What Do New Top-Level Domains Mean for SEO?

Aug 11 | 2015
search engine optimisation (seo)
New TLDs and SEO

A lot of new top-level domains have been created over the past year or two, and more are on the way. For example, .lol, .dog and .movie are all launching this month - creators of funny dog videos will soon spoiled for choice!

The popularity of newly-established domains such as .brand, .london and .wales may have you wondering if you ought to get with the times and snap up one of these snazzy new TLDs while the iron is hot. In particular, a lot of our clients have asked if using a more unique TLD will help their website's rankings on Google and other search engines.

Or, to put it another way...

Will a new TLD help my website's SEO?

The short answer? No - Google themselves have said that the new gTLDs (generic top-level domains) do not have any special advantage over the ones we're more familiar with:

"Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search."

So that's Google's position on the matter (the above quote is taken from the official Google Webmasters blog). Unfortunately, it looks like your choice of TLD won't have much of an impact on your website's keyword rankings; for example, your cookery blog won't have any more chance of conquering the foodie SERPs if you change your URL from www.grub-with-gwen.co.uk to www.grub-with-gwen.cooking. Sorry about that.

However, this doesn't mean that purchasing yourself a new gTLD is completely pointless. The really good thing about some of these new gTLDs is that they give users a little more information about your site than the ultra-vague likes of .com and .org. For example, it's impossible to guess what kind of website www.samsonswan.com might be from its URL alone, but we can reasonably assume that www.samsonswan.cymru is owned by a Welsh company, or that www.samsonswan.music belongs to a musician or band.

And that can be useful for search engine bots as well as for humans. Let's say you own a second-hand car dealership in London called Marvellous Motors Ltd. Your customers are Googling 'used cars London' and you want to show up on the first page of results for that term. Purchasing a domain name like www.marvellousmotors.london will make it more obvious (both to human users and to Google's spiders) that you're a London-based business, and this may well improve your chances of ranking locally.

The new TLDs may also come in handy if you share your brand name with somebody else from a totally different field. Imagine, for instance, that you've just opened a new pub called The Branch & Blossom, but - shock horror! - it turns out that there's a popular indie-folk band by that name already. Anybody attempting to Google your new business will end up on TB&B's SoundCloud page or browsing a list of their upcoming gigs, and since they're already using the domain name you wanted (www.branchandblossom.com), you're going to have to pick a different one instead.

So what'll it be? Your instinct might be to simply pick the closest available domain to what you originally wanted (www.branchandblossom.co.uk or www.branchandblossom.org), but it may be a better idea to register www.branchandblossom.pub or www.branchandblossom.bar instead. This will let everyone know that you're a bar, not a band, and people searching for your business will find it easier to spot which Branch & Blossom website is the one they're after. This also works if you're on the other side of the equation; newly-formed bands can use TLDs like .music or .rocks to differentiate themselves from established businesses who share their name.

So while an unusual TLD won't necessarily help you to scale the SERPs, there are other ways in which it can help you. If you want to make your website's URL more descriptive of who you are and what you're about, using one of the many new gTLDs that have been available recently may well be a good choice for you.

Of course, if you already have a website with a standard TLD (such as .com or .uk), it would be foolish to discard your established URL in favour of a trendy new domain name with no history. This will break any links to your current website, and erase the reputation that you've built for yourself with the search engines (they put a lot of stock in domain age and history!)

Instead, we recommend using 301 redirects to ensure that users and bots trying to reach your old domain are automatically sent to the new one instead; this will allow you to switch to a nicer domain name whilst retaining all the positive SEO 'juice' that you accumulated before the changeover.

Need help with registering a new domain name or setting up your company's website? Contact Designer Websites for assistance!

Success Story: Doctorcall

Aug 06 | 2015
client websites
Doctorcall logo
 
Doctorcall Medical Services are among the UK's leading private medical groups. Established in 1989, Doctorcall was the first visiting doctor service in the UK, although they now offer many other services besides (including sexual health tests, physiotherapy treatments, occupational health checks, and cosmetic treatments such as Botox®).
 
If you've never heard of Doctorcall before, here's a brief introduction:
 
 
Doctorcall first contacted Designer Websites in late 2014. Their website at that time was a self-made Wordpress solution, but what they needed was a professional, bespoke business website to represent their long-established brand in the best way possible, and we were the company tasked with delivering this.
 
