statistic reflects how Google SERP features, such as Google Ads and Featured Snippets, are competing for clicks.

However, Google Ads responded to our tweet, confirming that it was, in fact, a bug and not a test:

While their reply has received some mixed responses, it is a relief to know that this is not likely to be the layout of mobile searches anytime soon.

See the rest of the Twitter discussion here.

Google displays ‘empty’ search pages to European users

Posted on by Chloe

Recently, Google shared screenshots of proposed search engine results pages that would display if the EU passes Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. The search results appear empty, as if they have failed to load correctly, and only links are displayed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Image from Search Engine Land 

These types of results were then shown to European users, as discussed on Twitter:

 

The experiment was, according to Google, ‘to understand what the impact of the proposed EU Copyright Directive would be to our users and publisher partners.”

Two provisions that are part of this proposal are Articles 11 & 13. Article 11 would mean that Google and other search engines are required to pay licensing fees when displaying snippets of content. Article 13 requires certain platforms, such as Google and social media sites including Facebook and Twitter, to monitor content uploads for potential copyright infringement.

The full Twitter forum is below: