Category: SEO

If you regularly visit my website or blog you will have noticed that I have made some changes ( and one reason why I haven’t blogged as much as I used to over the last two months). Before I allowed myself to take my local site to the live server I had to do some basic testing and every website should go through this same process to ensure as few problems occur so your users can enjoy your experience to its fullest and also make sure your business looks professional. In this blog post, I will discuss 5 areas that must be tested before you allow yourself to let the website into the public domain.

Continue “Testing a website before it goes live”

Being close to the front of organic search results is really important to anyone who owns a website. It is seen as the holy grail of a good website but it isn’t always easy to reach the top as many a blog owner knows.

Semrush keyword discovery tool

Semrush tool helps you discover who is ranking highest for particular keywords and in which country, you can discover which keywords are particularly expensive or alternatively cheap, if they are increasing in price to help you with your Adwords campaigns.

Discovering related keywords

Not only can you see how a particular keyword is performing and who is achieving the best result in search engines for it but you can also discover other keywords that relate to the keyword you are trying to target.

The benefit of discovering keywords is that when you start writing new blog posts or web pages around your product or service you can discover which keywords are less competitive and what seems to be trending to boost the likely traffic to your website.

So for example, in the below image you can see how many times ‘cardigan’ keyword has been searched for (49,500), how much it costs per click (CPC) and what I think is very beneficial, how competitive the keyword is to allow your content to be found and clicked on, the lower the number the less competitive the keyword.

There are many more options but I will let you explore the keyword discovery website for yourself. Just know that on the free version you can only search for a small amount of keywords and you don’t get as much results as you would on the paid version. Don’t let that put you off, go and check it out NOW!

Is the keyword still trending?

Lastly, to make sure you are targeting a keyword that may be increasing in popularity check out Google Trends. This tool helps you see if your particular topic is going to be worth the effort. Will it bring in a massive influx of new traffic and hopefully fans of your content or not?

If the keyword is not going to attract people to your website how else can you bring your services into your potential customers consciousness? Can you target another keyword, do you need to rethink your product and or service? Or do you need to reconsider how to reach out to the potential market you are targeting?

I hope you find these tools useful and if you have any other suggestions about creating great content to help improve organic search results and traffic then please feel free to comment in the box below.

Related articles across the web

• How to Get On the Front Page of Google Search Results (4 Tips)
• Understanding Keyword Research for SEO
• The Evolution of Keyword Research Tools [Infographic] by @jonharules
• 3 Top Strategies for Attracting Visitors to Your Website
• Top eBooks To Boost Your SEO Skills

There is a lotta lotta information out there about digital marketing and how to get your website seen and generate sales leads and by golly, don’t you just worry that you’ve missed something? Hubspot, probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, digital marketing agencies offers a service to see if your website is meeting the online marketing ‘grade’. Take some to grade your websites digital marketing via how well it is performing.

Continue “Grade your websites digital marketing via Hubspot”

5 Tips For Getting Better Results From Mobile

People are using more diverse devices to browse the web than ever before and more and more of these devices are tablets and smartphones. Browsing behavior on such devices is different than on laptop and desktop computers. Because it is very likely that a lot of the traffic to your website will be coming from mobile devices and that this will only increase in the future, it is important that you devise a mobile advertising strategy that tailors ads for these devices and consequently improves your online advertising results. Here are some tips for getting better results from your mobile advertising efforts.

Make Sure That Your Website Works on All Mobile Devices

These days mobile devices aren’t limited to just iPhones and iPads. You need to make sure that your website displays correctly on a number of different Android and IOS devices. If a person lands on your website and finds that scrolling doesn’t work properly on their device or that they can’t read the text on your site because it is too small, they will quickly move on. Creating a great mobile user experience is very important so make sure to test on different devices and alter your website if necessary. A good responsive design is a must for any website these days.

Create Mobile Specific Ads

If you are using Google search ads, you can activate mobile preferred ads through the Advanced Campaigns feature in the Google AdWords backend and use specific ad texts for mobile devices.

