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....

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 webs...

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 busines...

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… Gett...

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...