Search Engine Optimisation » redesign

As Featured In … @netmag

Andy Kinsey — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:24:38 +0000

In the March 2012 edition of .Net Magazine, the worlds best selling web design and dev magazine, I am lucky enough to have taken part in the “design build off”.

My design brief was to create a mock-up of an Intranet for anything of choice, from myself to a bluechip company. I decided to base my design around a hospice I work with, Willow Wood. The objective: to examine both the design and technology in use and the reasons for using such technology from HTML5 & CSS to Large Fonts and Accessibility Features.

If you want to take a look at the build-off pages and .net mag subscribe via their site
or visit a shop (such as WHSmiths).

You can follow .net on twitter @netmag

If you would like me to design and build an intranet for your business, visit andykinsey.co.uk today.

Your Chance to Win a Free Website!

Andy Kinsey — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:42:39 +0000

Whether you are a new business or old business, this is your chance to win a new website.

Actually it is more than just a website, there is much more and you can see the whole package here.

If you would like to win all you need to do is use Twitter or Facebook!

Simply Tweet the text below and follow @andykinsey or like our facebook group (in the sidebar)
Psst! by retweet we mean copy and paste

Tweet Text “I want to win a #FREE website from @andykinsey http://j.mp/akfreeweb (RT to enter)”

This is a competition by Andy Kinsey Designs (the creators of this site), you can get top tips on increasing your chances of winning by visiting the link in the tweet!

But also as a SEOAndy reader you can enter in another way! Simply link to andykinsey.co.uk or seoandy.com from your website and leave us a comment on this post. You can enter on as many websites as you want to, so go for gold and stick a link on all of your websites

Good Luck!

A Design Update for Andy Kinsey Designs

Andy Kinsey — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:02:47 +0000

Ok, look it’s not often I will shamelessly plug my web design and graphic design services and website without a good reason, today is no different. Today I’ve release what would technically be v9.7 of andykinsey.co.uk

The release is an iteration of the former site based upon user testing and feedback.

The old website

The new site offers more information than the previous site design and also puts the services at the heart of the website, not the case studies as previously. The reason for the services being promoted is users said that they visited the site looking for a particular service but couldn’t find it easily enough and it was only through persistence that they found the right page. So now all of the main services are listed on the homepage, with case studies listed in the footer, as has the new portfolio page. Contact details (except social media) have now been moved to their own page, again linked from the footer. The site also no longer uses lightbox as an engine to show larger versions of a give image, instead more textual content is on the site with clearer links to the websites and services dotted throughout the content.

The Updated Website Design

As you can see from the above, I’ve changed to heading font to catch the eye of the user whilst maintaining the look of the header such that previous visitors do not think this is another companies website.

I have also, as you see, included a slider at the top which in future will be used to promote new services in addition to websites which have recently been launched. If you visit the site you will see that to make it more eye catching there is a slight delay between the image changing and the text on the right.

Finally on the front page you will see from the two images above that I have kept the 2 col structure on the homepage, the images are service based and as you hover you will see a small text description of that service. These lead to more structured service pages, such as the web design page and logo design page where as you will see there is more information and details on contacting myself.

Let me know what you think of the latest update

BBC Homepage Redesign – It’s Night and Day!

Andy Kinsey — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:20:12 +0000

One of the things I love about my job, both as a marketer and designer, is that I get sent little sneak previews of websites being made. One which I’ve kept my eye on recently has been the BBC homepage makeover, they are moving from what can only be described as dull and boring to a bright, lively and interactive website. The new homepage is now in Public Beta (almost ready for the masses) so I thought it was time to give my views on the website redesign.

You can view the Beta homepage by visiting http://beta.bbc.co.uk

Here’s what the new page looks like, compare it to the current bbc.co.uk (if you wish)

with thanks to the BBC for use of this image

So lets take a look at what is in this redesigned BBC website.

Making the BBC Local to You

The first thing to note of change is below the global navigation (at the top of all bbc pages) you will see the clock and your location (as always this is still manually set), along with the date. Look to the right of this and you’ll see the weather for this location. Thumbs up so far, its nice and local. But wait that isn’t all. Local to You means that local news stories will be fed into this page, weather forecasts (as already said), local TV listings where separate from national listings and a whole lot more is promised yet. According to one insider Local to You will be an idea rolled out across much of the BBC real estate.

