The UK's economy shrank by 20.4% in April alone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are forecasting the worst world recession since the Great Depression of the 1930's. The uncertainty of the economic landscape ahead of us all is a concern for many businesses. However, there are ways to help your business prepare for whatever is around the corner and completing a full marketing audit (assessing all marketing activity, benchmarking effectiveness and developing new strategies), is a sensible...

You've dived into your Google Analytics and you know where your website visitors are coming from and how they find and use your site. You also discover that your bounce rate is really high. Is this a problem and if so, what can you do about it? What exactly is a bounce rate? A website bounce occurs when a user visits your website, views just one page and then exits immediately. They essentially 'bounce' off your website. Your bounce rate is calculated by dividing all single page sessions by all...

In these challenging times, it’s essential that businesses keep talking to their customers; this really is not the time for marketing 'radio silence'. While cashflow may be a concern for many businesses, the great news is that marketing doesn't have to involve big budgets. In fact, there are lots of highly effective and impactful, low cost marketing activities businesses can (and should!) utilise.  Email marketing  Mailchimp offer free email marketing up to 2,000 subs...

Effective website copy which is informative, persuasive and compelling will not only help to convert sales and enquiries, but also greatly assist your SEO efforts. However, in our experience it's often one of the biggest stumbling blocks during a new website project. A combination of resource, time and experience can leave a new website ready to go but with no content.  Who are you writing for? Writing effective website copy is not the same as writing effective print copy. In general, website ...

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a pretty simple phrase for what is, in reality, a huge area of digital marketing. Generally speaking, when people refer to SEO they're talking about making sure their website appears high in a search engine's listings. So what on earth is technical SEO?  What is technical SEO? Technical SEO is just one part of SEO (which also includes content marketing, keyword optimisation, link building and UX design); it's the process of ensuring your website functionalit...

The digital marketing landscape is continually changing, making it difficult to know where to focus your time. So here's a round up of the digital marketing trends we think everyone should keep an eye on during 2020.Google's speed addictionYour website needs to (ideally) load in under 3 seconds! Any longer and less pages can be crawled by Google, which can have a negative affect on your search rankings. Check your website loading speed and if it needs to improve, look at compressing fil...

So you’ve launched your brand spanking new website and it's received fantastic feedback. But does a website have a 'shelf life' and if so, when should you start thinking about developing a new one?Let’s be SMART about itIn principle, the success of a website can be measured against its intended purpose. Was it developed to attract new customers? Is it an eCommerce site that needs to deliver a specific ROI? Maybe it adds credibility to your business or service? Or perhaps it's purely...

As a local estate agent, you have something national chains don’t have – local knowledge. When it comes to helping people find you in search engines, that local experience can be invaluable. Here’s how to use local SEO to your advantage... Get to the top with Google My Business When people search for terms like “estate agent” in Google, the search engine often takes into account their location and shows them relevant businesses nearby. This box appears above the main search results s...

Have you heard about Google’s RankBrain? Here’s why you need to take it into account for your search engine optimisation. What is RankBrain? Many of the details (like much of Google’s operations) are shrouded in secrecy. But since it was revealed in 2015, more information has come to light. Basically, it’s an artificial intelligence machine learning program. It teaches itself and applies its learnings to search results. It first came about (as far as we know) in 2013 when Google were...

Want more people to find your blog posts via Google and other search engines? Here’s what to do... 1. Answer questions The easiest way to optimise your blog for search engine is to research what questions people are already asking that relate to your business. There are lots of ways to do this. Read our keywords blog for some ideas, or try a tool like Answer the public. Once you’ve found a question to answer, Google it yourself and look at the current search results. Prioritise topics th...

Now that there’s so much content online (over 2 million new blog posts are published every day!), writing a good blog post is key if you want it to have any traction. Here’s what every good blog post should contain: Title Your title needs to be compelling so that people will want to click on it. This is easier said than done, so try keeping a note of every blog post you click on and refer back to them when you’re writing your own titles. Your title should also be optimised for search e...

Put simply, keywords or key phrases, are what people are searching for in search engines. As a business, they’re important because you want to come up in search engines when people search for the keywords or phrases that are relevant to your products or services. To stand a chance of being near the top of the results, you need to include those words and phrases in your website. For example, if you’re an accountant that specialises in small businesses, you need to have the words “Small bu...

SEO (search engine optimisation) can seem like an daunting task, but the key is to remember that search engines use bots to index your content, so by organising and writing your site in a way that make sense to the bots, you'll make it easier for them to find and index your pages. Here's 10 ways you can do just that... 1. Use structured site navigation  Group similar pages together under menus and try not to let pages get "orphaned" as it will be harder for bots to find them. 2. Creat...

Ever wondered where your website traffic comes from? How do people find you and end up on your site? Thankfully, it’s easy (and free!) to find out with Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics yet, here’s how to set it up.How to check your website traffic Once your website is set up on Google Analytics, head to Acquisition > Overview in the left hand side menu. From here you will see an overview of all the different sources that are sending traffic to your website.Ide...

If you’ve looked in Google Analytics and seen that people are finding your website through search engines, you might have wondered what they typed in to find you. You may have tried to find the answer within Google Analytics, in which case you probably came across the unhelpful term “(Not provided)” where you expected to see the keywords. So does that mean you’ll never know what people are searching for to find you? Thankfully not! Although Google Analytics no longer displays search t...

Have you looked at your website objectively lately? When you’re head down running a company, it’s easy to forget that people are forming impressions every day based solely on your website. If your website is badly designed, hard to use or poorly maintained, it could be losing you business.Bad first impressions Looks aren’t everything, but on the internet they count for an awful lot. People make first impressions incredibly fast online, typically in just two tenths of a second. Your websi...