The first and most important stage of any website SEO campaign is the keyword research. If your keyword research is flawed and you identify words which are either too competitive for your budget, or which don’t attract a high enough search volume, you will effectively be fighting a losing battle from the start. Some companies will make the mistake of determining their keywords without carrying out any research. Considering how quickly keyword research can be carried out, this can prove to be an incredibly costly mistake. You may think you know your industry inside and out, but it is likely you will not think of the products and services you offer in the same way as your customers. It is possible to spend thousands on website SEO which targets keywords that there is absolutely no market for, and in so doing miss out on those little niches which can bring you some easy gains.

Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are usually those which represent niches in the market. So where as the most obvious keywords which will be the most searched for but also the most competitive, a good long-tail keyword will still attract a good search volume, but with far less competition to battle against. If you operate as a florist then if your website SEO targets highly competitive keywords like ‘florist’, or ‘buy flowers online’, then you will find yourself competing against some of the biggest names in your industry, and may not feature until around page 20 of Google, even after a long-term website SEO campaign. Alternatively, as a smaller retailer it would make much more sense to target a niche with a long-tail keyword, which may not have quite the same search volume, but will make you show up on page one rather than page 15 and will consequently experience far greater traffic.

Identifying niches
Niches can often be identified by long-tail keywords i.e. those including two or more words. These usually identify users who are already knowledgeable about a particular product or service and are further through the decision making process. By targeting these words you are far more likely to find consumers who are ready to make a purchase. Broader keywords are used by searchers at the very beginning of the decision making process and are more likely to be carrying out a bit of research rather than being ready to make a purchase. In the case of our florist, a long-tail keyword like ‘mother’s day flower bouquet’ is likely to be far more profitable in the early days of a website SEO campaign than a broad keyword like ‘florist’.

But remember – there’s more than one way to skin a cat!
A good SEO website campaign will have a mixture of broad keywords as long-term aims with long tail keywords providing the quick wins along the way.

For further information on long-tail keywords and other website SEO techniques, please do not hesitate to contact our friendly website SEO team here at Designer Websites.

We have worked with Gift House International for over 5 years now and recently we have developed a new website for them which features an improved design, an improved buying journey for their clients and an much improved bespoke content management system. Gift House International are a wholesale specialist selling gifts, gadgets and novelty items, many of which are exclusive items. The company have a very high profile in the wholesale gifts and wholesale gadgets industry and wanted their new website to reflect that, especially as the old one that we built 5 years ago was looking tired and very dated!

The website is also highly optimised and the website now ranks on page 1 of Google for terms like wholesale gifts, wholesale gadgets and gift wholesaler.

Anyway the new website looks great so if you are looking for a gift wholesaler then perhaps you should go to the website and fill out an application.

We were approached by iola who are a leading supplier of beautiful and functional indoor and outdoor rattan furniture earlier this year when they wanted a website to represent Iola in the United Kingdom. We launched their United Kingdom website in April 2011 and they were really pleased with the results and subsequently wanted a website for their New Zealand business. As with their United Kingdom website they wanted it to look good and perform well in the search engines. Iola’s all weather rattan furniture creations are exclusively from Australia and New Zealand and are hand crafted by their team of master weavers, originating from Cebu in the Philippines, and produced in their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, with exacting standards for quality.

So if you are looking for great rattan furniture for your conservatory or garden then you simply will not find better quality or designs and a more professional service.  We are certain you will be impressed with Iola.

The New Zealand website is located here..
Iola Rattan Furniture New Zealand

Remember they also have a United Kingdom website
Iola Rattan Furniture UK

We were approached by iola who are a leading suppliers of beautiful and functional indoor and outdoor rattan furniture. They came to us with the requirement of designing a professional website to represent their rattan furniture business. The website was to look good and perform well in the search engines for searches related to rattan furniture across the United Kingdom.

Iola’s all weather rattan furniture creations are exclusively from Australia and New Zealand and are hand crafted by their team of master weavers, originating from Cebu in the Philippines, and produced in their state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, with exacting standards for quality.

So if you are looking for a piece of rattan furniture for your conservatory or garden then you simply will not find better quality or designs and a more professional service. We are certain you will be impressed.

The website is located here.. iola rattan furniture

Many individuals new to the world of online marketing have no idea that their website’s name can impact greatly on the results they can expect to achieve from search engine optimisation. For this reason, it is an excellent idea to consult professional online marketers before deciding on the domain for your website. This can make the whole website optimisation process a lot more effective.

As you may already be aware, links to a website are incredibly important to high search engine rankings. The text associated with these links – known as anchor text – is one of the main SEO factors when it comes to optimising a site. Getting this text just right is of the utmost importance.

If you have picked the website name badly, i.e. very few people use that name to find your products or services online, then the SEO impact of the links bearing your website name will be minimal. For example a link to “Designer Websites Ltd” contains our keywords “Websites Designer” or “Websites”.

Traditionally, the branding of a business was critical to its success. Whilst branding is still very important it is obvious that it has become more important to be found on the Internet than almost anything else. These days the most appealing or witty business name is of little use unless you have a particularly large advertising budget and people are using the search engines to search for your specific business name.

When deciding on the domain name for your website some compromises may have to be made. In the majority of cases, the perfect domain name for your business will already be owned by a competitor. For this reason, it is essential to carry out keyword research into your market to find out if you can identify a niche that has been missed by the other businesses in your market. A perfect keyword to base your business and domain name around would be one that has a large number of searches, but a low level of competition. This will make it far easier to appear high up in the search engines, as there will not be such a large number of businesses battling against you.

For more information on any element of domain name choice or website optimisation contact Designer Websites Ltd.