While it’s true that blog content creation is an important element of content marketing – it’s not the only one. Many types of content exist, from mailshots and testimonials to interviews and podcasts, and so with fresh, creative ways to tell your story, you can easily boost your content strategy by implementing these content types into your marketing campaign.
So, as a leading content marketing agency, we’re taking a look at ten types of content you can create alongside blogs.
Email marketing should be part of your content strategy for the simple fact that it helps create and develop relationships with customers. They can help you to generate leads and build trust and are useful to inform people of your latest company news.
In addition, newsletters bring people to your website, so as part of an effective email marketing campaign, you should include plenty of links to pages you want people to visit. Similarly, measuring how the newsletter performs is just as important as the content you write. By checking out how many people open it and what they click on, you can understand the content they want to see more of. Platforms like Mailchimp have a section similar to Google Analytics that gives you all this information. If it’s done well, your audience will get plenty of value from it since you can round up your recent content, offer incentives, add links to your latest deals, and so much more.
A case study is an ideal format to highlight a success story. If your clients have used your products or services and loved them, tell that to the world. Case studies double as testimonials because they encourage potential clients to consider your business. They also build confidence, help during the decision-making process, increase audience engagement and allow you to repurpose content.
Your case studies can be written as articles, published as videos, or shared in audio format; it’s up to you. For inspiration, browse our case studies page, and you’ll see some of the great work we’ve done for our clients.
There’s been a 70% increase in online audio content in the last few years, which is a huge leap. This is largely because audio content is a more convenient way to consume information, especially considering our increasingly busy lives. With podcasts, you can reach your audience while on the go, whether on their commute or when they’re getting on with household chores. And, with distributors like SoundCloud and iTunes, it’s now easier than ever to inform, educate or entertain people.
Similarly to audio, videos are increasing in popularity because they’re quick and easy for audiences to digest. You can use them to show product demos, showcase your company culture, inform your audience, tell stories about your brand, and much more; video has endless possibilities. And it doesn’t have to be a glossy, expensive, high-end production that takes weeks to assemble. Depending on your brand and tone of voice, a short, simple video can increase website engagement and conversion rates.
Webinars (or web seminars) can be anything from video presentations and lectures to workshops. These online, interactive events will help you share your knowledge and expertise with large audiences, no matter where they are. Webinars can help you generate new content for your website. They’re a great way to engage, educate, and, most importantly, get to know your audience. Additionally, they help develop followers as well since you can have unlimited numbers of participants.
They’re also a cost-effective way to promote your business, allow you to add more value to your brand and help to cast you as an expert in your field.
This type of content is perfect for various businesses, from small to large companies. White papers are your opportunity to address an issue in detail and offer a solution to a problem, all with plenty of research to back it up.
For example, if you sell domestic appliances, a white paper can show your clients the benefits of purchasing a particular product. The same goes for watches; a white paper will have all the details and specifications of a watch, which can help people to make a purchasing decision.
There are many benefits to producing interview content. For example, it can help you develop ideas for your content and spark collaborative relationships between you and others in your industry. This type of content is fantastic as written blogs, podcasts and videos.
And if you’re the interviewer, you don’t even need to provide most of the content. Just ask the question, and the interviewee will provide the rest; is there any easier way to create valuable, engaging content?
Another big advantage is that people who know your guests (or follow them on social media) can find you when you interview them. This means you can reach a wider audience just by talking to people.
This is a visual way to educate your audience. Putting bite-sized information on a visually appealing image makes this information fun to engage with and easy to understand. Infographics can be shared and create backlinks to your website. These links from other websites to yours are seen by Search Engine Results Pages, like Google, as a vote of confidence. If you have many good-quality backlinks, you’re more likely to rank for relevant keywords.
Ebooks can easily turn into evergreen content and act as lead-generation tools. They also help to establish you as an authority in your industry. A major advantage of digital books is that they’re hosted on several apps and platforms, making them convenient for your audience no matter how they consume content.
If you’ve ever encountered the ‘social proof’ concept, you’ll know that it helps buyers feel more informed and confident about a purchase. For example, if you’re planning to buy a product, large or small, you probably check out reviews from existing purchasers. Likewise, if visitors to your website find positive reviews and testimonials from happy customers, they’re much more likely to choose your products or services over a competitor.
Because they come directly from your clients, they are the social proof needed to convert more people to your business. Testimonials are like referrals and help build trust, show the benefits of your products, and build an emotional link to your products.
And, while getting testimonials is one thing, you must add them to your website so people can see them when they’re scrolling through the pages on your site. Pepper them throughout the site instead of having a dedicated testimonials page – most people don’t tend to look there.
These are just some examples of the different types of content you can add to your overall strategy to help your business reach a wider audience.
As a content marketing agency, we can help you develop a content marketing campaign as part of your overall digital marketing strategy. Feel free to contact us to learn more about what we can do for you, and we’ll be happy to chat.
WordPress is a content management system that allows users to build and host websites online. As the most popular content management system, making up around 34% of all websites on the internet, WordPress is an ideal choice for creating a website for small businesses. Not only is it simple to use, but WordPress is also a versatile tool, allowing users to build any website using a range of over 55,000 plugins.
If you are looking to increase the amount of traffic your WordPress website receives from search results (by improving search engine optimisation, SEO), WordPress offers a variety of features that can help you get started.
We’ve listed 15 features that you can use to start improving your SEO today:
When building your WordPress site, choose a responsive and light builder such as Oxygen. Some builders can be detrimental to page speed and core web vitals, which is an important ranking factor. With a website builder like Oxygen, the code output is clean, meaning pages load quickly. Oxygen is also compatible with any WordPress SEO plugin, meaning you are not limited by which tools you can use.
Using more advanced builders and themes such as Oxygen can sometimes be tricky when editing SEO elements, especially when altering an existing website. In this case, it is best practice to use a web development agency who are experienced in using these tools.
When a site is in the development stages, it is important to inform search engines not to index the site as it is incomplete. In WordPress, there are visibility settings under Settings > Reading, which allow you to discourage search engines from indexing a site. This should only be used in the development stages, and it is crucial to turn this feature off when the site is complete. If not, it could result in the entire site being no-indexed by search engines, meaning that pages will not appear in search.
For a webpage URL, the bit after the domain name is called the slug. WordPress has a permalink manager feature which allows you to customise the slug structure. The default permalink structure chosen by WordPress is often not SEO friendly, so it is important to select the best permalink structure. We would particularly recommend avoiding plain or numeric settings, as these offers very little information to the search engines about the page.
To edit permalinks in bulk, visit Settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard and choose your desired structure. For SEO, either post name or custom structure is the best choice as search engines such as Google favour URLs that contain your content’s title and relevant keywords. Never do this with a live website without a web developer as it can break your pages.
A crucial ranking factor for SEO is metadata. Metadata, including title tags and meta descriptions, describes to search engines the content of the landing pages on your site. An SEO plugin is a great tool to alter these page elements. Plugins designed for adding SEO features allow you to write custom title tags, meta descriptions, URL slugs and more. The following plugins are widely used to improve SEO on WordPress sites:
Yoast allows you to do more than just altering metadata for each page. With Yoast, you can auto-generate sitemaps, bulk write metadata for page and post types, and choose which site pages you want search engines to index, all from one place.
Like Yoast, All in One SEO allows you to alter your pages' metadata to add relevant keywords. It also allows you to add redirects without an extra plugin and gives a complete SEO analysis of each page optimisation.
Depending on the SEO plugin you choose, you can edit general settings to reflect what you need from the plugin. For example, Yoast allows you to turn on extra filters such as SEO analysis and readability analysis. These elements offer suggestions to improve SEO on your WordPress site and assess the content's structure and style.
