Bookmarks and Breadcrumbs on Websites

5th May 2011

Bookmarks and Breadcrumbs on Websites

Continual improvements are the key to good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Standing still will mean you'll be inevitably overtaken by more active and ambitious competitors.

We're constantly aware of this with the wide number of sites that we work on.

This week we've spent some time looking at the Quintessential Bed and Breakfast website in particular.

The website has now been online for several months and has been successfully indexed by Google and the other search engines and we've now reached a position when we can really judge the success, or otherwise, of our approach to the site's search engine performance.

On the whole the site is doing really well. We've hit many of our targets and our client is delighted with the growth in traffic over the months since it launched.

It's no time for complacency though and so we took a long hard look for any under performing areas on the site, and parts that could be improved. We realised that there were two sections that could be developed.

Breadcrumbs for Navigation

Firstly, we added in some breadcrumb navigation to the pages. This helps users to find their way around the site. In addition it gives search engines a clear idea of the site's page hierarchies and their relation to one another.

Keyword Refinements

Secondly, we added some additional keywords to some of the underperforming pages to increase the relevance of the site for important search phrases and hopefully drive more traffic to the site for these terms.

Making the News More Prominent

In addition to these usability and SEO improvements we also made the site's news section more prominent in the main navigation on the site's homepage. This should make it easier to find and bookmark the site's news pages which are available on Twitter, RSS and on Facebook too - so there's no excuse for not knowing what's going on!

All in all these changes, along with the news stories and new properties, events and activities added by the client, should contribute to the increasing success of the site as a first place to go to find unique and beautiful places to stay.