With all these latest algorithm changes Google did in the past days, there are a lot of rumours regarding how Google classifies low-quality websites that do not deserve their rankings, thus getting them penalties and being thrown from their actual rankings.

How will Google determine whether a website is of low quality or not for its future visitors? There are two major things that seem underestimated nowadays by SEO communities out there: the click-through-rate and the bounce rate.

The CTR, although being a way to measure the success of a PPC campaign it can also be considered one of the top factors of ranking a website due to its quality. The higher the CTR, the more Google sees a website as a quality one.

The bounce rate represents the volume of visitors that enter a website and leave it instead of continuing viewing any other pages from that site. But what does a higher bounce rate percentage mean? It means that people entering the site did not find the information they were searching for nor did they find anything interesting to read more of on the website, thus leaving and searching for another website. This leading us to the conclusion that the website is not of such high-quality…Nothing wrong here, right?

These two metrics can definitely represent a quality site (or a low-quality one), but again, this is only a supposition while nothing is clear right now. We will definitely keep an eye on this subject and update as soon as we find out more data.

Most of the time when doing SEO for a website we start with different recommendations regarding things to change on that website in order to become better optimised for search engines. However, most of the things can be done and should be done even before and during the website development by the web developers.

The problem is that most web developers do not perfectly understand basic SEO concepts thus the problems that arise lately when “calling” an SEO company. Here are some things you should be aware when designing your website or things that you should remind your web design team when dealing with your website, all from an SEO perspective:

Duplicate content resulted from non-www and www websites

Always decide from the very beginning which version of your website should be used, with or without www. By making your website  load using both versions can only mean trouble when it comes to SEO as this creates a duplicate version of your website. The simplest method to do this is to 301 redirect one of the versions to the other. Also, duplicate content can result from not using unique URL for each of your product, so create unique URLs for each of your products, even if it can be found in multiple ways on your site.

Do keyword research from the very beginning

Whenever a website is launched, keyword research should be already done even before starting the website development. It is the most important thing you should do and it guarantees a best start when dealing with search engines.

Text instead of images works better

Whenever you can use text instead of images for site navigation, do that! It is a great opportunity to improve your internal link structure through perfectly chosen anchor texts.

XML Sitemap and Robots.txt

Always generate XML sitemap and submit it to the most important search engines. As for the robots.txt, it is a great thing to have as well while you can allow/disallow search engine bots to crawl certain pages from your website.

Add more content to your pages

There are websites with pages featuring 10-15 words of content. Try to make things a little easier for the search engines, create for each of your page at least 250 words of content and optimise it. Use H tags, unique meta descriptions, unique titles and so on. You will have more chances of ranking high with that page instead of just throwing some 10-20 words with less to zero optimisation.

Show some love!

Right from the start you should incorporate some social media sharing buttons, from Facebook Like to Tweet and Digg. As we all know, social media is on a big wave right now, why missing the opportunity?

All business owners are excited when they get an online presence from setting up an website, whether it is an ecommerce one or just a regular site. However, the excitement might lower in time you see your business does not get so many visitors or the exposure is very low, and this is where SEO professionals should come into play.

Though many business owners are trying to optimise their websites’ SEO on their own, this is sometimes not the best practice one can take, so here are some reasons why any company should use an SEO firm that will properly take care of online promotion.

1.      Knowledge and experience

As a business owner, even if you start learning about SEO and web mastering, one thing is sure: you cannot know what are the best practices when optimising a website while you lack years of experience SEO professionals have. While you will do this in your spare time, a person/company hired  for this will focus 100% only on SEO, so the benefits are obvious here.

2.      Time and effort saving

Though it might seem an easy task for anyone with basic information about SEO, optimising a website takes lot of time and effort. Staying up to date with all new methods, analyzing competition, building links, building content, this definitely will cover a lot of your time. By hiring a SEO firm you will have more time to promote your business in other environments.

3.      Long term rankings

Long term rankings come only with great SEO. Although PPC could be a great way to promote your service, once you stop paying you’re off the “network”. An SEO firm knows exactly what to do to get your website as high as possible in rankings for the foreseeable future.

4.      SEO firms can make the difference

Most companies nowadays do not use SEO professionals for their websites but they try to optimise it themselves, or worse, seal a deal with a website design firm, have their site created and launched and wait for customers/exposure to come. If that company is from your competitors’ boat, wouldn’t a SEO firm make the difference between you and your competition? This can only translate in more customers/sales.