The general configuration settings also allow you to choose which types of pages on your site are shown in search engine results and the metadata of these pages. For example, Yoast has author categories for the different publishers of posts to your site. However, suppose there is only one author for the site. In that case, we recommend no-indexing the author category using your SEO plugin as it provides no value to search engines and no-indexing the page can help search engines focus on more important pages on your website.
You can also set metadata templates in this section of the WordPress site. For example, you can use unique variables such as site title, page title and separators to generate metadata for each page within that category. This can be handy for blogs, as they mostly follow a set metadata template. However, when wanting pages to rank for specific keywords, it is best to write unique metadata for each page. As an experienced SEO marketing agency, we write metadata daily using these plugins, so if you’re struggling, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
A sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the web pages on your site. This is a beneficial tool for search engines as they can read the sitemap to identify which pages need to be crawled and indexed. Sitemaps can be easily generated using an SEO plugin such as Yoast. Simply flick the XML sitemaps toggle to on, and your site map will be generated. You can submit this sitemap to Google Search Console, which prompts Google to read the file and begin indexing your site.
A robots.txt file tells search engines which URLs the crawler can access on your site. The robots.txt file can be created on a WordPress site via an SEO plugin or manually within the site's root folders. Rules such as pages to disallow from crawling and any other important rules for search engines to follow can be added to this file. We also recommend adding the sitemap into the robots.txt file, which means search engines can easily find this file and discover the landing pages.
As mentioned, Yoast is an extremely helpful tool to improve SEO on a WordPress site. Yoast offers a ‘Traffic Lights System’ which rates the optimisation of your chosen keywords on each page. If you neglect to include a focus keyword in the title tag, meta description or other features on your site, a red rating will be given. If a keyword is used more frequently, a yellow rating will be provided, highlighting that the SEO rating of the page is average. A green rating is given for a well-optimised page with little room for improvement. Play around with this feature to find the perfect optimisation for your keywords. Alternatively, we offer on-page SEO services that optimise each page for relevant keywords.
Cache plugins create and store cache files to improve the speed of a website. Storing the cache reduces the amount of data the user has to load when visiting the site. This decreases the amount of bandwidth required to load, as the website data such as scripts, are already saved via the cache files in a compressed format.
By using a cache plugin which provides a clearing feature, such as WP Rocket to clear the site's cache, the cache files are refreshed so latest changes to pages or code are visible.
It is likely that, over time, pages will be deleted from your site, whether that’s from outdated products or no longer relevant landing pages. When pages are deleted, the URL becomes a ‘404’ error code. This can also happen when URL slugs are changed to reflect updated content or to include keywords. When a user is met with a ‘404’ error, they are likely to become frustrated as they are not led to the expected page.
Using a redirects plugin, you can add the relevant redirects so that when a user visits the old URL, they are diverted to a relevant page. This is highly beneficial as although the deleted page may no longer be relevant, you can still direct potential customers to similar services/ products on your WordPress site. As a technical SEO agency, we work to resolve technical fixes such as these, ensuring that site health remains as healthy as possible, as this can affect rankings.
The category feature can be used when using WordPress to post blogs to your site. The category feature can be found under the post section of your WordPress dashboard and is used as a way to topic cluster. For example, blogs on specific topics or themes can all be grouped, which makes it easier from a user experience perspective for people on your site to find related articles on their chosen subject. Using the category tags is an excellent way to organise the content on your site, and from an SEO point of view, it allows the search engine crawler to navigate quickly and assess the site's structure and pages. WordPress's easy-to-use category and tag features can be easily aligned with your blog marketing strategy.
Another handy tool relating to posting blogs when using WordPress is the blog scheduling feature. It can be hard to track when blog posts should go out, especially if they are frequent, and it can be easy to forget to publish. With the scheduling feature, you can ensure that all blogs are automatically posted at the set date and time, meaning that there will be no missed posts.
Having regular blog content added to the site is beneficial for SEO. Posting blogs frequently can help improve SEO on your WordPress site, as search engines such as Google favour fresh content and can help drive a steady traffic flow to the site. Blogs can also be targeted for specific keywords, promoting them to rank. As part of our content creation services, we create SEO-friendly blogs and ensure your site remains updated
When writing landing pages or blog content in WordPress, it is essential to format the headers. Headings such as H1’s, H2’s, and H3’s are crucial ranking factors for SEO as they are an excellent opportunity to add relevant keywords. Search engines like Google use these headers to quickly crawl through a page and determine how to rank your content. Header tags help Google understand your content and assist people in reading more efficiently.
WordPress offers the functionality to add in distinct types of headers, ensuring your content is well structured and optimised. This is a crucial part of any SEO content writing strategy.
The media gallery is where any images used on your site can be found. This WordPress feature makes finding and reusing images easier, which is excellent for minimising the size of the media gallery and saving storage. The media gallery also makes adding alt text to images quick and easy. Alt text is used to describe the content of images, which is not only usually for those who are visually impaired, but it is also helpful for search engines. Using alt text on all images provides you with another opportunity to include your target keyword on a page.
Once added to the media gallery, alt text is linked to the image and is automatically pulled through when the image is used elsewhere on the site.
Schema.org markup informs the search engine precisely what your content is trying to convey on your web page. It essentially converts unstructured data into structured data. There are many different types of schema.org properties, from FAQ to product schema, each of which can be great for gaining rich results in Google search. Rich snippets can be found on the search engine results page in many formats, including ‘people also ask’, starred reviews or even prices.
Schema can be added by downloading a schema-specific plugin on your WordPress site in which you can input the schema code, and it will pull through to your site. However, this can sometimes be tricky, and it may be best to consult a digital marketing agency with experience in this side of SEO.
As one of the most SEO-friendly content management systems available, WordPress is the ideal choice for anyone wanting to boost their SEO efforts. At SQ Digital, we offer WordPress website design for those looking to redesign or start from scratch with a WordPress website. As an expert SEO web design company, we can also help to get your website in prime condition for achieving high-ranking results on the search engine results page. Using a combination of our ideas, you can start to improve your SEO for WordPress almost immediately.
Businesses are presenting information to online audiences in various ways. Google continuously promotes user-friendly mediums by allowing content to appear in search results in multiple formats. Video content is increasingly popular on websites and across all marketing channels. More and more companies are taking advantage of video, and it is fast becoming a fundamental ingredient for a successful digital marketing strategy.
Videos can be used to share information about brands, products, services, reviews, how-to guides, and so much more. The use of visual media is increasing, and when considering the future of digital marketing, there is no doubt it will be front and centre. It is estimated that 92.6% of internet users worldwide consume video content each week.
When it comes to developing website content to be more engaging and informative, videos should be at the top of the list for several reasons:
Videos increase the time visitors spend on your website. If a person lands on a webpage but leaves quickly, it can be seen as a quick exit, suggesting poor content to search engines. The more time a visitor spends on a webpage signals to search engines that the page contains engaging and helpful content. This helps with your website’s SEO optimisation and the chance of converting that visitor into a customer or client.
Embedding the video on your page keeps the content highly shareable. Users can access and share the original video when content is uploaded to a video-sharing website such as YouTube or Vimeo. Using a third-party platform means the video isn’t hosted on the website and prevents the page from being resource-heavy and slowing it down. Slow loading pages will be frustrating to a visitor and reduce engagement.
Also, as well as videos being able to be shared across social media platforms, Google can also index the video in search results from the third-party hosting platform as well as the webpage it is hosted on within your website. Hence, the video can be indexed twice.