BBC are getting Interactive

Something the bbc have done over the years is slowly integrate more and more interactivity. We see it in the old homepage with just the one short shift slider, on the news website there are a few horizontal scroller’s, some nice graphics and lots of use of video – indeed it is fair to say the BBC in the uk pioneered online video for TV. Looking below the local bar you will see a nice big section with news boxes and it scrolls from left to right with lots more news, videos, iplayer links – it is being touted as BBC online today, but its more of a mash up of the BBC. It seems a little clunky and confusing at first but after a moment it’s easy to navigate. I’ve not seen it on a wide screen as yet so how it looks there I am not sure, but on this 1024 today it looks smashing. I have noted a few oddities when loaded in IE, but these will be ironed out before the official release I am assured. And the dark bar below is your quick slide guide for this section.

Lets do the Slide

The BBC have gone all out with this love of interaction. In the bottom half of the page by default are 3 distinct sections, but click the arrow and they slide across to give a fuller view of their content, and then a little more. This means more content for your buck and there are filters around to make life easier. This really is a charming little addition and bit of loveliness, but it does have some sticking points – this isn’t as intuitive to use as you may think. At first its confusing and then remains so until you fumble to find what you are looking for. The bbc iPlayer page is a little nicer in doing this kind of job, its where the homepage has taken lead from but unfortunately hasn’t attained the glory.

Anything else?

Well being a geek, I took a look at the code. It’s not pretty and certainly not short hand, but it works. This said the page loads pretty damn quick, especially when you consider how many DNS calls are being made as all the images are loaded, all the css files (yes there are a fair few) and all the javascript files too (even more of these). All in all the code isn’t the best. But this is the BBC and this is innovation. I actually would have cringed if it was really tidy, simply it doesn’t need to be. But whether it needs all these calls to files for css and js I am unsure, I would aim to consolidate them on launch (as I am sure will be done).

In Conclusion, the new bbc website is fantastic and I suspect if they added a little more to the search functionality (i.e use google or bing to allow external searches) then this site could easily become my new homepage. Yes, I like the Google doodles, but I’d much prefer this (sorry Google), and I don’t think I am alone in saying that. So finally, well done to the BBC, when launched this will be the redesign of the year (almost unquestionably), really well done.

Creating an Awesome Site Navigation

Andy Kinsey — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:10:03 +0000

In the world of the web the navigation of a website is paramount to getting users to where they want and ultimately where you want them to be. Navigation is an essential tool in the arsenal of a Website Designer and Internet Marketer.

Navigation is like a map, it directs people to pages of importance that you think they should see, for example a product category page. This of course means that Navigation is not a tool for your use, but for your users use – and it is very important to remember this. When designing a navigation system there is usually plenty of room for creativity, and far be it from me to halt that (god knows I love design) but it is vital to not forget the usability of the navigation, so keep it simple and easy to use. If you complicate things your user won’t forgive, they will just go elsewhere.

To help you on the way to that perfect website navigation, I’ve devised 10 steps to success. If you follow them your website navigation will be one of the easiest sites to navigate on the web.

Step One: Planning

Planning a website navigation often starts earlier than most people think. It starts even before the designer gets involved. It’s the conceptual stage, in most cases. It’s where you say what content you need and where it will be on the website. From this you should be able to generate a sitemap (a version of this should later appear on your website), from this you will be able to see the main page, category pages and possibly sub categories and other pages … this is your site structure, so keep it simple – the fewer paths to information the more likely someone is to find it.

Step Two: Consistency

Wherever your navigation is located on your website, it should always look the same, act in the same way and be in the same place. Most website will place their main menu at the top or on the left. Very few do otherwise, because of the “it’s where you expect it” theorem of ‘socks go in the top draw, knickers in the bottom, and the menu goes at the top of a web page’.

