In this website analysis of the KSR Architects website, we’ll determine exactly what needs to be done to improve:
- How the website performs in the search engines (SEO)
- The overall user satisfaction when using the website (Usability)
- The website’s potential to convert website visitors into leads and potential customers (Conversions)
Here are the areas we’ll be covering in our report:
- Overall Website Design
- Calls-to-actions
- On-page SEO
- Organic Search Traffic Analysis
- Top Organic Pages
- Top Organic Keywords
- Backlink Profile Analysis
- Broken Pages and Links
- Content Analysis
- Content Gap Analysis
The KSR Architects Website
KSR Architects is an architecture firm based in North-West London.
Overall Website Design
KSR Architects ensure that photos of their amazing architecture take centre stage on their website.
So much so that the text on the website seems like an afterthought.
For example, look at the text highlighted in the example below. It’s as if they don’t want anybody to read it.
But it’s not just the above example. KSR architects website is full of examples of this poor choice of font size.
For instance:
Interestingly, this was a staple feature of this type of portfolio website in the early 2000s.
They directly or indirectly followed the psychological selling tactics used in the luxury market. Where the focus is on solely the product.
Any additional information such as product description and pricing was visually deemphasized. As if they were unimportant and negligible.
KSR Architects website uses the light version (font-weight: 300) of the Roboto Google Font set to font size: 14px.
It also does not help that they are using a dark grey colour for the paragraph.
As a result, this colour choice plus the tiny size of the text make it very hard to read.
User satisfaction will greatly increase if they use the regular version of the font. In addition to an increased font size.
We tested how this would look above. That’s much better!
In fact, it is much more legible than the current font styles that KSR currently use.
You will notice that we also suggest a line-height of 1.4em (16px or pixels). This provides better spacing between the lines of text.
Calls-to-Actions
Overall, ksrarchitects.com is a portfolio website.
Maybe the owners would like the website to help them generate more revenue. But at the moment, as it stands, it just looks pretty.
And, there are no calls-to-action on the website at all.
A call-to-action is text, a link, a button etc. that prompts the user to take a specific action.
For example, this call-to-action banner on our competitor analysis page reads:
“Competitor Analysis with Purpose. Learn why your competition is ranking higher than you. Build a marketing plan to start beating them.”
On the button beside the text input field, it reads “Get Started”.
This is a clear call-to-action.
We’re directing our website visitors to take a specific action by clicking on that button.
Unfortunately, you can browse page after page on the ksrarchitect.com website and you will not see a single call-to-action.
As a result, they really are missing a trick.
For example, at the bottom of their Interior Design service page, they explain a 6-step process.
But at no point do they say something as simple as:
“Would you like us to work on your next project? Click here.”
On-page SEO checks
Next, we are going to check a few on-page fundamentals.
We will focus on the homepage. However, if we were doing this report for a client we would cover all other important pages on the site.
The most important pages are the pages that are receiving the most organic traffic.
Below you will see the top 5 pages on the KSR Architecture website. And, as you will see the homepage receives the bulk of the website’s search traffic.
Homepage Title Tag
KSR Architects has a well crafted and compelling title tag:
“Award-Winning Architects in London – KSR Architects”.
Unfortunately, the homepage features no H1 or H2 tags.
But back to that title tag.
It includes the keyword “architects in London”. Overall, this has an estimated 3540 monthly searches.
But, there may be an opportunity for improvement here.
In fact, we found that there is more search volume for keywords such as:
- architects london – 800 monthly searches
- london architects – 600 monthly searches
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions do not have a direct effect on rankings. But they do have an indirect effect because they influence the people searching on Google. Effective meta descriptions encourage searchers to want to click through to a website.
In order to use meta descriptions effectively they should be succinct. And they must communicate the main USP of the product or service related to the page.
In fact, the role of a meta description is to compel potential website visitors to link through to a website. It should lead them to want to find out more about your business and how it can help them.
