Fibre Marketing

Author: Chloe

7 Ways to Give Your Business Blog a Boost

Posted on by Chloe

A business blog helps to drive traffic to your website, showcases your knowledge and authority, and can help convert those casual readers into paying customers.

But you know that because you’re already working hard to create new high-quality content that resonates with your audience, aren’t you?

If you’re averting your eyes and feeling slightly embarrassed at this point, don’t be. Many businesses just like yours aren’t using the power of their blog to get them real results, or they’re making many minor mistakes that could have a huge impact.

But don’t worry. Just by making a few minor changes, you can soon take your blog from average to outstanding. Here are our tips to help you do just that.

1. Focus on your audience

The first thing you need to do when creating content for your blog is to make sure that you’re writing about things that your audience genuinely care about and will find useful.

That way, you’ll know that your content is highly likely to be successful from the moment you hit that ‘publish’ button, and you won’t be just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping that it sticks.

You’ll also be far more likely to get engagement in the form of comments, likes and, because you’re creating useful content, your audience is far more likely to like and trust you too.

To do this, you need to find out exactly who your audience is and what they want. The best ways to do this include:

  • Creating buyer personas
  • Gathering customer feedback
  • Doing surveys
  • Looking at your FAQs
  • Reviewing your website metrics
  • Researching keywords

From this data, you can narrow down those topics that they most want to learn and then create your content based on these ideas.

2. Create high quality content

These days, it’s not enough to sit down and fire off 500 words of content on a randomly chosen topic. If you want to make your content get results for your business, you need to make sure what you’re sharing is good.

Each piece of content you publish on the internet should be high quality, add maximum value, and showcase your expertise.

This is what Google is looking for when it ranks your website, it’s what your business needs when it comes to building a strong brand, and, most importantly, it’s one of the factors that will keep bringing customers to your (virtual) door.

Some tips you can use to do this include:

  • Choosing a topic your audience will love (see the last tip)
  • Make your writing interesting
  • Speak to your customers in their language
  • Check for spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors
  • Always write for readers, not search engines

3. Be consistent

How often do you currently post new content? If you’re like many businesses you aren’t posting as often as you could be.

Although this is completely understandable given the stressful few months we’ve just had, this sporadic posting isn’t doing your search rankings or the popularity of your business blog any favours.

Research has shown that posting new content on a regular basis is key to content marketing success. It’s what gets you noticed by the search engines, what helps you to stand out on social media, and what shows your customers that you care about your audience.

If you can commit to publishing on a certain day each week or month, you’re also more likely to find time in your schedule to get it done, or hire someone to do it for you.

How often you actually post is completely up to you. While the general rule of thumb is ‘the more often, the better’, this is unlikely to be sustainable if you’re a solopreneur or don’t have a large marketing team.

As content marketing experts, HubSpot say, “The frequency of blog posts depends on what’s best for your company. Smaller businesses have found comfort and success posting one to four times a week, while larger companies can push out daily and, sometimes, multiple daily posts.”

The key is to find out what works best for you, then stick to it.

4. Use keywords

Keywords are those words that a user types into the search box when they’re looking for information, and they can be extremely useful when you create blog content.

When the keywords searched match the words found on your website or blog post, Google is more likely to send this person your way.

So how do you know what keywords to include?

Luckily there are a variety of tools that can help you find the keywords that are relevant to your audience. You can then use these words to guide the topics you choose to write about, as well as including them in the posts themselves.

We can also help you research and optimise your keywords and other SEO assets – contact us for help.

But a word of warning – don’t overdo it. If you try to squeeze in too many keywords, you could get penalised by Google.

Instead, keep it natural, and don’t think you need to include the exact same words – synonyms are also effective.

5. Add meta descriptions

If you were to type the keywords ‘Fibre Marketing Cheltenham’ into your search engine, you’d get the following result:

 

 

 

 

As you can see from the screenshot, you’ll see the domain name at the top followed by a nice big title (meta title) then a short description (meta description).

Both the title and the description are known as meta tags.

Every page on your website should have them if you want to improve your online performance. They can substantially improve your SEO efforts, capture your user’s attention, and attract more readers when used correctly.

So, if you haven’t already tweaked yours, now is the perfect time.

6. Format your blog post correctly

With the average attention span getting shorter, it’s more important than ever to make your blog posts as user-friendly as possible.

Fail to do this and your reader might just take a look at your website, find it hard to use, and then click away to your competitor’s website. They won’t bother to read your blog posts because it’s just too much work.

The good news is that it’s very easy to solve this problem. You just need to format your blog post correctly. Here are some tips:

  • Avoid using big blocks of text on your websites
  • Use short paragraphs
  • Split up your content using subheadings
  • Use bullet points and number lists
  • Use subheadings (H1, H2, etc)
  • Include plenty of white space.

7. Learn from your mistakes

It can often take time to see an improvement in search performance and customer engagement, so don’t get frustrated or give up if you don’t get the results you were hoping for.

Be patient and you will often see improvements. If not, simply take a look at your website metrics and see what feedback you can get on what you’ve been doing so far.