Step Three: Minimise Clicks

Aim for One Click

The aim of your menu should always be to get your end user from page A to page b in as little time as possible. So this means you should keep clicks to a minimum, you don’t want an end user to spend 5 minutes going through 6 layers of navigation to get to a page. If you find a user is spending more than 30 seconds looking for something in your navigation before finding it, maybe there is something wrong. So keep your menu simple with as few layers of drop-downs as possible.

Step Four: Getting them Home

It sounds mad, your navigation is about getting people from page to page within the site, not taking them home. Well, you are right in one way, but if you think about it carefully lots of people like to “go home” after seeing a page or product. Maybe they want to find more detail elsewhere on the website and by instinct click “home” to start the search. So make getting home easy. Have a button which says home and make your logo link to home also.

Step Five: Add Search

Adding the functionality to search a website is an important part of any navigation. A visitor should be able to visit your website, search it and find the relevant information. This is especially true of larger websites or websites with great detail on each page. The search should pinpoint the exact information a person wants, quickly and easily, and then direct them there clearly. A great way to add a simple search engine to your site is to use Google Custom Search Engine.

Another use for search is to locate it on a 404 error page, such that a user can simply and quickly search for the information they want.

Step Six: Accurate Wording

You may think it’s cool to break the mold and use something funny or whitty in your navigation text. But the truth is, it will not help your search rankings and some users may find it a turn off. So cool or cutting edge words should be kept to a minimum. You should always assume that the person visiting your website doesn’t have a clue about your niche, so keep it simple! Not everyone talks like you, so keep your language simple and direct.

Step Seven: Read More

Many visitors will hate to read hundreds of lines of text, especially when they hit your homepage of a blog. So keep it as a snippet and put an Read More link to the full article. Remember the user maybe wanting to look for other information not your most recent blog post.

Step Eight: Breadcrumbs

Add these to all your content pages, they give your users information about where they are and how to get back. So for example breadcrumbs could be Home > Parent Cat > Sub Cat > ProductName … it’s nice and simple but allows a user to flow through your website to information they want and need.

Step Nine: Essentials Only

Stop and Think - Are you being concise?

To many links can scare a user, so keep it to the essentials. In most cases this is simply the categories or sub-category level … never ever go to product level on an ecommerce store, displaying hundreds of products in a drop down… is well stupid. Also in some cases you may find it useful to use icons to show what a category is, so maybe a blue and pink t-shirt for the mens and womens shirt categories.

Step Ten: Test!

Get friends to test your navigation

At the end of the process of creating your navigation test it and improve it. Use google analytics A/B split testing feature, ask users for feedback and simply make sure it’s usable and easy to navigate with. Also test it in all current browsers, make sure there are no little bugs to stop things working how you want them too.

Step Eleven: Evaluate & Renew

Oh a extra step, how lovely! This is where you look at your testing, look at other sites and make changes for the better. The easier and nicer your navigation the more users you will get, the more search engines will like your site and also the more profit you are likely to make.

Is your navigation the best it can be? show it off, leave a comment with a link

Three Ways to Boost Seasonal Sales via Google Places

Andy Kinsey — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:30:28 +0000

As you may suspect during the run up to and during the holiday season website traffic (across the board) increases fairly dramatically. This again as you may guess is down to people looking for and buying gifts. But one question I am always faced with is how best to leverage this extra traffic, both at say Christmas and during other holidays such as Easter.

With this in mind it is clear to see why it is vital that we optimise our Google Places (and other local listings) for each season. Not many companies realise that they can either a) do this or b) it will be of use.

There are 5 key changes you can make to local listings to optimise them for each holiday. This as I mentioned is based around Google Places but you can do this with almost any local listing services you may use … so go on optimise your local listings.

