The nature of your website and the specific goals of your business will dictate what a conversion looks like for you. If you have a high conversion rate, congratulations! This is an indicator that your marketing strategies are succeeding, your website works well, and your users are satisfied.

However, if you've noticed that your conversion rate is lower than you'd like, there are a few things you can do to improve it.

What is a 'conversion'?

Every time a user completes a desirable action, we count it as a conversion - but conversions look different on different websites. For example, if you're a blogger, you might consider each subscription to your blog as a conversion; if you have a brochure site that tells people about your services, you might consider enquiries as conversions; and if you have an ecommerce website, you'll count every successful sale as a conversion.

You might track multiple conversions to make sure that all aspects of your business are growing and working in unison. For example, with an ecommerce site, you might consider sales as your most important conversion while still keeping a close eye on the number of newsletter sign-ups, social media interactions and enquiries too. Together, these conversions will help to give you a more detailed picture of your site's overall performance.

Over time, you will start to see which things convert well on your website and which things don't. It's normal for things to fluctuate a bit, but if something is performing particularly badly, try the following tips.

1. Make sure your website is user-friendly.

Put yourself in the shoes of the user and test your website from their point of view. Does it work well across different devices? Do you notice any areas that could be improved? Did everything work properly? Think about it: if someone visits your website and struggles to figure out where something is or comes across a technical issue, then your conversion rate is likely to be much lower than it should be.

Improving the user experience is a great place to start if you want to improve your website's conversion rate. Here's how you can do it:

• Tweak the menus so they are easier to navigate
• Ensure your site works across all devices
• Check the functionality of buttons/forms across the site

2. Drive more relevant traffic to your site.

If you notice that your conversion rate is low in comparison to the number of visitors arriving on your site from day to day, then you might be driving the wrong kind of people to your site. Investing in a range of marketing strategies like Google Ads, social media and email marketing can help boost relevant traffic to your website.

Why? Because you can use these tools to target audiences who are likely to convert. For example, people who have visited your site before or people who are already interested in your industry.

Here are a few things to consider when you're trying to boost relevant traffic to your site:

• Include a call to action in your marketing material so users what you want them to do
• Invest more money in the marketing strategies that convert well
• Refine your target audiences
• Produce content that will appeal to them

3. Make sure your web pages are easy to digest.

Users don't interact with websites in the same way they'd interact with a book or newspaper. In fact, unnecessary long-form text can actually do more harm to your site than good. If users don't find what they're looking for quickly, it's likely that they'll lose interest and move on to a different website, at which point, you've lost all chances of conversion.

What can you do to combat this? Start by taking time to craft your copy so that it's easy to digest, engaging and highly relevant to your site. Embolden anything that you think needs extra emphasis and break longer points up using paragraphs or bullet points.

Revise the layout and copy on your website so that your main selling points and call to actions are more prominent. Drawing the user's attention to these things will make it easier for them to decide whether to convert or not.

4. Keep your graphics relevant and minimal.

Images are a necessity, especially on ecommerce websites where customers need to see the products they want to buy. They can show off your products or promote a spectacular deal, but all too often they are overused.

Having too many graphics on a page can distract people from their objective and reduce your chances of a conversion, so finding a good balance is key.

There are plenty of platforms that you can use to share photos and graphics related to your business. Instagram and Pinterest are two of the most popular, but there are plenty of others to choose from. Perhaps you would be better saving those 'behind the scenes' shots for your social media rather than sharing them all over your website.

By reducing the visual clutter on your website, you make the journey on your site more streamlined and improve your page loading speed. Faster pages and an overall better experience on your website feed back into better usability, thus encouraging more conversions!

Note: Improving your conversion rate is not something that will happen overnight. We'd recommend trying one of these tips at a time and leaving your site alone for a few weeks to accurately assess the effects. If you make multiple changes at once, you'll never know what worked and what didn't.

If you'd like to talk to our experienced team of developers and SEO specialists about improving your website, don't hesitate to give us a call on 01446 339 050.

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Keeping your SEO up to date is a vital part of maintaining your website and growing your online audience. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned expert, spring is the perfect time to adjust your SEO strategy with a few easy tips and tricks.