For example:

  • How many people are visiting your blog?
  • Are they engaging with it or just clicking away?
  • Which piece of content is performing the best and why do you think this is?
  • How about the worst performing?
  • What does customer feedback tell you?

By using this information, you can tweak your approach so you can start creating the right kind of content for your reader.

As Barack Obama said “The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”

Summary

With the coronavirus restrictions starting to ease, now is the perfect time to improve your business blog.

By consistently posting high quality content that you know your reader will find useful, including keywords, getting the formatting right, and tweaking your metadata, you can boost your search rankings and grow your customer base.

If this doesn’t work, continue to make improvements and your efforts will pay off in the long run.

Google Discover’s Help Doc Update: What Does It Mean For SEO?

Posted on by Chloe

Earlier this week, Google overhauled their help document for Google Discover to make it clear what the web feature is and how it can supplement regular searches.

If you don’t already know or haven’t used it yet, Discover works by recommending pieces of content to users based on their previous Google searches. It doesn’t work in the same way as organic search as it isn’t based on something that a person has typed into Google, and searched for at a given moment in time. Instead, it takes a more long-term view of what you might like so it can send the right information your way.

What’s especially interesting with the help document update is the fact that they have added a section that refers to a key website ranking factor called ‘E-A-T’.

It reads:

“Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Those looking to improve E-A-T can consider some of the same questions we encourage site owners to consider for Search.”

This highlights again the importance of following the ‘E-A-T’ principles, and suggests that if you do so, you are also more likely to be featured on Google Discover.

Here at Fibre Marketing, we spend a lot of time working on E-A-T for our clients. That’s why today we’d like to explain more about how E-A-T works and what you can do to improve your website with this in mind.

What is E-A-T, anyway?

The acronym ‘E-A-T’ stands for expertise, authority and trust.

These three characteristics are what Google looks for when it evaluates the quality of your website. They’re becoming increasingly important when it comes to getting your web pages to rank highly.

  • Expertise means that you should be knowledgeable and capable in your chosen field (and often have the credentials to back yourself up.)
  • Authority means that your website and its authors are respected by others in the industry.
  • Trust means that people should feel safe and secure on your website.

By using these characteristics to measure a website, Google can find the best quality content for its users and can avoid falling for some of the spammy SEO tricks used in the past.

This gives users a better experience, allows websites to showcase that they have to offer, and helps Google work better.

Although there isn’t currently a direct E-A-T score as such, these factors underpin everything else to do with rankings.

Therefore, if you want to get noticed online in 2020, you must focus on building and showing your expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness and provide the best possible user experience.

How can you improve your E-A-T scores?

The following tips can help this to happen:

1. Create great content

As we’ve explained many times on the blog, one of the best ways to improve your SEO and increase rankings is to consistently create high quality content.

By ensuring that it’s relevant, regularly updated, free from typos or grammatical errors, comprehensive and trustworthy, you will demonstrate your expertise in your field. Your website visitors will also enjoy the experience and want to come to your website again and again.

They’ll be more engaged, they’ll be more likely to be loyal to your brand and they’re more likely to make a purchase in the future.

To read more tips on creating outstanding content for your website, read our blog post “How to Create Great Web Content for SEO”.

2. Make your authors visible

If you want to build your website authority, Google needs to see that you have connections to other knowledgeable and authoritative figures in your field.

The simplest way to do this is to attribute your website content to an author by linking their name to the top of the page. You could also use an ‘author box’ at the bottom of the post that includes their name, biography, photo and a link to their website if possible.

This won’t just help your website to gain authority but will also help build the writer’s reputation too so it’s well worth taking the time to do.

3. Link to reputable websites

If you’ve done any link building to help build your site authority, you’ll know how beneficial it can be in terms of your SEO and web rankings. By linking out to authoritative websites within your niche, you’ll associate your site with it while backing up your knowledge.

However, it’s important that any site you link to is reputable and offers high quality content. The last thing you want is to link to a spammy site that ends up causing you trouble or even gets you blacklisted.

If you do find any unwanted links, you might want to get rid of them via a process called ‘disavowing’. Read this article to learn more about the process.

4. Improve your website security

Having a secure website isn’t just an excellent way to show your website visitor that they can trust you with their details.

Google also treats website security as a key ranking feature these days as it demonstrates that you take user experience seriously and are therefore more likely to provide a high quality experience.

The quickest way you can do this is to switch over to https as it adds encryption to your site to prevent hackers from accessing your information.

There are also various pieces of security software and security certificates you can add to your website to keep it safe from hackers, spam and unwanted visitors. Speak to your web master or host to discuss the options available to you.

According to SEO experts, Search Engine Watch, 82% of customers said they’d leave a website if it wasn’t secure so this is a tweak you need to make to your website sooner rather than later.

5. Focus your content

Instead of writing website content spread across a variety of topics, get focused.

Learn more about what your audience wants when they visit your website then create content that answers their questions, provides solutions and adds maximum value possible.

When you do this, you’ll be showing your audience that you understand and care about their problems and can provide a solution. Not only does that leave them feeling happy with their experience on your website, it builds your authority, trust and brand image at the same time.