Use Keywords and Phrases for the Season
Each holiday will have different keywords and phrases for different products. So for example if you sell clothing, in winter you may talk about waterproof jackets and have a sale on them. In spring you maybe talking about shorts or fleeces. Target your season and product, in your information mention your best sellers as gifts and sales. Re-targeting local listings for the season is easy and can give you a huge advantage over competitors. Do this kind of thing in the Additional Information section, be both specific to the product and generic about the season.
Amend Your Description for the Season
This sounds like the advice above and it is, only this time be more generic about seasonal gifts. “Christmas Gift Cards available” or “the perfect gift this christmas” are great little tag lines that you can easily add to a description. The more effective a tagline you can get in your description the better you will do (don’t forget you should also maybe put this in the blurb of your website too).
Imagery is Key
Whilst I go on and on about content being king, and it is, imagery as content is as they say “worth a lot more” … or a thousand words maybe. Anyway, what this means is that you need to be uploading seasons images of products in use or simply showing them off for the season / show off your sales. It is often over looked but if you search for a place in Google Maps it will show you an image next to a listing if its available! So take advantage and get selling with imagery.
Coupons are Awesome
As Ben said in a comment about setting up Google Places for success, coupons are almost never taken advantage of. Most businesses if they do use them forget they expire 30 days later, and don’t refresh them. Whilst they may not make a HUGE difference they may make some difference, they are especially useful if you are targeting a mobile audience or an audience who are looking around for something technical and will then look for the best savings. Vouchers and sales remain in someone’s mind even if they visit another website.
Get Ready Early
Remember despite it being on Google, it will need to be re-indexed and re-ranked this can take time. So do all this work a few weeks (at least 2) before you need it to kick in. When you do want it to kick in, take a look at joining it with an adwords campaign (i’m not a big fan but for short campaigns it can work). Don’t leave it until the last minute, it will mean these changes don’t make a jot of difference and your sales may suffer.

With thanks to Google for the Doodle

How to Promote Your Design Portfolio

Andy Kinsey — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 09:32:16 +0000

Regardless of your niche in design, from jewellery to painting to graphic design to website design your portfolio online is one of the most important aspects of your business. Getting it right is one thing, getting is seen is quite another. As with all websites without promotion and marketing it is a store front people will walk past.

When you first start out online as an “artist” it can be quite daunting thinking about how to be seen through the crowd of other artists, in the same niche. But alas success is within reach, in 3 steps, you can ensure your portfolio is seen, admired and drives business.

Design, Develop & Deploy

Step 1 – Design a Killer Portfolio

As an artist you will naturally want to create the best portfolio around. Not just in your little niche but the best overall. This was certainly one of my aims when I redesigned my Website and Graphic Design portfolio earlier this year. So what are the minimum requirements for a “killer portfolio” website?

Examples Your Work (with case studies if applicable)
Your Skills (tell them what you can do, plain and simple)
Your Personality (don’t make the mistake of being bland, show your passion)
Your Style (the design itself should reflect your work and style)

Notice I say examples of your work. As a designer I’ve working with far to many companies to name or show my work. Show only your best work, things you are proud of – writing a case study should be simple – if its a painting explain what it shows and means to you, if its a website explain what work went into it etc. Creating a portfolio isn’t expensive or hard work – if money is an issue use a system like behance or deviantart they are free though not quite as professional, if you want higher quality use a professional web designer (like me)

Step 2 – Develop your arena

This section I will keep short and sweet, a subsequent post will list some ideas of places to do this. Basically this is about blatant self promotion. You have a high quality professional website, it’s time to back it up – join other artist based websites like deviant or folksy or coroflot show off your work on there but make sure each image you upload has your web address in a comment (and watermark the work). This is the development of your brand so again show only your best work, if you’ve other work you can show this too here but don’t show the same 50 pieces of work on 50 websites, show your best plus maybe a few other pieces of random work.

Note though that although these sites may offer you a chance to create a portfolio, such as behance, you dont want to do this – you simply want to show some of your work and point them to your real portfolio. This is why you should join lots of them, you dont have to do them all at this stage, but over a few months or a year maybe.

Step 3 – Deploy in a big way!

Now comes the bit that is likely the hard work for you – more so than creating the perfect portfolio website, promoting that website. But you’ve done a fair bit already by joining the creative communities online (like deviant) but now you need to engage with them, offer to write guest blog posts, comment on blogs about your niche, engage with users on social media (create a facebook page use twitter).

