An Introduction to Google+
Google+ has been slow burn and as yet is a long way off taking over social platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook, however, it's not one to be ignored. There are some SEO benefits in adopting SEO and we will go over this in more detail in another blog post, for this one though we will go over some of the basics and a little bit about how it works.
Negative SEO and Click Fraud- The Latest Weapons Online
Negative SEO is basically when various techniques are used to try and damage your online marketing campaign. We've been noticing an increase in this kind of practise, mainly because Google penalises sites for trying to manipulate the search engines. It opens up opportunities to damage your competitors whilst improving your own businesses success online.
Personally it's not something we support and think its a really nasty way of trying to gain success. As a business, if you employ the services of an SEO company, you might want to check that they aren't doing this kind of thing, it can seriously give you a bad name!
Keyword Research – The key to success
Keyword research is so important, I can't stress enough how much. Any kind of campaign online must never be attempted until you have a thorough understand of the things that people are actually physically typing into the search engines. All too often companies assume they know what people are looking for, but in reality it can be completely different. Each key phrase is its own individual market, so in order to understand which ones to target you need to know the volume of searches for each term, how competitive they are and whether you are able to compete against other websites.
Designing Your Website’s Homepage
Your homepage is most likely the first page that people will visit, so when designing a home page for a website, it’s important to follow some tried and tested methods in terms of layout. Here are some tips for where certain elements should be placed on the page:
It’s a Jungle Out There! Choosing a Digital Marketing Agency
I get your pain, you need help marketing your business online but really have no idea where to turn. How do you know what you need, how much you need to invest and actually you may not know much about digital marketing and what it is all about. It doesn’t help that there are so many companies out there calling and emailing you every day, offering their services, promising the earth for next to nothing. But be warned, if you take nothing else away from this then NO ONE can guarantee natural ranking results on the first page of Google EVER, that’s right, EVER!
Using Facebook to run competitions
Facebook is a great place to run a competition, research shows that they get a good response. But what do you need to think about before running one?
Well the first thing is to understand your overall marketing aims, if you are looking to expand your customer reach and help build your brand then Facebook competitions can certainly help. The first thing I would do is ensure that no one can enter unless they have ‘liked’ your business page, this way any posts you make will appear in their news feed long after the contest has finished
Using technology to keep your customers happy
Forget the whole fantastic customer service thing; we all know that that's vitally important. But beyond that the thing that most people I know complain about is the lack of communication from their suppliers. It's one of the fundamental rules of any relationship to keep the lines of communication open. Just think of all those great friends you had in your school days that just drifted away, if they were still in your life today, chances are some of them at least you would still see on a regular basis.
Keyword Research – the beginning of the beginning
Sounds a bit melodramatic but Keyword Research is where it all starts out. If you are looking at lead generation and increasing traffic to your website then keyword research is a must. Before you do anything else you need to understand what people are physically typing into the search engines, you need to understand any trends and look for gaps in the market. You need to look at each individual keyword as a market in its own right remember as people often use different words to search for the same thing.
Images on your Website – things to consider
The images you use on your website should be considered carefully, firstly make sure you have permission to use the image in the first place.
If your business does not have its own images then using a resource such as IStock or Fotolia can help you get hold of photos that represent your business in the right way.
You need to ensure that the image fits in with the page itself, make sure it relates to the content on that page and that it accurately represents it, that’s not to say it has to be literal but images can help to draw the reader in and act as an aid in attracting them to reading the content on that page.
Long Tailed Keywords
A long tailed keyword is basically a more descriptive version of a keyword, so instead of searching for 'jacket' you might search for 'black leather jacket UK'. On an individual basis they do not account for a particularly large number of searches but they are far more likely to result in sales.
In terms of converting traffic into customers, this is the second most valuable kind of search term as people are very late on in the buying stage, they know exactly what they want and are far more likely to buy.