Acuity Designs » SEO http://www.acuitydesigns.net Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:36:18 +0000 en hourly 1 Creative Expansion! Acuity Designs and 2011 … http://www.acuitydesigns.net/creative-expansion-acuity-designs-and-2011/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/creative-expansion-acuity-designs-and-2011/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 21:16:03 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=3283

Dec 13 and we are all sat around the table here; some familiar faces and some new ones in the creative studio. A few hours, a long discussion and we are all very excited – 2011 will be very eventful year for Acuity Designs.

Acuity Designs has just expanded to include a whole new creative space crawling with all kinds – from graphic designers to web developers, from marketing specialists to usability experts; we have just included a whole bunch of new exciting people! Our new team members come from varied background and some of them have some very exciting brands and clients in their portfolio.

Over the course of 2011, Acuity Design will be focusing on its creative offerings, with the addition of 3 remarkable designers. From illustration to brand design, from web design london to customized design solutions, we hope to be creating award winning designs!

Another area of expansion has been the Online Marketing / E-Marketing offerings from Acuity. Now with a bespoke team of internet marketers putting their minds together to come up with online campaigns, search engine optimization and other marketing solutions through the digital world, our clients will receive a service (and of course the results) expected from some of the best in this field. Our current marketing team, led by a previous Head of Online Search of a large UK media company, has indulged with major brands and dot com companies.

And of course, we will be posting more and more helpful stuff here for all of you guys! Everything from design to development, you will find our articles, inspirations, solutions, discussions on these blog pages throughout 2011.

Watch this space – ‘Cuz we are stepping it up!

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/creative-expansion-acuity-designs-and-2011/feed/ 1 Web Based SEO Applications and Online SEO Tools http://www.acuitydesigns.net/web-based-seo-applications-and-online-seo-tools/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/web-based-seo-applications-and-online-seo-tools/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:23:37 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=3085

As we move more and more into doing things via ‘clouds’ and online web based applications; one of the few things that I have yet to find is a truely comprehensive intermediate web application for search engine optimisation.. I soon came across one that seemed to fit the bill.

Thus, I went off on a journey and in short, I found no web based SEO applications. There are hundreds if not thousands of fairly good individual tools for various tasks associated with SEO. Some of the more popular web based tools include for instance website grader. There is a previous post I made on such tools here: 10 Great Free SEO Tools and Resources

However, after a few tweets (@AcuityDesigns) I came across Sheer SEO.

Sheer SEO

SheerSEO is an SEO software to track and analyze your SEO campaign. Also helps you with link building.

Sheer SEO is a basic to intermediate tool that offers comprehensive link tracking, and automation and an intuitive UI to help speed up tasks such as directory submission to hundreds of free high PR directories. It couldn’t definitely work as a tool to help a freelance web developer offer basic to intermediate SEO campaigns to his clients.

Have any of you had extensive experience with Sheer SEO? Any negatives?

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/web-based-seo-applications-and-online-seo-tools/feed/ 3 5 Articles To Understanding Your Websites Bounce Rate http://www.acuitydesigns.net/5-articles-to-understanding-your-websites-bounce-rate/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/5-articles-to-understanding-your-websites-bounce-rate/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:57:39 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=1862

Understanding your website’s bounce rate can be the key between creating a more user friendly or profitable website. The 5 articles below should hopefully help you to do that:

How to Analyze and Improve the ‘Bounce Rate’ for Your Website

Getting users engaged with your content can result with a sale, subscription, bookmark and return visit. One of best ways to increase reader engagement is to make sure that your site architecture interlinks related content and displays them in a way which encourages the user to click around. If the first article doesn’t result in a subscription, the second might.

30 Simple Ways of Improving Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate

It’s obvious: Rankings and traffic do not mean much when the website visitors bounce off and you fail to convert them to buyers, subscribers or whatever you desire your visitors to do for you. Some industry insiders even suspect bounce rate to be a ranking factor itself already.

What is Your Bounce Rate?

Why is your bounce rate an important thing to keep an eye on, and better yet what the heck is your web site bounce rate? I will answer those questions and let you know the best ways to lower your bounce rate and get people staying on your web site a little ‘bit longer.

Stop Bouncing: tips for website success

Bounce rate is insightful because from the perspective of a website visitor, it measures this phenomenon: “I came; I puked; I left.” (OK, technically it also means the number of sessions with just one pageview.) While metrics like visitors show the number of people who came to your site, bounce rate will tell you how many of those people were unimpressed and left your site without taking any action (not even dignifying the site with a single click!).

How Bounce Rate Can Help You Pinpoint Site Problems

A bounce is a one-page visit. “I came, I landed, I left.” Bounce Rate is the rate at which bounces occur, that is, the number of bounces on a page divided by the number of people who entered the site on that page.