Let’s take a look at KSR Architects meta description:
And, this is how KSR Architects’ homepage meta description looks in the search results page:
As we can see, everything after the words “built on” cannot be read. Because the meta description is over the character limit.
This suggests that their meta descriptions need to be audited and properly optimised. If it’s like this for the homepage, then it’s likely the same throughout the site.
H1 Header Tag
The H1 tag remains an important factor for good on-page SEO.
So, we expect every page to have one unique and descriptive H1 tag.
In the case of a homepage, we would ensure that the H1 tag is in place for two reasons:
- It communicates the site’s primary purpose
- It includes 1 or 2 related keywords
Unfortunately, the ksrarchitects.com homepage does not include any headers at all.
Once again we are seeing signs that the website is in desperate need of on-page SEO.
Other On-page Issues
Following the homepage, we dug deeper for any other important on-page issues.
Here are a few of the on-page issues were found:
Missing Meta Descriptions
On the whole, 89.99% of ksrarchitects.com pages are missing meta descriptions.
Missing H1 Tags
In total, 91.50% of ksrarchitects.com pages are missing H1 Tags.
In addition, we also discovered that 5 of their pages utilise more than one H1 tag. This is a big no-no in terms of SEO.
Word Count
All in all, we discovered that 69% of the website pages have between 51 and 100 words.
And this is a lot of pages with very little content.
Organic Search Traffic Analysis
We can see from this graph that organic search traffic to KSR had been increasing slowly. From May 2015 (with just 3 website visits) until around the end of March 2018 (with 314 website visits).
From this period, the increase in traffic was a bit more pronounced. And by 2 August 2019 ksrarchitects.com had increased traffic by 332% to 1,357 visits.
Then, we see this freakish spike in traffic on 8 August 2019 where their traffic quadrupled to 4,079 visits.
One week later, on 14 August 2019 traffic dropped once more to 1,828 visits.
Furthermore, the decline in traffic continued until 25 February 2020 when they received just 842 visits.
Following this, KSR hit a period between April and August 2020 when their website visits fluctuated wildly. Between around 1300 visits and 2900 visits.
Then, it basically went downhill from 16 August 2020, when they had 2,839 visits.
By the start of November 2020, they had just 880 visits.
Overall, their growth has been erratic!
Let’s discover which pages currently bring in the most search traffic for ksrarchitects.com.
Top Organic Pages
In the second week of November 2020, ksrarchitects.com had 141 pages ranking in Google’s Top 100 search results.
Their top organic page is their homepage which received 667 website visitors.
In fact, the homepage received 82% of the total organic traffic to the website.
Second place for website traffic is a localised service page: Kensington and Chelsea Architects.
However, this page accounts for only 0.02% of the total organic traffic coming to the website.
Top Organic Keywords
Next, let’s check on how ksrarchitects.com’s rankings are progressing.
This graph shows the amount of ksrarchitects.com’s top 3 rankings.
Overall, it looks like the number of Top 3 rankings has been rising since 2015.
So let’s make sure that rankings for KSR’s 5 important keywords are headed in the right direction.
These are ksrarchitects.com’s 5 most important keywords:
- ksr architects (260 visits)
- architects in london (197 visits)
- architects london (140 visits)
- london architects (45 visits)
- architect london (43 visits)
Overall, these 5 keywords are responsible for 646 website visits.
Yeah, this is not looking good at all.
In terms of growth, the rankings are not moving in the right direction. And this coincides with the drop in website visits that we saw earlier in this report.
Backlink Profile Analysis
If you look at the graph below, it’s clear that the number of referring domains pointing to KSR has been steadily increasing since 2013.
Here are the top 6 referring domains. These are based on the number of ‘dofollow’ links that help ksrarchitects.com to rank better in organic search results:
- ksra.co.uk
- 34sp.com
- ksr-architects.com
- ksr-architects.co.uk
- ksrarchitects.co.uk
- skyscraperpage.com
We have highlighted 4 out of 6 of these URLs because they are actually copies of ksrarchitects.com.