If you want to give your search engine rankings a boost this spring but you're not sure where to start, Designer Website's search engine optimisation specialists have got your back. Here are our top tips for a thorough SEO spring clean.

Identify new keywords

The world is constantly changing, and it could well be that lots of new keywords and topics have become relevant to your business since your last big SEO check-up. You may be missing out if you have not updated your content to reflect up-and-coming trends; roughly 15% of all Google searches are completely new queries, so you might be able to capture a lot of extra traffic if you add extra keywords to your SEO strategy.

Whether you update your existing website copy to address current search trends or add extra content via blog posts, this is a great way to stay ahead of your competitors and give your site a nice spring boost.

Keep things fresh

Think of SEO like dating. When you first starting optimising your website, it's really easy to build your online presence and create new content that helps your site to rank. You might feel genuinely excited every time you publish a new blog post or add an informative new page.

But as time goes on, the thrill begins to wear off. Your content no longer ranks as well as it used to, and fewer people are visiting your site and engaging with your brand. You might even consider giving up and abandoning SEO entirely (though as we recently discussed, this is seldom a good idea!).

If you haven't released any new content in a while, we thoroughly recommend updating your website with some fresh new landing pages or a string of blog posts. It's important to remember how much search engines (especially Google) love fresh new content - as with relationships, a little commitment to your SEO can go a long way!

Minimise duplicate content

Content duplication - where the same piece of content appears on two or more web pages - can have a huge impact on your SEO strategy if you let it get out of hand. Few website owners create duplicate content intentionally, but it can sometimes happen by accident; for example, if you write similar or identical descriptions for two subtly different products, search engines may only index one of those pages, which will prevent the other one from ranking.

Try to make every page on your website unique, and if you can't avoid repeating a significant amount of content across multiple URLs, use canonical tags to tell Google which version you want indexed.

Don't neglect local SEO

If you have a brick-and-mortar business that's open to the public, you need to make sure potential customers can find you. Local SEO is hugely important - it's been alleged that 43% of Google searches are for things in the searcher's local area, and in the USA, an estimated 80% of disposable income is spent within 20 miles of the home.

So make sure your local SEO factors are in shape for spring. At the very least, you should create a Google My Business listing and make sure your company's address and contact details are correct and up to date wherever they appear on the web.

Master Google Search Console

Checking technical issues is an important part of SEO. You've created your new content, you're targeting new keywords, and you've even eliminated all duplication from your website - now you should carry out a Google Search Console check to make sure your website is working as it should.

Search Console can tell you all sorts of useful things, from how many of your pages are indexed to whether your pages display correctly on mobile devices. If you're new to Search Console, Google have some videos to help you learn the ropes, but you might be better off hiring a team of SEO experts to look after this side of things for you.

Remember: it's important to keep your SEO strategy fresh and efficient if you want to maximise your organic search traffic all year round. If you want to get more from your website, the Designer Websites team can help - our SEO specialists work closely with our experienced team of designers and developers to deliver the best possible results for our clients.

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A well-written blog can form an invaluable part of any marketing strategy, allowing you to interact with your target audience and share industry information, tips and expertise. By creating a regularly updated and informative blog, your business will be able to establish a reputation as an industry authority and in so doing improve overall brand awareness.

However, no matter how insightful and informative your blog posts may be if they don't show up in the search results, they are only ever likely to attract a handful of readers. So, what is the secret to optimising your blog? And how do you make sure that people convert when they read your posts? Let's start with the very basics, ideally, your blog posts will:

• Appeal to your target audience
• Rank highly in search results
• Invite your audience to complete an action

So, how do you make these things happen? We asked our SEO team to collate some helpful hints and tips about writing blogs to get you on your way to a successful blog. They understand the importance of creating high-quality content that will help improve a client's Google ranking and boost engagement. So, if you're considering adding a blog to your site, or if you want to optimise your existing blog, then just keep reading!

