SEO Archives - Nitin Gaba

Website Aesthetics – 2.0

gabanitin — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 12:45:50 +0000

How important is the look of your website? In today’s world where people use the internet for everything the first impression of your website can be the difference between a consumer choosing you or your competitor. When a potential customer first sees your website the first thing they see can have a big influence on whether they stay on your website and surf around to learn more about your company or if they close it right away and search for one of your competitors on Google. This is what we call a bounce and this is what makes up the bounce rate.

As the owner or manager of a business your goal should be to keep the bounce rate as low as possible. Although it may seem fairly obvious, if the bounce rate of your website is really high that means most people that visit your website will leave without doing anything. How do you drive traffic to your stores or have people make a purchase on your website if they leave without even clicking to another page?

For example take a look below at the four iterations of the Gaba Travel website. How long would you stay on each of the following iteration? Would you go to another page on that each of those iterations?

Pre-2012 Website:

2012 – 2013 Website:

2014 – 2015 Website:

2015 onwards website:

Our testing has shown that almost nobody stayed on the pre-2012 website but who can blame them, the colour scheme was not very attractive, the home page is filled with lines of outdated code. I myself would not stay on that website. As the website improved, so did the bounce rate. With every iteration of the website, the bounce rate has been decreasing tremendously, not only because of Website Usability but also because of pure aesthetics. Looks really do matter because the look of your website is the first impression you make on your potential client. If that first impression is not a good one, you may have just lost that potential client forever.

Don’t forget that you only have 7 seconds to make a strong first impression. “Everybody knows how important first impressions are. But not everybody knows that the “first impression” is actually only a seven second window upon first meeting someone.” (Business Insider)

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Website Usability

gabanitin — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:38:31 +0000

In 2012 I did a post about the importance of the look of your website. Today I’m going to expand on that post with more of a focus on the usability of your website. When I did that post Smartphones were just beginning to become mainstream and very few websites were mobile friendly. Today it is the exact opposite. Smartphones are not only mainstream but regular feature phones are rare almost worldwide as smartphones get cheaper. For people that have visited my blog before you may notice that I just did a big overhaul of my blog. It went from the default 2011 WordPress theme to a modern, mobile-friendly/responsive blog site. I’ve also made it easier to browse by creating a better navigation menu and pages rather than the previous setting where I had only 2 pages on the blog. A home page with continuous scrolling to see all my blog posts and an about me page. Making it a lot better to not only look at but also easier to navigate through.

Why is this such a big deal? Well simply put the harder your website is to use or navigate, the higher the bounce rate of your website will be and the lower the time spent on your website by each user will be. For a student blog this may not be very important but for company websites, personal websites and other blogs it is very important! The first thing users pay attention to is the aesthetics/looks of your website. If you have an ugly website the user will probably leave the website in under a minute. Second is the ease of use. So how easy is the website to use and navigate through. You might have a nice looking website but if it’s hard for me to find exactly what I’m looking for, you’re going to lose me pretty fast. I may stay on your website for about 30 seconds to find something but anything more than that I’m going. The third point actually builds on both the first & second point. It is mobile responsiveness. If your website looks great and is easy to use on my Desktop computer then that’s great but if I’m on my smartphone trying to use your website and it is hard to use or does not look nice on my phone then once again I’m gone.

What does this mean for Marketers, Businesses and Blogs? In order of priority each business must ensure their website follows the guidelines below:

1. Make sure your website looks good on the Desktop computers and Laptops.

2. Make sure your website is very easy to navigate through and use on Desktop computers and Laptops.

3. Make sure you make your website mobile responsive so it can detect if it is desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet and adjust accordingly to look nice and remain easy to use.

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What is SEO

gabanitin — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 23:43:23 +0000

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization. A word that not many new or small business owners understand or know about but yet it is a word that could take their business to a whole new level. Well the first question is what really is SEO and how does it work? Most of us use Google when searching for anything ranging from a local dry cleaner to how to write a blog post. Have you ever wondered how Google finds all these websites or how the companies at the top get to the top? Google uses specific algorithms to scavenge the web looking for keywords and other specific things, the process of tailoring your website to these specifications is what SEO is. Google uses “Googlebot” and Yahoo and Bing Search use “Bingbot.” These are the 2 main robots that go digging through the world wide web and basically decides what is the first search result for when you search “travel agent.”

At the top and on the right hand side we have the ads but right below that we have the “organic” posts, which means the unpaid and natural search results that the Googlebot feels belong at the top. The first organic search result is Flight Centre, which means they must be doing a really good job of SEO, at least on the keyword “travel agent.” Basically SEO is best optimizing your website to what the search engines are looking for, this includes but is not limited to content on your website, links from other websites to your website (the type of website linking to your website is very important), headings, keywords and more. Woorank.com gives them a score of 83.3/100 for SEO. This means that although they’re doing a pretty good job there are still some things they could be doing better. This is probably because the way the bots work is constantly changing which means so is the process of SEO, the company that can stay on top of this is the company that will consistently appear at the top of the search results and drive more traffic to their website.

Check out Part 2 for “Why SEO is so Important.”

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