The UK's economy has encountered persistent challenges since the pandemic, intensifying worries for businesses amid uncertainties in the economic landscape, further exacerbated by increases in living costs, material expenses, and the ongoing repercussions of Brexit. 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 st...

Investing in our people and their development, is something we continually support. Kim & Amy headed to brightonSEO for two days, their first in-person conference since they joined Cognique last year. Here’s what they got up to in the fun packed city of Brighton… brightonSEO here we come We’d booked our tickets, found an Airbnb with a seaside view, figured out the tube to get across London so we didn’t miss our connecting train. We were ready… As we headed down to Brighton, cracke...

We specialise in providing bespoke website design and digital marketing for OMBs and SMEs. Winners of the Somerset Business Award Small Business Of The Year 2021, we are enjoying a period of business growth. In response to increased client demand, we have recently expanded the marketing team with Marketing Manager, Kim Barnard who oversees the marketing team and Amy Scriven, in the role of Digital Marketing Executive. Combining their skills and enthusiasm will help take Cognique to the next lev...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ter...

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...

If your business has a physical location, one area you definitely shouldn't ignore is local business listings in search engines. If you don’t actively manage your business profile, search engines could be showing incorrect information every time someone searches for your business.What are local search listings? Both Google and Bing (the two most used search engines in the UK) show local business listings for a variety of searches. This could happen when:Someone searches for a business...

Search marketing can be confusing - it’s a constantly changing field and you never know what Google has up its sleeve next. Through all these changes one thing has remained constant - keywords. Although Google now places emphasis on lots of other ranking factors, such as the quality of your content, until searchers stop typing words into search engines keywords will remain relevant. So how do you work out which keywords are right for your business? Through effective keyword research…Getti...

Every day there are over 3.5 billion searches on Google, the UK’s most popular search engine. Search marketing provides an opportunity to get your product or service in front of these searchers. It is estimated that over 80% of consumers and businesses now use search engines for researching purchases, so if you are not investing in search marketing, you could be missing out on business. What is search marketing? Also known as: Search Engine Marketing or SEM for short. Search marketing is t...