Every business wants to be seen by its target audience - but how do you make sure that your website is the one that people want to click on?

There are so many websites out there that it can often feel like a battle to get anywhere near page one, especially if your keywords are very popular and/or broad. This is where search intent optimisation comes in handy.

Here's everything you need to know about search intent...

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An alt tag (alternative tag) is a brief description that’s attributed to an image within a web page’s source code. Alt tags are also known as alt text, alt descriptions and alt attributes.

Alt text serves a number of different purposes, and there are a whole host of different reasons why you should be using alt tags on your images.

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Here at Designer Websites, we understand better than anyone the importance of having good SEO on your website!

There are so many factors that come into play when talking about SEO, it can be hard to know where to start. The Google algorithm uses approximately 200 different ranking factors to determine where your website will show up; as much as we’d like to go through every single one, unfortunately we don’t have the time (and probably neither do you!). Instead, we’ve picked out 5 of what we consider to be the most important ranking factors. We’re going to be taking a closer look at what they mean, how you can improve them, and how you can keep your website on page one in 2022.

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If you want to attract lots of high-quality organic traffic to your website, there are two things you'll need to do:

1. Choose the right keywords.
2. Create great content to fit those keywords.

Both steps require careful consideration and a bit of hard work, but there are certain things you can do to make this process less stressful.

Today, we're going to focus on step one: finding the best keywords to target.

What are keywords?

Keywords - also called 'queries' or 'search terms' - are what people type in when using a search engine like Google or Bing.

(To be honest, 'keyword' is a slightly misleading name; most search terms consist of more than one word, so perhaps 'keyphrase' would be more accurate.)

Some keywords are extremely popular. Phrases like online food shopping and clothes for kids consistently clock up tens of thousands of Google searches every month.

But people are constantly searching, and many of them use keywords that nobody else has ever used before. Google themselves have stated that 15% of the queries their search engine processes are brand new.

There are all sorts of different phrases and questions an individual might enter when searching the web for the product or service that you provide. So how can you decide which keywords are worth targeting on your website?

Always begin with keyword research

Before you begin any keyword-driven task, there's one thing you need to do: research, research, research! This is what will lay the foundations for your keyword choices and the quality content that you're going to create - the content that will hopefully rank among the top Google results for those queries.

Companies with a sizeable marketing budget can hire an SEO agency (like us!) to conduct their keyword research for them. Specialist agencies carry out this type of work every day, using an assortment of tools to gain a deep insight into different keywords - how often they're used, how competitive they are, who currently ranks for them and why, etc.

If your business doesn't have the budget to hire an SEO expert, you can do some keyword research on your own - but be warned, this can quickly become a mammoth task!

Search intent: what is the user looking for?

One of the most important things to consider when choosing keywords is the intent behind each query. What question or need is the keyword expressing? What is the user's likely end goal?

As an example, imagine two Google users, Alice and Bob. Alice types in cheap car insurance, while Bob enters the longer query is car insurance cheaper for electric cars. These keyphrases are superficially similar, but they suggest very different end goals: Alice seems like she's ready to take out a new insurance policy, while the longer search string suggests that Bob is simply looking for information right now. Only one of these people has their credit card handy right now.

Learn more about search intent

Broadly speaking, keywords can be divided into three different 'intent' categories:

• Navigational keywords are looking for a specific web page. They have one particular result in mind, and they're unlikely to click on any others. For example, wikipedia is a navigational keyword; the user is probably trying to reach Wikipedia's homepage.
  
  
• Informational keywords are used to find answers and information. Example: you want to whip up a chocolate cake, but you don't have a recipe handy, so you search for how to bake a chocolate cake.
  
  
• Commercial keywords are those that suggest you're looking to make a purchase. Queries that include the word buy are very strong indicators of commercial intent; for instance, a user who types buy playstation 4 into Google or Bing is pretty clearly looking to purchase a games console (and will almost certainly be shown a whole bunch of shopping results).

If you can match your content to the search intent, you will have a better chance of ranking for your chosen keyword, and a better chance of satisfying the people who visit your website.

Check out the competition

Another important factor to consider when choosing keywords is competition. Before you get your heart set on ranking for a particular search term, type it into Google and take a look at what you're up against.

First, look at the ads that appear (if there are any). For most Google searches, these appear at the top of the results page, and they should be marked as either 'Ad' or 'Sponsored'. The number and quality of ads displayed can give you a rough idea of how competitive a keyword is.

Next, look at the websites that rank organically underneath the ads. If the first page of results is dominated by big brands with enormous marketing budgets, you may find it hard to rank alongside them unless you're willing to spend a similar amount of money.

However, if you feel that you can create a piece of content (e.g. a blog post, infographic or video) that's better than anything that currently ranks for your chosen keyword - and which will do a better job of fulfilling the search intent - then it's worth giving it a try and seeing what results you're able to achieve.

Create the right content

Let's say you've written an excellent piece of content that offers lots of helpful information. It's far better - more relevant, more informative, easier to digest - than anything on the first page of Google results for your chosen keyword. But you're still not ranking. Why?

Ask yourself whether you've chosen the right format. For example, if you're in the landscaping industry and you design gardens for a living, a thousand-word blog post on different design concepts is unlikely to be as useful as a high-quality image (no matter how insightful or how well-written the blog is).

Think about different types of media, and try to determine which would most resonate with the search intent you pinned down earlier. Potential options include:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Tables
• Graphs
• Charts

You may even be able to come up with something entirely unique that fits the search intent better than anything else currently on offer!