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/5-articles-to-understanding-your-websites-bounce-rate/feed/ 13 Grade/Score/Analyse Your Blog http://www.acuitydesigns.net/gradescoreanalyse-your-blog/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/gradescoreanalyse-your-blog/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:22:30 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=1306

Whilst on twitter, I came across this nice little tool to help grade your blog via a tweet by Rutiso It then provides an analysis of your blog and outputs a score out of 100. It functions/looks vry similar to hubspot’s ever popular Website Grader.

The tool can be found here: http://blog.grader.com/

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/gradescoreanalyse-your-blog/feed/ 0 Is Alexa Traffic Rank Important – 4 resources to help you find out http://www.acuitydesigns.net/is-alexa-traffic-rank-important-4-resources-to-help-you-find-out/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/is-alexa-traffic-rank-important-4-resources-to-help-you-find-out/#comments Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:47:05 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=1227

Alexa Traffic Rank

‘Is Alexa Traffic Rank Important??’ is something a client asked me the other day, and I realised I didn’t have a definite answer to give them… I found the following 4 articles to be very useful!

1 ) SEO Book: http://www.seobook.com/archives/000944.shtml

Over the last few days my Alexa has doubled from around 13,400 to around 6,800. Wow I am great. Not really!
If you looked at my actual server logs you would see that traffic has been fairly constant over the past week with only a small uptick in traffic of about 5 percent. Why the huge increase in Alexa rankings then?

2) Google Success: http://www.google-success.com/how-important-is-alexa-ranking-for-webmasters.htm

The main problem with Alexa is its rankings are based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar onto their browser. If your website visitors do not have the toolbar running, they do not affect the rankings of your sites. The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to game.

3) John Chow: http://www.johnchow.com/why-alexa-is-worthless/

The main problem with Alexa is its rankings are based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar onto their browser. If you do not have the toolbar running, you do not affect the rankings of the sites you visit. The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to cheat the system. Just get a few friends to install the toolbar and have them surf your site everyday. It does not take many people to break into the top 100,000.
4) http://www.kangainternet.com.au/exploring-google-page-rank-and-alexa-rank.html

So, you’ve heard a few things about SEO and now you are trying to learn some more about what SEO actually is and what your goals actually are. Well, your main two goals in SEO are to increase your websites position in the search engine results pages(SERP’s) and increase website traffic. Google Pagerank represents how important your website is compared to all other websites and Alexa Rank is how many visitors your website gets in relation to all other websites on the Internet. You are aiming to get a high Google Pagerank (commonly refered to as PR) and a low Alexa Rank. What looking at these two measured elements does is give you some idea of how well, or how badly, your website is doing in comparison to all other websites. Lets explore these two rankings in a little more detail.

Do you think Alexa rank is important?

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/is-alexa-traffic-rank-important-4-resources-to-help-you-find-out/feed/ 10 Google Analytics Explained Almost http://www.acuitydesigns.net/google-analytics-explained-almost/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/google-analytics-explained-almost/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 22:45:43 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=1170

Google Analytics Explained, well almost… sort of

As i continue my transition from flash to html, SEO/Web Stats has become a topic of increasing interest, and one that ha the rare ability to at times dumbfound me. Installing Google Analytics on our site, has for the most part just been used to count our visitors and look at our traffic, so over the past week i thought I’d find out what some of the other lovely little percentages and numbers mean….

Unique Visitors
The Unique Visitors figure you have represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period(the date range you specify). A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.

Bounce Rates
In my forum hunting and web searching for a simple and clear definition of bounce rate, I’ve found people throwing formulae around and others telling me to dismiss it all together if the site is not ad based. However, as with anything there is hope and I worked bounce rate to essentially be: when someone enters my site, lands on one page, and then leaves (exits) the site without ever visiting or looking at any of my other pages. Apparently, the general consensus I have found is that a site-wide bounce rate of over 40% is cause for concern. So for the past week, I was concerned, but the changes I am beginning t implement have brought my previous bounce rate of 71% to 38% in the space of a week. Mainly my navigation made it effort’ for people to just have a peruse, so making things easier for the user, they seem to be staying more. Pretty basic logic.

Exit Rates
This fell into place after figuring out bounce rates. Exit rates detail the amount of people who navigate away from your site entirely from a particular page. So for instance, if your home page has an exit rate of say 100%, this would be disastrous, as 100% of people would look at your home page and go away, not good! Although, there are situations where a high exit rate makes sense, lets say a ‘completed transaction page’ or a ‘thankyou for contacting us’ page. This is because the user has used your service and has no further reason to stay.

Visitor Loyalty
Bar a few certain site scenarios, wanting visitors to come back after they’ve visited in the past is a given for the majority of us. This tool is a decent indication of whether your blog is boring or not and how popular it is.

