For a website that has the aim to provide information about the Queen, Royal Monarchy
and the work as well as biographies of the Royal Family throughout the ages, the official web site of the
British Monarchy does an excellent job. Not only is it one of the most attractive and well optimised web
sites on the Internet, it sure is also one of the most comprehensive online information resources available
about the British Monarchy. From a web page analysis perspective the official website of the British Monarchy
is far superior to many government sites around the world.
It has a particularly well designed navigation system allowing for several pages to be
accessed from the main page without having to drill down if you want to find information fast.
Designed in shades of purple with a white background on specific pages, it makes for
easy reading although the sheer volume of information available may at times be overwhelming. Hats off to
the webmasters and developers for being able to integrate the large volume of information and images in
such a skilful manner through excellent web site design techniques.
The user can easily navigate back to the home page and since descriptive titles have
been included for all the pages, the user will always be able to identify the page visited by looking at
the blue bar on top of the screen. In addition the menu has also been designed with cascading style sheets
which provide a high level of continuity and allows for easy navigation.
Many sites housing the amount of images and information to be found at the official web
site of the British Monarchy take a long time to load. The page about the Royal Family states it has been
designed for browsing by the general public. As such they have certainly gone the extra mile to ensure fast
loading no matter what type of access technology is used by the viewer.
Information that can be found is categorized under main headings such as the Monarch Today,
Royal Family, History, Art & Residences, and The Insight Magazine. Additional categories can be found at the
bottom of the page and include News, Media, and Children, How do I…? and more.
The interactivity level is excellent although it lacks a forum, but understandably simply
for web design and maintenance reasons, it can become a huge project on its own. A search facility is included
that allows for the use of Boolean operators such as AND as well as OR for advanced searching capabilities.
Sound SEO principles have been used as can be seen from the keyword density, headings applied,
Alt tags used, and the well structured site map. All the internal links work and the site also includes a few
links to relevant information sources. Once you follow these links, you will still think that you are at the
official website of the Royal Monarchy. The links have been chosen with great care.
Supporters and interested parties can marvel at the availability of videos which can be viewed
online about special occasions and even the official piper playing. You can also sign up for the Royal podcast if
you have iTunes. Alternatives are provided to download and view the videos onto an mp3 player. The site also
includes .Pdf downloads and provides users access to an Acrobat download facility to ensure that they can indeed
download required files.
Attention to detail is evident in the variety of contact options provided. The “How do I?
section gives users the opportunity to ask questions. A mailing list is available for updates on the British
Monarchy site.
SEO optimisation and technology
The British Monarch site can be viewed in Netscape 4.7, Firefox 1.1, and Internet Explorer 4.
It has been designed for optimal viewing in screen size 800x600 pixels.
Main keywords of the British Monarchy site include:
- British
- Monarchy
- Queen
- Royal
- Jubilee
- King
Meta tags have been included with well written descriptions. The web developers are identifiable.
You will also find sections of the site in Welsh and Scots Gaelic. It has a current Page Rank of 7/10 and an Alexa
Traffic Rank of 39,086. There are at least 2370 incoming links from Google and a total of 38 334 incoming links from
Yahoo at the time of website analysis (30 April 2008). The overall estimated incoming links come to a staggering
43 824 with a mere 32 highly relevant outgoing links. This is definitely the best possible balance of inbound and
outbound links you can expect for web site marketing.
The site competes favourably for keywords such as British, British Royal Family and Queen
Elizabeth with other websites about the topic. Whether you want information about the British Monarchy, acts,
collections, and celebrations or want to buy valuable items available through their online shop, you will find a
visit to the official website of the Royal Family an enjoyable experience. The conclusion for this web site
analysis is that a well designed and SEO optimised website awaits you.