Measure Results and Behavior

Use Google Analytics to measure how well your mobile ads are performing and how users on different devices are behaving on your site. Investigate how your ads and site performs on mobile devices compared with desktop performance. If you find that some pages on your website aren’t performing very well on mobile devices according to the key performance indicators you have identified, make some changes and measure whether your results improve.

Funnel Mobile Users Differently

Creating a specific sales funnel for mobile users can significantly improve your conversion rates. People on mobile devices don’t want to search around on a page to see where they need to click, nor do they want to click through 20 times and fill out information on 5 pages before being able to actually buy something or get the information they are after. Your mobile sales funnel needs to be easy, fast and straightforward. That way you’ll lose fewer potential customers along the way.

Leverage Location Information

Many mobile device searches have some geographical intent. People who research products want to buy often still prefer to buy them in a physical store. If possible you should take advantage of this. For example, if your business has physical stores and one happens to be near where the user is performing their search, you can show this information in your advertising message. You can do this using the location extension feature that Google AdWords offers. If your business is using online advertising, but you haven’t set up any specific ads for mobile yet, the time to start doing this is right now. Your competitors are likely already on top of this, so make sure you don’t lose your competitive edge by ignoring the importance of mobile devices. Zane Schwarzlose is an SEO Specialist at Fahrenheit Marketing, an Austin Internet marketing firm. Zane thinks that a mobile-only Internet marketing strategy could be easier to implement and quantify.

The blog Title is probably the most important part of any blog post.

You have finally decided that you want to start blogging as you hear this content marketing stuff is really good for drumming up a new business and thus you have created your first masterpiece but what do you call it? Blog titles are probably one of the most important parts of any blog post and in this blog post, I am going to discuss why. Continue “Choosing a user centric blog title”

Some may say that getting your business’ content out across social media channels is the job of the marketing team but in fact I believe if your sales team or even your general staff aren’t on social media every moment they are in work, then your business are missing a trick.

Whilst doing my usual job, sitting at my in house mac computer it came to me something my boss had said during the weekly business update call.

‘please share our articles,news and content with everyone socially, whether on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other platforms it really helps’

I knew I was already reposting the business message out on all my main social media platforms but then I thought to myself, ‘I wonder how many social media platforms are the sales team on.’ Luckily, my work table was sat at the foot of the kitchen in an open plan office so when a sales member entered the door I questioned  the poor unwitting soul.

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Interrogation of how much social media do my colleagues use

Being nosey and generally wanting to help improve the company’s brand awareness I asked a team member of the sales team ‘do you have a Twitter account?’ and to my surprise he replied ‘no’.

I feel like this was a missed opportunity for any would be sales team member as I believe by your business’ employees building networks on as many social media platforms as possible ‘can’ increase your networks & ‘can’ generate leads. For example, just a week ago I received three enquiries for freelance work, I have found a possible lead by speaking to a cloud computing provider as well as speaking directly with a radio DJ (based in the locality of the service the company I work for provides ) about advertising the product on their radio show. All this was done by building a genuine network on social media, the potential of digital networking is huge AND global!

Not only sales, but everyone should be more social

I mustn’t make our team sound anti-digital social media as they are definitely not, they tend to use LinkedIn and they have quite a good success rate with this platform but its more helpful if you have a large network of various people with varying skills and interests on different platforms in different formats ( video, text , sound and infographics ) to draw interest to the product being sold it is of greater benefit to the sales team and also means the potential for more commission.

To be frank, a lot of people don’t really understand how to use each social media platform effectively as a sales tool ( even I am still learning day to day! ) and just how much potential benefits of learning how to use them correctly and the opportunity it can bring by taking the time to learn.

Common thought from a novice user of social media

Why would you tweet 140 characters, who is going to bother to read it?