Determine the Purpose of Each Blog

So, where do you start? We recommend that you start by considering the purpose of your blog post. Having this in mind as you write each blog is essential, it helps you make sure that each blog is staying on topic and fulfilling its purpose throughout! There are thousands of reasons you might write a blog, here are a few common goals of blog writing:

• Attracting new customers
• Promoting a product or service
• Sharing important news related to your business or industry
• Answering a question that's relevant to your business

Or something completely different! Blog posts are great because they offer a blank slate for you to address current topics and engage with users in a very direct way. Whatever you choose to write about, make sure that your writing has a focus to avoid creating convoluted, unnecessary content.

Select and Use Appropriate Keywords

As with website optimisation, choosing and using the right keywords is incredibly important when it comes to getting your blog posts to rank in search engines. Firstly, to select appropriate keywords you need to consider two things:

• What keywords does your site currently rank for?
• What keywords do you want your site to rank for?  

You need to be careful not to cannibalise (use the same keywords) as other, more important pages on your site. Why? because you don't want a blog post to outrank an important product page, for example. You can check what keywords and queries your site is currently getting impressions and clicks for by taking a look at the 'performance' section on the Google Search Console.

Instead of targeting the same keywords over and over again, you should consider using your blog posts to target keywords that aren't already targeted on your site (despite being highly relevant). When choosing keywords for your blog posts, you want them to grab your audience's attention so consider this; what topics do your readers care about that you haven't already addressed somewhere on your site? You can use Google's Keyword Planner tool to find hundreds of relevant keywords & check search volume!

Writing your Blog Posts 

Once you've decided the purpose of your blog, selected some interesting and relevant keywords - you're ready to start writing. Your first few blog posts might take you a little bit of time to craft and perfect, but the more blog posts you write the more your personal writing style will develop.

Readers will return to your blog time and time again if they like your writing style, so don't be afraid to add touches of your personality as you go along.  

Besides writing content that your readers will love, you need to ensure each post is properly optimised. Here are a few tips to make sure that your blog posts always add value to your site:

• Be conscious of the keywords you are targeting and try to include them throughout the blog post.
• Choose a compelling title.
• Use sub-headings and bullet points to break up long passages of text.
• Add some quality links to high domain authority sites (ones you want to grab the attention of!)
• Include quotes from notable people within your industry.
• Write a clear call to action - this will increase the likelihood of readers converting.
• Optimise: Add a meta title & meta description.

Write Frequently to Maintain Engagement

As you build up a group of loyal readers, they will enjoy coming back to find new, relevant blog posts while - for the purposes of SEO, regular posting will ensure you're constantly targeting new keywords and will (hopefully) keep you high in the search engine results. But how often should you post?

Posting Every Day: 

Posting every day does have its benefits, it allows you to develop your writing style, engage with new readers and quickly build up lots of interesting posts on your site. However, writing and sharing blog posts every single day can be time-consuming and might even put your readers off.

Posting Once, Twice, or Three Times a Week:

Many bloggers argue this is the perfect blogging schedule. Having small gaps between blogs helps to keep your readers interested without overloading them with 'spammy' content. Giving yourself time to plan each blog properly will ensure you create in-depth and genuinely useful blogs, rather than blogs that don't add much value to your site.

Promotion via Social Media

Promoting your blog posts on social media will help maintain a steady flow of readers. We recommend setting a page or profile for your business on each of the following platforms:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram 
• LinkedIn

Each of these social media platforms is different in terms of the way the posts are structured and the type of audience they appeal to. Therefore, you need to tailor each social media post to suit the platform you're working with. For example, Instagram is largely image focused so is the perfect place to share pictures and blogs related to products or completed projects.

As well as promoting your blog on your own social network pages, encourage others to do some of the work for you by including Facebook and Twitter ‘share buttons’ in your blog. One of the amazing things about social media is that people will always be inclined to share things they find interesting with their friends - so take advantage of this!

If you'd like to find out how our search engine optimisation team could help you manage your social media, click here.

By following these blog optimisation tips you will find that your blog performs really well and helps to drive conversions. If you are interested in finding out more about our blog development services, simply click the button at the end of this blog. If you have any other queries, give us a call on 01446 339050.

