Cairns Website Design

I’m going to take a look at the current website design companies in Cairns and evaluate them based on Design, Content Strategy and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Why? I’ve just moved to Cairns and as web company does – secretly evaluate their competition, I’m just going to report my findings and research (SEO).

Firstly, I’ll evaluate the websites in order of search results via google.com (not .com.au), ignoring the first 3 results as they are adwords.

Cairns Website Design

Cairns Website Design Search Results

When I first moved to Cairns 6 months ago I did a little bit research into the current state of website design in Cairns, I expected it to be much the same as the Sunshine Coast in terms of quality design and SEO competition. However upon further investigation I was wrong, the quality of design isn’t at the same mark and SEO almost tougher. It must be due to the fact that some web companies in Cairns have actually built there business via SEO (like I did on the Sunshine Coast) so competition is higher in a smaller tight-knit community.

In Cairns, the web services are the same, same good service, same kind of packages etc as offered by a large city counter part such as a Web company established in Brisbane. However large city web companies always seem to produce highly quality of work, with better design, code and functionality. But why?

Why are big city web companies better than small town companies?

I’m not having a go at the small town web businesses, as I am also a small town web designer / developer, but the fact remains big cities produce better work and the evidence is clear. This causes a dilemma for someone such as myself, I dislike big cities and I love it in Cairns for the adventure to inspire my web designs and logo designs.

Any who… onto the search results and evaluation.

1. Precedence

Design – Lets me honest here, the design of the site is rather outdated, I’d say it was a good design about 4 years ago, but now it is rather outdated. Interesting though their web work seems to be of better quality compared to their own website. But the conversion rate of the website is probably rather high, with the 3 calls to action on the home page – websites, hosting and marketing.

Content – Heaps and heaps of content which would definitely be helping with their SEO efforts. All the content seems very informative and helpful for a start up business in Cairns looking for a website.

SEO – First on google for “Website Design Cairns” which is good and would take a fair bit of work. They have a PageRank 5 and 170 pages indexed in Google search engine. Also a good Alexia ranking of around 700,000.

2. justpurple

Design – Justpurple have a pretty nice website design, however it is a WordPress theme (Nimble) which can be purchased for around $50. Generally I get pretty pissed off at web companies using templates for their own website, but whatever, do what you gotta do.

Content – Pretty informative content, however there is a “Test” link in the top navigation, and Paypal button on the front page that links to sign up to paypal? and the footer confuses me with their cross promotion of their other website services. The website content is a little hard to navigate as well.

SEO – Second on google for “Website Design Cairns” which again is well done. With a Page Rank of 5 and Alexia ranking of 5,000,000, I suspect domain age and some keywords have put them in the 2nd spot.

3. Cairns Web

Design – I love green and dark colours, my favourite when used well, it makes websites look fresh. Not this time, the Cairns Web website is pretty ugly, I’d say its from 2004, possible even designed and coded in 1997 when the company first started. But it does look like they produce better work their there own website design speaks, update guys!

Content – A website company operating since 1997 is a powerful statement, Cairns Web would have a lot of experience, however their designs and approach feels stuck in 2002. But they would build robust websites thats for sure.

SEO – Third on google for “Website Design Cairns” which again is well done. With a Page Rank of 3 I would expect more from a web design  company operating since 1997.

4. RJ New Designs

Design – The best website design in this evaluation so far! Looks like RJ New Designs knows quite a bit about website design, development and SEO.

Content – Good informative content, well structured and presented.

SEO – Fourth on a google for “Website Design Cairns” which again is well done, if I was Google I’d rate this page higher. With a Page Rank of 4 and a better Alexia ranking and content, I wonder why RJ New isn’t above Cairns Web. Upon further research its apparent – Domain Age, Website Speed along with missing highly critical optimisation aspects are missing from the RJ New Designs website.

Why “Cairns Web” is beating RJ:

  1. Domain is older
  2. Loads faster
  3. Has h1, h2 on front page for “Cairns Website Design”
  4. URL contains cairns and web (keywords)
  5. Isn’t missing valuable “alt” tags from images

All of which are easy fixes – RJ could be ranked higher in the Search engines than Cairns Web with around 2-3 hours by, increasing page download speed, adding headers to his home page, create a dedicated landing page /cairns-website-design/ and link to the home page along with adding alt keywords to images.

Current state of website design in Cairns

Overall the web design companies in Cairns are most likely run by under 5 person teams, which is why I would assume big city design and web firms are superior in quality compared to small town firms. The combined knowledge and experience is critical to achieving amazing websites – along with dedicated designers, developers and SEO consultants. Being a jack of all trades is a strength and sometimes the greatest weakness, however us small town Cairns web designers still do our best to compete.

Passion, love and work ethic can be found everywhere, small or big town, its there.

 

 

 

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