If you are wanting to gain work via your portfolio (not everyone does) then you could link to your LinkedIn profile, join other communities such as forums, read up about internet marketing (you already are by reading this blog), put it on your great business card – but most of all have fun doing it. Don’t be a stickler for detail just go out have fun and tell people they should take a look at your work.

Remember though – you never “complete” your portfolio polish it and polish it, add to it, take from it update it love it be it. your portfolio is your existence - never let it go.

–

If you know of any amazing portfolios let me know, in the next few weeks I’ll be publishing my top 10 inspirational portfolios from across the creative niches. If you have a great portfolio or know of one let me know! Leave a comment!

10 Reasons to Redesign Your Website

Andy Kinsey — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 18:00:38 +0000

Thinking about redesigning your website? maybe you need to explain to a manager why the website should be redesigned? Below is a list of 10 common website issues which you may want to consider during your decision as to whether or not it is time for a redesign.

1 – It’s looks amateur or parts are broken.

Research over the years has shown that from the moment someone lands on your website for the first time you have somewhere between 5 and 17 seconds to make a good impression – it depends on the speed of the internet, how quickly a person is used to seeing a website appear, what they expect to see and several other things. So first impressions are vital.

Remember, your website doesn’t have to be modern art or anything like, it just has to look good.

2 – There is no “Call to Action”

A call to action (CTA) does what it says on the tin. Quite simply it is the “ask” of a website … it could be “Request a Free Website Redesign Quote” or be as simple as “buy now” … it is a conversion … it could be simply asking someone to contact you or complete a questionnaire. For example on this website I simply ask people to leave a comment (if you haven’t before do so today… put a link to your website in your info … free link )

Put simply if your CTA is not clear, it should be!

This is not to say plaster your website with contact or buy now buttons. This won’t encourage anyone to click through and you’ll be seen as a spammy untrustworthy website. Basically you should funnel people to your goal, not just pounce on the user…

3 – NonNavigational Navigation

Confused? Well that means you may feel like one of your own users if you have a navigation that isn’t performing as it should be. Your descriptive, concise and specific in nature and not the opposite.

For example, if you have an contact section. A link should say “contact”, “contact us”, “get in touch” and not “our information” “company details” or “reach out to us” – you can see what I mean that the later are examples of vague terms and they would almost at times confuse a user … be clean clear and concise.

Sometimes “less is more” … this means if you’ve a huge menu you can hide parts of it using a drop-down menu for categories. An example of this, is this website … click “info pages” on the top left … it drags down … and yes I admit its a vague term – but do as I say not as I do. However Less is More isn’t always best, take for example Cheap Tents, they have all their main categories in the sidebar of every page making the website extremely easy for users to navigate. Once you hit a category you’ll likely find sub-categories, it’s a break from the norm that clearly works for them.

4 – The Death of the Content

Could almost be a film title, but more importantly it’s a term I use to describe content which hasn’t been updated in a long time. An example of this would be if say you were promoting a competition from last year, if someone notices this consider how they would trust the other information on your website? they simply wouldn’t… if one thing is out of date then why wouldn’t other bits be?

If this is the case then it’s clearly time to update the website content…

If you can’t do that yourself using a content management system (such as wordpress, drupal, joomla or another) then it really is time to contact a local web designer to redesign your website with a CMS. A CMS is not just useful for allowing updating of content, it helps with the costs of the website … it means that where as in the past you would have to send your text to a designer to update the site and you’d get charged per hour or per page, you can now do it yourself for free, night or day and no waiting.

5 – Content Readability (typography 1)

This may sound a little odd but the density of a textual paragraph; the literal size, the number of words / characters per line, the size of text, the font face used amongst other styling attributes can contribute to the readability of a web page.

For best readability you should aim (on a page such as this page) to have between 10 and 15 words on a line. With blocks of between 3 and 5 lines.

Styling of a paragraph can be determined with a style sheet, this includes things like line spacing, font type & size and much more. Font size by default will be set on the users browser.

Break up paragraph’s and use headings. Headings are useful for anyone using the site, it means a user can scan through a given page to find the information they are looking for. They are also brilliant for getting the attention of search engines, as they are likely to see these as determining keywords and phrases for that page and section.