Map keywords to specific pages on your website

It's important to know which specific web page / piece of content you want search engines to rank for a given keyword. Targeting the same keyword on multiple pages can create keyword cannibalisation issues - read more about cannibalisation (and why it's a problem) here.

Remember, websites don't rank on search engines - web pages do. Instead of creating several pages that are all somewhat relevant to your chosen search term, create one outstanding page that ticks all the boxes, and this should have a higher chance of ranking.

Looking for help with keyword research and search engine optimisation? Designer Websites can help - get in touch to discuss your requirements!

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Google is always tweaking and updating its algorithm to provide the best possible search experience. These improvements are a constant, ongoing process, and business owners and webmasters should expect to see some gentle fluctuation in the ranking and performance of their websites from one day to the next. This is perfectly normal - no cause for alarm.

On occasion, though, you might notice a particularly pronounced change in your website's rankings - even though you haven't made any changes to the site itself. This may be a sign that Google has released a more significant algorithm update.

It's important to keep an eye out for big Google updates, understand what impact they can have, and monitor the performance of your websites for any significant shifts. In 2020 so far, Google has released two core algorithm updates and two stand-alone updates: one that prevents featured snippet URLs from appearing in the organic SERPs, and one that changes the way Googlebot views nofollow links.

In this blog, we're going to take a look at these recent updates and the impact they've had, so you know what to look out for on your own website. Let's dive right in!

Core Algorithm Updates

Of all Google's updates, core updates make the broadest changes and happen most frequently. They're designed to improve search results pages so that Google can deliver the most authoritative and relevant content to its users. This year, we've already seen Google roll out two core algorithm updates: one on the 13th of January, and one on the 4th of May.

It's common for Google's core updates to have a drastic impact on your website's keyword rankings. Some sites experience severe ranking drops, others will see an impressive ranking boost - it's hard to predict!

Why does this happen? Well, Google's Webmaster Central Blog gives us a great way of looking at the situation:

"One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It's going to naturally change. Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realise they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before. The list will change, and films previously higher on the list that move down aren't bad. There are simply more deserving films that are coming before them."

What should you do if you notice a drop?

If you notice that your website is ranking much higher than it did before the update, bravo! Google thinks your content is highly relevant for its users.

However, if you notice that a particular page, an old blog post, or your website as a whole has slipped down the rankings following a core update, then the first thing to remember is that it doesn't mean your content is 'bad'.

What it does mean is that, if you want to reclaim those top positions in the SERP, you might want to revisit the content on these pages and make them better.

1. Start by looking at the pages that now rank above you. What do those pages have that might make them more authoritative/relevant for a user?
   
   
2. Re-assess your own content through a critical lens.

• Can you provide a more substantial description of the topic?
• Can you add links to authoritative sources?
• Could you re-write the content to make it clearer/more concise?
• Can you provide a more suitable heading?

By building better and more relevant web pages, you should start to see your website moving steadily up the rankings following a core update. Get in touch with our SEO specialists if you have any further questions about recovering dropped rankings.

Featured Snippet Duplication Update

On January 22nd, Google implemented an update that changed the way featured snippets appeared in the search results pages. Prior to the update, URLs that appeared in the featured snippet could also appear high up in the rankings, essentially giving that website twice as much exposure.

Post-update, you won't see duplicate URLs in the SERPs. If your webpage claims the elusive 'position 0' and is featured in Google's snippet, then it won't appear anywhere else in the rankings.

What impact will this have on your website?

Google has advised that the featured snippet position (or position zero) and position 1 are usually considered as the same position in most rank tracking tools, so you shouldn't see any dramatic drops in ranking.

In terms of your click-through rate, there are a few theories. Our own research suggests that holding the featured snippet is valuable for your website because it's the first port of call if a user wants to find out more information on a certain topic. Even on occasions when a user doesn't click through to your website, they're still being exposed to your brand and your featured content - so it's a win-win situation!

Sceptics argue that some users might choose to skip past all the on-page features like knowledge panels, featured snippets etc and head straight to the organic results. If this is the case, then this featured snippet update could be detrimental, but we're yet to see such an impact on our clients' websites.

Our advice? Keep an eye on your rankings and your inbound traffic. While it's unlikely that you'll see a drop as a result of this update, you can always re-work your content to gain a more beneficial ranking if you see that certain pages have been affected.

Nofollow Update

We've known that Google was changing the way it treats nofollow links since the end of 2019, but it wasn't until the 1st of March this year that the update actually went live.

Following this update, nofollow links will be treated as a 'hint' when Google is crawling and indexing your site, and might even affect your ranking.

Previously, nofollow links could be used to tell Google to disregard a certain outbound link. Essentially, you could tell Google "Hey, I don't want to endorse this website even though this link is relevant to my users". That's no longer the case.

When announcing this update, Google said, "Links contain valuable information that helps us improve search, such as how the words within links describe the content they point at. Looking at every link we encounter can help us understand unnatural linking patterns".

Generally, nofollow links will be treated as they were before, so the impact on your website should be minimal. As far as actions you should take, Google recommends using one of two new link attributes to identify the purpose of your nofollow links. For example:

• rel="sponsored" to identify links that have been paid for, e.g. adverts and sponsored articles.
• rel="UGC" to identify links in user-generated content, e.g. blog comments.

Google has said that they might still use these "sponsored" and "UGC" links as 'hints' when crawling your website, but using the correct identifications increases the likelihood that Google will understand why you've used a nofollow link, and they will assess the link accordingly.

Google updates happen all the time - it's part of an ongoing effort to perfect their search engine experience. On the whole, Google updates are nothing to be worried about, but having an awareness of them can help you identify the cause of traffic and ranking fluctuations. Contact us for more information about our search engine optimisation services.