Research has shown that users are two times as likely to purchase a product after viewing content such as a video review or demonstration compared to text or images alone.
Many B2B companies use videos to generate website traffic as part of a B2B marketing strategy. Selling a service can be harder than selling a product online. Video format provides you with the opportunity to share more information about a service and who you are, all in a succinct and digestible way compared to text. When it comes to building trust, a video can be a powerful tool.
Mobile devices offer convenience and information at your fingertips. It's no surprise that mobile use has been on the up for years with no signs of slowing down. A mobile phone screen simply can’t show the same amount of text or images that a desktop can. This is why responsive web design has developed in the way that it has, providing different but equivalent user experiences across device types. Videos bridge this gap by offering the same high-quality experience regardless of device.
The starting point of any video is content creation. Develop an understanding of what you want the video to convey. Think about the tone, length and film quality. Consider using a professional videographer to make this first step easier with professional results that match your brand. Videos are a great ranking factor for SEO, consider creating relevant videos to enhance key product pages or services pages for a boost to your organic reach. Or, to help boost conversion rates and trust, consider using video for testimonials, case studies or on your key business information pages. Whatever you decide, make sure you have a clear aim and stick with it.
You have many options for video hosting. Vimeo and YouTube are two very popular free platforms. Facebook is also a free video hosting platform however it does compress files. Be prepared to see the video quality reduce if you choose to upload your video to your Facebook Business page. The second option is to upload the file to your website but be warned videos can increase the loading speed of your website.
Both YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook provide embed codes that can be directly added to website pages to ‘pull’ the video into the page.
Use Schema markup to clearly mark the video properties to Google and other search engines. VideoObject Schema includes details such as the content or embed URL and can be used with HowTo Schema. Marking up the videos increases the chance of them being indexed by search engines.
There is a reason that digital marketing agencies like ourselves will encourage the use of videos. Not only do marketers see the value in video, but Google also recognises this valuable media format, allowing it to be found in Google search results, Google Images, video search results, and Discover. They've even launched a Video Indexing feature in Google Search Console, allowing website owners to track the coverage website videos receive in search (whether it appears in Google search or not).
This new feature also provides information about why a video might not be indexable. There are several reasons why Google cannot index a video; the file could be too large or too small, a thumbnail may be missing, or the URL could be invalid. All information can be found within the report, allowing you to identify and amend the issue easily.
In addition, if a video file is too large, not only will this cause indexing issues, but it could negatively impact core web vitals, an important SEO ranking factor. For more information about video indexing, please see the video below from Google.
For additional information or help with your video marketing strategy, the team here at SQ Digital can help you out. Please request your FREE SEO audit today to discover what we could do for your website's SEO. Or, get in touch, and we will be more than happy to discuss our services with you.
In the UK alone, revenue from online retailers is growing significantly each year. In September 2021, a value of £1.99 billion was attributed to UK online retail sales – a huge value demonstrating the need for retailers to be present online. However, simply having a website isn’t enough anymore to increase customer reach; with growing demand, the competition is fiercer than ever.
The biggest hurdle for the success of an e-commerce website is user experience. If an e-commerce website design lacks a ‘good’ user experience, additional online marketing efforts are likely to fail. As digital marketing experts, we often identify the website as the limiting factor of potential marketing campaigns.
User experience is being used in the e-commerce industry more than ever and represents more than you might think. To define a user's experience, we must consider their physical, auditory, and visual interaction with a website, in addition to their emotions, perceptions, psychological responses and the context of its use, as well as much more. And that is before, during and after their interaction with your website’s interface.
That sounds like a lot to consider, and it is! There’s no hiding the fact that when it comes to understanding people's needs, there is no one size fits all approach, especially when different industries and audiences are thrown in the mix. Fortunately, there are some constants we can focus on to help provide a good user experience for retail websites. These centre around usability (how easily the customer interacts with the website interface) and understanding customer expectations.
The customer expectations we refer to are the top-level needs that transcend product and industry. A report by Nielsen Normal Group (world leaders in research-based user experience) outlined convenience, speed, assurance, accuracy, options and experience as the main expectations for online e-commerce customers. You can start to see how these expectations are met when you look at the websites' of the most successful UK online retailers.
The UK leading online retailer for 2021 was Amazon. When you look at the website, you can see it meets present-day customer expectations very well through its usability. It's worth pointing out that these large companies are successful due to well-thought-out business models that meet customer expectations in parallel with their websites. This includes in-store pickup, easy returns, downloadable apps etc., all of which require extensive and complex infrastructure, time and money. However, when it comes to their e-commerce websites' there are many lessons to be learnt that are relevant to all online e-commerce businesses, from the very small to the very large.
If you have fast-loading web pages it will stop people from leaving your website in frustration. Users expect immediate information and page loading. Unfortunately, the people who view your website may well have experienced other websites with faster page loading speeds. This previous experience will reduce patience and increase the necessity for you to also improve page speed. On top of that, there is increased focus, not just on speed but also on the loading experience. As SEO experts, we would refer to these elements as Core Web Vitals, but it simply means how smooth does the page load?
Think about buttons moving during the loading time and accidental clicks or images loading after you've started reading text, making you scroll back to where you were. These are all examples of bad usability and page experience.
Mega menus are large menus organised in one view with categories and products shown together in logical groups. The below example from Asos shows an excellent example of a rectangular mega menu that allows the user to see all their options in a top-level category they are interested in.
Mega menus are an excellent choice for e-commerce websites because they give the users the information about the largest number of options efficiently.
Important considerations are that the menu should never drop below the fold (that is no matter which screen size the user is on, they shouldn't have to scroll). It's also important to ensure that the mega menu appears no quicker than 0.5 seconds once hovered over. If the user is heading for the search bar but briefly passes their cursor over the main navigation, they don't want a rapid succession of large menu dropdowns to interfere with their intentions.
Using a search bar with excellent predictability, speed of suggestion, the forgiveness of spelling mistakes and other intelligent features is another must for an e-commerce website. Below you can see the search menu for Amazon. Even with one letter, the search function makes suggestions to show the best-matched options as the user types.
This speeds up the time from the user looking for the required product or category to finding it. Similar to the mega menu, it is important that the suggestions dropdown does not disappear below the bottom of the current screen for the user to avoid unnecessary scrolling.
Nothing will put your online customers off more than missing or inaccurate information. Finding out an item is unavailable after trying to purchase through the cart is a huge inconvenience and a waste of their time. The in-store equivalent would be a shop assistant asking a customer to wait 10 minutes while they retrieve the product for them, only for them to return after 10 minutes without it and not apologising (your website can't soften the blow as a person can). The same goes for delivery details, which is why successful e-commerce websites encourage location detection before the user starts adding items to the cart. Argos.co.uk does this well, encouraging the user to select their preferred delivery time and store, in the case of in-store collection:
If you have any product detail errors, we would recommend you prioritise addressing them. The worst example of inaccurate information would be incorrect product dimensions or descriptions. There is no excuse for these kinds of errors, and it would be no surprise if an e-commerce business failed because of it.
Making sure your website is accessible to all users not only means you capture the largest possible audience, but it is an ethical must as well. It is essential you don't exclude any users from being able to experience and interact with your website. This doesn't just apply to people with sensory or physical impairments but also users on different devices, internet connections and so on. So on top of ensuring your website design is accessible, it must also be responsive under a wide range of conditions. Knowing if your website meets these requirements can be tricky but your website design and development team can give you this information.
Our web design team created the responsive web design that you can see above for one of our retail clients, Roccia. Making sure your website works on all devices, for all users, is vital.
