FreshWebz Web Design Colchester

Affordable Web Design Colchester

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How to use page titles better for local searches

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If you’re selling products and services that are related to a special area, it is crucial that your website gets found by people that are looking for it. One of the easiest ways to get found by people that live in your area is to optimise your web page titles for your product & location.

What is the web page title?

The title of a web page is the text that is written between the tags in the HTML head code of a web page, is displayed in the web browser window when someone visits your website and it is usually used as the linked text when your website appears in the search results.

Why should you use optimised web page titles?

The web page title is one of the main factors that Google, Yahoo and other search engines use to rank web pages. A good, relevant, informative web page title greatly improves the chances of getting high search engine rankings for your product/service.

The web page title is used by the search engines as the bold linked text on search result pages. That means that it should be clear, relevant, concise and appealing, so that web surfers will be drawn to click on it.

How to write your web page title so that it gets better local rankings

If you optimise your web page titles correctly, they will both increase your search engine rankings and attract people from the local area & those looking for your products/services, to your website.

You’ll benefit from targeted traffic and targeted traffic leads to more conversions i.e. sales. Here are some things that you can do to improve your web page titles:

Include the name of your business, important keywords and your city in the title of your homepage:

FreshWebz – Affordable web design in London and Essex

Depending on your business size, change the order of these items. Well known businesses should list their company name first. If your business is new then it’s usually better to list the keyword first:

Affordable web design for small businesses: Freshwebz in London

People are probably looking for a solution to their problem (web design) instead of your actual company name. Instead of your town, you can also use the name of the greater area if your service is available in that area.

Use a different title tag for every page. This is important! The title should reflect the content that can be found on the page, so it’s less effective just copying the homepage title to every page. For branding purposes, the titles should contain your company name and a popular keyword for which you want to be found on search engines:

FreshWebz: Search engine optimisation & SEO services in Colchester and Essex
FreshWebz: Web design Portfolio – websites designed for recent clients
FreshWebz: Contact us for an affordable quote for your new website design

Use short web page titles. Short titles are much easier to read for web surfers. Do not try to stuff your title with keywords in the same way that you wouldn’t stuff your page content with keywords. It is much better if your web page title is highly relevant to one keyword, than somewhat relevant to many keywords. If you want to optimise your website for different keywords, optimise different pages for different keywords.

Do not use special characters in your titles. Avoid symbols and other special characters wherever possible. They might not be displayed properly on all computers and your website listing might look strange in the search results.

If you change your web page titles as described, your website will get better rankings on search engines and it will be found by people looking for your products/services & who live in the right area. By getting more visitors for one topic, you will improve the overall ranking of your site & so improve your position for other search terms.

Unfortunately, the web page title is not the only element that influences the position of your website in the search results of Google and other search engines. If you want to make sure that your site appears in the top 10 results, you should optimise all factors that are needed to get top rankings.

How Google Suggest influences the traffic you get from Google

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Last week, Google added the Google Suggest feature that had been available in beta for a long time to its main page. This might sound like a small change but it can have a big effect on the traffic that you get from Google.

What is Google Suggest?

Google Suggest adds suggestions to your search query while you type it. For example, if you type “holiday” in Google’s search box, then Google will suggest “holiday inn”, “holiday insurance”, “holiday hypermarket” and a variety of other keywords.

Why does this change the traffic that you’ll get from Google?

The implementation of Google Suggest on the main search page might have several effects on the keywords that web surfers use:

People might search less for one or two word keywords

MP3 is a very popular search term. However, it’s unlikely that a search for “mp3” will return the results that the web surfer searched for. When you now search on Google, Google will suggest “mp3 player”, “mp3 downloads” and “mp3 converter” among many other suggestions. It’s likely that the web surfer will choose one of these suggestions because they describe more accurately what they are looking for.

Web surfers might become less creative when they search

Some people might think that the options offered in Google’s suggest box are the only possible keyword combinations that can be entered. Other people might rely on Google’s suggested keywords out of convenience.

Technically less adept web surfers or lazy people might stick with the default suggestions instead of really typing what they are looking for.

AdWords prices for some keywords might go up

Instead of many different keyword combinations, the same (suggested) keyword combinations might be searched over and over. This could result in increasing AdWords prices for these keywords and in increased competition for these keywords.

Long-tail keywords might be negatively affected

Long-tail keywords are keywords that typically consists of 4-6 words. These keywords are usually very targeted and they often lead to conversions because people who enter long-tail keywords know what they’re looking for. As Google mainly suggests keywords that consist of up to 3 keywords, the amount of long tail keywords might decrease.

Long-tail keywords might be positively affected

On the other side, Google Suggest might show some people that it is possible to refine search queries. Web surfers might use Google’s suggested keywords and further refine the queries with their own words. People who never thought about their search terms now might start to do so.

How to write link texts that will increase your Google rankings

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Good inbound link texts can give your website a boost in Google’s search results. Unfortunately, many people still don’t take advantage of the full potential of optimised link texts. They will list their links with the title of their site or use the time honoured phrase “click here“! This article explains how to make the most out of your links.

What is a link text?

The link text is the text in the clickable text that is used to link to another web page. It is the text between the anchor tags. That’s why some people call link texts anchor texts.

Why are link texts important?

Google and other major search engines heavily rely on link texts to specify the position of web pages in the search results. If many websites link to a web page with the link text “travel” then Google thinks that the web page must be relevant to the keyword “travel”. For that reason, the web page will get a ranking boost for that search term.

The more often a keyword appears in links to your website, the better your rankings for that keyword will be.

