SearchEngineOptimisation.com, only one way up

If your website targets worldwide, then you might already know that distance from the server to the user can introduce latency – an effect of distance. Latency is basically the time it takes to make a round trip from the server, to the user, and back to the server again. The longer the latency gets, the longer it can take to download a file. The cause is quite technical so we won’t get into that, but rest assured distance does take its toll on load speeds.

This is where Content Delivery Networks (CDN’s) come into play. CDN’s are designed to serve content to users as fast as possible based on their geographical location throughout the globe. The basic principle is to mirror your data such as images, videos and other large downloads to several servers, and geographically place them where your users are.

For example, your main site may be hosted in the United States but your visitors come from USA, Europe and Australia more than any other country. In this case, you would have 3 sets of CDN servers, one in USA, one in Europe and one in Australia. This way the users will be served content from the server closest to them. This will increase speeds and give the user a more pleasant experience when browsing and downloading from the site.

With Google Caffeine and site speed being introduced into ranking results, it is important that your site perform as quickly as possible, and a Content Delivery Network helps to ensure this.

A CDN doesn’t just offer faster speeds to those it’s closest to either. Browsers will often only download 2 items at a time from each hostname. This means if you have a lot of JavaScript files or CSS files, it will load them before continuing to load other items on the page. This limits you to 2 connections while it waits for those items to download. If you have CDN, you are essentially giving the browser more than one hostname to download from, so the browser can connect to more and download in parallel the files required for displaying the site.

In turn, this makes the content download faster and display more quickly on the browser, and prevents the user having to wait. Most users won’t wait more than 4 seconds for a page to load so be sure you’re not losing visitors by having a slow loading website.

CDN’s don’t have to cost the earth either, with companies such as Amazon and the S3 Cloud, you can set up a CDN in no time for very little cost.

Below is an example of what a CDN could look like:

At Searchengineoptimisation.com we know that whilst every page within a website is important, the homepage is one of the most important. Not only is the homepage the window to the rest of your website, but it is often the landing page for many users; providing a visitor with the first impression of the website and in many instances, the entire company. A homepage is also the page a user returns to if they are unsure of where to go next on the website or struggling with navigation. For all these reasons, it is important that your homepage provides enough information yet at the same time is not cluttered or over complicated, as these things can put a visitor off, and the best way to achieve this is to consult professional web designers.

It can be tempting for a company to try and cram everything they need to say on to the homepage to ensure they are getting the message across, however this is not necessary. Many SEO experts will offer the advice that a homepage should clearly show the offerings of the company itself, and whilst this is true, it can often be misinterpreted. Showing your existing and potential consumers what you have for them does not mean that you have to tell them every element. Keep the more detailed information for the subpages and maintain a focus on a summary of what the company has to offer. By all means demonstrate the diversity of the business, but there is no need to go into too much detail at this stage – this is what the subpages are there for.

As with all communication channels within a business, the main reason is to gain some form of return or response on the investment, which is what makes the homepage an ideal place to post the largest form of a call to action. This could be an invitation to purchase something, sign up to the website or complete another task such as filling out a form. Whilst it can be important to include these elements to any web page, it is vital to follow the same simplicity rule and not overdo it. Select one call to action and stick to it, rather than having multiple options that will just confuse the user. If you do need to include other calls to action then include a link to a separate page so you are not overwhelming the web visitor.

Pop-up advertisements are also a common occurrence yet most consumers do see these as a nuisance. Whilst there are no hard and fast rules to say that pop ups should not be used, always proceed with caution and consider carefully what you place on the homepage. The last thing a user wants on their first visit to your website is to be irritated and put off.

Consistency is probably the most important thing, and all SEO experts will tell you this. The homepage should flow from top to bottom and not look segmented. Often the desire to include too much information results in a fragmented vision that simply does not work.

Website design is an extensive area nowadays and is advancing at many different rates. On one hand it is becoming more of a specialist field with a lot of companies employing external services to help them with their design, whilst at the other end of the spectrum companies are learning more about web design themselves and choosing to create their own websites. Creating a successful website which is easy for users to read is harder than people initially think, and one area which is underestimated in terms of importance is colour scheme.

