SEO Part 3 Good Website Design

Clear Navigation

Try and predict the information your customers will immediately want to see and make sure this is visible when they first visit your site. This information might include:

The services you provide,
Your business name and location
Your contact details and/or a contact form
An easy-to-use site menu

Flashy graphics and pop-ups may seem attention grabbing, but they can easily confuse and frustrate your visitors. Similarly, you should only decide to add a fashionable “carousel” or image slider if you can still fit the most important information at the top of your homepage where it is easy to find. If your carousel is able to include text and links to useful pages of your site it can be a useful tool to guide people to where they want to go.

Site Speed

Slower websites will be crawled slower by search engines, which means that any changes you make to your site will take longer to appear in search results.

Additionally, a slower website means your visitors need to wait longer for the information they are looking for, especially if they are using a poor internet connection. There will also be a higher chance that they will leave your site if it is not a pleasant experience to navigate.

Mobile Compatibillity

Google announced at some point in 2018 they will start to index search results giving preference to “mobile first” websites, which are responsive to mobile devices like phones and tablets. These websites will have a better chance at being listed before similar sites which do not react to different screen sizes.

There are plenty of other ways to improve your site’s design; you can get a report of how your website is successful and how it is failing by using tools such as http://nibbler.silktide.com/en_US which you can send to your web developer.

Here are the links to our previous SEO Guides:

Part 1 | Part 2

SEO Masterclass | PART 1 | Writing Content to Promote Your Business

In the first of a series of three updates, the HETAS marketing team has put together some tips on Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, to help you make the most of your online presence. This moth we are talking about adding unique content and regular updates. Read more.

Adding unique and regularly updated website content

This is one of the most important things you can do to improve your rankings in search engines (i.e. your “SEO score”). Search engines love a site that is clearly in active use, and adding new relevant information is the way to prove this is the case.
Remember that fewer, good quality articles with 100% original content will help boost your site’s visibility much more than several quickly hashed together posts with text copied from other locations on the web. Copy-pasted content will not add to your sites position in search engine results – only the original website’s content will count.

Writing articles takes time and can be hard work if it doesn’t come easily to you. Perhaps consider starting a blog – this is one of the easiest ways to add regular content. If you are an installer or sweep and if your customers agree you could even write about jobs you’ve completed as individual case studies and include photos of your handiwork.

Calls to Action

An extra tip for content writing is to include “calls to action”; these are sentences such as “contact us now for your free quote”, or “search for your local showroom by entering your postcode below” that make the reader take action. Using the right phrasing for your audience will give a sense of urgency and increase enthusiasm for your services.

Depending on your type of business, you may decide start a newsletter which will include links to articles on your website. This will improve traffic on your site and therefore its rankings in search engine results. You may decide to include home improvement tips, offers, important safety information, industry event news or example case studies of your latest happy customers.

Tools such as Mail Tester will give you tips to reduce the chance of your email being marked as spam.

Before you start your newsletter, remember that UK and Irish law states that you need to receive consent from individuals to sign them up to a newsletter (i.e. they cannot be signed up to it by default). Similarly, you must allow your customers to opt out from receiving your newsletter at any time.

More information on electronic marketing law is available for the UK on GOV.UK and Ireland in Regulation 13 of the Electronic Privacy Regulations.

Spread the Word About Your website

Make sure you add your business to Google Business. This is one of the quickest and simplest ways to improve your visibility online. If you include the address of your offices, warehouse or showroom then you will show up on Google maps in local area searches.

Try leaving helpful, constructive comments on well-known industry-related websites and forums – if you say something productive, informative and interesting people will be more likely to click on the link to your website that you’ve added to your comment signature.

Producing printed media with your website and contact details (business cards, leaflets, pens etc.) may not be as expensive as you think. It may feel old fashioned, but hard-copy advertising that people can physically handle and/or use remains a fantastic way to promote your business.

Link Love

Link love is a term which describes the process of one website linking to another as it benefits the reader and acts as a compliment to the website being linked towards due to its content, without the need for anything to be given back, and passes value to the other website.

Make sure you are not only linking to useful websites such as HETAS and Woodsure, but also linking content across your website.

Next month, we’ll be talking about creating trust on your website.

Get in touch with the marketing team on marketing@hetas.co.uk if you have any questions or would like the team to offer further advice on a particular topic.

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Tag: marketing