How to write good links

There are a few easy tips that will make your links more useful for both web surfers and search engines:

1. Write your texts as if there were no links. Search engines like links that are in the normal text of your web page. The content should make sense to the user e.g.

Getting links from another web page is a great way to improve your rankings on Google and other search engines.

2. Do not describe the action of the link, or a meaningless title, but the purpose of the link:

Bad: Click here for more information on cheap flights.

Good: Further information about cheap flights can be found on our site

3. Use clear and descriptive text for your links. The link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context.

Bad: The software can be downloaded for free on the product name website.

Good: The software can be downloaded for free on the product name website.

4. Avoid unpleasant surprises. If the link goes to a web page that starts a movie, or downloads a file then you should warn the user by mentioning this in the link:

You can download our review of this destination for free.

Many website visitors do not read the text on a web page but scan the highlighted keywords. For that reason, your link texts should be easy to understand & catch their attention even if people haven’t read the surrounding text.

Use keywords in your link texts whenever possible. The more often a keyword appears in a link to a specific web page, the better are the chances that this web page will get higher rankings on Google for that keyword.

Brief Guide to choosing keywords for your website

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1. Look for keywords on your own web site.
Think like a customer and pick the words that your customers might be searching on to find you.

2. Use a keyword suggestion tool.
Google and Miva both offer keyword research tools. The Google Keyword Tool has been updated to show actual search volumes rather than a graphic. Miva also shows search totals on its Keyword Generator. Yahoo no longer offer the Overture tool, but if you are signed up to Yahoo Search Marketing, you can use the Yahoo! Keyword Assistant to research new keywords.

3. Think about keywords that attract customers at each stage of the buying cycle.
The buying cycle has three major phases: research, shopping and purchase. The closer someone is to buying, the more specific your keywords should be. For example, customers may search for “guitar” during research, “Fender guitar” while shopping, and “American Standard Fender Telecaster guitar” when they’re ready to purchase.

4. Pick a mix of broad and specific keywords.
Keep in mind that using more generic keywords, like “guitar,” can cause you to go through your budget and may not lead to sales as often, but can be helpful for driving traffic from prospective customers who are in the research phase. Selecting more specific keywords may deliver fewer clicks, but they may be more likely to result in sales.

4 reasons why your Google rankings may have dropped

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The rankings of your website on Google have dropped and you don’t know why this happened. Most webmasters face this problem at some time. Indeed, I experienced it myself with Cashback Shopper only last month! There are many reasons why rankings can rise or fall but here are the 4 main ones why they might drop:

Reason 1: Your website has been penalised or banned from Google

Search for “site:yoursite.com” on Google (replace yoursite.com with your actual domain name). If Google returns one or more pages from your website then your website has not been fully banned. Your site has NOT been banned completely, but HAS dropped for keyword searches for some reason.

What you can do to solve that problem:

Find out what you have done wrong on your website! Google doesn’t like spamming, cloaking, link building and similar shady tactics known as black hat SEO. Clean up your website, ensure that you are not using any of these methods and ask for reconsideration.

Reason 2: Your server rejects Google’s spider

Have you installed a new robots.txt file lately? Does your robots.txt file allow Google to index your website? Have you changed your htaccess file? Have you recently installed a spam bot blocker?

Are you 100% sure that the spam bot blocker lets Google through to your website? Google uses different IP addresses for its different spiders and some spam blockers might accidentally block one of the spiders. This might also look like cloaking to Google.

What you can do to solve that problem:

Double check the settings in your robots.txt file, your htaccess file and your spam bot blockers. If possible, avoid bot blockers because they might send the wrong bots away. I had an incorrectly configured robots file on one of my sites without realising it & only picked it up by using Google’s Webmaster Tools which reports errors found by the Google spiderbot.

Reason 3: Google has changed its algorithm

Google is continually tweaking its algorithm. It might be that one of the latest changes affected your website. Last year, Google released more than 450 changes of the ranking algorithm. That’s more than 37 per month. Google’s rankings have been very fluid of late, which indicates that the algorithm is changing more often than ever before.

What you can do to solve that problem:

Check your website to ensure that it is compliant to Google’s latest algorithm.

Reason 4: Your competitors increased their SEO efforts

You’re not the only one who wants to get high rankings for your keywords. Search engine optimisation is a constant competition & rankings are affected by a number of different factors both on & off page! Your competitors might have done something, even just one thing, better than you.

What you can do to solve that problem:

Analyse your competitors to find out what they’ve done to get the top rankings. Get better inbound links than your competitors and optimise your web pages.

Things that brought your website to the top of Google’s search results yesterday might not work today. If you want to get on Google’s first result page and stay there, you have to continually check if your website complies with Google’s latest changes & updates.

FreshWebz Web Design Colchester

We are a web design company specialising in working with small to medium-sized businesses. We offer high quality website design, as well as a range of other online web services, for any individual, sole trader, small business, SME or UK company. Our services are geared to both new and established business owners requiring a professional, affordable website design solution with local on-going Colchester based support. Contact us for an informal chat, to see how we can improve your business' web presence!

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E : enquiries @ freshwebz.co.uk

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We are a Colchester Web Design company, specialising in creating Affordable Websites for Sole Traders, Start-Ups and Established Small Businesses in Colchester and surrounding areas. We provide Affordable Web Design, Mobile Friendly / Responsive Websites, CMS Websites and eCommerce Websites that are affordable, professional and easy to use. Visit our Web Services page to find out more about what we can offer your business.

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