The checkout stage is crucial to get right because your website has already done all the leg work. Losing people at this stage is like running a marathon and then stopping before the line. On the flip side, it is the easiest stage to develop to see the most significant customer retention and sales improvements.
Offering sign-up options can help return customers speed up purchasing, and it can be used to increase your email marketing list. However, you should always provide guest check out options to cater to all audiences. The stage you present these options is also crucial. You can do this before the purchase stage or after, where sign-up at the end is optional (and the sign-in option is ever-present in the navigation). Both can work; however, the latter will reduce the purchase process by one step and can be preferred by customers.
In addition, if you use an external payment site, make sure you have wording on the page to explain what will happen to the user. They need to trust the website at every moment. Other tips for a well-thought-out checkout process include making the product details (especially price) visible at all times, so the user has no doubts about what they are buying, and ensuring any errors in filling out fields are clearly displayed.
Use high-quality images to attract and engage your audience. Use them as a wow factor, with many different angles and zoom options. Show images with the item in use vs not in use etc. The product image is the only way the user can interact with an item before purchasing. Having a high-resolution photo that is flattering (you might need to consider improving how the images are taken in some cases) with a very detailed alternative description for those relying on auditory descriptions, is a must.
You can see the image and image carousel available at Banks Lyon above. There are images of the front and back of the watch and a third image that lets the customer see its packaging. The images also have a zoom function on hover, increasing the visible detail shown. It is essential to use high-quality images that don't impede page load speed and experience.
There is a reason everyone says content is king in online marketing. Content is your narrative with the user, it is how you walk customers through your website, pointing them in the right direction. For an e-commerce website, its purpose is multifold. Product description information must be detailed and answer all of the user's questions. Include things such as size, material, weight and functional metrics. For more technical products having downloadable data sheets and specifications are all very helpful. For online clothing retailers, the content should include size guidance (even if a link to a size guide on another page) and information on where items are produced. There is no such thing as too much information with a good layout and structure.
Through website traffic monitoring tools, such as Google Analytics, you will see the volume of traffic coming to your website and whether the proportion who purchase is low. Identifying industry-relevant benchmarks, such as average checkout abandonment rates and conversion rates, and then cross-referencing with your own data, can help you know if something is wrong. Once you know there is something wrong, the hard part is working out the sticking points.
We use a user behaviour tracking tool called Microsoft Clarity and A/B testing to improve website user experience. If you need any help improving your e-commerce website, please don't hesitate to get in touch with our web design experts. We are well versed in building WordPress websites designed with the end-user in mind.
As the digital world evolves, many small businesses find digital marketing intimidating and often don't know where to start. Digital marketing covers various services, including SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and more - all of which, when used in conjunction, can form a solid digital marketing campaign.
One of the most important aspects of any digital marketing campaign is Search Engine Optimisation (“SEO”). SEO refers to the practice of increasing the visibility of your website or landing pages on search engines (such as Google or Bing) and driving organic traffic to your site through a variety of methods.
As an expert SEO agency, we understand the importance of SEO for small businesses and how it can transform a digital marketing strategy, bringing in new, relevant customers and enhancing overall brand awareness. This article discusses the top reasons why SEO is essential for small businesses and why your business should implement SEO into a digital marketing strategy.
There’s possibly nothing more important for a website than user experience. Having a poorly structured website is similar to a messy high street shop where it is hard to see where to go and find what you are looking for. With a well thought out website layout and structure and a good page experience, you can expect your online customers to hang around and browse your website.
As a technical SEO agency, we are constantly improving the technical aspects of small business websites. Staying on top of technical SEO is vital for a small business as a good page experience can bring customers back to a site and increase brand loyalty.
Fixing technical SEO issues such as 404 error pages and broken internal links and images is essential in enhancing the user experience. It can be very frustrating for users if they come across these and will most likely leave the site prematurely.
Technical SEO also focuses on issues such as page loading speed and optimising this to reduce user frustration. Page loading speed is a significant contributor to conversion rates. If a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of users will abandon the site. Also, 52% of online shoppers have stated that a quick page loading is essential to their site loyalty, making them more likely to buy.
SEO can boost conversion rates by driving targeted traffic to the site. We use SEO to target potential customers at each sale/enquiry funnel stage. By regularly publishing SEO optimised blog content, we can help small businesses attract new customers who are still researching products, services and suppliers. You should produce content that provides relevant information to the reader and potential customers.
You can also optimise product content to target potential customers who know what they want. The content can attract users to your specific service or product. It also means that you are more likely to receive conversions in the form of enquiries or purchases as the initial user intent is to use what you have to offer.
SEO focuses on improving search engine ranking positions using keywords and optimisation. Search engine rankings can vastly improve with a successful SEO campaign, with keywords ranking on the first page of search engine results.
If your site ranks on the first page of results, it increases the amount of trust that potential customers have in your brand. High rankings from reputable search engines such as Google show that they have confidence in your brand, which increases user trust as the search engines have a lot of influence on customers.
Also, if your search engine rankings are higher, it helps increase brand awareness as a more significant number of people will see your brand name when searching. Higher rankings also mean that your brand is easier to find when searching for the key terms, which ultimately means that your site is visible to more customers, hence increasing traffic.
Using SEO techniques can also boost the physical visibility of small businesses with a brick-and-mortar store. When typing a query into a search engine, the searcher's location is also considered.
Search results can vary when searching from different places. When you search locally, maps and addresses of local businesses are typically displayed on the right-hand side of the page. This is one of the first features that users see when searching. A Google My Business account can be created for small businesses and optimised to appear in local results and maps. As an address is listed, it can also drive people into the physical store rather than just increasing online traffic.
Search engine optimisation can be a very powerful tool, and with the right optimisations, your website can start to rise in rankings and surpass competitors that do not utilise SEO. As a small business, it can feel overwhelming when up against larger competitors in the same industry. However, many more prominent companies online are still not using SEO services, which can put your smaller business at an advantage.
Using SEO competitor research, we can identify gaps between small businesses and competitors, whether that be through keywords or content. We can then develop a plan to level the playing field and ensure that smaller firms have the same advantages as larger competitors.
One of the primary practices in SEO is to carry out keyword research, which forms the basis for any optimisation campaigns. We use keyword research to highlight the specific terms that users search for to find relevant products and services. We also consider the search volume of keywords to ensure we optimise sites for frequently searched terms, thus increasing the chance of being seen.
As sites are optimised for key terms, it ensures that only potential customers who are actively looking for a product or service relating to the business are being directed to the site. This eliminates traffic from those looking for unrelated services or products and ensures that the traffic to the site is relevant and can lead to conversions.
With online advertising, the results can often only last as long as the investment. However, with SEO, the results are long-lasting, as long as you continue to use On-site SEO techniques to build up a solid optimisation of your site.
Once higher ranking positions have been achieved, you can use SEO to maintain these positions. Over time, with increased brand awareness, customers will become familiar with your brand and re-use services if satisfied.
Although results can be long-lasting, it’s essential to stay on top of SEO as your competitors will not stand still and will constantly update their site. Furthermore, the search landscape is constantly changing and should be considered in optimisations.
As an award-winning digital marketing agency, we have over 20 years of experience providing SEO services for small businesses. With a successful SEO campaign, a small business can expect an increase in targeted traffic and conversions, along with further digital and physical visibility.
To find out more information on how SQ Digital can help your small business grow with SEO or other digital marketing services, get in touch with us today.
Over the last two decades, especially in the previous few years, online marketing is becoming crucial to help your business succeed.
However, knowing how to start your digital marketing campaign can seem daunting, let alone keep up with the latest trends and best practices. Nowadays, it can even depend on your industry to know what you should do and what you should avoid; it can get complicated!