The problems which occur when deciding the colour scheme of the website are that usually the company already has brand colours and logos in place, which means that the automatic approach would be to design a website colour scheme using the same colours. Of course, this is excellent for brand consistency and identity and depending on your company colours it can work well. The issues arise when the company colours are not distinctive or strong, or simply not easy for consumers to digest. If you do find that this is the case then fear not, as you can select alternative colours for the main bulk of your web design, as long as there is some presence or resemblance to your corporate identity. A good way to combat this is to use the main corporate colours for borders or boxes.

If you ask your SEO experts for advice on web design then one of the first things they are likely to discuss with you is the font. Text is one of the most important things on a website, as if people cannot easily read the content on your site then they are likely to leave and not continue using it. The factors to consider are font size and colour. Size is generally best kept as standard, with headings and important information which you require to stand out in a larger font size.

When it comes to text colour, the key is to make it as pleasing on the eye as possible. Contrasting background and text colours are the best way to go but it is still a good idea to keep it simple. Dark text on a light background may sound basic, but is a safe and effective option. You can brighten up the rest of your website by asking your SEO experts to work on the surrounding design. However, it is best to avoid the text area of the web pages when trying to do something creative. Similarly, light text on a dark background can also work well, however dark backgrounds do require some skilled creative input to make them work.

Over half of your website is made up of background colour, sometimes more, and generally this will set the trend for the rest of the website. Using a small number of colours is also a good idea. Nowadays most websites can accommodate any colour as opposed to years ago when only a certain number were compatible. However, just because you can use them all, does not mean that you should.

At Searchengineoptimisaion.com we are continuously highlighting the importance of images and videos within websites. There is no mistaking that more complex content can benefit your SEO strategy, and the inclusion of images is not only more appealing to users, but can offer you more solutions in terms of search. With search engines such as Google offering users specific search tabs for video and image, it is fairly obvious why websites should be including them. There is another end to the spectrum though, and that is websites which are more image-based than they are text-based, and optimising this type of site for search engines is a little different.

Professional SEO consultants can help you with this and it is a good idea to seek expert advice, especially if you are finding your web pages are losing rank or not performing particularly well. Whilst images and video can be appealing, ultimately it is still text that search engine crawlers identify and pick up on, so not including any content which is text-based could have a devastating effect on your website’s ranking.

It is of course possible for sites of this nature to succeed. Think of YouTube or Flickr – both of these sites are based predominately around video and image content, yet are two of the most popular sites out there. Granted there is an element of brand awareness for these two sites and a lot of traffic to the sites is direct and not a recommendation or search result. However, you do see both these sites, and many more of a similar nature, being displayed high within the SERPs.

One of the most basic techniques is to ensure all images and videos have sufficient tags. Description tags should provide as much information about the image as possible and should also include a keyword. This makes it easier for search engines to identify what the image is, even though they can only use the tag to do this. If you are struggling with this then you can seek the advice of a copywriter or any SEO experts as they will know how to describe images and videos via text.

Search engines and human users digest information in a certain way and segments or chunks of content is easier for both to understand than one large lump of content. Try to separate different image or video subjects by including individual subject headers or placing them into categories, as this will make it easier to understand.

If your website is heavily image-based then try to use other channels to promote them, which can include more text. Social networking sites and blog pages are classic examples and are often used as places to post links to other forms of content. It can also be useful to get your content posted on other websites that are more text-based, as if the search engines pick up on them easier then users can then link through to your site. Having an image based website succeed in SEO is possible, it just take a little bit more creativity.

When web designers first included frames on their web pages, most of us liked what we saw. A frame seemed like a good idea, as it enabled pages to view more than one page within the same browser, aided navigation for users on the site and allowed consumers to view more than one piece of content at the same time. Framing looked good and gave a professional edge to a website and was a web design technique used by companies worldwide.

Over more recent years we have seen a decrease in the use of framing, mainly for the reason that incorporating it into a website could have negative effects on the success of that site’s page ranking. There have been many debates as to whether the use of frames does directly impact on search results, however SEO experts now realised that it does change the way in which search engines pick up our pages.

Within a normal web browser the main frames and the sub frames are picked up quite easily, however the problem when it comes to search engines is that apart from the index or main frame which is usually a HTML format, the other frames are often created using a format such as SRC which spider crawlers cannot pick up. This means that apart from your title links, nothing else will be seen.

As Google has developed it has been able to follow some SRC links, however the issue again here is that the way in which your site is created for the framing means that some of the content and navigation bars will be missing when linked to via Google. With content being so crucial now in terms of search engine criteria, creating a site which makes your content practically invisible to a search engine seems like website suicide.