Here are some of the features that Doctorcall requested for their new and improved website:
  • Fully integrated Qinec booking system
  • Ecommerce system with online payments powered by Sage Pay
  • Mobile-friendly responsive design
  • Blog engine to allow Doctorcall's staff to post news and updates

What happened next?

We worked closely with Doctorcall to design and develop a new website that was tailored to their specific requirements. The new site went live in March 2015, and the impact of our work was visible almost immediately - the site's total traffic for April was almost 20% higher than in April 2014:
 
Doctorcall site traffic
 
An even more pronounced improvement was visible in Doctorcall's mobile stats - total mobile traffic for April 2015 was 41% higher than the same total one year earlier:
 
Doctorcall mobile traffic
 
This demonstrates the difference that a responsive, mobile-friendly website design can make - at time of writing, mobile users make up roughly 40% of Doctorcall's total visitors!
 
It's also worth noting just how well the Doctorcall website has been performing from an ecommerce standpoint. When developing the new site, we incorporated a shopping basket system that would allow visitors to purchase certain Doctorcall products (such as home testing kits and anti-ageing creams) over the web.
 
This approach appears to have worked wonders for the business - site revenue increased by almost 90% between June and July 2015!
 
Doctorcall revenue
 
All in all, our work has yielded outstanding results for Doctorcall's business. Here's what they had to say about the new website and its performance over the last few months:
 
"Designer Websites came highly recommended to us, and we couldn't be happier with the results of what is essentially a huge project for us. From start to finish they guided us through the design, delivery and acceptance of the ecommerce website in a clear and easy-to-understand way.
 
"Thanks to their clear communication and expertise, we now have a product we are very proud of. They continue to help us develop our online platform as we think of more ways to increase revenue through our web presence."
 
Jamie Watkins, Doctorcall Medical Services
 
Would you like us to design a new website for your business? Request a quote now, or give us a call on 01446 339050 to discuss your requirements with a member of our team!

Web Design: 5 Do's & Don'ts

Aug 04 | 2015
website design
 
When it comes to web design, there are a lot of pitfalls to be aware of. Whether it's doing something you shouldn't or failing to do something you should, one mistake can ruin your entire online presence, so it's important to keep your wits about you!
 
Here, courtesy of our professional web design team, are five do's and five don'ts for you to bear in mind when you're putting together your company's website...
  • DO get straight to the point. The average web user prefers not to stay in one place for too long, so when you're designing your website, be sure to put the crucial details (i.e. what you offer and how to get it) front and centre.

  • DON'T put style above functionality. We've no doubt that you're an artistic genius capable of designing a web page that belongs in a gallery, but appearances shouldn't necessarily be your top priority when it comes to creating a successful business website. Instead, focus on providing a straightforward, elegant experience for the end user, and tailor your design to complement this.

  • DO be consistent. Each page of your website should have the same basic look and layout as the next, as this will give users a smooth, seamless journey through your site. Of particular importance is the site menu - if this crucial navigation element changes or moves around as users browse your website, those users will quickly get frustrated and go elsewhere. However, we also recommend keeping a close eye on less obvious factors such as fonts and branding; keeping these things consistent at all times will ensure that your company looks professional to site users.

  • DON'T use Comic Sans. This 'fun' font looks extremely childish, and it is almost never an appropriate choice for a professional business website.

  • DO stick to a simple colour scheme. Using too many colours will make your website hard to read and unpleasant to look at. Stick to just two or three colours to keep everything striking and easy on the eye.

  • DON'T forget about your mobile users. The number of people using smartphones and tablets to browse the web is increasing every day, and so it's becoming more and more important to ensure that your website looks just as good on these devices as on a desktop PC. A good way to achieve this is with a responsive design that changes to fit the screen on which it is viewed.

  • DO show off your social media accounts. The power of social media has grown exponentially in recent years, and few business can afford not to be seen on Twitter and Facebook these days. Incorporating your company's social accounts into your website is a great way to gain followers and boost your visibility; obviously, you'll want to include links to your various profiles, but you may want to go one step further by integrating social media feeds into your site's design, allowing visitors to see your latest tweets, pins and posts as soon as they arrive on your homepage.

  • DON'T stuff too much in. When designing your website, aim for brevity and simplicity - don't pack each page with dozens of images and reams of text, as this will create a cluttered look that makes it difficult for users to find the information they need.