Do you need a company to skyrocket your rankings in search engines? Ask for a free SEO quote, no obligations, and we will get back as fast as possible with some answers.

We all see how the web design industry exploded in the last ten years and there are literally hundreds of thousands of website design companies in the world. However, online folks pay much more attention on a website’s design, usability and so on and this is something any experienced web designer should be aware of.

In a perfect world, every website is great, no mistakes, perfect coding, website SEO-friendly etc, however we are far away from this world and bad things can occur. This article will showcase the worst mistakes a web design firm can do, pay attention to them and try to avoid as much as possible replicating them on your work.

1. Use JavaScript only when it is necessary to use it, do not overdo it.
2. Do not use PDF content on a website. Whenever users encounter a PDF file they tend rather to avoid it than to read it, regarding how interesting it is.
3. Readability should be placed before stylish design. Don’t use complex and fancy fonts that will make you visitors not willing to read the whole content provided.
4. Even if websites created in Flash look fantastic, try to avoid it at all costs. As for creating a whole website based only on it, it’s not so search engine friendly, it means long waiting period to download it and the worst thing, the mobile compatibility problems. Large amounts of people browse online through mobile devices.
5. Music in the background or many animations, or even worse, both. These are just for the past ages.
6. Flashy ads, pop-ups, will make a visitor never visit a website for the second time.
7. Grammatical errors are a no-no. Proofread the content again and again and publish it when you are sure it is perfectly written.

There are tons of other mistakes when building a site from scratch, however these seem to be the most annoying and bad for  business.

E-commerce is a fast-growing industry and it’s clear that there are great rewards to be had. Of course, it’s vital that you source a good and reputable web design company to design your e-commerce or e-retail website. But as an e-commerce business owner you should also be aware of the finer points of a great website.

In the second of a two-part blog series we bring you five tips for a great ecommerce website:

Customising: Many shoppers like to compare products by price, reviews, colours, bestsellers etc. We’re all different. So offering features that allow a customer to customise the ecommerce products to suit themselves is much more likely to create a good user-experience, and therefore increase sales.

Product reviews: Increasing numbers of consumers say that they are swayed by product reviews. If you offer reviews on products, and the ability for shoppers to add their comments, you are more likely to create a shopping experience that people value and trust.

What’s in stock?: Shoppers will become frustrated if they go to the trouble of ordering a product only to find it is out of stock or “expected in”. Make it clear what is available now and what is not. A real-time inventory is the best way forward.

Product specifics: Ecommerce shoppers cannot pick up the product, look at it, feel it or try it on. So it is vital that your product descriptions offer as much information as possible. Make sure that size and colour is detailed. Use images for different product views. And make sizings clear.

Checkout: You want to close your sales so make it clear how to get to the checkout and then keep people focused on the task. Do not use this as an opportunity to offer other sales. It has been found that single-page checkouts have the highest conversion rates. And keep the checkout process simple.

Talk to leading web designers WebCreationUK about their great deals on ecommerce sites.

E-commerce is a fast-growing industry and it’s clear that there are great financial rewards to be had. Of course, it’s vital that you source a good and reputable web design company to design your e-commerce or e-retail website. But as an e-commerce business owner you should also be aware of the finer points of a great website.

In the first of a two-part blog series we bring you four tips for a great ecommerce website:

Good layout: Just like a shop that has clearly marked categories and aisles, so your website should make the process of looking for products as simple as possible. Make tab names as straightforward as possible. For example, women’s shoes, men’s jackets. And make sure there are “bread crumbs” so that shoppers can trace their way back from where they came. A “continue shopping” button also means that shoppers can easily return from their shopping basket or checkout to make more purchases.

In the basket: If you’re shopping in the real world you can take a look in your basket or trolley to remind yourself of the items chosen so far. The same should happen on an ecommerce site. Make sure that when shoppers add to their basket, trolley or cart that they can see the items clearly. It’s also important that there’s a clear label for getting to the checkout from the basket.

Colour perfect: It’s claimed that colour can make a big difference to how website users rect. So when it comes to call-to-action buttons, such as “add to cart” or “buy now”, try to choose shades such as blue and green. Orange and red have been shown to be off-putting.

Search easy: A study has revealed that more than 20% of ecommerce shoppers prefer the direct use of a search feature than searching for products in various categories. Therefore a “search product” feature is vital for business success.

* Talk to leading web designers WebCreationUK about their great deals on ecommerce sites.