Name: Sleekweb
Price range: $$$

In basic terms, SEO - short for <em>Search Engine Optimisation</em> is all about <em>optimising</em> your website to rank higher on search engines such as <em>Google,Bing</em> and <em>Duck-Duck-Go</em>.

These search engines will <em>crawl </em>using "robots", essentially visiting each page of your website that it can find and then performing some tests to determine how well it should <em>rank - </em>how high in the search results this page will appear for each search query.

As I've talked about what SEO is in previous blog posts, I won't go into too much detail about the concepts here. Instead, you may find <a href="https://www.sleekweb.co.uk/blog/seo-benefits-to-a-business">this article</a> of interest.

This may sound very complicated, but it doesn't have to be. You can measure the effectiveness of your SEO using a number of tools available online.
<h2>Two types of SEO</h2>
Search engines rank each individual web page based on a number of different criteria - which can be divided into one of two groups. <em>Technical SEO </em>or <em>Content SEO</em>.

It's more fruitful to focus your efforts on getting both of these aspects of SEO to a good standard, rather than focusing on one area and completely neglecting the other. An optimal combination of both will set your page up for the best possible chance to appear high in the search rankings.
<h3>Technical SEO</h3>
The time it takes to load your page. How each element appears to a mobile user. Delivering resources in an efficient way. Image sizes being the correct resolution for the screen they are being viewed on.
These are all <strong>key factors</strong> considered by <em>robots </em>when it comes to deciding where to rank your web page in search results listings.

The full list of factors is far too long to write down here, but you can diagnose your website's <strong>Technical SEO</strong> using <a href="https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse">Google Chrome's Lighthouse</a>

<strong>Lighthouse</strong> is a tool which performs a similar analysis to the crawling <em>robots</em> search engines use. It analyses many criteria, including the ones mentioned above, to determine how accessible, mobile-friendly, fast and optimised your page is.
After running a scan on your page, you should see a screen like below.

[caption id="attachment_233" align="aligncenter" width="300"]<img class="wp-image-233 size-medium" src="https://data.sleekweb.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/sleekweb-lighthouse-homepage-300x239.png" alt="Sleekweb homepage lighthouse score" width="300" height="239" /> Sleekweb homepage lighthouse score[/caption]

On this screen, you are able to see exactly what factors are "weighing your page down", and how to fix them.

Google focuses on mobile-first, however lighthouse allows you to scan your page from both a mobile and a desktop point of view. The differences being how much content is shown on the screen at once, how quick the expected connection will be and how large the images should be.

<strong>Fixing your technical SEO</strong> is mostly a job for your website developer. Very often, technical SEO issues can only be fixed in the code side of things, though some issues such as <em>image sizing </em>could be solved by just uploading optimal images to replace the (usually) too large ones.
<h3>Content SEO</h3>
Relevant keyword usage within the first two paragraphs. Correctly assigning a H1 heading, title and page description. Providing relevant and <em>non-spammy </em>content to your users. Being linked to by other popular websites (<em>Backlinks).</em> These are the key factors of <strong>Content SEO</strong>.

Be consistent with writing and providing content. Focus on <a href="https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/11/22/long-tail-keywords-in-content-strategy/">Long-Tail</a> content which is always relevant, not tied to any specific limited one time event or product.

There are a few more tools which I recommend for checking your <strong>Content SEO </strong>effectiveness.

<a href="https://search.google.com/search-console">Google search console</a> allows you to see the performance of your web page in comparison with real search terms that people have used. Optimising towards the keywords which prove to get you clicks can be an effective approach.

<a href="https://www.pulno.com/">Pulno</a> can effectively judge the effectiveness of <em>backlinks</em> towards your website rankings. Enter your site's URL and you can see which sites are linking to your pages, the "<em>Pulno power</em>" of each of those sites, and your own websites <em>power</em>. Beware though, there can be a long delay for this tool to update. Check the "<em>last checked"</em>
<h4>What Sleekweb can do for your SEO</h4>
<ul>
 	<li>Affordable consultancy and analysis of your site</li>
 	<li>Full website development includes SEO set up with 100% lighthouse scores</li>
 	<li>Fast hosting from £6 per month or £60 per year</li>
</ul>

Sleekweb designs high quality, modern and optimised websites to draw in customers for an affordable price. I am a web developer local to Hereford.
<h2>Web design for business</h2>
A fast and beautiful website is the key to getting business today. I can design and create your business a website to maximize your online potential and attract the most customers you've ever had.