Because this content is almost certain to include a variety of targeted and natural keywords which centre around a particular topic, Google are also more likely to see you as an authority in your field- another win.

Summary

The recent updates to the Google Discover help document demonstrate that E-A-T is more important than ever when it comes to SEO and improving your rankings. Keep working on your website expertise, authority and trust and you’ll see excellent results.

Introducing: Google’s Manual Actions

Posted on by Chloe

Imagine firing up your laptop and discovering that your website has disappeared completely from the search rankings.

Despite all of the hard work you poured into boosting your organic rankings and building your brand, your website is simply nowhere to be found.

You’re back to square one.

That’s exactly what could happen if Google issues a manual action against you.

Luckily, these ‘website red cards’ aren’t issued often or without careful consideration. Nor do they always have such a devastating impact.

But given the strict penalties, it’s vital to understand what Google’s manual actions are, why they are issues and importantly, what you can do if the worst should happen.

Here’s our short guide.

What is a manual action?

Manual actions are penalties that are given out by the humans at Google.

They’re given to websites that are using unethical practices to boost their website rankings and disregarding the Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines.

These penalties can affect individual pages or even entire websites, and can cause them to drop significantly in rankings or even disappear completely. This happens quickly – often overnight.

They’re a serious problem that can have a profound effect on your business.

How do websites get a manual action?

Provided you have created a high quality website and you aren’t using those underhand, spammy SEO practices that aim to cheat the system (often called black hat SEO), you shouldn’t ever be issued with a manual action.

“Experience shows that manual penalties are infrequently issued and only for serious offences,” agree industry experts, Search Engine Land.

Having said that, sometimes Google can issue a manual action as a result of other people’s behaviour such as dodgy links that point towards your website, blog or forum spam comments or even a hacked shared server. This is why it always pays to be aware of potential problems and monitor your website consistently.

With this in mind, here are some of the reasons why these manual actions are issued:

  • User-generated spam: This can come from spammy, self-promoting blog comments, forum posts, or other user-created content.
  • Using a free host: If infected with spam, shared servers can cause Google to issue a manual action, even if your website itself isn’t infected.
  • Unnatural links to your site: Unusual links that appear to be manipulating page rankings will be penalised.
  • Unnatural links from your site: Likewise, unusual outbound links could also be creating spam or point to disallowed practices.
  • Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects: Giving users a hidden page or image instead of the one submitted to google or redirecting users to a page they didn’t click on.
  • Pure spam: blatant use of spam.
  • Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing: Over repeating keywords or hiding them on the page.
  • Sneaky mobile redirects: When mobile users are directed to a different URL than clicked on.

It’s important to quickly note that you won’t be issued with a manual action when a user manually reports a website for spam.

According to Gary Illyes’ post on the Google Webmaster blog last Friday, “…we use spam reports only to improve our spam detection algorithms,” adding that although spam reports play a helpful role, there’s an inefficient way of detecting spam.

How do you know if you’ve got a manual action on your website?

If you have a manual action on your website, you’ll immediately receive a message from Google via Google Search Console. This will tell you what the problem is, which page or pages have been affected, and what steps you can take to resolve the problem.

If you haven’t received a message or haven’t noticed one, you can also check whether your website has a manual action against it by looking at your Google Search Console.

What should you do if you have a manual action?

If you discover that you have a manual action, don’t panic! Although it’s certainly not great news for your website rankings, you can fix the problem and then appeal to Google to reconsider.

Here are the steps you should take if this is the case:

1. Read Google’s message carefully

Before you do anything else, take your time to read the notification message carefully so you understand why your website has been penalised. Often, you’ll see how you can solve the issue.

2. Understand the problem

If the reason for the problem isn’t immediately clear, you will need to gather and evaluate key data so you can identify the cause. Depending on the size of your website and the issue in question, this can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks.

At this stage, it’s also a good idea to review Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to help guide your investigations.

3. Fix the problem

The data you’ve gathered in the previous step should have identified what is flagging Google’s system and causing you problems. Now you need to resolve the issue by following one or several of the following steps.

User-generated spam

Check your website for malicious content then delete it. Ensure all comments and content submitted to your site are moderated.

Using a free host

Contact the hosting company to inform them of the problem and consider moving to a secure host instead.

Unnatural links to your site

Disavow any links that appear suspicious.

Unnatural links from your site

Remove excessive links or low-quality links and use tags to identify where there are affiliate links.

Cloaking and/or sneaky redirects

Fix any pages that contain code, content or sneaky redirects that are hiding content.

Pure spam

Check Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and remove spam.

Cloaked images

Ensure that both Google and your users can see the same images.

Hidden text and/or keyword stuffing

Remove excessive use of keywords and hidden text including in the html and CSS of your site.

Sneaky mobile redirects

Remove any redirects and check for malware or hacking.

4. Ensure full company compliance

If the manual action was issued because of a team member’s mistake, take steps to prevent the same happening again in the future.

Call a meeting and ensure that everyone understands why it happened and its severity then issue clear guidelines to safeguard your business.