Here, we'll help you understand how to start your digital marketing campaign as a B2B (business-to-business) operator.
If you want to learn about what you can do ahead of launching your campaign to improve the chance of success, we recommend you read this guide from the beginning. However, if you want to skip straight to the “How to” guide, use the links below.
The ecommerce (commercial transactions conducted electronically) market is something we can all relate to since most of us have bought something online at some point. The buyer journey usually begins with research, often on a search engine such as Google or Bing.
With the B2C buying journey, the purchase decision is often driven by emotion, and the sales process can be quick and impulsive. The consumer will search for product information, which tends to be followed by market research looking for the best deal. This stage of the buyers’ journey can be influenced by adverts such as social media retargeting or Google retargeting banners on other websites.
For B2B, sales tend to be influenced by budgets, ROI (return on investment), and a logical mindset - the sales process can take months, and we will see how this impacts your strategy later.
On different platforms such as social media, you can advertise products to a given demographic and potentially prompt sales from people who initially had no intent to buy online. This tactic usually only works for B2C and is not viable for B2B.
You can begin to understand what may and may not work for a B2B marketing campaign by understanding more about your target market. Before you can do that, you should also understand your company’s purpose. Sharing your purpose with your target audience will lay the foundations for true success in marketing.
Building a brand is just as important as selling a product or service. Customers will return time and time again to a brand they can trust.
Before launching your marketing campaign, it’s essential to establish your brand values and proposition. Determine what products and services you provide and what the benefits are. Invest time to understand your customers' expectations, values, and what they deem important.
Trying to market everything you do to a relevant target audience can be time-consuming, costly and lead to thinning resources. The best marketing strategies will line up with a company's goals. For example, suppose the company wants to increase revenue for a new product. In that case, the marketing should primarily focus on the product launch and make it visible across all marketing channels and platforms. The focus of resources and effort will see more success than a broad but thin campaign across all products and services.
KPIs (key performance indicators) break down and clarify company goals into bite-size and digestible objectives to help teams understand their targets and how they fit into the broader company objectives.
For instance, if the aim is to increase revenue by attracting new customers, the KPI target for the Sales team could be to increase the number of calls with new customers. On the other hand, a Marketing team may have a KPI of growing customer sales leads through the website. The KPI could be website metrics such as new vs returning visitors, number of contact form submissions, email subscriptions, and so on.
KPI’s should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Bound) and be able to identify real improvements. The same is true for a marketing strategy – define the KPI’s, so success is measurable.
You know your target market is a business that needs the products or services you offer, but knowing who you are trying to attract specifically is even more insightful. A few factors you should consider are;
Knowing who to approach will undoubtedly change your marketing messaging. Remember that you will often be looking to identify two to three different client personas’ depending on your industry.
An established B2B business will have established USP’s. These are the factors that will set you apart from the competition. For instance, perhaps you offer an initial free consultation or a volume discount that increases when order number increases? Whatever it is, use it in your marketing strategy, shout it to the hills to get your target market to come to you and not the competition.
All businesses are unique and specific methods will work better than others. However, we’ve listed tried-and-tested methods that are best suited for B2B marketing. Use these tools in your B2B campaign to achieve your set KPI’s
As a B2B business, email marketing is something you really should be doing. It can offer the best ROI of all marketing channels when done correctly. When planning your emails, you should segment your email list into different persona’s to target your audience more effectively. You should automate the process to plan for scaling your email marketing.
Also, think about your audiences’ needs and not yours. It’s great that you have a new service or product, but that won’t necessarily catch their eye. Focus on how it will help your customers and what benefits they can expect. Create a catchy subject line to get their attention. Don’t forget to measure the success of your campaigns and tweak them accordingly.
B2B businesses tend to have less success with social media marketing channels such as Facebook and Instagram. LinkedIn offers an alternative platform to engage and connect with other businesses. There are almost 50 million business decision-makers active on LinkedIn.
Create engaging content using a social strategy that forms connections and interacts with your target audience. Aim to build beneficial relationships to help generate leads and referrals.
From our own experience and that of our clients, often personal profiles do better than company profiles, but both should be used synergistically as part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising a website to appear higher in a search engine, such as Google. Unlike paid ad listings using PPC (pay-per-click), these are organic results. A successful SEO campaign will help you bring in new customers and is an excellent tool for expanding your online reach.
Most user’s regard organic listings with greater trust as they are selected to rank higher based on merit. The keywords you target with your SEO campaign must be relevant and match the correct intent of a potential searcher. This will mean fewer irrelevant leads down the line.
The main thing to remember with a B2B SEO campaign is to be patient! Improvements in rankings can take months, depending on how much time you invest in your website. Coupling this with longer lead times for B2B, seeing a ROI can take time.
Launching a marketing strategy for your company is exciting, but regular check-ins with KPI metrics for each marketing channel must be a pillar of the strategy itself. Make sure that you are recording what is important for each channel.
As an SEO service provider, we monitor Google analytics and click data in Google Search Console and Google Business Profile metrics (formerly known as Google My Business). Calls and directions, for example, can be monitored, but the actual value of the SEO work is measured by the value of a lead, not just lead number.
For B2C businesses, it is easier to track a transaction value and is usually instant. As a B2B business, take the time to match up your marketing channels to lead value. This will improve your strategy and save you money in the future.
Often overlooked by B2B businesses, content marketing can offer numerous benefits. Webpage content explaining your products and services and what sets you apart from your competition is key.
A website is a modern-day substitute for the initial face-to-face contact with a company. Instead of being able to tell someone directly why they should buy from you, you will need to use content marketing to do this for you. Guiding the reader through the website and explaining what you can offer is essential. You should highlight your technical capabilities and expertise.
B2B webpages often lack content and don’t provide the user with much information to make a decision. This can be frustrating and results in a poor user experience and a potential client will go elsewhere.
Blogging regularly can improve your SEO and target clients who are still in the research phase of their enquiring journey. It is a simple technique that can expand your online reach. This could be your secret weapon!
One metric we track, is the device type used to look for our clients’ products or services. We regularly see that more B2B target audiences use desktop devices more than mobile, however this gap is narrowing and both platforms need to display a good user experience. A website must load quickly and efficiently across all devices. On average, if a webpage takes 3 seconds to load, 40% of people abandon the page and use a webpage from a competitor website. Effective B2B website design is one of the most overlooked parts of most B2B marketing campaigns and such a simple concept as page experience can impact lead generation significantly. A fast and responsive website works hand-in-hand with SEO, it can encourage PPC conversions and yet, without it, your marketing strategy can go down the pan. We would recommend you consult a website design agency, if you are not sure whether your website meets these criteria.
This is aimed at B2B companies who have a local presence or a physical address. Optimising your Google Business Profile with the correct information, photos, opening hours, service category and regularly posting content, can help you appear higher in local map pack results (please see an example image of these results below). For localised searches, these results capture most of the traffic available and so you need to appear here. In addition, good review ratings and review count, impacts advocacy and your profile’s rank. Ensuring that you have the infrastructure in place to encourage reviews from clients will help you out and increase the conversion potential of prospective clients. [insert image below]
The benefits of a PPC campaign are plentiful. Before investing in a long-term SEO campaign, PPC can ensure that even very niche B2B businesses can succeed and bring in relevant online traffic. PPC is an immediate form of marketing that can bring in leads fast. It can also verify the need for an integrated SEO and PPC campaign to maximise your leads. This marketing platform is a conversion driving tactic and involves using a budget to bid for advert placement at the top of Google search (we focus on Google in both our SEO and PPC campaigns due to the search engines 92% global market share). PPC for B2B companies can be expensive but focusing on long-tail (generally less competitive but more specific) terms can be rewarding. It can also help with brand awareness.
Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is another branch of your B2B marketing strategy, which without, can make it all pointless. Every single channel used links in one way or another to your business’s website as a central resource, but if the structure, layout, or any element of the website is confusing, unhelpful, or messy, then people just won’t enquire. Think of this as having a high-street shop but with bins and boxes cluttering the sales counter, very few people will make the effort to break through. A bad website user experience can unfortunately make your strategy destined to fail. You need to have a slick and easy to navigate website with an easy contact option. This involves minimal effort on the user’s part, but maximum information and slick design on the website’s part. It is not easy to know how everyone interacts with your website, but tools such as Microsoft Clarity are a great place to start.
This channel was traditionally considered as a B2C technique, however, increasingly B2B businesses are finding value in remarketing. Also referred to as retargeting, Google’s remarketing platform, allows adverts for your business to follow a website visitor across the internet after they have left your website. They can be set up so that they follow people who did not enquire on your website. This can be help you stay present in the minds of potential customers as they evaluate multiple different companies. Retargeting on Google’s Display Network has a lower cost per lead than other non-branded campaigns such as PPC.
Now we have looked at the top 10 B2B marketing strategies for 2022, it is important not so consider these different techniques as isolated campaigns. Every single branch works with the other channels and so you must approach your strategy in the same way. Remember, think SMART, regularly review progress and adapt based on your results. SQ Digital are an award-winning digital marketing agency who work with several B2B businesses. If you need any assistance in launching your B2B marketing campaign, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
User experience (commonly referred to as UX) transcends all marketing channels from SEO to PPC. It is a fundamental part of any digital marketing strategy as it is completely entwined with the user journey from site visitor to customer. In this article, we look at one of the tools we use here at SQ Digital to audit website UX.
If you need more insight when it comes to the marketing data you collect, there are plenty of options available. The Internet is awash with analytics tools designed to make it easier for you to work out precisely what your customers are doing – or, in some cases, not doing.
One very insightful tool, appropriately named Microsoft Clarity, helps marketers worldwide get a clearer idea of their position with user behaviour data. Let's take a closer look!
Launched in 2020, Clarity is a relatively new offering from Microsoft and is already proving useful for marketers and webmasters. It provides easy to understand data capture and analytics in a simple dashboard format. The tool contains several key features for a marketer to use; for example, session recording, which shows how users navigate pages on your website in reasonably granular detail.
This is a handy tool if you’re looking for more in-depth information on user behaviour throughout your website. Using screen recordings and heatmaps, you can see the most popular links on a page or what users are doing when they land on the page.
These heatmaps refer to the places where people clicked and scrolled when visiting your site, so you can more easily see what they’re doing. As for the sessions replays, you’re able to record how visitors are interacting with the pages.
The tool is GDPR-compliant, as you can also turn off the recording for places where sensitive information is gathered, like log-in pages.
Microsoft Clarity can be used alongside other tools, like Google Analytics, to give you a more detailed picture of how your site performs. For example, if a page isn’t converting, Microsoft Clarity can highlight further information and help you understand why.
In the example below, certain elements of our homepage are highlighted through the heatmaps, showcasing where users are clicking most often. This helps us to see what draws their attention and the pages they’re interested in.
People are engaging heavily with the navigation bar, which is understandable because it’s where they can find the links to other pages on the site, including more information on the digital marketing services we provide.
Microsoft Clarity can also provide a wide range of simple data tools for businesses. It can, for example, organise the pages on your website in order of how popular they are – helping you to understand what content is most attractive to your visitors. It might not go as deep into the numbers as Google Analytics, but it does give you a good starting point for future investigation.
Most PPC Agencies know that Google Analytics has long since been a big name in this field. It’s by far the most popular data analytics tool for digital marketers, and its association with the Google brand means that it’s likely to stay that way.
The general industry perspective on Microsoft Clarity is that it’s not – and probably never will be – a replacement for Google Analytics, as some of Google’s basic product features, such as bounce rates, don’t feature in Microsoft Clarity.
But rather than Clarity and Analytics competing with each other, we believe that the real benefit comes from using both platforms to build a complete picture of your site’s performance. Marketers who analyse and measure several factors simultaneously – such as several distinct campaigns at once or multiple conversion aims – can gather much more data than before, helping to better inform their decisions.
You can connect Clarity with Google Analytics by adding a link to Analytics sessions that helps you to identify areas where information is scarce. When you go back to Clarity, you’ll be able to see what visitors to your site saw and how they interacted with it.
To achieve this, Clarity creates a dimension called “Clarity Playback URL” that sends data to your Analytics account. Microsoft Clarity offers some metrics that Google Analytics doesn’t – or which Google Analytics doesn’t name in such a user-friendly way. This is why both Clarity and Analytics should be used together since they can complement each other well.
A marketer logging in to the Clarity dashboard will find, for example, ‘rage clicks’, a metric that works out how many website sessions featured negative user behaviour. The feature offers a simple way to investigate which pages of your website might be due for a redesign – and, unlike on the more complex Google Analytics, it can be done in seconds thanks to the centralised dashboard feature.
Both tools are free and simple to set up, requiring the addition of a script with tracking code to your website pages. As mentioned, Clarity provides actual recordings of visits, including where people place their cursor on a page and where they’re scrolling down to, which Analytics does not.
These are invaluable metrics if you want to improve your website, as well as the UX. For example, if users are leaving your site halfway down a page, you can figure out where the problem lies – it could be that the rest of the content on the page is not informative enough or that the layout is a little confusing.
This means you get the opportunity to look more critically at your site and analyse the users’ pain points. Why are they clicking on one link above another? Which pages are not performing as well as they should? How is the page rendering?
Clarity gives the answer to these and many more questions, so it’s fair to say it’s already a comprehensive tool despite being relatively new to the game. And it’s also clear that using just one of these tools could result in incomplete information – by combining Clarity with Analytics, you get access to more data than ever before!
But while we recommend using both analytics tools to get a more comprehensive view of your site’s performance, Microsoft Clarity is more straightforward to use than Google Analytics for those less confident with these types of tools.
And, given that the tools can integrate, investing time and effort in learning to use Clarity could give you more options, depending on the type of data you need and how quickly you need it. Clarity’s user-friendly dashboard is arranged so that the information required can be accessed and selected in just a few clicks, whereas Google Analytics might need more of a deep dive.
Ultimately, this goes to show that there’s no such thing as a perfect marketing analytics tool. A marketer with one set of conversion goals might need basic information, while a marketer with a different set of goals and requirements will need more sophisticated information.
Overall, Clarity is no better or worse than other tools on the market: it just caters to a particular need, and that need is simplicity and accessibility of information. Contact us today to find out how we can help your website reach its potential – or why not check how your website currently performs with our free SEO audit tool.
Core Web Vitals, originally scheduled for May 2021, rolled out as a new ranking factor in two Google algorithms across June and July. The introduction of Core Web Vitals has got a few website owners concerned since new ranking metrics impact how well pages perform in SERPs (search engine results pages).
At SQ Digital, we're always proactive, so we're getting ahead of the curve when it comes to Core Web Vitals to help keep your website in tip-top shape so you can deliver the best experience to your audience.
Core Web Vitals are metrics that apply to all web pages and showcase how they perform based on real-world usage data. Page experience has been an important factor for a while, but it now plays a more significant role in helping you rank in SERPs.
Core Web Vitals refer to loading, interactivity and visual stability, so they're made up of three distinct measurements that help Google to analyse your page's UX (User Experience):
LCP is the largest element on the browser since it indicates when content has shown up for the user; in short, it can be defined as the loading speed of a page. According to Google, loading time shouldn't exceed 2.5 seconds.