With over 5 years of industry experience I can guarantee satisfying results. I have a deep understanding of user experience and user interfaces and the know-how to produce websites accessible to all.

Whether you have an existing website which feels outdated or not fit for purpose, or you don't yet have a website, I can bring your website ideas to reality.

All of my custom website designs provide the best experience possible across all kinds of devices and screen sizes.

Many of my designs can be found on my <a href="https://www.sleekweb.co.uk/portfolio#wrc-content-block">portfolio page</a> or on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/sleekweb">Instagram</a>
<h3>I work with a wide range of businesses</h3>
Whether you are a small one person company, a huge corporation or a brand new startup, I can work with you and everyone in between.

I have experience working with local businesses and with multi-national companies. As long as your business is reputable you can count on Sleekweb to produce a website you'll be proud of.
<h3>Impressively affordable</h3>
My aim is to provide you with a high quality website design without breaking the bank.

Good sites should not just be limited to huge multi-national companies with big budgets, and that's why my services are reasonably priced with a huge range of options if you are on a tight budget or schedule.
<h3>Function first, then form</h3>
My design aim is to provide beautiful and elegant sites but without an overhead. Website performance is a key metric in both <a href="https://www.sleekweb.co.uk/blog/seo-benefits-to-a-business">SEO</a> and user experience.
Not only is performance important, but usability. Pretty but confusing sites are frustrating to use no matter who you are.

All of my designs are made with the goals of converting visitors to customers and then customers to long-term, repeat customers.
<h3>Whatever you need</h3>
I am a web developer local to Hereford and have experience in creating varying kinds of websites which deal with content, products and services.
<ul>
 	<li>E-Commerce selling products online</li>
 	<li>Informational or portfolio websites</li>
 	<li>Content Management Systems used internally</li>
 	<li>Service and sales</li>
</ul>

Search Engine Optimisation influences if your web page shows in a search engine, and how high in the results. You can gain advantages by making your website load quickly, write high quality content and have other sites backlink to yours because you provide something of interest. I am a Hereford based web developer and I can help with your website SEO.
<h2>SEO for your business</h2>
Search engines such as Google and many others are the primary way a new customer might find your online business.
Have you ever wondered why your competitor is at the top of Google? It all comes down to SEO.
SEO is an acronym which stands for Search Engine Optimisation. The art of tailoring your website to be more attractive to search engine algorithms.

Imagine you sell "Web Design" services and a potential customer is looking for this exact thing. They might go to Google and type in "Web designer".
What if your company didn't show up on Google at all? There's no way you'd get to sell to that customer, because they don't even know your company exists. Ranking high on Google lends your business an air of authority because you are being trusted by Google to provide relevant information.

Proper SEO is essential for any online business to thrive, because every business wants to appear on Google search results, and even better, near the first few results. This is a free and constant stream of potential customers. These potential customers also a good conversion rate, as they are searching you out rather than just having an ad placed in front of them. In order for your website to appear here, you need to optimise so that Google deems it a good option to show to the people who search for related topics.
<h3>Keywords</h3>
Keywords are perhaps the biggest factor in how your site will rank, as these are the search terms a potential customer would use.

An important aspect to SEO is to make each page on your site have a slightly different focus. Imagine a keyword, and then try and tailor your page around that keyword.
The majority of the information related to that keyword should come from this page, not split across multiple others.
This means you do not cannibalise your SEO by trying to rank two or more pages against each other.
<h3>Finding your niche</h3>
It can be discouraging to see large businesses taking all of the top spots in a Google search when related to your industry. Your business needs to find niche keywords to capitalise upon.

Competitive keywords are usually more generalised such as "Hire an SEO specialist", or specifically the name of a product or service like "SEO specialist".
Most competitive keywords are dominated by giant businesses, therefore it is wiser to try and rank in more niche keywords.