5. Request a reconsideration

Finally, once you’ve fixed the problem you should request a reconsideration, including detailed information on how you fixed the problem and whether your website was hacked. Don’t request one before you’ve fixed your website as you’ll only be wasting Google’s time and your own.

At this stage you’ll need to be patient because it can take them anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to process your request and make updates if relevant.

Once Google has come to a decision, they’ll let you know whether your request was accepted.

When will my website recover?

For obvious reasons, a manual action affecting just one page on your website will be easier to recover from than problems with your entire site.

Generally speaking, it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few years to recover from a manual action. You’ll need to provide useful, valuable content to your users and rebuild trust so you can move up the rankings again.

To round up, Google manual actions can cause huge problems for your website rankings and even cause them to disappear completely.

The good news is that they aren’t routinely issued and are never the result of a spam report issued by a user. By adhering to the guidelines and fixing any issues, most businesses can avoid ever receiving one.

6 Quick Steps to Build A Reputation Management Plan

Posted on by Chloe

With the UK economy fighting to get back on its feet after the coronavirus, there’s never been a better time to build a reputation management plan and use your customer feedback to its full potential.

Your online brand reputation is everything when it comes to growing a successful, highly profitable business. When your branding is strong, feedback is positive, and you’re seen as a business that cares about their customers, you’re more likely to make sales, grow your customer base, and stand out online.

Without further ado, here are six quick steps you should take right now to improve your brand reputation.

1. Monitor your brand reputation online

Above all else, you need to be listening to what people are saying about your business online. It’s the step that underpins every part of your brand reputation management plan and without it, your efforts will be a waste of time.

These days, reviews influence people’s buying decisions heavily. Before they make a purchase of any kind, whether this is buying an expensive camera upgrade or simply choosing which new novel to download to their Kindle, they’re almost certain to check out those reviews online.

According to Inc.com, a massive 91% of consumers take reviews into consideration before buying and as surprising 84% trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

With this in mind, your first mission is to find out where people leave you reviews and feedback and start monitoring them. Typical places include:

  • Facebook
  • Google
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Trustpilot

There are also several specialist review sites such as rateragent.co.uk (for estate agents), solicitor.info (for solicitors), removalreviews.co.uk (for home moves) across numerous industries. It’s important to understand if there are similar sites in your sector and monitor them often.

Once you’ve done this, start looking at what they’re saying. Are there any points that keep being mentioned? What appear to be the strengths of your business from the eyes of your customers or clients? What could be your weaknesses?

2.  Find branded search terms and create content

Your brand reputation isn’t just built from those kinds of online reviews. There are also plenty of long-form websites, web pages and blog posts that either review your product or services and even compare them against your competitors.

Mentions of this kind can positively influence your search rankings, drive more traffic to your website and boost your brand image. But only if they’re accurate and preferably show your business in a favourable light.

So what do you do if you find branded content about your business that isn’t so great? You have two options:

1) You contact the site directly and ask them to make changes.

This feels like the easiest, most cost-efficient approach to take but this often isn’t the case.

Although most site owners are friendly and helpful, many just ignore these kinds of emails or ask that you rework and change the piece in question. This can translate to lots of extra work for you and lots of back and forth communication which takes time and money.

2) You create your own branded content and outrank them

By far, this is the most savvy option because you’ll have full control over what you publish. You’ll be reaching out directly to your audience, addressing their questions and queries in an accurate way, and sharing your brand values with them. This translates to a better buyer experience and a better reputation for you as a business.

As industry experts Content Marketing Institute says, “Because these content pieces are often focused on establishing thought leadership, raising awareness, and generating positive brand perceptions, they are more likely to be viewed as worthy of the audience’s trust and attention as compared to more product- and pitch-driven formats like digital ads.”

However, it’s important not to create content that sounds too biased or salesy. Your audience will see straight through it and you could end up unintentionally harming your brand image.

3. Plan how you will respond to negative comments

The fact is, you’re almost certain to receive at least a couple of negative reviews or comments about your product or service, even if you get 5 starts the rest of the time.

For that reason, you should devise a strategic and effective plan on how to respond so that you can take control of the situation and use it to your advantage.

Done right, those less than stellar reviews can be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your commitment to your customers and clients. Here’s how you can develop your plan.

Step 1: Decide who will be in charge of monitoring the review sites and comments.

Keep it simple- usually it’s best to choose someone from your marketing department or in customer service. Make sure this person understands what is expected of them, which sites they need to monitor, and so on.

Step 2: Decide what your response should be?

Whether you’re responding to positive or negative feedback, you should have a clear vision of what your response will be. Wherever possible, develop in-house guides that outline exactly what this should be, including template responses where necessary.

Step 3: Decide what happens if the query is out of the ordinary.

If your business is faced with a trickier issue that needs resolving, your designated person should understand what he or she needs to do. Who should they turn to for assistance? Do they have any power to resolve issues without first gaining approval from another member of the team?

Step 4: Decide who delivers the response.

Your business needs a designated person who will answer any feedback. This is likely to be the same person who monitors the feedback, but this isn’t always the case. Ensure that this person understands their responsibilities and is made aware of the overall complaint response plan.

