Why does my competitor’s ugly websites outrank me?

You may of Googled yourself and wondered why you beautiful modern website is being outranked by old, ugly websites...

Why are you they ranking above you?

There are many factors to consider when looking at Search Engine Optimisation for an Estate Agency website; however the simple answer is that your competitions pages are delivering more qualities Google are expecting to find to enable them to rank the website accordingly.

These qualities include things like relevant content and page titles, unique content that references your keywords, domain authority, backlinks and the list goes on.

Search engines are built to rank pages that deliver the best user experience through both relevance and authority and even though design is a  huge part of the user experience, Google doesn’t believe it outweighs the need for quality content, reliability and structuring of the page.

Google bots can only read text and coding, through this they can see colours, image sizes and page placement details but are limited to what we as humans can actually see on the screen, making it impossible for the design to be a direct factor when ranking a website.

Another reason why design isn’t a factor is because design is subjective, what you believe looks good others may hate it. Making it difficult for Google to analyse what’s best.

Keep in mind that just because your website is beautiful doesn’t mean it will rank highly within Google. There are many other SEO and usability factors you have to consider and incorporate within your website before your website will achieve high rankings.

By Luke Stanley
SEO Consultant