Adding the city where your business is based in the content can help, e.g. "Hire an SEO specialist in Hereford".
Another way to find a niche keyword is to offer a slightly unique twist to stand out, and talk about it on your website. Specialise in a subcategory of your industry to try and find a niche keyword and capitalise on it.
<h3>Backlinks</h3>
Another factor in how Google views your website is the backlinks - other websites linking towards yours.  These backlinks are judged based on the original sites authority, relevancy, popularity and credibility.

Backlinks from sites like the BBC provide a huge boost to SEO because they are deemed so highly valuable by Google, whereas links from Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are given low importance because literally anyone can create a backlink from them.
<h3>Page load time and resource hogging</h3>
It is important to have a website which performs well, as Google will favour a fast website over a slower one in search rankings. Clogging your page with huge images, unnecessary code and data can bloat your website, and your SEO will take a hit.

Properly sizing your images, cutting redundant scripts, using optimal content delivery strategies such as an image serving CDN and caching can all have a huge positive effect to not only the user's experience, but Google's ranking too.

Read on to find out how you can identify website performance issues.
<h4>Measuring your SEO effectiveness</h4>
Google judges your website based on multiple factors such as how quickly it loads, how accessible it is for a wide range of users and how well it's made. For a quick way to see a basic view of how optimised your site is, try <a href="https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse">Lighthouse</a> by opening your site in Google Chrome, open developer tools with F12 and choose the Lighthouse tab.

Run the audit and you will see four scores appear from 0 to 100 based on different metrics. The higher the number, the better your score. Many areas in which your site are lacking will be highlighted by this tool, and most are often actionable fixes by a web developer or content writer.

Another free tool for measuring your sites SEO is <a href="https://nibbler.silktide.com/">Nibbler.</a> Simply enter your URL and test. This tool covers many different aspects of SEO including how important building a social network for your business is for authority and trust.

I'd recommend using Lighthouse in the early stages after launching your site and using Nibbler later once you have tackled all of the more technical and content related issues.

Finally, <a href="https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/">Google Analytics</a> is an important tool for measuring your SEO effectiveness. It will allow you to see how users first found your site whether through a direct link, Google search, social media referrals or anything else.
<h2>What Sleekweb can do for your SEO</h2>
<ul>
 	<li>Affordable consultancy and analysis of your site</li>
 	<li>Full website development includes SEO set up with 100% lighthouse scores</li>
 	<li>Fast hosting from £6 per month or £60 per year</li>
</ul>

While Covid-19 is putting a dampener on everyone's livelihoods right now, you can expect the markets to bounce back once it's all blown over.

Capitalise on the rebound with a unique website for your business to draw in new customers, whether you own a small barber shop, a restaurant, a delivery service or something else entirely.

The important thing is that your website will be unique, fast, easily searchable and bring in new customers.

Try Sleekweb for all your website needs.

Website caching is a technique of "taking a snapshot" of your web page and storing that as html. This snapshot is then stored and given to the next visitor.
<h2>Why cache anything?</h2>
Web pages written in modern programming languages are usually compiled by the server on each request by a visitor. This means the server takes the instructions given on the page to render HTML.

Rendering web pages puts a strain on a web server, and it does this for each unique visitor. This can cause the server to appear slow, as it's working overtime trying to provide each visitor with the page they want to see.

If we enable caching, we can "save" the first rendered copy of the HTML and then serve that straight away to subsequent visitors.

This will be quicker for the user, as rendering web pages does take time, and also put much less strain on the server.

Caching is used when the content of the page would not have changed from visitor to visitor, but what happens when the page would differ on the next load?

Any page which is unique to each visitor, such as for example "My Settings", is not suitable for caching. We definitely don't want to present other users with the cached version of someone else's personal preference page.

Another instance is if the content of the page changes. If a blog article is edited, then the cached version would no longer be relevant because it doesn't provide the next user with the up-to-date information.

Fortunately, intelligent caching systems exist to circumvent this issue. If a page renders HTML based on a set of data and that is then cached, any data changes would invalidate that cache. This way, cached versions are only served if still relevant. Similar to changing the ingredients of a recipe results in a different flavour, changing the data for a page results in different HTML and therefore you have a different recipe - you can throw the old one out.

Cache files are usually also given a "time to live". We give a cache a time to live which we expect it will still be relevant and necessary, and then once that time has passed it is no longer used.

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