Interactivity measures how responsive the page is and how quickly people can start interacting with it. If a user wants to access your website, but the page is processing something and doesn't react to the person's input, this will negatively impact your metrics.
Visual stability refers to how your content moves on the page. For example, have you ever tried to click a link, but an image loads suddenly, and the link shifts down, causing you to open the wrong thing? Or you're trying to read a paragraph, but an ad or video loads and shifts the entire thing down the page, preventing you from having a smooth experience?
Google believes all page elements should be as stable as possible since shifting layouts lead to a poor user experience (UX).
All three measures are crucial but now carry a lot more weight. Webmasters and SEO professionals must stay on top of these metrics to ensure the site doesn't fall in rankings.
The idea behind attributing such importance to these metrics is that Google wants sites to provide high-quality pages people can enjoy. If the algorithm determines your page is quality based on these and other metrics, you're likely to appear higher in search results.
However, this doesn't mean the content of the page itself will lose importance. On the contrary, both matter. As Google says:
"A good page experience doesn't override having great, relevant content. However, in cases where there are multiple pages that have similar content, page experience becomes much more important for visibility in Search."
It is essential to measure the Core Web Vitals metrics and understand how they can impact your page experience. Google has several tools to help, such as Page Speed Insights, which allows you to see what can be improved regarding page loading speed.
You can also use Google Search Console for reports and analytics that show several ways you can enhance the UX of your pages.
It would help to keep optimising your pages to ensure no issues pop up, and this means staying up to date with the latest Google algorithms and information and tweaking your site regularly. For SME owners, this can take up valuable time that could be spent running their business.
You don't have to worry about learning new tools and changing things on your site, as we can take care of everything for you. We'll monitor your pages to prevent issues from arising and act fast to solve problems should they arise.
Core Web Vitals first became a feature of Google Search Console back in 2020 and, since then, our Design and Development team has worked together with our SEO department to make sure all our clients' pages are optimised. We've managed to get URLs out of the Poor classification for both Mobile and Desktop use; we also worked hard to get as many URLs into the Good bracket as possible.
There are several ways to improve Core Web Vitals, including:
As an SEO agency, we look into these and more when we analyse your website, so you can be confident that we leave no stone unturned.
Core Web Vitals are key metrics you must pay attention to in 2021 and beyond, as they'll impact your page rankings.
At SQ Digital, we monitor your pages so they continue to perform well. We look at these metrics and combine them with other technical SEO elements (for example, mobile-friendliness and site structure) and on-page SEO (like keywords and internal linking) for tailored, comprehensive strategies.
If you're looking for a web design agency to ensure your website pages are fully optimised, contact us today, and we'll be happy to help.
Google and other search engines prefer content that's relevant to what the user is searching for while also being informative. The search engine values user experience above all else and prefers sites that are updated regularly. Authority is also a key factor, and a good way to build this authority is to optimise your content to keep it relevant.
Tending to your old content is an efficient way to improve organic traffic and boost its chances of ranking higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
As a digital marketing agency in Lancashire with over two decades of experience, we know just how important it is to have fresh content on your website – but continually creating new content from scratch is time-consuming. Optimising your old content can have a huge impact for less effort.
Since 2011, Google has been using the ‘Freshness algorithm’ which is designed to give users the most recent and up-to-date content. Think about the last time you Googled something; the top results are typically from the same or past year. For example, if you Google 'how to plant a tree', you can see dates for 2019 and 2020 at the top of the search results.
Some keywords will benefit more from fresh content, like those referring to current events, product updates and trending topics. Monitoring search volume and mentions on social media can also help you to understand which content you should update based on the most popular trends.
Because people are usually searching for the most up to date information, not blogs that were published years ago, keeping content fresh and up to date can help to take it to the top of SERPs – and draw eyes (and traffic) to your site.
Another reason why you should update your old content is to check its relevancy and improve its accuracy. As we’ve established, search engines favour useful and relevant information, which means they want accurate information too.
Accuracy leads to trust, and trust is vital for Google. If people lose trust in the information you’re offering, Google will notice the reduction in traffic and you’ll quickly drop down the rankings.
Imagine you want to visit a store in your area. You want to know when the store closes so you can be sure to get there in time. Google tells you it closes at 5pm. You get there at 4pm and the shop is already closed for the day. Understandably, you won't be happy.
Also, you may even stop trusting what Google tells you if it keeps happening. It's a no-brainer; if a search engine repeatedly gets information wrong, people will stop using it – so it’s in everyone’s best interest to get it right and keep it fresh.
If you'd like to learn more about content marketing and how it can help draw traffic to your site, talk to us. As a content marketing agency specialising in all things content, we'll create valuable, engaging and accurate content for your audience.
How frustrating is it to see this when searching for information?
When people click on a link, they expect to be taken to a page where they’ll find what they're looking for. A broken link means the user will see a ‘page not found’ message instead of the destination page. Broken links make for a poor experience, so Google tends to penalise your site for it.
Broken links can hurt your SEO.
Make it a priority to optimise your content by fixing them. To do this, you should periodically check for 404 errors, which usually occur when your content was removed or relocated without adding a redirect.
A site crawler does it automatically for you, but you’ll still need to add the redirects yourself. Alternatively, ask an SEO agency, such as SQ Digital, to do it for you; we can correct any issues you're having and carry on fixing them as they crop up over time.
And while we're on the subject of links, think about your existing content when you're publishing new pages. Can you link to other relevant pages to help visitors find what they're looking for? You can take this a step further too, by periodically checking your old content to look for opportunities to link to newer pages. If you have an older page that performs well, can it be linked to newer, relevant content?
All of these small things add up to increase your overall domain authority.
Optimising your content allows you to prepare it for publication on other websites or social media. This might involve using a short, catchy headline so people can digest it quickly while scrolling, or making sure the image you use is eye-catching and appropriate for the platform you intend to share it on.
If you’re intending on sharing a post via a social media channel, like Facebook, you should always tailor your post to that particular platform if you want to make the most of your content and engage your audience. A Facebook post will not achieve the same success if published on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn as is. Your content must meet the platform's guidelines and its users' expectations.
When we published the 'How Do You Know Your Website is Performing Well?' article on SQ Digital's site, we also shared it on our social media accounts, including Facebook and Twitter. You can see below how the posts differ from one another, as we made sure to optimise the content for each platform (on Twitter, posts should have hashtags, while this isn't the case for Facebook, for example).
Facebook:
Twitter:
Sometimes, the changes you should make are minimal. Other times, you have to repackage your content into something like a listicle or a 'best of' post. And if you use infographics, it can be a great time saver to create these with the intention of chopping them up to share smaller visuals via your social channels – it’s a great way to repurpose existing content and get more value from it.
Increasing the domain authority of your site can take a while, but every little thing counts, including optimising your content. While you may think that refreshing your content won’t have much impact, it does change the way search engines view your site.
Domain authority, a metric created by Moz, refers to a score that predicts how a website will rank on SERPs. Each site has a score of 1 to 100 and higher numbers mean the site is likely to rank higher.
By re-evaluating your content to ensure the quality remains high, it's authoritative and offers value to your audience, you can slowly build the domain authority of your site. You should remove duplicate content, update older blogs with new information and add keywords that are relevant to your site and brand.
And, if your content is useful to people, they will link to it from their own websites and social media platforms, which further boosts your domain authority.
So, we've determined that Google likes fresh, optimised content. But what exactly is the search engine looking for? How can you be sure you're making the right changes to your content?