4. Address negative comments

Many businesses feel tempted to ignore those negative comments and hope that the positive ones will push them out of sight.

Not only is this extremely hard to do (you’d need 40 positive reviews to undo the damage done by just one) you’d also be sending a subliminal message to your customers that you don’t care. In turn, this will severely impact vital branding factors such as trust and brand perception.

That’s why it’s important to acknowledge it and do what you can to fix the problem.

Yes, this can feel slightly uncomfortable. No one likes dealing with criticism.

But by acknowledging and responding to your negative feedback, you can show your listening and resolve those issues. Act quickly, use the framework you developed earlier to guide your response and above all else, be friendly, professional and polite

5. Use the positives to build your brand reputation

When you’re creating your reputation management plan, consider how your business will respond to positive feedback too. If you can do this effectively, you can make the positives work harder and give your brand reputation a well-deserved boost.

“…high-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.” agrees the Google team on their support page.

Here are a few tips that can help:

  • Decide on your response to positive feedback. This doesn’t have to be anything overly complex. Just thank your customer for their kind words and make your response as unique as you can.
  • Ask your customers for feedback as often as possible and make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Added incentives for reviews can also be highly effective.
  • Monitor the review sites frequently. The faster you can be with your response, the better your business will appear.

6. Track your results

Monitor your online presence and keep an eye on the ranking of your branded content once you’ve put your reputation management plan into place.

Track any changes as they happen and schedule regular reviews so you can assess whether you need to tweak your approach. If you’ve done your homework, your star ratings should improve, you should see more positive feedback and your brand reputation should see significant improvements.

Plan-respond-track

Building an effective reputation management plan does require careful consideration and you need to be willing to actively engage with your customers to get optimum results.

Be friendly, be willing to listen, be willing to adapt and improve your offerings and you will create a stronger, more profitable brand.

A Breakdown of the Nofollow Link Attributes

Posted on by Chloe

In SEO, nothing stays the same for long; a link strategy that works one day may not work the next. Google originally launched its nofollow link attribute in 2005 in an attempt to stop comment spam and untrusted links. The Googlebot didn’t crawl, index or rank internal and external links, but ignored them completely. The rel=“nofollow” attribute excluded a link from the search algorithm, and that was that.

In September 2019, Google revealed that the nofollow feature would begin weighing in on how Google would rank the site, i.e. the content, links and anchor text would feature in spam measurements, but more as a “hint” than an explicit directive. With this update Google could now recognise content and anchor text, and follow the links they deemed necessary, regardless of nofollow. Importantly, Google claimed it still would not crawl or index these links in any way. With this update we were also introduced two new related link attributes, rel=“sponsored” and rel=“ugc” (where UGC is user-generated content). Both of these contain more detailed information about the link.

What each attribute means

  • rel=“nofollow” applies whenever you want to link to another webpage but don’t want to endorse or give any credit to that page in the process. This attribute basically allows Google to treat the untrusted or spammy link, and will likely be ignored.
  • rel=“sponsored” is to help Google recognise those links that you’ve deliberately added for advertising, sponsorships, or other paid agreements.
  • rel=“ugc” tells Google what you consider user-generated content, for example legitimate comments on a blog or a forum post.

It’s possible to give a single link more than one attribute, for example rel=“nofollow sponsored.” However, the impact of a link will be reduced if it’s not an accurate description of the link, for example if you’ve chosen rel=“sponsored” for a blog comment.

The March 2020 update

After March 2020, Google will treat the nofollow attribute as a hint for conducting a spam analysis, and possibly for rankings, depending on just how relevant and high-quality the links were. If Google feels that, after crawling the surrounding content and anchor text, the link is in fact relevant, then it may crawl the link despite the nofollow tag.

What’s the confusion?

Google claimed in its update that links would not be ignored if they had any of these three attributes; rather, the attribute would give Google algorithms a “hint” about the kind of link it was seeing. In other words, data is still being collected from those links to track and rank the link scheme, ultimately having the potential to improve the overall website search ranking. This can be confusing unless you understand exactly why Google has made these updates.

The reason for this feature is to constantly discourage spammers – Google attempts to identify spammy, unnatural link patterns so these links can be properly omitted. The only way to do this is to gather the data for these links so Google can correctly recognise and categorise them. By calling these features a “hint” Google can still access the important data it needs.

To add to the discussion, John Mueller recently stated that all guest blog post links should also have at the minimum the nofollow attribute on them, regardless if they’re paid or not, and irrespective of how natural the link seems (for example, if you’ve put a link in the byline). This claim divided the SEO community as some links in guest posts are included for natural reasons, such as genuinely using a site for research purposes, or the link is included in an author’s bio. People also felt that, if a change like this were ever to be implemented, Google would be trying to have a larger claim over the internet.

Overall the mixed reaction to this change is yet to go away, with questions frequently appearing across social media platforms and forums. Furthermore, Google’s Gary Illyes mentioned in June that more nofollow link changes may be on the horizon.