Visitor Recency
This stat looks at the number of days that have passed since a person’s last visit to your site. So you get to see how often people are coming back to read your blog ramblings. The ’0′ field means they have never visited before as there is no stored tracking cookie on that computer. This will probably be the highest number by a good margin.

Depth of Visit
In short the depth of visit report shows how many pages of your site, the user took the time to view. The depth of visit 1 goes to constituting your bounce rate. A high depth of visit, basically means user’s are enjoying whatever it is you have or are doing, as they are taking time to navigate through your pages.

There are flip sides to most of these analytic statistics that will be relevant to your website and what it is your trying to achieve, but as I delve further into Google Analytics, I am beginning to realise what a marvellous tool it is. Until next time…

Comments from others:

Quimp

I find the Goal tab to be much more valuable than a lot of the stats you mentioned in the article. As a designer, you should use this tool to optimize your important pages.
- If you’re going to buy ads, the map overlay tool is excellent to identify regions to target.
- The Click Patterns > Site Overlay is awesome. You get to know what works and what doesn’t on your pages. I found out that one of the links I thought were the most important had a click ratio of 0.1%; it had to be moved.
- and so on. Analytics is a very valuable tool with a lot of potential.

Elan Man

Nice post.
There is a lot of functionality in GA that a lot of people probably don’t bother with/know exists (myself included and I’ve been using it for a long time). I too was concerned about bounce rate recently (just over 50%) on my blog.
But then, most of the visits come from google search where they type in a specific search term. I’m assuming they find what they want and then leave? I’ve since managed to get the bounce rate down to about 30%.
But I can’t help wondering, is the bounce rate as important on a blog?

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/google-analytics-explained-almost/feed/ 9 Free Tool to Select Domain Names http://www.acuitydesigns.net/free-tool-to-select-domain-names/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/free-tool-to-select-domain-names/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:38:45 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=1005

Visit the tool by clicking below:
http://domai.nr

Domainr helps you explore the entire domain name space beyond the ubiquitous—and crowded—.com, .net and .org. Inspired by jish.nu, burri.to and del.icio.us, apologies to Flickr, and a high-five to Dopplr.

Other Posts

]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/free-tool-to-select-domain-names/feed/ 4 How to translate a website – considerations http://www.acuitydesigns.net/how-to-translate-a-website-considerations/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/how-to-translate-a-website-considerations/#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:00:30 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=964

Guest Writer: Tamara Bloom BSc, MSc

Localisation/translating your website/…

Do what with my website?

First things first, why would you want to translate your website? Half the world speaks English anyway, right? In today’s ‘globalised’ society, clients are increasingly outsourcing commissions abroad in search of the best provider. If potential customers cannot even understand your home page, nine out of ten will click straight past you to someone who has had the forward-thinking to make their webpage more accessible. Even if you’re the best person for the job. Contrary to common belief, tapping into this potential market needn’t be time-consuming or expensive. Plus, doing so will enhance your image to overseas and home clients alike as a modern, international player proactively catering for every need.

The details…

Before anything else, you will need to think carefully about how much of your website you want to translate and the language(s) you will provide. You might just give an idea of what you offer through an alternative home page and possibly a couple of main links. Or you may opt for a version of the entire website. Be practical – having your website in Zulu or Gaelic might be appealing, but it’s unlikely to win you many potential clients. Your energy would probably be better spent adding German or French to inject an online presence in those search engines. A few well-chosen keywords will get you the clicks you need. Then your images can speak for themselves!

Remember to make clients aware of your actual linguistic capabilities, or include provision for communicating when they get in touch. No point wowing them with your perfect Polish website if you can’t then understand their requirements or give them a quote! Similarly, don’t be misleading with your translated page. Nothing will annoy visitors more than finding a wonderfully translated homepage, only to discover that all the links go back to English content pages.

Bring on the translation!

Now that you’ve planned what’s to be translated and how, there are several ways to tackle the translation itself. We’ll outline a couple of the main ones below.

* Do it yourself. If you happen to speak a (relevant – see above) foreign language, this is the simplest way, and gives you the most control over what the translated version says. If you plan on an extensive amount of translation, however, do make sure you have the time to invest in it. Also, only attempt this if you really are fluent in the language concerned, including any industry-specific vocab. Even native speakers make mistakes; anything less and your text is guaranteed to sound unnatural. At worst it will be totally unintelligible.
* Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. These vary a great deal, from commercial software such as STL Trados to online translators such as Google Translate. The latter group is likely to be the one of use to you, and we’ve put a list of some of the better-known apps below. One idea is to try the url translation box in the Google’s tool, for an instant version of your website in almost any language. (Caution: this WILL need revising!)
* Call in the professionals. Getting a professional translator to tackle your webpage saves you the time and hassle of doing it yourself, as well as providing a contact for summarising any foreign-language correspondence you receive. You can contact translation agencies for recommendations. Ask about experience and qualifications to help find the right person for you – a specialisation in your area would also help. Check if they use CAT tools such as Trados or Déjavu – among other things you may be able to negotiate a better rate and a quicker deadline as these can cut out a lot of the more tedious parts of translation. You can cut costs further by simply getting them to redraft an online translation or proofread a later draft.
* Phone a friend. Whether it be proofreading or helping with the initial translation, make use of your native-speaker contacts, especially if they understand your area.

