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Building a modern business - III - Keyword targeting updates


In the previous post, Building a Modern Business - Part II - Keyword Targeting, I spoke about identifying keywords that would be used to boost my website up the rankings. This post follows on from that and outlines the tasks that were undertaken to include more of those keywords in my content.

Developing keyword focused content helps search engines better understand what your website’s primary goal, or service, is. If your content is sporadic/not structured, then your results will ultimately reflect that. You might be picked up for a range of keywords, but never anything that is strong enough to guarantee a high search engine results page (SERP) ranking.

At the end of the day, once you peel back the fancy algorithms, search engines are computers performing tasks. How well they perform those tasks depends on how good your instructions are. 

To help the website perform better in search and to instruct search engines better, some structural changes need to be applied. These changes will focus on my chosen keywords, selected in the previous post. As a reminder they are:

  • Web design inverness

  • Inverness web design

  • Web designer inverness

  • Inverness web designer

  • Web design in Inverness

The first two weeks

The primary task on the list during this period was to create an improved landing page template. Your landing page is a vital cog in helping users perform tasks on your website, and if the landing page is weak, it’s unlikely your users will know what they are expected to do next.

The page that was chosen for this task was Development Services. A page that was performing well in terms of impressions, but not when it came to ranking. In simple terms, the page was being picked up for a number of keywords, but was not giving off a strong enough signal to indicate what its primary keywords are.

First of all, the text content on the site was reworked to include more of the target keywords (listed above). This would better indicate to search engines this page is about web design in Inverness. 

A simple change, but a key one nonetheless. It won’t be perfect at this point, but that’s not the issue. Once the page is ranking better for those terms the content can be perfected over time.

Next up was a structural change. Improving the flow of the landing page and making it more like a sales funnel. Previously, it was selling a service, but not structured in any particular order. Having it flow more like a sale means the users have a better idea of what they are expected to do next. 

There were more contact methods added to the page, as well as increasing the number of contact forms. Previously, users had to scroll to the bottom of the page before seeing a contact form. Now, they are placed strategically, near content that entices users to take the next step.  

The contact forms were also simplified. Previously, they were asking for too much content, such as business name, requirements… Off-putting for users who just want to send a quick request. 

Now, they are basic quote request forms. Asking for a name, email, and if they want to include it, a phone number. Much simpler and faster to complete.

One of the final amendments made during this first two weeks was to improve the meta tags. Although they are not a ranking signal, and improved, optimised meta tag can really help sell your business to clients should they see your result in SERP.

During this time there were regular indexing requests made to Google Search Console. Although it is not guaranteed the changes will have been indexed at such an early stage, its worth comparing where the page was ranking before and after:

On November 14th, the day before the previous post went live, the page’s average ranking and impression count for the targeted keywords was as follows:

  • Web design inverness - 10 impressions and an average rank of 35.6

  • Inverness web design - 2 impressions and an average rank of 31.5

  • Web designer inverness - 3 impressions, 44 average rank

  • Inverness web designer - 3 impressions, 42.7 average rank

  • Web design in Inverness - 2 impressions and and average rank of 22

At the end of the first two weeks, on November 28th, those numbers were:

  • Web design inverness - No data

  • Inverness web design - 3 impressions and an average rank of 44

  • Web designer inverness - 3 impressions, 52 average rank

  • Inverness web designer - No data

  • Web design in Inverness - 2 impressions and and average rank of 45.5

At this point it’s safe to say that there has been a decline in performance. However, I cannot be certain that any of the changes have been indexed here. Google can take time to rank a page after it has been resubmitted. These numbers are disappointing, but not unexpected given the short period of time between the old and the new content.

The next two weeks

Now the content has been amended to match the keywords I am targeting, the next stage is to modify the internal link on the site.

When looking at the data on Google Search Console I noticed that the home page was not actually my top page for impressions. It was actually the third highest, which got me thinking about a ‘doorways and rooms’ concept.

Most pages on a website are doorways. By that I mean they lead you onto other areas of the site. It could send you to another ‘doorway’, or it might be to a ‘room’. 

The ‘rooms’ are where the main sales funnel begins. A landing page is a perfect example of this. The purpose of this ‘room’ is to supply the user with enough information that enables them to move onto the next step. Getting in touch, or buying a product.

The way I had structured the site previously meant these doorways were leading users to dead-ends. There was no pre-defined route or indication of what the most important content on the site is. 

With this in mind, my next move was to create routes to the most important content, the web design in Inverness landing page. 

This would do two things. 

First, it makes it easier for users to find the information they are looking for. If they land on one of the ‘doorway’ pages they are still able to easily navigate to the main service content and sales process.

Secondly, having a number of pages all pointing to the same content indicates to search engines that this is what is valued the most. This indicator could help a search engine prioritise its ranking. 

I use the word ‘could’ because nothing is guaranteed at this point, but the concept sounds plausible at least!

Structured data is of importance when building a site, it gives search engines a helping hand to identify content related to the services you offer, and a range of contact information.

With this in mind, I improved the structured data used throughout the site, and particularly on the web design in Inverness landing page.

Most of the schema was added the the head of the document, but in some cases it was added inline. For example, I had no idea a simple link on a page can potentially have so much structured data attached to it. The same with the footer credits, where I added information such as the founders name and founding date.

As well as this, I included a link to my personal LinkedIn page, and marked it up with the correct format to indicate to search engines this is a personal page that I control the content of.

Finally, there were improvements made to the image names and their alt tags. Probably not a change that would have too much effect, but potentially it could pull in users via an image search query.

Final Rankings Changes

So, how did these changes affect the overall rankings? To answer that question, first we need to look at how the site was performing before the date of the previous post. It was at that point I submitted new content.

On the 14th November the average rankings and impressions were as follows:

web design inverness - 10 impressions and an average ranking of 35.6

Inverness web design - 5 impressions and an average ranking of 38.2

Web designer inverness - 3 impressions, 44 average rank

Inverness web designer - 3 impressions, 42.7 average rank

Web design in Inverness - 2 impressions and and average rank of 22

Generally, there was not much that could be achieved from those rankings. The landing page picked up a few impressions, but no clicks. Pretty much expected given the page was mostly being served on the third or fourth page.

And at the end of the four weeks, was there any improvement on these rankings? You would hope so. Even a small gain is enough to confirm the effort has been worthwhile. 

web design inverness - 8 impressions and an average ranking of 13.1

Inverness web design - 3 impressions and an average ranking of 15.3

Web designer inverness - 1 impressions, 16 average rank

Inverness web designer - 3 impressions, 16.7 average rank

Web design in Inverness - 2 impressions and and average rank of 10

Visually, taking all search queries on the site into account, from November 14th to December 13th, the data looks like:

Google Search Console data for morganbaker.dev

The overall impressions count has clearly improved over that time period, and the average ranking has improved slightly. However, it does seem to be going down again, and clicks are virtually non-existent at this point.

Conclusion

Overall the work done in the past four weeks had a positive effect on the website. How long these gains hold for is another question. And certainly it’s not going to be enough. More work needs to be done to boost the rankings even further.

What can be attempted next?

More content will be added with this post, first of all. Once it is indexed it will hopefully add to the rankings boost. As well as that, the next step will include improving how the site appears in search, optimising meta tags and improving knowledge pane data. 


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