01
Website Design
02
Marketing
03
Website SEO
04
Photography
05
Copywriting
Specialist Sectors
Lifestyles
Trades
Fire and Security
06
About Vector7
07
Portfolio
08
Insights
09
Get in touch
10
Careers
Speak to our team
01404 598 015
info@vector7.co.uk
Latest News
Knowledge base
Have you received an 'SEO' report for your website?
If you've received an SEO report from any of the providers below, you may be worried your website isn't performing as it should. At first, we recommend asking yourself some basic questions;
Are you being found on Google for what you do, and where you do it?
Are you receiving potential leads and traffic from your website?
We've myth-busted many frequent SEO queries
Whilst many reports are skin-deep, with a primary use to scaremonger, other reports rely on technical information to pick holes in SEO techniques. Thankfully, Google have provided us with many of the answers. We also like to think our 20 years of experience gives us a good idea of what works and what does not.
Q
Lack of SEO optimisation
A
Google looks for one thing and one thing only.
"Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site."
Ref. Google's Webmaster Guidelines
We use our own techniques that we have developed and refined for over a decade. Our technique follows the spirit of Google’s own rules, in providing a website that is useful to the end user and explains itself perfectly well to Google.
The proof of our work is in the long term success we have had in a variety of fields in building a dominating web presence for our customers.
Q
Lack of meta tags
A
We do use meta tags where necessary - however some can have a negative effect.
There are two distinct meta tags which Google cover in their Webmaster information.
Meta Keywords
These are tags where you are supposed to list all of the keywords relevant to the webpage. Google announced officially back in 2008 that they don’t use this as a search signal.
It’s inclusion these days can only have a negative effect.
Meta Descriptions
Google will look at meta descriptions, and if it is relevant to the search results, it will use that as the Snippet shown for your page in search results. However, Google will ignore it entirely if there is something on the page that is more relevant to use as the snippet, or if the description is blatantly being used as an attempt to misguide Google’s spiders, or the end user.
Google says - "Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content."
Google prefers to use either a pertinent block of text from the page as this reduces the chance of misleading snippets if the meta description does not properly match the content of the page.
We focus on ensuring that the text that appears on the page is fully relevant to the search, making the Meta Tag for description entirely irrelevant.
Q
No optimisation of title tags
A
We always ensure title tags are present and accurate for Google
There is a fine balancing act between using these properly as a signal for the search engines, and to encourage people to actually click on it when they see it in the search results.
One problem that SEO Checker software has is that it can’t tell why we have tuned a webpage for a particular search string. Few people who send these reports out have our experience and expertise in marketing companies to the internet and don’t understand exactly what it is we are doing.
Q
No image optimisation
A
Image optimisation is one of the cornerstones of our work
You can rest assured we utilise every element of your web pages to correctly signpost your company to Google.
Q
No or limited Internal Linking
A
We take great care to ensure our website have strong internal links
We take great care to ensure that our websites have strong internal links in a manner that is easy for both the users and Google’s spiders to understand. This methodology aids us in other areas of SEO.
Q
No HTML Sitemap
A
We are very careful to create websites where the footer of each page is an organic sitemap
We are very careful to make an entire website using a very carefully planned and clear system for navigating around the website. Essentially the footer of each and every page is the site map.
We take care to monitor a website and make certain that Google is finding all of the pages within the site and is treating them in the way we have designed them to be treated.
Q
No XML Sitemap
A
These are important if a great deal of 'rich' content is used - such as videos etc.
Google says;
"If your site’s pages are properly linked, our web crawlers can discover your website."
Ref. Google's Webmaster Guidelines
We are confident in our techniques and double-check this by verifying that Google is indexing the website correctly.
Q
No Google Webmaster / Google Search Console
A
Vector7 have always use Google webmaster tools to monitor our websites and to ensure Google understands our websites correctly.
Q
Not Mobile Friendly
A
Our websites have a separate, cut-down mobile version of the website
All of our websites have a separate, cut-down mobile version of the website, specifically geared to those users on mobile phones. This is because a mobile user will have very different needs.
In line with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) policy, it is best to provide a simplified version of your website providing the relevant information for the user. As you can see on the link below, the mobile version of your website is perfectly mobile friendly.
Q
No Backlinks
A
We make sure that all of our websites have good quality backlinks
We make sure that all of our websites have good quality backlinks. It is a matter of quality over quantity. Our high quality links work in tandem with the on-page tuning of your website to focus on the pertinent keyphrases.
Q
No H1 or H2 heading tags
A
We ensure your website is well understood by Google in other, proven manners
As mentioned above, your website is well understood by Google and this makes H1 and H2 tags irrelevant.
Q
SEO Unfriendly URLs
A
We ensure your website is well understood by Google in other, proven manners
The URL of a page is the address it can be found at, and it appears in the address bar of your browser. It is important for the pages to be clear and user-friendly.
However, it is not vital to separate keywords with only hyphens. Google is more than capable of differentiating words from each other regardless of how they are separated.
Q
No Social Profiles
A
If needed, we can help with setting up social media accounts
We can help with setting up social media accounts. Should you want us to link to Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn / etc accounts, please let us know.
Q
URL Canonicalization - two domains resolving to the same URL
A
We correct this at the source, using Google's own webmaster tools
One of the tools within the Search Console on Google is to be able to actually manually correct for this at the source. This means we don’t have to worry about forcing redirects which would reduce the weight of backlinks to your website that use the “wrong” URL format.
Q
Lack of accessibility
A
Google purely cares for the usability and usefulness of the website (continued)
The underlying structure of the website is not an issue for Google, they purely care about the usability and usefulness of the website. Broken links are an issue, however, this is something we carefully monitor. We have software in our office that checks through websites for links that don’t work. We have addressed the issue of headers previously.
The issue of W3C compliance is a tough legend to dispel, but I can assure you that it’s irrelevant. Two ways that it can be demonstrated are:
1.) Google's own home page is not W3C compliant. That can be seen using W3C’s own validator software.
2.) Google officially announced back in 2011 that HTML validation is not a ranking factor used by their algorithm. Google's Matt Cutts explains all in this Webmaster video blog
Q
Lack of scoring for National search keyphrases
A
Our motto is to get our clients found for "What you do and where you do it"
We do not aim for nationwide scoring unless our client actually does offer their services nationally. We focus specifically for the locality where our clients are based.
Q
"Outdated content is negatively impacting SEO"
A
Our websites are constantly being fed with new content, links and off-site generated content
Again, we can refer back to what Google is looking for to populate their search results...
Google says, "Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do."
Thanks to our wide and varied community of security companies, websites and directories, we are able to provide a continuous stream of fresh content and links that directly effect how your websites appear. Working within a development budget, we are proactive in adding new pages to the site to keep it up to date and pertinent for the positioning we are capturing for you on Google's search results.
Remember, Google looks at over 200 elements to calculating search engine positioning.
Still unsure? Ask our experts and we'll happily send you a detailed report
Get in touch with our team and we can organise a full review and report on your SEO performance.
Professional branding, photography and print designed to present your business clearly, consistently and with impact.
Structured, results-driven marketing focused on increasing your visibility and generating consistent enquiries.