So there you have our brief guide to translating your website. Contact us if you have any questions. Good luck!

Guest Writer: Tamara Bloom

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/how-to-translate-a-website-considerations/feed/ 3 Check Your Google Position for a Keyword/Keyword Phrase Tool http://www.acuitydesigns.net/check-your-google-position-for-a-keywordkeyword-phrase-tool/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/check-your-google-position-for-a-keywordkeyword-phrase-tool/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:11:56 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=707

Hi all.

Today, I came across a great FREE (always nice!) tool that allows you to check your search engine position for an exact keyword or keyword phrase in Google, Yahoo and Live.


You can then go further and a whole host of keywords to a full report which then includes backlinks.

Visit the Tool.

Credit: http://www.exactfactor.com/Seo-tools.aspx

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]]> http://www.acuitydesigns.net/check-your-google-position-for-a-keywordkeyword-phrase-tool/feed/ 7 10 Tutorials and Resources to Help You Understand/ Implement Copywriting Techniques http://www.acuitydesigns.net/10-tutorials-and-resources-to-help-you-understand-implement-copywriting-techniques/ http://www.acuitydesigns.net/10-tutorials-and-resources-to-help-you-understand-implement-copywriting-techniques/#comments Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:45:27 +0000 London Design @ Acuity http://www.acuitydesigns.net/?p=692

Copywriting is the use of words to promote a person, business, opinion, or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing (as in the body of a newspaper article or book), the term copywriter is generally limited to such promotional situations, regardless of media (as advertisements for print, television, radio or other media).

Copywriting Wikipedia


1) Copywriting 101: A 10 Step Discussion

Copywriting is one of the most essential elements of effective online marketing. The art and science of copywriting involves strategically writing words that promote a person, product, business, opinion, or idea, with the ultimate intention of having the reader take some form of action.

2) Copywriting in Web Design

Web copy is too valuable an asset to simply stuff into a finished web design. Learning to analyse and use copy as a design tool helps you make the right design choices and create unified websites tuned to their purpose. There’s more to a website than looking good and being easy to use.

3) 10 Tips for SEO Copywriting

SEO Copywriting is a skill. For most people it’s really something you learn over time by doing it, paying close attention to what your competitors are doing and reading up on how to write copy for websites, blogs, press releases and articles.

4) The Art of Copywriting

Copywriting involves researching the client, in depth and then writing about them. However, depending on the contract or web page, the amount that needs to be written may vary drastically. The content needs to be relevant at all times and should, perhaps most importantly, include keywords. These keywords are given to the SEO Company by their client, and must appear in the text within the website, in order to gain the rankings in the search engines.

5) Copywriting: the edge of..

So my view is that ‘copywriting’ describes, at it’s broadest but yet most useful definition, the business of thinking through, organising and then presenting any information at all required to place a case before the world.

6) Tips To Improve Your Copywriting

To retain a reader’s attention span, sentences should be clear and concise. Copies have to be simple to read and browse. Whenever possible, utilize headings, sub-headings, bullet points, and numbered lists. The golden rule of copywriting is that less is more. Action verbs, as well as speaking in the active voice instead of the passive voice, will move your readers and build their confidence.

7) Why Copywriting is the Key to Successful Online Marketing

Content drives the Internet, and using the right words in the right way will determine not only how well your site converts visitors into sales, but also how well you rank in search engines and how many links you get.

8 ) 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang

Just imagine how disappointed you’d be after crafting a killer headline for your post, only to lose readers with an opening that failed to carry the momentum. A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.

9) The benefits of freelance copywriting

Copywriting requires a great number of skills; you must know your audience, what medians are most effective, and you must be able to write something that motivates your reader into buying your product. Many copywriters take time to attend workshops, seminars, and conduct research in order to improve their skills.

10) Persuasive Writing Techniques

Want to convince your readers to do something or agree with your point of view?

OK, that was a silly question. Of course you do.

Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating a win-win situation. You present a case that others find beneficial to agree with. You make them an offer they can’t refuse, but not in the manipulative Godfather sense.

Reccomendations; check out:

http://www.escapingthewordcage.com

http://www.copyblogger.com

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