Web design always has been and always will be a numbers game. With many web design companies now offering their customers the chance to check up on the number of hits their website gets and other key information about its performance a lot of businesses are now becoming more switched on with regards to the number of visitors their website gets per day, week, month or year.

However there are a number of reasons why higher volumes of web traffic do not lead an increased number of enquiries for your business. One of the most common reasons for this tends to be that you are bringing in too much generic traffic as opposed to targetted visitors.

So what’s the difference?

If you are a local business then targetted traffic includes online visitors from within your business encatchment area such as a town or suburb who have a specific interest in the product or service you can provide for them.

Generic traffic can include people from outside your encatchment area or those with no more than a passing interest in something on your website which is never going to lead to a transaction between you and that person.

To give you an example I used to work with a tyre dealer based in east Manchester in my old job. As a business they had spent a lot of money on a website which saw them rank as number one for car tyres in Manchester on Google which in turn brought them plenty of visitors to their website. By analysing the entry and exit pages on their website it was easy to see that visitors were coming in to their website from across the city and surrounding areas and then leaving again once they had seen that their depot was on the other side of Manchester.

Manchester is a big place and very few drivers are likely to drive from one side of the city to the other for a set of tyres unless they can get a hefty discount that most suppliers just can’t afford to give! To put it quite simply the business were ranking highly for the wrong keywords. This meant that their website got plenty of hits but most of these visitors were from the wrong parts of the city and were never going to become customers.

If their designer had been doing their job properly they would have realised that they would get a greater return on investment by targetting local suburbs within a few miles of their depot. This may have resulted in less traffic to the website each month, but as this would have yielded a greater number of targetted visitors it would have led to more enquiries and more business!

When working with us we find out about the scale and scope of your business to ensure that your website delivers targetted traffic and more enquiries giving you a greater return on investment. Can you really afford to deal with someone who doesn’t? Call us today for further information & no obligation quotes, or just to discuss your needs.

In order to rank a web page search engines such as Google take into account a number of things of varying importance in order to determine which order they should appear in for certain search terms.

One major piece of the SEO puzzle is keywords and keyword proximity.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is a single word or phrase which you would expect someone looking for your website to search for in a search engine.

Many people using search engines are now leaning towards the use of long tail keywords. For example many internet users are now more likely to use a phrase such as “surfing equipment hire in Newquay” over “surfing equipment hire” because they have learnt that being more specific gives them more accurate information in return. Therefore you should make your content more specific in order to reach out to the correct audience.

What is keyword proximity?

Keyword proximity is the distance within a piece of text between two or more keywords. For example if someone were searching for “swimming pools in Cardiff” you would expect a site containing this sentence:

“There are a number of swimming pools in Cardiff“

To rank higher than this one:

“Cardiff has a total of 17 swimming pools“

The keywords used in the search are in closer proximity in the first sentence, which therefore makes it more relevant.

Many people try to cram their content with keywords until it is fit to burst and does not flow naturally to the point where it becomes difficult to read and understand. Do not do this. Users do not like decoding your content. They want something that is easy to read, and simple to understand and will most likely leave your site and fail to recommend your website to others.

Keyword proximity is important, but so is readability. If you are looking for extra keyword density make sure you make use of your alt tag in your images. The alt tag shows a text alternative to an image for those who have a text only browser, and can be used to add further destcriptive keywords to a page without them having to be logical as they are not meant to be read.

The key points to remember are:

• Identify Your Relevant Keywords And Phrases
• Construct Your Content To Contain Those Words And Phrases
• Keep It Readable

And remember that most people construct their search terms the same way that they would construct a sentence when speaking.

For example you are more likely to see:

“Restaurants in Chester“

As opposed to:

“Chester Restaurants”

So use the top one in your content, and the second and less readable one in your alt tags.