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Published - 26th February 2018 / Updated - 12th March 2019

Over a year ago, Google announced via their Webmaster Central Blog that the new version of Search Console (originally made available to a limited set of users in August 2017) was going to be released to all site owners who use the tool. The big roll-out took a few weeks, but the majority of users are now able to access the redesigned Search Console interface.

Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tools) in an indispensable tool for website owners, and so we'd like to take a moment to walk you through the updated version and explain how it can be used. The new Search Console is still being built, and certain reports have not yet been migrated into the new version, but what is there is well worth exploring if you're serious about looking after your website's health.

How do I view the new Search Console?

To access the new version of Google Search Console, simply follow these steps:

1. Go to www.google.com/webmasters and click the big green 'SEARCH CONSOLE' button.
   
   
2. Sign into your Google account to continue.
   
   
3. Once you're on the Search Console home screen, select the property (website) you'd like to manage.
   
   
4. Go to your Messages (under 'Dashboard' in the menu).
   
   
5. Look for a message with the title 'Introducing the new Search Console for [website URL]' and open it up. (If you haven't received this message then you probably don't have access to the new Search Console yet - it is still being rolled out, so be patient and you should be granted access soon.)
   
   
6. Click the 'Open the new Search Console' button in the body of the message.

I'm in! So what's new?

The first thing you'll notice upon accessing your new and improved Search Console is the sleek new design.

As we've already mentioned, the new Search Console doesn't yet offer as many different reports as its predecessor, many reports are still to be migrated over in the coming weeks but a number have been included in the new design. The main features of the current version are as follows:

• Performance
• URL inspection
• Index coverage
• Sitemaps
• Mobile Usability 
• AMP
• Products
• Manual Actions 
• Security Issues
• Links

Let's familiarise ourselves with these reports one at a time...

Performance

The 'Performance' report is more or less identical to the 'Search Traffic' report in Search Console Classic. The interface is a little different, and interestingly, there appears to be some disparity between the data in the 'Performance' and 'Search Traffic' reports, but it's still essentially the same tool. Use it to see which queries drive clicks/impressions for your website.

URL Inspection

The 'URL Inspection' tool offers website owners detailed crawl, index and serving information about web pages, directly from the Google index. Here you can view the last crawl date, the status of the last crawl, any indexing or crawling errors and the canonical URL for a page. It will provide information on successfully indexed pages, any AMP and structured data errors as well as any indexing issues. The URL Inspection tool also allows users to run live tests against a live URL. Details are not provided on the last time Google indexed that URL but on what Google sees on that URL in real time.

Index coverage

Of all the features that the new Search Console brings to the table, its 'Index coverage' report is unquestionably the most exciting. One of the most frustrating things about using the old Search Console was spotting that Google hadn't indexed some of your pages...but having no way to find out which pages the algorithm had passed over.

The 'Index coverage' report aims to give site owners a clearer idea of which pages have and haven't been indexed (and, more importantly, why). Blind Five Year Old wrote an in-depth blog post about this report back in October, but here's a quick summary of what 'Index coverage' shows you:

• Error - Pages that HAVEN'T been indexed because of some kind of error (e.g. server error).
  
  
• Valid with warnings - Pages that HAVE been indexed, but with some issues that you may want to inspect.
  
  
• Valid - Pages that HAVE been indexed successfully.
  
  
• Excluded - Pages that HAVEN'T been indexed, usually (though not always) intentionally. For instance, a page with the 'noindex' tag or a canonical tag that points to an alternate URL will show up in this section of the report.

This report makes it easier than ever before to see which of your pages aren't getting indexed, and to establish what you need to do about it. This report now uses mobile-first indexing data when available, instead of using desktop indexing data for sites that have already switched to mobile-first. This only impacts the data related to the 'error counts' and 'new issues' in the report.

Sitemaps

Again, this is just a nicer-looking version of a tool that we've been using for years (find it in the old Search Console under Crawl > Sitemaps). You can submit sitemaps and check the status of all submitted sitemaps here; handily, you can also click through to an 'Index coverage' report for each sitemap you've submitted.

Mobile Usability 

The Mobile Usability report is an important tool for all site owners as it provides critical information to help fix mobile usability issues. With Google using mobile usability as a factor in their ranking algorithms, it is important for site owners to keep a close eye on this report to ensure that issues are fixed when they appear. Issue names are the same as in the old report, but users are now able to submit a validation and reindexing request when an issue is fixed.