What this means for your search results

Google will use these attributes to gather data to feed into its search ranking schemes, tagging links with information that marks it as excluded or included in searches. Though Google claims there should be no significant effect on search results, some people are naturally worried. It’s important to remember that even after the March update, the attributes are still just hints.

What should you do?

You don’t have to make any changes, if you don’t want to. You could opt to do nothing and keep using nofollow attributes as you have been. You could always consult your SEO team if you’re concerned about a few key links, however. For paid links, you will need to keep a nofollow attribute or amend it to a sponsored attribute or a mix of sponsored and nofollow.

How to Optimise Your Product Pages for SEO

Posted on by Chloe

It seems obvious to say that excellent product pages should have two characteristics: they should appeal to your customer and be optimally tuned for SEO. It’s simple in theory, but a little trickier to put theory into practice. A product page is like any other content page in terms of SEO, but it’s the crucial moment when your customer decides to make a purchase. Cultivating trust requires a smooth user experience, consistency in design and layout, and well-indexed reviews and product information that will make it easy for your customer to find exactly what they need, as fast as possible.

Get the basics right

User experience is paramount. You’ll need a captivating title that showcases the product name, being as specific as is comfortable and appropriate. Product descriptions should be unique – don’t use the manufacturer’s content as this will appear all over the web (i.e. it’s duplicate content).

The word count is not as important as the relevance; spend time considering what your customer actually wants to know about this product. What’s the shelf life? Which colours, sizes or types are available and what are the different prices? Is assembly required? What’s included in the package? Is it compatible with other products? Can you think of creative, suggested uses your customer hasn’t? Is there a seasonal or time-limited aspect? Your description should speak to your customer’s desires and offer concrete, appealing solutions they can imagine in their own lives.

Finally, don’t forget a meta description, also unique, or risk Google defaulting to using strange text. Bullet lists, proper paragraphing and videos will go a long way. Your URL should be simple to remember, and your images should be high quality with ALT text, so you appear better in visual searches.

Use

structured data

Structure your data using the “Product” schema in your page code will make sure you appear with rich results. Do the same with the “Review” or “Rating” schema. This means that search engines will be able to recognise the key elements of product pages, index them properly, and generate rich snippets in search results that clearly show price, star rating, number of reviews, stock availability etc. This is great for users and shapes their expectations of your product before they even land on your page.

Optimise category pages

Customers are most likely to search for board, category level terms than more specific items. In any ecommerce page hierarchy, category pages rank highly, yet they may be the least optimised because they have the least content. An expert team can help you do the keyword research necessary for category-level SEO.

Check on your site speed

It’s a shame to spend so much effort and money to get a customer to click on your page only to have them wander off when they feel they’ve waited too long for it to load. Page loading speed is easy to overlook, but every second matters. Check with your SEO team to see whether site speed could be hindering your SEO efforts, and find ways to fix it.

Make sure your reviews are up to scratch

Customers love reviews. Most will put enormous weight into the number and quality of a product’s reviews. Actively court reviews from buyers and put the reviews you have front and centre. A negative review is a blessing in disguise: reach out to the user and see how you can solve the issue, and possibly convert them into a positive rating. At the very least, customers enjoy seeing a genuine and thoughtful response to any valid criticism – perhaps even more so than they trust uniformly excellent ratings!

Conduct user testing to see how people interact with your page

Your user experience may be worse than you think. The Baymard Institute released a study showing that the average site has a whopping 24 structural UX issues, with most earning only “poor” or “mediocre” UX ranking. Poor images, out of date or irrelevant shipping information, image inconsistencies and the like erode trust and credibility.

Scanning your Google Analytics data will help you understand how people are finding and navigating around your pages, but an expert SEO team can help you really dig into the details of your typical user’s experience and how it could be improved. You might like to switch to search terms and descriptions more favoured by your customers or reword FAQs.

As part of your routine site audit (i.e. checking your sitemap, structure, internal links, breadcrumbs, design, UX, overall SEO performance etc.), it’s worth taking the time to fine-tune your product page SEO.

Disavowing Links in 2020

Posted on by Chloe

The topic of disavowing links has always been a hotly debated one, with SEO experts disagreeing on whether to disavow “bad” links, and how this might affect site rankings on Google. Though the extent is debatable, ranking algorithms still do factor in link quality, so a poor link could very well damage search rankings. With all the changes and challenges bought by 2020, we are finding it wise to regularly audit links for their relevance and quality. Let’s take a closer look at how and why to disavow backlinks – and how to determine whether you need to do it at all.

A brief intro on disavowing

In the past, Google ranked pages by link quality via PageRank, but this system was quickly exploited. The Penguin algorithm update in 2012 aimed to discourage sites with an abundance of spammy links. These sites could only recover by removing those bad links, and hence Google’s Disavow tool was born. Later, Penguin 4.0 saw an important change: Google wouldn’t penalise low quality links so much as devalue them, meaning you only needed to disavow a link if you’d received a notice to this effect, i.e. a “manual action.”

Fast forward to today, and Google maintains that disavowing links will not do much to help your site’s ranking. The unofficial position, however, is a little more ambiguous, with Google’s John Mueller claiming that disavowing may in fact benefit some sites. Ultimately, disavowing can help in some cases, but Google makes it rather difficult to use the necessary tool – and going too far can definitely backfire.