Consider the use of bold text. Using bold text or text in italics grabs attention. It encourages the eyes to read around that area and understand the emphasised area is important. It’s great for users who scan read too. You can also use bold text, as I do on this website, as headings for lists.

6 – Graphics that leave much to be desired

I’ve seen many ‘Webmasters’ take a photo with a digital camera and just dump it onto a website, as is. Don’t see a problem? Well think about it, the average size of the file is above 5mb (it will take forever to download), the dimensions of the images is likely to be thousands of pixels wide, and further to that it is unlikely that the image looks perfect.

So take some time: crop, resize, adjust the colour & balance of the image and then save it in the correct format. Ensure that when you save the file for online use you consider it’s finish size… if it more than 150kb for a large image think again… it’ll take forever to download and could ruin a user’s experience.

If you don’t have software to edit photos, try Gimp (open source software, free) or software online such as PicNik.

7. Hosted using a Free / Ad supported Service

When I though of this point I almost removed it with the abolition of GeoCities not so long ago. However there are free website hosting services which everyone will know, and many use such as; wordpress.com blogspot.com and to an extent tumblr (though this isn’t ad supported).

Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with these to start with, as a hobby or keeping an online diary but as a website for a business they leave a lot to be desired. Free hosting will normally put an advert on the site, be slow and can be fairly unreliable.

So get off that Free Hosting and use a paid hosting service.
If you as your web designer they will likely suggest a host, they may even have a server for clients for which you pay a nominal cost for it’s up keep and not a huge premium. For my clients it’s about 10p a day to host if I design and build the website. If you wish to have hosting on my server and you’re not a client it’s just 15p a day … interested? contact me about cheap web hosting today.

Further to this if you need an SSL certificate, don’t get a free or shared one. They cost from as little as £15 a year dependant upon your needs. So pay a little but get a lot

8 – Where’s My Site Gone?

Doh! the website has gone down and we can’t get it back … or maybe all the files have mysteriously been deleted. Erm what better reason to get a new website…

Ok, if the website is down, contact the host and ask what happening – if the site is down on a regular basis find a new host (again it’s normal free hosts which fall over a lot).

If it’s a “oh deleted” case then yeh you’ll need a new website… not many other options – you should back up your site often is the lesson there.

9 – Discotech’s Are in Fashion

Children of the 60′s & 70′s yes the discotech’s are back with bright garish colours and flares all over the web… joke! If your website is full of brightly coloured text, has a garish background that isn’t really in keeping with your brand image then it’s time for a make-over.

The good news is you may not need a full redesign if this is the case, but if it is the case it’s likely your website is fairly old and the point below may apply.

10 – Old Code for Old Men

Website Coding Standards have improved over the last decade. We’ve gone from grey websites with red text in a fixed table layout to todays dynamic websites styles using external style sheets with more interactivity than we could of dreams of shaking a stick at 10 years ago.

So have a professional web designer or internet marketer take a look at the code your website uses … there could be parts which are outdated and make your website inaccessible. There will also likely be parts of the code which simply don’t render correctly in today’s modern (for the most part) standards compliant browsers.

A great example of a site moving forward is Google, who recently announced they were dropping support for IE6, a browser with many bugs and styling quirks. Why are they dropping it? because to support it would require using old outdated code which takes time and effort … if you’re not google and your using old code you may also soon find google doesn’t index your website so much … a search spider will only make so much effort each time it visits … if you fill a page with tables for styling or have hundreds of fill 1×1 images – it really is time to get your website redesigned.

Does your website need a redesign?

Garish pink has your attention huh? anyway, if you need help or advice on redesigning your website, leave a question in the comments.

If you’d like to discuss your redesign project and hire me to work on the project, hop over to my Website and Graphic Design website and contact me today.

8 ways to Increase your website or blog visibility

Andy Kinsey — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:25:27 +0000

Having been a designer for several years and an SEO expert for a while I want to share a few little tips with you. These tips are pretty much common knowledge but every now and then when times get hard you will loose sight of them and so the tips will always help you increase traffic to your site.

The only thing these tips require is some time and effort (and sometimes a bit of money), do all they say and take your site to the next level.