Google looks at specific things, including the following:
If you keep these elements in mind when reviewing old content, not only will the quality of your content improve, but you'll increase the chances of moving up those all-important rankings.
If you're unsure how to go about all this, simply get in touch with SQ Digital. We have over 20 years of experience providing digital marketing services and can help you make the most of your content and website.
How many times have you heard that content is king? The importance of great content has been emphasised over and over again and, while it may have become a bit of a cliché nowadays, there is a reason why everyone says it: Google.
Google is constantly refining the algorithms they use to rank pages according to content quality. The technology titan has also released Search Quality Rating Guidelines that are kept up-to-date and help websites create the best content possible. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the best content and the one that ranks higher on Google is the one that follows those guidelines.
So, how can you ensure that your content hits all of Google’s sweet spots?
Low-quality websites are not, predictably, Google’s cup of tea… if a page is considered of low quality, it will not rank as well on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). However, it can be challenging to know exactly what makes a high-quality page. Thankfully, Google’s guidelines can help you here.
A low-quality page is characterised by factors such as:
If you think your website or your pages present one or more of these elements, then it might be time to re-evaluate your content! A simple but effective rule of thumb is E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This of, course, also implies that certain practices, such as copying content from other websites, having little content on pages, and making things up, to mention a few, are not well regarded by Google.
Google launched their mobile-friendly update in 2015, which boosted the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. While most people who accessed the internet in recent years were doing so on their computers, 2016 was the year when mobile web use surpassed it. 51.3% of people used mobile devices to load websites, an astonishing figure that clearly showcases the importance of a responsive website design agency for a mobile-first website.
And, with the introduction of a mobile-first index that might launch at the end of 2017 or in 2018 (the exact date is still unknown), it is increasingly important that your website has the appropriate content to rank well – if it’s not mobile-friendly, it may not rank that well at all.
Your SEO needs to be on top of everything to prepare for this change: your mobile website should have structured data, responsive design, rel-annotations, and, of course, the content you want to rank for.
SEO is your friend. Contrary to what you may think, Google has no problem with organic and natural SEO practices, as long as you approach them with a positive, user-friendly mentality and intention.
A good way to optimise your pages is to ensure the right balance of keywords. While search engines need keywords to tell them just how relevant a page is, keyword abuse is frowned upon, so cramming them will have bad results for your ranking. A 1% to 3% keyword distribution will allow you to keep your readers in mind, too, not just the search engine.
Keywords should also be grouped in synonymous sets, as Google recognises similar words when performing a search. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are, in essence, keywords that are closely related to other search queries, and Google holds them in high esteem. Your page can rank better by using LSI keywords, as different people will search for the same thing in different terms.
However, as with everything else, moderation is key! Otherwise, you get something like this:
"So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor"
— L.A. Weekly (@LAWeekly) January 10, 2011
Funny, but not the best SEO practice!
Another way to improve SEO performance is by using H tags. There is a hierarchy to H elements, with H1 being the most important one for a very long time. Structuring a page correctly means obeying this hierarchy and applying H2 to H6 as subheadings.
If we were to consider where SQ Digital lives, for example, the hierarchy could be applied as such:
<h1>Earth</h1>
<h2>Europe</h2>
<h3>UK</h3>
<h4>England</h4>
<h5>Lancashire</h5>
<h6>Lancaster</h6>
While this is not the cure-all for your SEO needs, it does make it easier for Google to understand what your content is all about. There are much more ways to correctly optimise your pages, from making sure you have a great link-building strategy and creating a user-friendly website to ensuring YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages have the right references and expert opinions.
Being helpful and providing positive, valuable information is Google’s aim; if your content can achieve this by following the guidelines, then you’re well on your way to having a website with content loved by your readers and, of course, search engines.
Our SQ Digital experts always strive to provide the best SEO content for Google and other search engines. Our content marketing agency has over 20 years of experience in producing SEO lead content so that we can create meaningful and user-friendly content for your website; contact us and talk to a friendly member of our team.
Once upon a time, Charles Dickens wrote “David Copperfield,” sent it off to the publisher, and moved on to his next book.
The end.
Not many ways for a content repurpose. As a result, there were no:
The process was finite and allowed no time for marketing and promotion: characters > plot > conflict > climax > resolution > printer...
In actuality, Dickens was a pioneering marketer of his day. Releasing snippets of his book to drum up interest in a full book release, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, et al., got their boost in part because of his efforts to promote it.
The marketing profession indirectly owes a lot to Dickens, (though probably not as much as the so-called "Father of Marketing", Philip Kotler). The only difference between him and you? There's no publisher serving as your go-between in the process - once you can get it out there, it's out there.
The next step is directly addressing any engaging, easily optimised content that might otherwise sit around without a much-needed touch-up.
Times change, customer needs change. To the point that you’re keen to market your business. And the life of your content, in contrast to Dickensian Britain, is not so finite.
When a piece of content is researched, developed, and published, the process rarely stops there, and it rarely should. In marketing, one bit of insight offers so many ways of purposing for your audience, wherever they may be. An industry survey, for instance, offers a bevy of content options and topics. Take just one topic that arises from it. We’re talking about content marketing like:
Additionally, there is a technical goal that the survey topic should satisfy: the needs of an SEO goal the survey attempted to address.
A good strategy to re-purpose your content marketing relies on one thing: adaptability. Too often, I’ve become confounded by blogs, webpages and articles that do well statistically (conversions, unique page views, low bounce rates and discernible first legs in a journey through your online presence) and then sit around, waiting to take the next step.
We think you’d better think it out again.
The next step is directly addressing any engaging, easily optimised content that might otherwise sit around without a much-needed touch-up.
If you run a financial business that faces a myriad of new laws and regulations you must stay compliant with, those laws and regulations can fly in the face of an evergreen post you wrote in 2013. The post in question had everything going for it in terms of search engine optimisation to land you in the Top 5 of Google. Keyword placement, searchable title, solid meta tags – you met the needs of the algorithm at that given time. Fact is, if you do the homework on any search term, you’ll see content from the last decade on there from time to time.
But as Dickens once wrote, "I have been bent and broken, but I hope into a better shape."
That proverbial 2013 post being ranked highly is nice: if it gives off a hint of irrelevance and outdated knowledge, the UX and trust for your brand will suffer.
It’s time for re-purposed content: an informed, relevant update, if you will.
As we all know, search algorithms change. Media forms (like ours) and an entire industry (us included) are dedicated to monitoring, following and staying ahead of such changes. This is why
For UX, there’s nothing more galling than having your website modernise into such a beautiful layout, you half expect young girls with rose baskets singing “Who will buy?” outside the door; meanwhile, your post shows signs and practices of the old site.
In short: bring the SEO practices of that content up to speed so that your top five rankings today won’t be penalised (and will possibly move to within the top three) tomorrow.
One thing we like to do here at SQ Digital is brushing up content that’s evergreen, is organically searchable, and/or shows such potential with a right good tidy.
Remember how we talked about new laws and regulations informing your content strategy moving forward? For posts like this (and even posts that had potential, but couldn’t quite get off the ground), it should be considered that new laws and regulations can inform the posts of Christmas past.
A touch-up of the wording to address new regulations that have arisen is a godsend for being found organically. Google loves an update, specifically one which:
This is proactive content backed by good practical marketing theory. Something as simple as writing “UPDATE” within the body and keeping the original date is a trigger to search engines. Be sure to back it up with relevant additional content, and you’ve let them (and by extension, potential customers) know about a re-purpose of content with meaning, context and relevance to your world.
Or as Fagin would say it, you’re reviewing the situation.
If you would like to more about content marketing, feel free to get in touch and our team of experts will be happy to help.