This is a common misconception that crosses the minds of many a novice tweep. When you start developing an effective network you will find conversation, mutual respect, RTs, FF and more are common place, as well as the slightly pointless ‘thanks for following’ which do sometimes become quite tiresome.

Your business’ social network : Twitter Example

I imagine a lot of business owners now realise that you should be on social media regardless of your industry and having a genuine network that is 2000+ strong per social media platform is of equal importance but it doesn’t end there! Your business is the first stepping stone in the equation but if you have 20 members of staff all with 2000 followers and who regularly tweet out your information your are increasing your reach by 40,000 as well as your business account!

Helping your team build their Twitter network

I hope you have found this blog post useful. If you already allow your employees to use social media how are you using it? Or are you afraid to embrace and risk the change of direct communication with potential customers and partners through social media incase you say the wrong thing? Please share the post and leave a comment in the box below.

The last blog post I wrote was all about three steps to increase your website traffic and it is clear that blogging is of huge importance to any online marketing.

Make your blog titles count!

Something that is very important is the title of the post and also the keyword selection you use within.

Incase you are unaware what a keyword is it is a word that you are targeting the search engines to look for in your page to give it more relevance to a users search.

For instance, my keyword might be ‘twitter profile’ then the website must include this keyword throughout the article without making it look ‘faked’.

Go forth and populate my keyword minions!

You need it in your title, your page url, your heading tags, your paragraphs and even in your alt tags for images! Don’t stress though, search engines are clever, they will look at the rest of your content and see how relevant your content  is to your keyword without actually being your keyword!

So now you have an idea about keywords you might realise why what you title your blogs is so important! If you are still a bit stifled for ideas then here are 9 ideas to help you start those creative cogs turning!

1. What does (fill in service/product) do?

2. An insight into a (your job)’s role

3. 3 things you should always consider when choosing (service/product)

4. What to expect from your (service/product here)

5. Should I buy a (your service/product)

6. Opposing service/product vs your service/product ( start with positive points about the opposing service and where that competition might actually be the answer to the readers problem).

7.  5 problems with your service/product (then turn it around to help people make decisions)

8. Best price for a (your product/service) –  ( make comparisons with others and why you are cheaper or more expensive than the competition or alternatively what you think is important in your/product service.

9. Should I buy product A or product B.

Notice that these headers are all asking questions , questions that your potential customer might have! By blogging about these topics you are educating your customers and that is great way to build trust with your possible customers as it empowers them to be able to make decisions and shows that you care about giving good service and advice to those that need your business.

A great tip I read from the http://www.thesaleslion.com/ is that to take time to consider questions that your customers ask you. Usually they are about pricing or time but there may be some other questions that are not price related, these are fantastic things to blog about and will help you generate new content for your business blog!

Best of luck writing your blogs and remember this is meant to be fun and not a chore!

If you have any tips how to generate new ideas for blog posts please comment in the box below! Or should you need help with a specific topic and want me to help you generate some ideas please get in touch and i will see what i can do 🙂

The majority of potential customers and clients are now online and that is great news for any business owner, it means reaching in to your target market is a lot easier than it once was. The problem is, do you use this online way of living to your advantage and not only to your advantage but to the advantage of your customers.

The internet has made shopping around easier and personalization of service of huge importance and if your business isn’t using its digital marketing tools properly then the company is likely to fail. In this post I will discuss three ways that I GUARRANTEE will help you generate ‘the right traffic’ and leads for your business.

1. Blogging, but the right content

What, you don’t know how to blog? Do you have an opinion? Well then my friend, you CAN blog and I believe that EVERYONE should be blogging! Blogging is actually a really fun way to get your thoughts out of your head and shared with anyone who is interested and willing to read the content you provide. It is so important that your business ( or as individual ) are blogging and for quite a few reasons.

Firstly it breaks down perceived barriers between being a professional corporation to an approachable professional that cares about its customers and becoming seen as an educator not just an informer. Secondly blogging helps boost organic search results and thirdly if you write the right content then you are being a little bit psychic and answering questions that customers have before they even make enquiries empowering your customers! In this era customer truly is king and being a caring compassionate business that really wants to make a difference to people it does business with are the businesses that are going to thrive in the 21st century and beyond.