Understanding manual actions

You can find out your site status by looking in the Google Search Console under “manual actions.” This is simply when Google lets you know that it plans to omit/penalise certain lower quality content from search results. Penalised links can include anything from keyword stuffing or hidden text, unnatural or inorganically received links, automated links, PBNs, comment and forum spam, influencer-inspired/paid links, suspicious redirects, thin content and the like.

Is it a good idea to disavow?

As with most things SEO-related, it all depends. Just how low quality are the links and how much are they affecting rankings? A good rule of thumb is to only disavow when you literally have no other option. For example, first reach out to the owners of low-quality links pointing to your site and ask for them to be removed, using disavowal only as a last resort. Ultimately, it’s an advanced feature that should be used carefully since it could cause more harm than good.

What if I don’t have a manual action?

Before you do anything, you need a comprehensive link audit to properly understand how your links are performing. Rest assured that Google will ignore all but those links that your SEO team are directly responsible for. In appraising link quality, look for anything that violates Google’s terms, such as paid links, link schemes and reciprocal linking/swapping, suspicious anchor texts, articles with links to dodgy sites, malware and cloaked sites, or “pills, poker and porn.”

If these links don’t generate revenue and also don’t affect your organic search traffic, then the solution may be as simple as removing the page completely.

Tips for effective disavowing

  • Naturally, remove any links you’ve received a manual order for.
  • Focus on creating links with value to human readers, and which will boost your site’s domain authority and trust.
  • Unless you’re ultra-confident with SEO, use a backlink monitoring tool or consult an SEO team for expert advice on exactly which links to disavow as part of your routine site audit.
  • Check that you’re receiving links from high-authority, industry relevant sites.
  • Links to expired domains or overly regional content may slip through ordinary filters, so keep an eye out for them.
  • Generally, the most likely culprits are links that have over-optimised anchor text, links that are not industry relevant or links that seem spammy, so start with those.
  • Don’t assume that removing any old link will automatically improve rankings – it may just do the opposite.
  • Finally, there’s plenty of wiggle room, and many links will fall in a generous grey area.

The best strategy

Overall, your focus should be on maintaining the highest quality outbound links possible and disavowing those that are obviously and significantly harming your organic search results – otherwise tread carefully. Keep an eagle eye on any incoming links that could be harming your site’s reputation. Even scrupulous link audits can miss a few bad links, but this relatively small risk should be weighed up against your overall SEO priorities, the risk of disavowing incorrectly, and your marketing strategy in general.

All You Need to Know About the Page Experience Update

Posted on by Chloe

Google have recently announced that they’ll be rolling out another new ranking factor in 2021 called Google Page Experience.

This will judge your website based on how user-friendly your website is perceived to be, using metrics such as:

This means that if your website visitors don’t have a great user experience (UX), your Google rankings are likely to suffer after this new update is rolled out.

In this short article we’d like to explain more about what the Google Page Experience update is, why it matters and how you can prepare your website for the changes so your search performance isn’t affected.

What is page experience?

Think back to when you last visited a website and found yourself getting frustrated.

Perhaps the page took ages to load. Or annoying pop-up adverts and opt-ins kept getting in your way. Maybe you could barely read the content because it was designed for desktop use and was tiny.

When this happened, you almost certainly just gave up, clicked the back button and found another website instead.

In this case, the problem wasn’t that the website didn’t offer the right information. It may very well have. The problem was that you didn’t have a good experience using it.

This is what we call page experience.

How much will the update affect your rankings?

At this stage, it’s unclear to how much the Google page experience update will affect your search performance. We’ll only know for sure when the update will be rolling out in 2021.

Having said that, the metrics which Google will be focusing on with this update do already have an impact on your search performance, but in an organic, audience-led way.

As we mentioned at the beginning, visitors are less likely to stick around on your website if they can’t read your information on their mobile, annoying ads dominate the screen or it takes ages for your page to load.

If you haven’t already optimised these factors, it’s more than likely that your website won’t perform as well as it potentially could, regardless of the update.

It’s also important to note that the page experience update factors won’t be the only ones used in ranking your website. Producing engaging, useful content is still the most important factor.

How to prepare for the Page Experience update

Although there aren’t currently any specific tools that can measure page experience, you can identify what needs improvement and make changes with several other tools. These will help you improve your website and get ready for the update.

1. Optimise your site for mobile.

If you’re running a business in the 21st century, you must make sure that your website is mobile friendly.

According to market and consumer data provider Statista, around 52% of traffic in 2019 came from mobile devices. This figure looks set to grow over the coming years, especially as the online market expands as a result of COVID-19.

2. Make your site more secure

These days you must have a secure website if you want to succeed in the online world. You need to keep hackers away, you want to protect your customer’s sensitive personal information and you want to provide users with a safe user experience.

When you can do this, your customers will trust your business, your search rankings are likely to improve and your website will be safer.

There are many ways you can do this, including getting an SSL certificate and switching to https. Both encrypt your website, keeping threats out and helping to boost your SEO rankings.