Have a Plan

Each and every website or blog starts with a vision and an ideal of what it will be in years to come and what services you want to offer and/or products you are selling (or maybe just how many posts you will write a week or month). So write it down on a piece of paper in bold black or red pen, then stick it above your desk or somewhere you always look from your desk!

Show the Love

A common belief (and rightly so) is that links a) bring traffic and b) are picked up by search engines and your site is ranked on this and several other factors. So this tip is simple, if you want a link give a link, its called Link Loving – your link to them doesn’t have to last forever but its always nice to receive something in return for giving someone a link.

View the Bigger Design Picture

Your design is the quickest and first way to attract the attention of your visitors. It is said that you have approximately 17 seconds to grab the attention of the user – this means if your site isn’t fully loaded and/or isn’t pulling your user in they are likely to click off your page. So top tip is ensure your first/homepage as thin as possible, make as much as you can external (javascript, css etc), emphasise your main content/the aim of the page and optimise each & every image on it (also ensure each page has a full set of the main three meta tags – see below). Now take a step back and pretend you know nothing about your market or your site (or ask some random friend) and honestly evaluate your design.

Unique Meta Tags (with Your Content)

Each page should have a unique set of meta tags (in particular: Title, Description & Keywords). So for each page use your title tag to emphasise your subject and appeal to the user to view you – the title tag is pretty much only used by search engines and the users of … it is the first thing your user will see if clicking through from a search engine. Your Description should ideally be the first line of your main textual content, but if not you should use this again as a marketing tool to attract users from the search engine. Finally your keywords should actually me key-phrases – two or three words that sum up your content and more so terms people are likely to search for (eg. “Search Engine Services” or “SEO News”).

Contextual Tone and Language

Take a look at your textual content, look closely at the language and “jargon” used. You may think this exercise is pointless but if you can remove any hardship from your text, remove all jargon and ensure your get your point across in the first few sentences then you will be able to draw your user in to your site and the content. Most sites start in a personal tone and move to be more business like in language, however you should try to stay personal speaking one to one with your user improves interaction and increases the memorability of your site/blog.

Increase or Decrease Your Coverage

Sometimes moving forward is hard either because you are not covering enough of a subject or enough topics or alternatively you are trying to include to much within your posts and you need to simplify and cover one subject in great depth. The first place to look in your blog is at the number of writers to number of categories ratio, if its roughly one to one then you are fine but if you find you are the only person covering 5 or 6 categories you may want to consider consolidating these into just one or two that you can concentrate on. Now you’ve done that focus on your content and adding more on a regular basis (bi-daily or weekly, either way stick to your schedule – also update static pages monthly).

Networking

One way to increase your visibility to search engines and users is to use social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumpleUpon and Delicious. This also shows your participation in the wider community and gives you a chance to interact with potential clients around the globe as well as gives them a chance to ask you questions & see what you and your site are doing at the moment.

Package it up

Whether or not you offer a service on your site/blog, package your content up, release it as a pdf e-book and either release it for FREE or sell it. If you offer other services release it for free but include various links to your site.

If you have questions about how to improve your site and/or you need help implementing the above why not pop by to TheSEOClinic – or tweet me @andykinsey

Redesign or Optimise – Which Suits You Best?

Andy Kinsey — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:00:18 +0000

Over the past few weeks I’ve found that more and more people are asking for a full website redesign… When it is my belief they should actually be asking for their site to be fully SEO optimised, especially during this time of recession.

Now i’m not saying every case that a redesign isn’t what is required because sometimes it is, what I am saying is that you should cover all bases before considering a redesign. If you really think you may need a redesign then you may want to read a previous article i wrote.

Sometimes a better option than redesign is to Optimise Your Site. This yes involves SEO (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog), but more so it involves some fundamental changes to the site structure and climate. This means that you can adapt your current site to your current situation, at a much lower cost than a redesign. Ok I confess the tweaks to yoursite maybe in the design and templating you use… but its more so to do with optimising and speeding up your codebase, your images and most importantly your copy!

So make your content sell your products & services, make copy your salesman today!