Write the right content

People get confused about what blogging is. Blogging is not really a tool for spreading gossip and news or discussing the latest news events ( unless it is really appropriate for your business ), the reason you shouldn’t blog about major events and twist it on to your business is because the person who views the content is interested in the ‘news event’ not your services or product! Comprende!?

Instead take just 10 minutes of your time and ask yourself what is the last 20 questions a potential customer or lead asked? Usually cost is top for most businesses but what else is an issue? When you have the questions you have the greatest content creation tools at your disposal and if  you ignore the customers needs you will always be seen as a corporation that are not very approachable.

Remember, its time to be personal and friendly with the customers NOT just provide a service or product. Show the consumers why you are the company to do business with.

2. Getting your employees to blog

If you are small to large-sized employer then this applies to you otherwise one man bands, im sorry ignore this section!

Your employees are the ones who are your point of contact with most of your clients, particularly the sales team so get those guys knowledge and get them putting pen to paper ( or finger to digital ), they are perfect people to try blog content because they know not only the questions that consumers have but usually the answers to their problem too!

Not only the fact they have all the questions and answers of your market but they will also free up your valuable time! A blog post can take anything from 30 minutes to half a day ( should you be interested in creating a good infographic or something else of such liking), if you have 30 sales staff and each one writes just one blog post a week that is 30 pieces of new content for the search engines to feed on and you didn’t have to divert some of your time to writing a post!

Guest blogging both home and away

So your blogging, your workforce is blogging and now your content is mounting but you can add even more content to the fabulous informative blog you are creating for your market! Inviting others in your industry to blog on your website will not only benefit you but it will also benefit the guest by increasing awareness of their ability and creating back links to their own content.

It may not seem a very clever idea, isn’t it like inviting the wolf to the lamb’s dinner? It depends on your viewpoint, personally I believe by building relationships with fellow industry experts you can build mutual respect, share business when your workload is high and also help promote each other; surprisingly you may even learn a few things from the new post too!

Social

Lastly, if you are not on social media then where the heck have you been!?! EVERY and i mean EVERY business has to be on social media, social media is becoming a much more powerful tool for generating traffic than the organic search. I guess the most obvious reason for this is that you will connect to people who you really do have an interest in, particularly on Twitter so getting your message out to the right person is instantly easier.

Every time you create a new piece of content ( not just blog posts, images, infographics, podcasts too) then share it on all social platforms. A lot of marketers might tell you to just use LinkedIn if you are a B2B, others will say to target a few social platforms, I am going to tell you to target as many social media platforms as physically possible! Create networks everywhere, the more you connect to people from every country and continent on the world the easier it is to reach the right people with your product or service but don’t spend all your time on social media and neglect the importance of actually running your business.

How do you drive traffic to your website? What do you feel works best? Please comment in the box below.

Finding Blog topic inspiration can be tricky. Sometimes you may have noticed my blog posts start drying up…I go three to five days without posting anything new and it sometimes is due to a lack of creative writing inspiration but how do we get back into the flow of things when this happens? How do we get our creative cogs turning again? In this post I give five suggestions on how you can get inspiration and start writing regularly and freely.

Trending topics

Sometimes what others are saying about a particular topic in your industry can be useful to spark your creativity. I have written about how to find out what is trending on the major social media platforms before here but there are other ways too!

Twitter trends

For instance on Twitter you can #Discover things you are interested in. Okay so, for an example, I would probably search for something like #art or #graphics or #brand. This will bring back hashtags with those phrases on and give you inspiration to see what others are talking about in your particualr field of interest.