On top of that revelation, 4 out of 6 of the top referring domains get zero organic traffic from search.
Can you guess which ones?
Yep!
- ksra.co.uk
- ksr-architects.com
- ksr-architects.co.uk
- Ksrarchitects.co.uk
So far, not so good on the backlink profile analysis we’re afraid.
To see how deep these issues go, we’ll move on to have a look at broken links. Both to and from ksrarchitects.com.
Broken Pages and Links
Overall, the KSR website has 22 pages that have a 404 (page not found) error.
Thankfully, these 22 pages have a total of 1 inbound link from, funnily enough, ksra.co.uk.
Nevertheless, it is important that these 22 pages are fixed as soon as possible. So, that the firm can eliminate poor user experience due to pages not being found.
Content Analysis
KSR Architects struggle to create valuable content for their website.
Overall, they have a minimalist approach. One that provides very little for the website visitors to engage with.
They have 3 main types of content:
- Service Pages
- Portfolio Items
- Blog posts
Service Pages
There are just two service pages:
- Architecture
- Interior Design
Each page contains content sections that are then used as anchor tags in a sub-menu.
Architecture Page Sub Menu
Interior Design Page Sub Menu
However, these subsections should be separate pages.
This would make for great keyword-rich content. Not to mention with numerous internal linking opportunities
In their current form, these service pages have very little text content.
The layout for these pages starts with a massive hero section with words that offer no value proposition at all.
And there is no explicit information or “above the fold” section about the problem KSR solves. Or how they solve that problem.
In fact, the service pages are not at all optimised for search engines.
The text in the above hero sections does not contain a keyword (e.g. architecture or interior design).
Even worse, the text in the hero section is not in an H1 or H2 tag.
It is in a CSS ::before Selector. And this is normally used to insert something before the content of each selected element(s).
This approach makes it difficult for search engines to understand what the page is about.
In addition, the pages will also struggle to rank because they contain so little text.
- The Architecture page has 135 words
- The Interior Design Page has 159 words
And this is way below the recommended amount of words per page.
“For regular posts or pages, we advise writing more than 300 words. Why is that? Well, a higher word count helps Google to better understand what your text is about. And, generally speaking, Google tends to rank longer articles higher.”
– Word count and SEO (Yoast)
Portfolio Items
One of the content sections within the service pages is the Portfolio.
This is a photo gallery widget. Yet again, this shows minimal information in the captions that appear when you hover over an image.
There is not even any preamble text to support the Portfolio Heading.
A click on The Barn, for example, takes you through to a page with:
- Poorly formatted images
- Only 47 words
- No call-to-action
- No previous or next buttons
- And, no footer!
Blog Posts
Naturally by now you may already realise that KSR Architects does not do a lot of blogging.
If the order of their published blog posts is anything to go by, it seems that their last post was published towards the end of December 2019!
On top of that, the thin content issue is present again.
For instance, the blog post above has just 365 words.
Another one has only 233!
Clearly, KSR Architects have not blogged at all in 2020. And there is no content marketing focus.
Blog Sidebar
KSR Architects do not make great use of their blog sidebar either. It could be used to as a lead magnet or to house a general call-to-action, to ask people to contact them.
However, the only thing we find in the sidebar is an uncompelling, squished and unoptimised Twitter widget.
Finally, let’s complete this website analysis by conducting a Content Gap Analysis.
Content Gap Analysis
We looked for keywords that KSR’s competitors currently rank for. As well as those which KSR don’t rank for.
First, we took a look at ksrarchitects.com’s competing domains.
Overall, there were 49 competing domains.
We analysed the list and looked for architecture firms, ignoring everything else.
