SEO Case Study

Search Engine Optimisation (referred to as SEO from here on) is the process of applying different and varying methods in order to obtain a higher ranking on different Search Engines for your chosen keywords. There are a myriad of different things that contribute to the actual rank and the search engines release new algorithms periodically so staying on top of the latest SEO news is of paramount importance in order to maintain your website’s position.

SEO techniques vary from the very simple to the obscenely difficult and each technique can be considered either ‘white hat’ or ‘black hat’ depending on whether it is a trustworthy and reputable technique. For example backlink farming is considered a black hat technique and will eventually hinder the progress of your website.

For this particular case study we decided to analyse our own website (http://www.asit-group.com) and try to gain first page on Google for a search term for which we were not indexed at all at the time. The search term chosen was “web development coffs harbour”.

Please note that this report will hint at the use of various tools however will not actually use any specific names or give any specific websites used, also note that when the term ‘Google’ is used it refers specifically to ‘www.google.com’ and not any redirects based on country.

The starting date of this research was the 25^th of October 2014 and it finished exactly two months later on the 25^th of December 2014.

After researching what the latest algorithms demanded of high ranking websites an audit was done of our website. We decided on how we were going to target the website in order to utilise the chosen keywords most effectively.

The Code

Firstly, the code itself was not compliant with the standards from the W3C and as such would have a negative impact on the ranking. After the code was made to be compliant additional meta tags were added, with better, more precise descriptions, titles and keywords. A viewport was also added in order to help mobile viewing of the website.

Website Optimisation

After auditing our website we discovered that a lot of the content on our website was not well optimised and as such we had to go back and remake images and reword text in order to achieve a better website responsiveness and loading time.

Moz Rank

Moz Ranking is a very important system that does weigh in when ranking your website. Moz has the ability to rank your website based specifically on the domain and the trustworthiness as well as give it an overall score. After doing a fair bit of research on the matter it was found that a decent Moz Rank starts at 3 out of a possible 10 so this is what we were aiming for.

The Moz Rank was one benchmark used continuously throughout the study in order to compare how the techniques were working.

Backlinks

In order to increase the Moz Rank as well as how the Search Engines viewed our website it was extremely important to generate lots of reputable backlinks from trustworthy websites. Various techniques were used for this and within the two months we went from having no backlinks at all to at least 100, the final numbers are uncertain because there are many different tools used to count the number of backlinks and they all had different results.

Social Media

Some of the most trustworthy websites according to the Search Engines are the big social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and of course Google itself. As such we doubled our social media efforts and made sure we linked back to our website at every available opportunity.

Blogging

In order for a website to appear as trustworthy it must be seen as an ‘authority’ in the field. One of the easiest and also most effective ways of doing this is by blogging about your selected topic. We continued blogging about various topics as often as possible and actually embedded our blog into our website as well and encouraged people to visit the website to read the blog rather than the blogging platform we were using.

Alexa Rank

Alexa is another important rank and is basically a global rank. One of the tricky bits about SEO is this, in order to reach a higher place and gain more traffic you first have to have a lot of traffic. It’s a catch 22 situation. As such we tried to drive more and more traffic to the website in order to increase this aspect and gain a better result. What we managed to do was actually quite impressive.

Google PageRank

Google PageRank isn’t actually updated as frequently as it should be and as such isn’t a reliable tool for SEO, for the primary part of this research it was ignored.

Obviously there are a lot more techniques involved in this process with a lot of different tools being tried and tested and we actually also built a couple in house to help with the process.

The Results

Moz Rank

The Moz Rank results jumped very quickly in the first few days after the optimisation was applied and remained steady for the duration of the research. Each measure was converted to a percentage for the graph to provide a stable comparison.

Alexa Rank

This is the area where we saw the most immediate improvement. The first graph displays the actual position (the lower the number, the better).

Our initial rank was above 15 million and our final rank after the 2 months was about 966 000.

This next graph shows the varying rates at which we gained places on the Alexa Rank and shows how the rate lessened towards the higher ranks as there was a lot more competition.

It also shows how, at one point we actually lost places on the Alexa rank.

Page Appearance

Finally the most important result, where our website actually appeared in Google when searching for the term chosen. Initially, the website was not anywhere in the first 30 pages (possibly more, it wasn’t checked). Within a day we had jumped to page 8. The ranking remained about the same for a period of time until it jumped and then jumped again.