Instagram trends

Or on Instagram you can search for tags in your field of interest. It is a lot similar to the Twitter discover tool but obviously these are images relating to the hash tag. This isn’t a bad thing, why not take inspiration from an image and write about it or maybe do a review of another artist or someone else’s photography. Maybe an image will spark a piece of creativity within your own soul.

Tumblr trends

Tumblr offers the same ability to search for hash tags so there are oodles of ways for your to find some inspiration from others.

Questions, questions, questions

Have people asked you questions about your work or industry lately? This is a great area of inspiration, every time someone asks you a question don’t just answer it but write it down too! You would be surprised just how many people in the world probably have the same question.

Get your work colleagues to help

Are you a business man or woman reading this blog? How many employees do you have? For each colleague you could have a potential new blog post in each and every person! So if you have 40 employees and each creates just one post a week that is 40 pieces of new content A WEEK!! A huge advantage over a lot of your competition.

If your creativity is a bit low as sometimes happens call a friend and ask them for a little hand, we are all creative and all have things to say about the industry we work in.

Old Works

Another option is to consider old works such as case studies ( if you provide a service ) or artworks you have created ( like myself ) and explain the concepts you had behind them. You can even discuss what you learnt from the experience too, that might help you to readdress where your strengths and weaknesses are which is always a great thing to do.

Guest Blogging

If you are totally dry and still struggling to blog about something interesting then you could open up your blog to others in your industry. This will help to keep your readers interested in coming to your website but also allow others to gain promotion from your website. You may think this is crazy to allow people to post on your blog but the truth is that the internet has made it easy for people to shop around a lot easier for what their specific needs are so don’t get defensive at the thought of advertising or helping a fellow person in your industry, actually helping others is great for business!

By helping promote another you are building a relationship with the person who has blogged on your website which may result in internet karma and potential leads when that person can’t complete a job for whatever reason.

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Once you have some inspiration spend just ten to twenty minutes of your time writing down around 10 to 20 topics you can write about in the near future then, when it comes to writing you can choose from one of your titles you came up with at the start of the week.

Have you got any more ideas how you find inspiration? Please feel free to leave a comment in the box below.

Sometimes deciding what to write about on your blog can be difficult, you just get a creative block and it’s like you are sat in a white room, on a white stool with white windows & with nothing to white, oh sorry I mean write! Finding out what is trending on social media is one great way to inducious your creative sparks. In this post you will find four useful links to find out what is currently trending.

Google Trends

Each day there is new content created on the web and search engine giant Google is a great place to find out what is trending. It is the most widely used Search Engine in the Western Hemisphere so if you write about something related to the main trend you have a good chance you may generate some traffic from it.

Reddit

Ever heard of reddit? Well you have now! Reddit is a place that people share stories that they find interesting and they post them in specific categories. The benefit of this for looking for ideas for your own works is that you can see how many up’s they have which gives an indication at how interesting and successful the story might be if you were to create something yourself around that particular article.

Buzz Feed

BuzzFeed is the leading media company for the social age, intensely focused on delivering high-quality original reporting, insight, and viral content across a rapidly expanding array of subject areas. Their technology powers the social distribution of content, detects what is trending on the web, and connects people in realtime with the hottest content of the moment. A great way to really spark your imagination with many subjects and ideas to discuss on your blog, what could be better?

Youtube Trending

Lastly, if you are starting to enter the world of video blogging you may like to take a look at this site. It gives you insight into what is currently trending on youtube. Even if you aren’t video blogging it still might spark some ideas for your latest blog post or podcast.

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Remember, although all these websites are informing you of what is trending at that particular moment you may want to try and be a little bit psychic too and write about things that are yet to happen but are foresable and highly likely to happen as this will give google time to index your content and you won’t become old news. Alternatively, if you can write an article within a couple of hours and you have large social media followings on various platforms and you are a part of various communities then don’t worry so much about natural search results just make sure you use the hashtag as effecitvely as possible when describing your blog post so that your article can be found amongst all the other trending information. Best of luck and if you have any other ideas of to find out what is trending then please feel free to comment in the box below.