Kent Household Income by Local Authority District

The Kent Economy and Household Income

Simply Clicks is based in Kent. We also have a number of clients based in Kent. Our economic knowledge and years of experience serving Kent clients have taught us that the geography of Kent has major implications for the success of any Kent-focused SEO or Kent-focused PPC marketing activity. The specific implication depends on the nature of the product or service and its market structure. However, one overriding feature of the Kent economy is how household income changes as you move away from London. The parts of Kent closest to the centre of London tend to be more affluent. Conversely, locations further away tend to be less affluent. This “distance” can be measured in miles or commute time. For example, if you look at the table below, you will notice the position of Ashford. Ashford is further from London but ranks above Gravesham and Medway. The reason being the effect of Ashford’s high speed rail connection.

Kent Household Income by District
Kent Household Income by District - Source ONS

A More affluent northwest Kent a less affluent south and east Kent

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of Kent geography will realise that by looking at the chart above that the places nearest to London tend to occupy the upper end of the income scales and those places further away, tend to occupy the lower end.

The chart below shows this relationship on the basis of miles from central London. The data being taken from Google Maps. Each district is plotted on two axes. The Y axis showing average household income and the X axis showing distance from London. A red dotted line shows a line of best fit, which correlates at 80% with the distance.

Attractiveness

There is some variation, with certain districts appearing above this line and others below. Towns shown above the line of best fit have positive attractiveness. Excluding the effect of rail commute times, there must be another factor at play. My own view, is that this variation is caused by the relative attractiveness of the towns involved. Towns above the line of best fit have positive attractiveness. Towns below the line, have negative attractiveness. Attractive towns, such as Tunbridge Wells, may attract higher income families. Whilst less attractive towns may well deter them. Attractiveness could be determined by the reputation of schools, the type of shops or access to recreational faclities. In monetary terms, what counts as “attractive” is determined by current and potential residents of each town.

Kent Household Income and Distance from London
Kent Household Income and Distance from London

Implications of Household Incomes

This variation in household income presents implications for marketers. If you are marketing luxury goods, you would typically target the more affluent towns. Likewise, if you had the responsibility for retail store location, you would seek to match your store locations to the socio-demographic and income profile of their catchment.

I have several examples of search marketing projects where tailoring search activity to this model has produced outstanding results. If you would like to discuss, please contact us.

The Decline of Keyword Density In SEO Importance

Exploring the Myth of Keyword Density

Why Keyword Density Is Not Relevant For SEO

In the ever-evolving realm of SEO, one term that has garnered both attention and confusion is “keyword density.” Let’s unravel the intricacies surrounding this concept and understand why it’s time to reevaluate its significance in your content strategy.

The Evolution of SEO Practices

In the digital landscape’s early days, keyword density was deemed a crucial metric for search engine optimization. Marketers believed that saturating content with keywords would catapult it to the top of search results. However, the SEO landscape has undergone a paradigm shift.

Breaking Down the Myth

Quality Over Quantity

Modern SEO emphasizes the quality of content rather than fixating on keyword density. Search engines have become smarter, prioritizing user experience and relevant, valuable content. Focusing solely on keyword density neglects the essence of providing value to your audience.

Semantic Search Dominance

Search engines now employ semantic search algorithms, deciphering the context and intent behind user queries. This renders the traditional keyword-focused approach less effective. Crafting content that aligns with user intent takes precedence over arbitrary keyword inclusion.

The Pitfalls of Keyword Density Obsession

Stilted and Unnatural Content

Excessive emphasis on keyword density often results in stilted, unnatural prose. Readers can discern forced keyword integration, diminishing the overall user experience. Engaging content that flows naturally holds more weight in today’s SEO landscape.

Risk of Keyword Stuffing Penalties

Search engines penalize websites engaging in keyword stuffing – the practice of overloading content with keywords. Such penalties can adversely impact your site’s ranking and credibility. A strategic, balanced approach to keyword usage is now the key to success.

Embracing a Holistic SEO Approach

Content Relevance and Authority

Shift your focus from keyword density to content relevance and authority. Crafting comprehensive, well-researched content establishes your website as an authoritative source. This, in turn, boosts your search engine ranking.

User-Focused Optimisation

Prioritize optimizing for the user rather than search engines alone. User engagement metrics, such as bounce rate and time spent on page, carry substantial weight in modern SEO algorithms. Tailoring content to meet user expectations ensures sustained organic traffic.