The end result is obvious that we did in fact manage to get on to the first page of Google for the search term chosen. We are currently swapping between positions 6, 7 and 8.

So if you are tired of being anonymous to your potential customers, why not try some SEO? Contact us for a personalized quote. Additionally for our blog post readers, if you mention this post whilst in discussion with us, your second month will be free!

Some of my favourite tools.

Honestly, I was struggling to find a topic for this post but then it occurred to me that maybe I should let you lovely people know some of my favourite tools and websites that I use to develop and design. It might give you some useful places to go or some fun things to use in your own projects.

http://www.dafont.com/

This website is fantastic. It’s just a massive archive of different fonts all organised nicely for you. All you do is download the cool looking font you want, install it, then use it to your heart’s desire!

http://www.fontconverter.org/

This website converts the font you just downloaded into a bunch of different formats just so everyone who ever looks at your website will be looking at it in the same way. You obviously need the right CSS to go along with this but I linked you to that in a previous post.

http://www.css3maker.com/

This website is pretty magical to be honest. It gives you a nice interface to tweak some parameters while giving you a visual example of what is happening and outputs the actual CSS to use on your own website.

http://www.w3schools.com/

Any web designer or developer that says they don’t use this website is not telling you the truth. Or they should start using this website! Nice, simple and clean interface with easy to understand example of most functions within HTML and CSS. Very good website for a quick refresher.

http://ietester.en.softonic.com/

This is a little program called IE Tester that simply loads a website in all of the different versions of Internet Explorer. Nice way for you to test the compatibility of your website.

http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Notepad++ is in my opinion, simply amazing. It has syntax highlighting, support for a load of different languages, is fast and very simple to use. The higher end of functions in Notepadd++ include thing like macros, launching the file to different programs and even saving via FTP.

I do have and use a lot of other tools for website development but those are some my favourite and definitely the ones I use the most often.

If you have any tools, utilities or websites you use a lot then let us know in the comments!

Till next time.

Alec

Is developing for Internet Explorer necessary?

Everyone knows what Internet Explorer is. It’s that browser you use to download a different browser. There are a lot of different options, each with their pros and cons. Google Chrome is by far the most popular but may not suit some people because of the fact it chews up a lot of RAM. Safari is rarely found on anything other than an Apple product and the other main option is Firefox which had a brief period of being really, really bad.

When you look at the current browser usage statistics (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) Chrome is sitting at just over 60% whereas Internet Explorer is under 10%. So the question comes up, is it really necessary to develop a website for Internet Explorer considering the fact that it is used so little?

Most people reading this would remember the dreaded Internet Explorer 6. At the time it was the most popular browser by far but to make sure a website would display properly on it a developer would have to include lots of weird, contradicting things that somehow combined into a working piece in IE6. Since then (thankfully) Internet Explorer has gotten a lot better. The interface is now quite clean and the actual browser is very fast, usually only just behind Chrome with most tasks.

Another point to consider is this, Internet Explorer is now very standards compliant. There are a few little things here and there, but the majority of the time the website will display exactly the same in the latest version of IE as it does in Chrome. Actually, in my experience, nowadays, it’s Firefox that requires the most ‘tending to’.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why hasn’t he given us an answer yet? Is developing for Internet Explorer necessary?” Well you could always do a quick check, in CSS or JS, for any versions of Internet Explorer and display a message to the user ordering them to download a better browser in order to view your amazing website but the simple fact is, yes, you do still need to cater for any weird little problems that Internet Explorer has, just like you need to cater for any weird little problems that any browser has. Even though only 10% of people use that browser, if your website gets 1000 visitors a day, that’s 100 people who are missing out on your content. Which is 3000 people a month (approximately, I did some serious rounding up with those figures) but the point is that you can see how quickly it adds up.

Besides, the only major issue I’ve come across lately is embedding different fonts on your website and with a simple little conversion tool and the code from this post http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/using-font-face/ you should be fine.

If you want to check out how we have catered for Internet Explorer just head over to our portfolio on www.asit-group.com

Till next time

Alec

Question and Answer Time: Ask ASIT Group.

1. How much does a website cost?

A website can cost a little or a lot - that is, things like its appearance, complexity and purpose all have an effect. Web developers (like us!) will work with clients to understand their needs and wants, and following that, can put forward a proposal for pricing.  To get you started, we have an excellent guide to pricing on our website http://www.asit-group.com/ and if what you're searching for isn't listed or you feel you require something special, drop us an email and you will hear from us as fast as humanly possible!


