Akira Studio blog - Web Design London Ontario

Ever wondered how online shops seem to know what you want before you do?

Each time you browse, Amazon (for example) will pop in that scrolling bar of items at the bottom of each product page called “Customers who bought this item also bought”. It’s (usually) full of relevant products like the one you’re looking at.

Now flip back to the Amazon home page and you’ll be presented with “Related to Items You’ve Viewed”. This is where things get interesting, because the choices it shows you are not necessarily directly linked to what you have just been looking at.

As Akira's SEO guru, I'm fascinated by this kind of search results. I just looked on Amazon at the DVD box set of the kids animated films “Hotel Transylvania 1 & 2.” As I’d expect, the “Customers also bought” section shows me other light-hearted children’s animated films, such as ‘Minions’ and ‘The Good Dinosaur’.

Flip back to my home page, and the choice gets more eclectic: “The Lady in the Van’, “Bridge of Spies”, “Spectre’. These mix what I’ve looked at previously with my current viewing, but all within the same category - DVDs.

What has this to do with website SEO and a wet dog? Read on and find out....

There has been a bit of a panic over the recent changes Google has been making to SERPs (search engine results page), with more ads appearing at the top than before.

Panic ye not. This is not the end of organic (non-paid) search as we know it. It’s just Google rearranging elements to better suit mobile users.

Here’s what’s happening, how it affects SERPs and three good reasons not to worry!

It’s one of those questions everybody seems to ask when the subject of websites comes up - “How fast is your broadband? Mine’s only….”

Slow business internet connections are not only irritating, they can also affect how you view the internet as a whole. If your internet is slow, then it must be the same for everyone, right?

Not at all. Figures from TestMy.net show that your broadband speed really does depend on where you live. That in itself isn’t surprising, but the locations with the fastest average speed did surprise us…

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but Akira Studio has been in business for 10 years this Friday 19 February.

To celebrate, we’ve been posting a countdown of Amazing Akira Facts on our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/akirastudio/).

We’ll be having some cake and fizz in the office on Friday, so if you’d like to pop in and say hi, you’re very welcome.

Best of all, we have a very special deal just for the day itself. Like our Facebook page now, as we’ll be posting details at 10am on Friday morning.

What do Google and other search engines actually want your website to provide? 

It’s a question that is very vexing for site owners and website designers alike, as it’s often very tricky to get a straight answer.

However, there is one place that you can find advice direct from Google, and that’s the Webmaster Guidelines.

So when Google quietly updated these a couple of weeks back, we went delving into the small print to find out if anything major had changed….