Landing Pages

[Cloud]

Hey People!

I see a lot of people asking about SEO, WordPress, or Xara the basics are the same. As an example:

The client wanted to target a new city for their SEO so what did we do? Simple - create a landing page for that city. It's hard to target more than one geographical area with the same home page - not impossible - but difficult. They rank high for their main geographical area (Harrogate) so the new landing was created to target their new area (York). This page only went live a few weeks ago and has leapt and bound to rank around 20 in Google search, we're hoping for a higher rank within the month.

You can check out the new page https://hgblindsandshutters.co.uk/blinds-york/
There are some speed improvements to be completed - Facebook Messenger is slowing down the page.

It's a simplified version of the home page with links to all of the products and some important bits and pieces.

Here's what's good for SEO.

1. Keyphrase in URL
2. Keyphrase in Heading (H1) make sure that it's right at the top (Google say that you can use as many H1 as you want to but for most pages 1 is enough), keyphrase in body text, right at the top
3. As many H2 headings as you like - just remember the hierarchy
4. Relevant content - DO NOT go mad on keyword stuffing.
5. Plenty of internal links - if a page on your site is very popular then link it to some other pages on your site.
6. At least 1 external link
7. Images - main image with the same filename as the page title, be descriptive in the ALT-Text for the image
8. Provide information - NOT SPAM
9. SPEED - User Experience is VERY important. Make sure your page loads fast, that means smaller image sizes. One of the benefits of XARA is that it creates static sites, and everything being equal; a static site will load much faster than a dynamic one such as WordPress.
10. I don't know if Xara still uses the keywords meta tags, but ignore those.
11. User Experience - Google is VERY SMART these days, make sure that your site is a pleasure to use, clean design, easy to navigate, speedy, etc. All contribute to higher rankings.

Obviously, there are backlinks etc which affect SEO but the list above is the least you should do.

[gwpriester]

Great tips. Many thanks.

[Cloud]

Thank you, Gary. Hopefully, it inspires some people to go and read up on SEO in 2020, it's completely different from what existed before. Unfortunately, we have to remember that Google is the world's largest advertising company, so a lot of what they say contradicts what they might have said a few months earlier. They are now at the stage where they are being deliberately vague about SEO so that they can pull people toward pay per click. But as long as people follow this list (obviously not exhaustive) and get plenty of organic backlinks, they'll be OK.

[Acorn]

Thankiess for the tips!!
___________________________________
[Acorn: Please remove this blatant link from your personal details] --> Scan Ur Pics

scanurpics, you are not particularly good at infiltrating this community with a trite Post that is badly written and then you advertise your company as of Aus but you are posting from Jakarta.

Sorry to see you go.

Acorn

[Barbara B]

Dear Scan Your Pics—

You got off lucky. If Acorn hadn't thoroughly deleted your post and your member ship, I myself would have, and Administrators have secret powers that will make your girlfriend leave you, spoil your milk, and get 20,000 "Learn how to Draw" spams in your mailbox.

Basically talking to no one here; they won't be back, but it's therapeutic to snark a spammer every so often,

-b

[handrawn]

to me, a snark is a wild goose it is pointless to hunt... sorta apt for a spammer...

although I appreciate your quaint north american usage is more like a reference to sarcasm

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi Cloud, I don't wish to come across as anti any of your points made in your post. I've often found the same difficulty in placing pages into Googles SEO for a company covering various regions.

First and formost is trying to gain ranking above multiple directory sites (yell.com etc) These sites have huge budgets and back-links to force their top rankings. Getting on the first page is the only target. No one searches into page two and lower.

Your 'parent' page for 'Blinds Harrogate' (Lovely place!) brings you slap bang in the middle of the first Google search page.

However my search for 'Blinds York' only listed your York site on Googles page 5 this evening.

So my question is what other methods could you use:

Perhaps purchase a seperate domain name?

Create an entirely different hosting?

Register this domain in google webmasters under a different (but valid) address?

You can also register a company with multiple addresses wth Google webmaster but this can be a choir.

I'm interested in your reply as a few years back I ran a site for a local blind/curtain company which I had no issue getting into the top three in Google for my local area but getting a ranking in another town twenty miles away was exceptionaly difficult.

[ss-kalm]

Okay Barbara ... you're up!

[Acorn]

Okay Barbara ... you're up!

Keith (and Egg), thank you for advising about the erstwhile newbie TGer who has been banished.
I decided to have an early lunch first.

Acorn