In the earlier days of web developing, coding and meta tags were all that mattered and framing worked a lot better. The likes of Google could pick up the text in your main frame tags and coding fine and with professional SEO services being fairly new, the quality of content was not as crucial to page ranking. Nowadays however, search engines such as Google look for relevant and natural content, so if your framing codes are getting in the way of your content then it is highly likely your page ranking will suffer.

Professional companies have recognised this problem and there are ways around it. It is possible to create noframes tags, however in order for these to still be detected and be displayed properly you need to recreate your content with these tags. With all that being quite a lot of hard word it is just as simple to create a website with no frames at all. If you are currently using framing on your site then now is probably a good time to have a revamp on your website and discard some of your framed pages. That is not to say that framing has died completely, but to favour the search engines it is possibly best avoided.

As in life, compromise is often required in search engine optimisation. Therefore it makes sense that there has to be a balance between the aesthetics of a site and its functional capacity as a tool of a firm. Sometimes what is easy on the eye is also ‘what works’, but that is by no means always the case. It is very important to look at a site through the perspective of a user to appreciate where it scores well and where it falls short. Often users first end up on a site at its homepage so it is vital to get these things right on this page.

Some SEO companies mistakenly think that their work is almost done when a user has found their way to a site. However, a site may have a high bounce rate and few conversions may be made if additional effort is not put in. Users may get to a site, be unimpressed by it and rapidly be off elsewhere to have their needs met. That is one of the reasons why at Searchengineoptimisation.com we never use or recommend black hat techniques. These unethical methods can sometimes temporarily boost the ranking of a site, but users are seldom impressed when they observe what is actually on a site which has had this kind of work done for it.

The homepage is crucial in displaying to users that they have gone to the right place. If the homepage is not inviting, users will not hang around for long. Users are like ‘real world’ travellers in that they have been on a journey and need a bit of reassurance. They need to be convinced that they have found a reputable establishment which will provide them with reliable information, goods and/or services at competitive prices. Some inexperienced people therefore conclude that the homepage should be the virtual equivalent of a shop window. It is wise to remember how many times you have gone ‘window shopping’ at this point. It is one thing to be impressed favourably by an attractive display, it is quite another to be enticed inside a shop and make a purchase.

Search engine optimisation is not a straightforward activity. Nor can effective web marketing be performed in haste. The complexity of the world of search, the rapid pace of technological innovation, alterations in the algorithms of the major search engines and the efforts of competing sites all militate against progress being achievable in a simple manner. Furthermore, the diverse goals which a campaign is obliged to focus on mean that ups and downs are almost inevitable. This is even before the inherent complexities of social media marketing are entered into the equation.

Despite these important considerations, there are certain things about optimisation which remain true. For example, the same set of tactics will have divergent outcomes if applied to different sites. Another example, which receives much less attention in the online articles, is the fact that a flawed design can prevent the best laid plans from having the most positive consequences imaginable. The effort spent in moving a site up the search engine results pages and securing higher traffic levels should not be wasted via poor design.

At Searchengineoptimisation.com we realise that the best SEO is accomplished through partnership with a client. Excellent communication is essential if progress is to be achieved and sustained. The design of a site may not be the direct responsibility of a consultant, so if the aesthetics of a site are not up to the mark conversation may be imperative.

One aspect of site design which can sometimes serve as a deterrent to users involves colour. If the colours are not suitable, of if they do not work together, the consequence can be that users do not linger on a site. This can easily have a negative impact on conversions. There is little point in possessing enviable rankings if they do not translate into sales of goods and/or services. Hence getting the colours correct is an economic imperative.

The colours which are appropriate for a specific site are partly related to the individual ethos of that site. However, the sector in which the site operates is also an influential factor to bear in mind. Normally, a commercial site wishes to present a corporate image which has trust at the centre of it. This means that the use of clashing garish colours is not usually the order of the day. Nevertheless, it can be the case that the design of a site is too conservative. Excessive timidity in the employment of colour can lead to a bland site which is dull and subconsciously contributes to users looking for greater visual stimulation in other virtual locations.

There are some basic principles to adhere to in this area. Areas of the site which contain relatively bright colours will attract the attention of users and should thus be utilised to house important information. It is a priority to ensure that all text can be read with ease. Content matters a great deal to users, so any misuse of colour which obstructs the perusal of content is obviously counterproductive. Many of the relevant tips with regard to colour are still being ignored now and then, as a quick look around the net demonstrates.