Irish Website Design Ireland

When optimising your website for search engines (SEO), the domain you choose can make all the difference.

This brief article highlights two important options businesses regularly have to consider before ordering their domain. The option you choose will depend on your overall strategy and goals for your business.

Option 1, Keyword Rich Domains

If you were running a web directory of “Hotels in Kerry” and you’re competing primarily for that search phrase, the domain ‘HotelsInKerry.com’ would be a good choice. The URL is packed with your keywords and clearly coveys what the site is about.

Both search engines and surfers can accurately assume the content of the website as it matches their search criteria. This can help with the positioning of the domain in search engines AND ensure a healthy click-through rate to the site.

Tip. Popular keyword rich domains are snapped up quickly. If you find you cannot buy the exact domain you are looking for you may be able to find something very similar. As you can image HotelsInKerry.com is already taken, so look for TopHotelsInKerry.com, VisitHotelsInKerry.com, BestHotelsInKerry.com and so on…

Option 2, Brand Name Domains

When it comes to choosing a domain you could go with a brand name like ‘Oval’ or ‘Peaches’ or ‘Apple’ (thank that one is taken…) or something similarly obscure, but you better have the money to market it, if you want anyone to find it.

The word ‘Apple’ does not suggest the company behind it manufactures PC’s, iPods and other technology. Before ‘Apple’ came along, the word just conjured up images of a fruit. If I were to say ‘Granny Smyths’ what’s the first thing that pops into your mind?

That’s branding for you…

This is less to do with choosing a domain and more to do with brand and strategy. The clear advantage to this is, if you can successfully market your brand and it becomes a household name, then searchers will usually have no problem finding you. However, if you can’t afford to rollout and sustain a marketing campaign to build brand awareness you might consider going for a descriptive, keyword rich domain with a call to action (if you can squeeze it in).

Option 3, Bonus Option

Okay, I said at the introduction we’ll discuss two domain options, there is a third and it is ‘the road less travelled’ but worth mentioning.

The age of the URL can be an important factor when if comes to SEO. If your domain is five years active you’ll probably get a lot more ‘love’ from Google than if it’s five months active. Particularly if the website under that domain is respected by Google.

This can be a problem for new websites trying to make their way to the top in the hostile environment that we call the Internet. The solution is simple though, but requires luck and money. Make and offer to buy the domain/website. Who knows, you might get lucky!

Every website has to be hosted on a web server in order for it to be available to view online. If you are targeting the Irish online market, you’re usually better off going with hosting where the servers are based in Ireland.

In my experience your website will perform better for local search (Irish market) than the same site hosted in the USA (or Brazil or wherever), particularly if your domain is .com, .net, .org, .biz. You can get around this if your domain is a ‘.IE’ as Google, and most search engines, will identify your site as being targeted to the Irish market. The same would apply for a ‘.CO.UK’ domain for the UK market etc.

There are possible exceptions to this. I have had .com sites on Irish servers for years that performed well for local Irish search. I moved a couple of these to USA servers and there seems to have been no negative impact on their positions for Irish search to date, over three months later. Perhaps once a site is labelled as an ‘Irish’ website by Google, the server plays a less important roll thereafter?

In conclusion: If you are targeting the Irish online market you should ensure your website is on an Irish server. This is particularly the case if your website is a .com, .net, .biz, .org.

Starter Websites was originally a ‘static’ type website with a WordPress blog ‘tacked’ on.

When I decided to redesign and move servers I thought it a good time to build a custom website, with blog, on the WordPress (WP) platform. This enabled me to take advantage of the excellent WP content management system, now controlling about 95% of the websites content via the WP control panel.

Nearly There…

The previous blog had some posts in it that I have not yet moved to the new site. I did think of transferring the database but because the number of posts is less than a dozen (and there’s a few complications around the database transfer) I’ve decided to just re-post them instead. I’ll use their original date and time stamp and set-up permanent redirects from the old posts URLs. I’ll be adding them this week.

The site still has a few jobs that need to be completed before it is 100%, and I’m working on getting those complete this week.

New Starter Websites Accommodation Package

Besides that, I’m also working and testing the new Starter Websites Accommodation package, soon to be released. While most of the design and build is complete I am still perfecting ‘traffic getting’ techniques for these sites. Stay tuned…

Hi all,

Starter Websites has long been over due for a redesign, and with the launch of a new accommodation website package in the pipeline I thought now the appropriate time to update the site.

I’ve moved it to a WordPress platform so I can take advantage of its content management system. The layout is different and the design has a more modern feel. The site has been tested across multiple browsers including IE6, Safari, Google Chorme, IE7 and Firefox. It should display correctly but if you come across broken layouts or obvious problems please let me know.

I’ll also complete the portfolio page shortly, and from now each new project will be profiled in it’s own blog post. This way future customers can easily access all the details of  individual projects.

I’m also offering 10% off orders in June to make the new site going live, so don’t be shy and get in touch so we can get your website live in 10 days or less from only €395. Call me (Peter) 087 9767812