Conclusion: A Paradigm Shift in SEO Mindset

In conclusion, the era of fixating on keyword density has waned. Embrace a holistic approach that prioritises quality, relevance, and user satisfaction. By understanding and adapting to the evolving SEO landscape, your content can rise above the noise and secure a prominent place in search engine results.

My recommendation is that you should unlock the true potential of your content by focusing on what matters – relevance, quality, and user experience. Bid farewell to the myth of keyword density and usher in a new era of SEO success.

Bounce Rate and How to Improve it

How to improve bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to website traffic that enters a site and leaves without carrying out any sort of action. A higher than average bounce rate indicates that there is an issue with your website, web page or web traffic. It is therefore considered to be a negative measure of website performance.

This measure, however, doesn’t impact your search engine ranking factor, a key part of SEO. This is mainly due to the behaviour we humans have adopted over time. We move across the internet in a more erratic way causing more website interactions to be recorded as a “bounce”. For this reason, it is illogical for search engines to go against what is becoming natural human behaviour.

So this measure acts as more of an indicator to see if you website, web page or web traffic is having the effect that you originally intended.

Industry Measures

There a few definitive measure of average bounce rate performance. In the past, Google published a benchmarking report that reported that the average bounce rate was 42.5%. The report included details of average bounce rate by country, by visitor type and by device.

Google Publication: Predicting Bounce Rates in Sponsored Search Advertisements

A well established “How to” guide

The best guide we can find is Confluent Forms – Guide to the meaning of Bounce Rate in Analytics. It has stood the test of time, first published in 2015 and last updated in late 2019.

Our advice on improving this measure

Include simple and accessible links to related information on your website. Think like Wikipedia and mirror their easy site wide navigation. This can be as simple as linking keywords in your blog posts and grow to be as complex as dynamically updating viewable content based on the visitor.

How to Implement a 301 Redirect

Arrow on the wall

Implementing a 301 redirect or more precisely managing 301 redirects is increasingly an integral part of technical SEO. This is especially the case when websites expand or migrate from one owner, host, domain or code platform. Over time, websites, if not properly managed, tend to get ragged. Duplicate content, broken links and out of date site maps tend to be errors that show up in your Google Search Console Tools or Moz crawl diagnostics summary. Firstly a 301 redirect redirects a browser from an old to a new location. Secondly, and most importantly for SEO, a 301 redirect tells search engines that your web page has been permanently moved to another location or address. As a consequence, the search engines transfer the PageRank, or link juice, from the old location to the new.

Using a CMS for your Redirect

If you utilise a content management system or CMS, there are quite often tools inside that allow you to arrange redirects. Check in your CMS tools section first. If you use WordPress or similar platform you may find a plug-in that will do the redirect. If not, you will have to arrange the redirect yourself, usually via a .htaccess file. In my case, I was working on two separate redirects. One to send http://simplyclicks.com traffic to www.simplyclicks.com. The other to eliminate the index.html versions of my home page. There are good reasons for undertaking both redirects.

Redirecting http://yoursite.com to http://www.yoursite.com

There are two good reasons for implementing this redirect. Firstly, Google may treat the http:// only and the www versions of your site as two different sets of documents. Secondly here is a risk that you will build up two sets of inbound links. There are many ways of organising a redirect and the way selected depends on your operating system and server. In the most recent case, I was organising a redirect on an Apache server utilising Linux.

Redirecting www.yoursite.com/index.html to www.yoursite.com

My main reason for organising this redirect is a problem I have with web analytics. Quite often, web analytics will treat these two versions of the home page as two different pages. So you end up adding and diving all the time to get consolidated statistics for your home page. The second reason is more long term and affects link building. What happens, if people send links to a home page which is www.yoursite.com/index.html and you moved platforms? So that your home page became www.yoursite.com/index.php? Without a redirect, the old page would become a broken link, losing all its link juice or PageRank. This redirect also applies to a redirect of .php or similar. But not .asp as this would be covered by the Microsoft IIS and is not covered here.

The 301 Redirect Code

Below, I show the code used for organising both redirects in the same .htaccess file. The redirects must be in this order. The .htaccess file is uploaded to the root directly of your website that contains your home page.

########
RewriteEngine On
#
# redirect index.htm and index.html to / (do this before non-www to www)
#
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /.*index\.html?\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^(.*)index\.html?$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
#
# redirect domain.com -> www.domain.com
#
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]
########

If you use this code you will need to change the “yoursite.com” to your exact domain, e.g. simplyclicks.com in my case. This code works for me on Fasthosts.com, the largest UK hosting provider. You may need to make several tries and depending on your web host wait for the new .htaccess file to become activated.