2. How do i get people to visit my website?

One of the biggest questions we get asked, and the answer is complicated.  Driving traffic to your website can come in a variety of ways, the nature of your business also has a huge impact and can massively change how you get your visitors. Typically though, people that see your site have a chance to visit it, this is nice and easy, flyers, paper / billboard advertising, listed advertisements, all of these will help people see your site.  Additionally, connecting with sites of similar interests and having them link to you is also an excellent way to do it.  There are so many other ways too, but I feel these are my favorite!


3. Why aren't I at the top of Google?

Let's first start with how Google ranks sites, and why some are higher than others.
Google likes sites that have HUGE daily traffic, a site with a million daily visits will just about always be higher up than a site with a thousand daily visits (as long as they are both relevant to the search criteria).  Secondly, a site that has a lot of other sites linking to it will be very likely to be at the top of a search, see, a site with a lot of other 'backlinks' is more likely to be relevant and provide the searcher with valuable information pertaining to their search.
Finally, Google loves compliant, updated sites, and that is where we can come in, building your site in certain ways and using certain tools will allow Google to search and index your site easier, also, making sure you have a skilled web developer that doesn't have any errors in his code is very important.


4. How long does a website take to make?

This is again, a difficult question to answer, simple websites can be deployed in a few days to a week, whereas large, complex websites can take weeks or even months to finish, it is all relative to the needs of the client and the project that is undertaken. Getting in contact with us early allows us to establish a deadline and milestones early on so you are always in the loop. When
you choose ASIT Group, you are assigned your own consultant that is with you throughout the entire development process, our commitment to customer satisfaction and transparency is second to none.


5. How can I add things to my website - I'm not great with computers?

When your website is completed you will always have your own customer interface just for your (or your employees) to use to update, administer, and manage your site.  We create an easy to use interface that is well structured and labeled. If you can Google, e Mail, and Facebook (or any of the three) we can create a portal that you can use easily and without frustration.

Well, that't it from us, catch you next time!

Definitely and absolutely necessary

I'm going to do something a little different today. Normally we discuss a lot of different things related to web design and development. At ASIT Group we also do a lot of computer repairs and custom installations and obviously there are a bunch of different things we need for the various jobs. So for anyone in the same sort of situation or for those of you who are attempting a fix on your own computer (hardware or software) these are the absolute necessities.

A lot of people forget that computers are an actual physical thing and need to be maintained in order to function correctly.

• Screwdrivers, for unscrewing those tiny little screws that seem to be everywhere, a magnetic one would be best and a little tray is always nice to store the screws while you're working so you don't lose anything.
• Cloths, dust in a major issue and apart from being ugly and making you sneeze it also increases heat inside the computer and hinders working on the machine so cleaning it may be a necessity.
• Blank CDs/DVDs, these can always come in handy.
• Blank Flash Drive, again, always handy, you will really want a minimum of 8Gb.
• Ethernet Cables, for network problems, you'll want a minimum of two and make sure the cables you have do actually work.
• Hiren's Boot CD, this is honestly the most useful tool ever created, it's basically a bootable CD with a load of different tools on it ranging from anti-viruses/anti-spyware/anti-malware to optimisers such as defragmentation and cleaning software to disk image makers and everything in-between. I prefer to have it on a bootable USB purely for the durability and portability factors but I honestly can not praise Hiren's Boot CD enough.
• Install CDs, if we're doing a fresh install of an Operating System it's handy to have that operating system lying around because chances are the client won't have the discs. I like to keep Windows 7, Windows 8 and a Linux distro around. Don't forget that you will need any extra drivers as well to make all of the peripherals work properly.
• Live CDs, these are extremely useful because it boots to an almost fully fledged operating system while keeping the actual operating system completely off which mean you can do those deep scans and proper diagnostics.
• Mobile Internet Connection, just in case the client doesn't have an Internet connection or they think theirs is broken, it's useful to have a backup. Most people have a decent amount of data usage on their mobile phones nowadays so that is actually my go-to thing.
• Various Cables, just to be sure everything is actually working as it should and in case the client doesn't have the right one. I would recommend at least a micro USB and a mini USB to USB cables as well as a printer cable and lately, possibly even a proper USB 3.0 cable.

Obviously the list goes on but those are the absolute necessities. If you think of any others just leave a comment!

Till next time,

Alec