Sponsored Review: VisionDirect.co.uk

I’ve been told that my sense of humor is an acquired taste but for some reason when I logged on to VisionDirect.co.uk to do this Sponsored Review and saw some of the smallest fonts ever on their site, the irony made me laugh. I’m wondering if they use their website both as a marketing tool and a vision test. Anyway, this review is supposed to be about any SEO tweaks or changes VisionDirect.co.uk (please note, I make the distinction because there is also a visiondirect.com that does not appear to be owned by the same company) could make to better rank for their targeted terms such as contact lenses, and contact lenses online. So, get out your reading glasses if you need to but let’s get this show on the road.

One of the first things I do when reviewing any site is check out how they are ranking right now. Usually sites asking or paying for a review aren’t found very high up on Google, so you can imagine my surprise when I found VisionDirect sitting at #6 in Google and #1 in Google UK for the term contact lenses online. I presume they are trying to improve their rankings on this side of the pond but really when a site ranks that well, I’m hesitant to suggest many changes.

One change I would suggest they make would be in their title tags. If it seems like I’m always harping on the title tags in these reviews it’s because I am. Title tags are one of the easiest areas to optimize and it can benefit your site a great deal. Right now VisionDirect has their URL at the beginning of every title tag. There’s just no good reason for that. I’d suggest reversing their title tags’ order completely (putting the product name in front) and possibly getting rid of the URL in the title all together. I understand some sites and companies don’t like doing that for branding purposes but at least move it to the back of the tag so you can place the most emphasis on your target terms.

Probably the only other change I would suggest making would be to make use of the H1 tags throughout the site. A lot of e-commerce sites I run into aren’t using any H tags and I’m not quite sure why, but there can be considerable benefit to working your top targeted term or phrase into that H1 tag.

And of course, there’s the old SEO forum standby answer of “get more links” but it appears that is exactly what they are trying to do with this SponsoredReview. All in all though, the site looks to be ranking well for several competitive terms and I’m a strong believer in the “if it aint broke, don’t fix it” school of thought. Whichever changes or tweaks you decide to implement, please do so slowly with a close eye on your rankings.

As I mentioned, this has been a SponsoredReview. If you’d like SEO Refugee to review your site, you can do so through SponsoredReviews.com.