The top three competing domains that are architecture firms were:
- architectureforlondon.com
- makearchitects.com
- Scenarioarchitecture.com
After looking at their competitors, here are some example keywords that KSR could be ranking for:
- Riba work stages (2,800 avg. monthly number of searches)
- How long does planning permission last (2,500 avg. monthly number of searches)
- Side return extension (1,700 avg. monthly number of searches)
- London architecture (1,600 avg. monthly number of searches)
These keywords provide ideas about the kind of content KSR Architects should create.
Doing so would bring more targeted traffic to their website.
Conclusion
We’ve provided a summary of our webisate analysis below. And we’ve included our recommendations for KSR if they want to start converting website users and potential clients into leads.
Overall Website Design
The KSR Architects Website is like many other websites in its industry.
Naturally, their key focus is on images of their work. And these are extremely impressive.
But just like other websites in KSR Architects’ industry, the website struggles to provide value to website visitors.
It doesn’t do a good job of converting website users or potential clients into leads.
Content
Overall, the content on the website needs to be urgently improved.
There are three main types of issues:
- Thin content – we discovered that 69% of the website pages have between 51 and 100 words
- Regular keyword-rich content – there have only been around 40 blog posts published since November 2013. The last blog post seems to have been published a year ago. This is an average of 5 posts per year!
- Broken pages – there are numerous pages that have broken elements
For instance, here:
Furthermore, here is another example of a broken page:
Recommendation: KSR Architects need to conduct an in-depth content audit which will allow them to find low-quality pages with little to no organic search traffic that they can either improve, update and relaunch.
Or, if they are not able to improve their low quality pages. Then, they should delete them and redirect (301) the URL to a relevant page.
KSR Architects also need a solid and long term content marketing strategy. If they want to appear in more top 3 ranking positions. Especially for commercial intent keywords. Then, they need to create regular keyword-rich content.
The easiest and most effective way to do this is through regular blogging. In addition to on-site and off-site SEO (guest blogging, outreach etc).
Calls-to-actions
There are no call-to-actions on the website. And as a result the website completely fails to convert website visitors into leads and/or email subscribers.
Recommendation: KSR Architects need to plan and implement at least one lead generation system that will allow them to generate qualified marketing leads.
Competitor Analysis
Clearly, KSR Architects can learn a lot from their competitors.
For example, in November 2020, architectureforlondon.com had 6,012 website visits.
KSR Architects had 6.4 times less that amount of traffic (944 website visits).
In fact, architectureforlondon.com also had 159 top 3 keywords versus ksrarchitects.com’s 14 top 3 keywords.
Recommendation: KSR Architects should conduct a thorough competitor analysis that will allow them to learn why their competition is ranking higher than them and build a marketing plan to start beating them.
By following just some of our advice, KSR architects could turn their stunning portfolio website into one which also generates leads. With just a little on-site work and some in- depth content, KSR could overtake and outrank their competitors.
Like what you see? If you want an honest and upfront
conversation about your online performance, get in touch
We work with hundreds of companies to help them grow their businesses online.
Our analysis can provide logical and actionable roadmaps. These help companies understand their online positioning. As well as enabling them to envision what growth is possible and exactly how to get there.
If you would like to have a conversation about your online goals, get in touch for an obligation-free consultation. Alternatively, submit your details below for a personalised competitor analysis or website analysis report.
Did you find this website analysis useful?
We hope you enjoyed this website analysis report and found it interesting. Let us know in the comments below.
And if you would like to read more, here are some to get you started:
- What Does Dr Nicole Dermatology Need to Do to Become the Manchester’s Next Dermatology Kingpin?
- How Did Pearl Accountants Grow From Nothing to 1st on Google for ‘London Accountants’ in Just 12 months
- How Could Go Cleaners Increase Their Website Visibility In The Cleaning Industry
- What Does Crisp & Co Need To Do To Be Seen As The Leading Family Law Firm in London?
- What Do Gilbertson & Page Need To Do To Avoid Losing Their Current Position As Pet Food Industry Leader
You may also be interested in receiving these, and our competitor analysis reports, via email every week. If so, join our mailing list below for weekly reports, as well as SEO and content marketing advice.