Disclaimer: I specialise in graphic design, not websites or SEO.
So if you want real expert advice definitely look up Studio Cotton, go to one of their clinics, and scour their blog.
Last Friday I shot up to Bristol for an afternoon with Aime from Studio Cotton, and clutch of other businesses looking to improve their digital presence / reach.
I take my work seriously, so it’s important to invest in the digital touch points of DC Design Works. Not only is my website a way to celebrate my work with clients, it’s how new clients find me.
I wanted to get better at getting found by people who need graphic design support, so I went up to Bristol with levelling up my search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind. Here’s what I learnt…
Where I write “graphic design” is more important than I thought.
Something I hadn’t considered before was where keywords should be focussed in a website. When we developed my current site I wrote relevant terms into my content, but hadn’t necessarily focussed on where they should sit.
A quick look through this site and Aime highlighted the need for certain keywords to be at the heart of the site, instead of case studies and blog entries. Broad terms like “graphic design” should primarily sit in the centre of my site, and more specific keywords like “coffee shop logo design” in case studies and blogs.
On reflection it felt a bit like a brand or communications project where the centre is the key strategy / message, and messages get more targeted as channels get more narrow. It felt like a good breakdown was:
- Core pages: Who you are / what you do
- Case studies: What you have done / where you do it / who you do it for
- Blog posts: What you think about it / how you do it / how it relates to the wider world
This was a really useful perspective that is already helping me refocus content for maximum effect.
My website weakness:
The same way graphic design considers how a visual identity represents a brand in a third-party environment – for example a poster in a public location, or advert in a newspaper – the links to your website in places you don’t control are very important.
Graphic design and agency directories. Event sponsorship. Articles. Partnerships. PR.
Everything adds up. These backlinks let Google and other search engines know you are a real, insightful, trustable human.
And if they know it, it’s going to show you other people looking for your services.
This was my key takeaway / point of focus from the website clinic.
If you’re like me and need to build links, Aime gave us a great tip: use a backlink checker to check your own site. If it shows gaps, check the sites of people who offer similar services, so you can see where folks in your industry get backlinks and start building.
Golden advice I’m already using.
AI leaves a mark.
Wow – I managed to go over 300 words before I wrote AI. Something that surprised me was how to identify AI copy on a website.
As someone who has experimented with AI generated copy I was aware of it being identifiable, but didn’t know what to look for. Aime showed us.
When you copy and paste text from a platform like Chat GPT, there are HTML tags in the formatted text. They are pretty easy to spot if you’re looking for them.
To remove them you need to go through it manually. At which point it feels like you may as well engage with your content and write it yourself.
While AI generated copy isn’t penalised in web searches, a quick look online suggests that the generic and potential inaccuracies impact the quality of the content. And low quality content isn’t helpful to your ranking or potential clients.
Back to link building…
While it was only brief I also met some cool folks who run great independent businesses across the UK. The types of businesses that could be really useful to anyone passing through this blog, so I’ll list them when I have all the details.