  • DO keep analysing, measuring, and making improvments. Like great art, a good web design is never finished! After your website goes live, you should use Google Analytics and other tools to continuously monitor its performance and tweak your design as necessary. Are people clicking on that button? How does it compare with the other button on the other side of the page? Should you move it elsewhere, make it bigger, or scrap it entirely to make room for something else? These questions can be answered with the help of things like goals and event tracking, so keep a close eye on how people interact with your site and never stop looking for potential improvements!

  • DON'T use Comic Sans. Please. We know we said this already, but it bears repeating. Refer to www.comicsanscriminal.com if you don't understand the issue here.
Want us to design your business website for you? Click here to get a quote, or visit our Professional Web Design page for more information.

Multiple Ecommerce Websites: 5 Reasons to Branch Out

Jul 31 | 2015
ecommerce websites
Multiple ecommerce websites

It's easy to imagine the benefits of having multiple ecommerce websites - if one ecommerce website can drive a hundred sales a day, then a trio of ecommerce websites should theoretically be able to drive three hundred sales, right?

However, setting up a multi-site ecommerce solution is both expensive and time-consuming, so before you get started, you need to be absolutely sure that it's the right choice for you. Here are a few different ways in which multiple ecommerce websites can benefit a business - do they apply to yours?

1. Target multiple audiences

Some products are suitable for many different audiences. There are lots of disparate groups who might be interested in purchasing drinking accessories, for example; you've got university students, hen parties, stag parties, nightclub/bar owners, and goodness knows who else. This is great news if you specialise in drinking accessories, because it means you've got loads of potential customers to sell to!

However, this can pose a problem when it comes to your ecommerce website. If you're simultaneously trying to market your business to all of the groups listed above (and probably several others besides), you won't look like a particularly appealing choice to any of them - instead, the hen parties will probably go to a website that deals specifically in hen party accessories, the bar owners will go to a trade website for industry professionals, and so forth.

Setting up multiple ecommerce websites is a fantastic way to tackle this problem. If you've got three completely separate websites stocking the same products, this allows you to target three completely separate audiences. You can make one pink and glamorous to appeal to the hen night market; the second can look slick and professional, so as to rope in the nightclub owners; and the third could be used to highlight your biggest discounts, which is sure to please those thirsty students!

Of course, that's not the only benefit to a multi-pronged approach...

2. Compete for different keywords

Search engine bots are a lot like the customers mentioned above: they'll be more interested in your website if it's specifically targeted at the market you're aiming to conquer. For example, that generic drinking accessories website of yours will probably never rank for terms like 'hen party shot glasses' or 'wholesale pint glasses', because these things form only a small part of your overall offering. Unless you're Amazon or someone similarly huge, you'll generally find it very difficult to compete for keywords that are only tangentially related to your business.

You'll find it a lot easier to rank for those keywords if you've got an entire website dedicated to each set; just as the hen party planners of the world are more likely to click on a website that's specifically designed for them, Google are far more likely to show your website to those party planners if you look like a hen party specialist.

3. Focus your product ranges

If you're one of those companies that sells all sorts of different products, squeezing your entire range onto a single website can be a serious headache. If you've got the budget, it may be much easier to spread your stock over several ecommerce websites rather than trying to cram it all into one place.

As a bonus, this will make it much easier to label each website when it comes to marketing yourself. If everything's neatly divided up, you'll be able to say...

"This one's a flooring website, and this one's a wallpaper website, and this one sells furniture!"

...instead of...

"This is a website that sells...um...stuff for decorating your home with."

Fewer product ranges per site equals stronger overall focus, and focus is key if you want to make a big impression on potential customers.

4. Multiply your social media reach

If you have several different ecommerce websites then you also have the ability to create several different brands, and this in turn gives you the scope to set up several different accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and the other big social platforms. The benefits of this are reasonably obvious: you can accrue multiple sets of followers from multiple demographics and interact with them in multiple different ways!

One of the best ways to make the most of having multiple brands on social media is to establish a distinctive voice for each one. For example, if one of your ecommerce websites sells gadgets and techy stuff, you can adopt a 'geeky' persona for that brand, weighing in on the latest tech news and pop culture gossip on Twitter whilst also sharing your own products. Then, if you're selling those same tech products in a slightly more professional capacity (e.g. to businesses) on a second ecommerce website, you can set up another Twitter account for that site and use a more formal tone to speak with your customers in the industry.