AMP

If your website includes any AMP content, this report is worth keeping an eye on as it will inform you of any errors on your accelerated mobile pages. This isn't anything new, though - the old version of Search Console includes a very similar report under Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Products 

The Products section of the new Google Search Console helps users to see how well their product markup is performing in Google's search results. This is an important feature, especially for e-commerce sites in managing their product markup. This report allows e-commerce site owners to quickly see what issues they have with markup and fix them. In order to be able to see this report, site owners will need to add product markup to their products to show up in GSC. This can be used on a product page to describe a single product or on a shopping aggregator page that displays a single product.

Manual Actions

The Manual Actions section of the new Search Console is the same reporting tool that you've been using in the old console with a fresh, new look. Manual actions are issued by Google against a site when a reviewer from Google has determined that pages on the site are not compliant with Google's webmaster quality guidelines. Therefore, it is an important section that needs to be regularly checked. 

Security Issues

The Security Issues section of GSC will let site owners know if Google finds any security issues with the site, pretty self-explanatory. The types of issues can include hacked URL's, deceptive pages, malware, harmful downloads and more. This feature was available in the old the Search Console so users should be familiar with it and the information provided. For a full breakdown on the details on the security issues monitored, click here. 

Links 

The Links section of the new Search Console consolidates the functionality of the 'Links to your site' and 'Internal Links' reports found in the old Search Console. This updated link report, according to Google, is "more accurate" than the old Links to your site report. For a more detailed analysis of the data, you can get in the links report, click here.

And that's just about it - for now, anyway. Google is still building the new Search Console, so keep your eyes peeled for additional reports as 2019 progresses.

Do you need an expert to look after your website and make sure it's running at peak performance? Contact Designer Websites today by clicking below - our website optimisation specialists will help you to achieve online success!

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Here's something you might have seen recently if you use Google Chrome to browse the Internet:

This scary red 'not secure' warning now appears in the Chrome address bar whenever you type something in on a non-HTTPS web page.

What does this mean for my website?

If your own web address still begins with HTTP rather than HTTPS, Chrome users will see the warning whenever they enter any information on your site. It doesn't matter whether they're entering their credit card number, searching for a product, or just commenting on your latest blog post - as soon as they start typing, Chrome will display that little red warning triangle and inform them that your website is not secure.

Obviously, this may put people off using your website, particularly if you're asking them to enter sensitive and/or personal information like their name, location, telephone number, email address, card details, etc.

(If your site is already under HTTPS, you don't need to worry - Google Chrome doesn't show the 'not secure' warning on HTTPS pages.)

Why is this happening?

Chrome already showed a 'not secure' warning on non-HTTPS pages that requested sensitive info such as passwords and payment details.

But Google made it clear some time ago that this warning would eventually be displayed on all non-HTTPS pages, and they recently made good on this promise. Now, if you use Google Chrome to visit any non-HTTPS page, you'll immediately see this notice in your address bar:

And if you start typing text into any text entry field on that non-HTTPS page, that warning will turn red, like this:

This is Chrome's way of letting you know that the information you're inputting will be sent over an unencrypted connection.

How can I make sure the 'not secure' warning doesn't appear on my site?

Simple: switch to HTTPS!

If your website address begins with http:// rather than https:// then Chrome will show your users the 'not secure' warning whenever they type something on your website. Under a HTTPS connection, all information is sent securely and encrypted to prevent unauthorised access. The same does not apply to a HTTP connection, which is why Chrome now shows this warning.

Online security is a big concern for Internet users nowadays. By switching from HTTP to HTTPS, you will not only be safeguarding yourself from Chrome's 'not secure' warning but also proving a bit of extra reassurance to your users. This will make them more likely to buy from you, or make an enquiry, or do whatever it is you want them to do. There is also some evidence that HTTPS websites rank better in the Google search results.

If you're a Designer Websites client and you'd like to switch from HTTP to HTTPS, please email info@designer-websites.co.uk or give us a call on 01446 339050.