5. Make money via an affiliate system

If you want to get really ambitious, there's another fantastic way to profit via multiple ecommerce websites that we haven't yet touched on. We at Designer Websites have helped several clients to set up 'affiliate' systems - this means that we create a white label ecommerce website for that customer, who then sells that website design to clients of their own. Each client (or 'affiliate') can brand and customise their own website in any way they please, but they're all selling the same products, and all of the affiliate sites are built upon the same original code.

Here's the upshot of all this: you can drive more sales for your business by allowing others to market and sell your goods via ecommerce websites of their own. Your affiliates will be happy because they're getting a cut of the money you make, and you'll be happy because your sales are going through the roof and other people are doing all the legwork for you!

If you have a large product range, multiple target audiences, and/or the desire to set up an affiliate marketing system, then a multi-site ecommerce solution may well be a great choice for your business. Click here to get a quote for your project, or visit our Multi-Site Ecommerce page for more information and some examples of our previous work in this area.

The Benefits of PPC Advertising

Jul 29 | 2015
online marketing
We've already explained to you what PPC advertising is; now it's time to look at why you might want to do it. There are many benefits to pay-per-click advertising - here are a few of the big ones:
  • You can set your own budget depending on your advertising goals. If you own an ecommerce website, you will probably want to be a bit more aggressive with your ads; therefore, a larger daily budget would be more beneficial, as you will achieve more clicks and more potential sales. However, this does depend on your market; for example, if you are operating in a very niche market, you might not need a very big budget, whereas if you stock a more widely available product, the keywords will cost more as there will be a higher number of other companies aiming to attract the attention of potential customers.

  • If done correctly, PPC advertising will get you to the top of Google's results pages. Whenever we ask clients about their SEO goals, 95% of them say, "We want to be at the top of Google." Well, by using PPC, you can reach the 'top of Google' instantly - that is, if your AdWords account manager has done a good job and created a top-quality advert for your product. This means that you will get noticed, get clicks, and get sales. Even if you are already at the top of Google's organic results, PPC can still be used to support your current rankings. With your products at the top of the organic results, the PPC results AND Google's Shopping feed, customers would find it difficult NOT to click through to your site!

  • You can target specific demographics. Are you planning on expanding your business to another area of the country, or even to a different country altogether? Would you like to expand and test to see if there is a demand for your product/service elsewhere? Or perhaps you just have a bricks-and-mortar shop, and you only want to advertise to people in the immediate surrounding area? Whatever your target area is, search engine adverts can help you to reach it with ease.

  • You can track everything. Between AdWords and Analytics, you can see where your customers are coming from, what they are searching for, and the paths that they take through your website to come to a purchasing decision. For this, you can see if you are pointing your customers to the correct landing page, as well as if they are converting then and there or if they are just adding things to the basket and comparing prices with your competitors. You can also test the success of the keywords you're using - are people coming through to your site via a broad keyword search, then failing to convert? If so, why aren't they converting? Are they converting, but taking a long time to do so? What are they looking at on your website? AdWords and Analytics can answer all of these questions and more, providing a wealth of valuable information for you to analyse.

  • You can test quickly. Do you remember the good old days of direct marketing, when you'd step through your door to find piles of marketing communications lying on your doormat? Or the days of Web 1.0, when online advertising platforms were nowhere near as intricate as they are now, and you had to sort through hundreds of pages of data? Back then, the campaign results took ages to interpret, and you wouldn't know whether or not a campaign had succeeded until several months later. Nowadays, Google AdWords allows you to see data almost instantly, and meaningful data interpretation can be achieved in weeks instead of months. You can test all kinds of strategies and factors in a very short period of time.

  • You can compete with global companies. Whether you're a one-man band selling products out of your garage, a modest SME, or a multi-national company, you'll be in direct competition with everyone else when it comes to PPC advertising (something that was unheard of until quite recently). Don't let this put you off, though - sure, the big companies may have a slightly larger budget than you, but if you're clever with your advertising, you could well receive a better response than a large company that's been around for years.
If you would like to try PPC advertising for your company, we strongly recommend hiring an experienced PPC expert to handle your account for you. Click here to request a PPC management quote from Designer Websites, or give us a call on 01446 339050 to discuss your requirements and, if necessary, set up a meeting with our AdWords specialists.

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