3. Check your site for security issues

Most businesses will already know if they have been hacked, contains malware or contains content that is deceptive or could potentially harm a visitor or their computer.

However, you can check if your site has any issues that could influence page experience, user experience (UX) or search rankings by using Google Search Console to access a security report.

4. Review how you use ads and images

Using ads and visuals on your website will drive customer engagement, improve the user experience and help boost conversions.

However, it’s vitally important that these don’t detract from your content and provide a poor user experience but add value.

“Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller,” say Google Webmasters.

Check through your website pages and ensure that any visuals used such as images, infographics, and ads don’t dominate the page. Always opt for high quality, professional standard images instead of stock images.

If you do use pop ups to offer opt-in gifts or encourage newsletter sign ups, keep them to a minimum, avoid using them for mobile and make them easy to close.

5. Improve your page load speed

If you haven’t followed the advice in our blog post ‘Why Low Speed Scores Could Be Killing Your Traffic’, now is the time to do it.

As we said in the blog, your page load speed makes a huge difference when it comes to user experience, your Google rankings and attracting website visitors and it can be relatively straightforward to improve.

“Longer page load times have a severe effect on bounce rates,” say Google Webmasters, “If page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, bounce rate increases 32%.”

Start by running a speed test in Google Search Console, then read through their advice and optimise the elements suggested. This can include using a design that loads quickly, optimising images, and minifying CSS, JavaScript and HTML.

Summary

To summarise, page experience won’t become a direct ranking factor when the page experience update happens. But combined with other factors, it will influence your rankings overall.

So make sure your site is optimised for mobile, make site security a priority, review your images and opt-ins, and improve your page load speed. You’ll be better placed to maintain your rankings and make your website a more user-friendly, professional place for your customers to visit.

How the Coronavirus has Changed the Work of SEO

Posted on by Chloe

Several months into lockdown and the country is still cautiously trying to navigate its way into the post-COVID world. Some industries have been massively and permanently altered by the pandemic, while others are scrambling to find creative ways to stay afloat in changing times. How has the SEO world been affected, and more specifically, what lies in store for SEO workers and for the way businesses show up in searches?

Google’s Gary Illyes recently set up four Twitter polls and asked SEOs around the world how the virus had impacted their work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results were mixed, with some reporting barely any change and others reporting massive differences.

Almost half claimed that the pandemic actually increased their SEO-related workload; just 20% claimed it had decreased, and 30% noticed no change. When asked whether it was harder to convince decision makers on the value of SEO services, the results were again mixed – 37% said it had gotten harder, but 31 and 32% said it had gotten easier, or there had been no change, respectively.

Did this happen because SEO workers were pitching differently during the crisis? When Illyses asked about this, the result was split three ways, with roughly a third each claiming they spent less time, more time, or roughly the same time pitching as before. Perhaps the most revealing result came when people were asked about their experience working with developers on SEO projects. A full 55% said it had stayed the same, 30% said it got harder, and only around 15% said it had gotten easier.

What are we to make of these results? As with most things in SEO, there is seldom a simple, straightforward answer. Polls like this go to show that SEO’s range is so broad that it can be challenging to pinpoint trends sometimes. In the end, exactly how any one industry or business is affected will depend heavily on their marketing strategy before the pandemic, the nature of the business, and how swiftly that business responds to the new challenges.

The virus has changed what people search for. For example, e-commerce is experiencing increases across the board, but less so for more non-essential items. Health and wellness sites are seeing traffic boosts as are some recipe sites, but the travel industry is a little more complicated – searches for flights may be up, but could be simply due to people seeking cheaper deals. Most restaurants are having to pivot into home delivery (making things like Google Posts useful for updates).

Ultimately, the answer to how the Coronavirus has affected SEO marketers and their clients’ campaigns is: it depends. The virus has affected every industry differently. The job of any SEO expert is to understand these unique changes and respond accordingly.

What have we been doing at Fibre Marketing?

When the pandemic hit, we had to adapt quickly and as efficiently as possible. Our client portfolio spans across a variety of industries that were affected in different ways. Because of this, each strategy we crafted was unique and adaptable, as the growing uncertainty resulted in almost daily updates and advice on what to do next.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the ways we helped navigate our clients through the Coronavirus crisis:

Google My Business Listings (GMBs)

One of the first major changes to search was the sudden release of GMB features, which allowed businesses to inform customers of their situation more accurately, as well as holding back on others. The option to mark your business as ‘Temporarily Closed’ was long-awaited, so we implemented this feature across clients’ GMBs ASAP. We also published a post for each one to ensure their customers and clients that they were operating smoothly, and how they were opening/closing.

As well as this, we made sure that any contact details were updated so that customers could reach the client as easy as possible – especially after Google temporarily suspended the posting of new GMB reviews.

Content Creation and Optimisation

One of the best ways for businesses to make the most of lockdown is creating and optimising their site content.

As the pandemic changed search behaviour, we needed to ensure that our clients were making the most of any opportunities that arose. Monitoring the rapidly evolving trends and search frequencies, we worked with our clients to create content that suits the users’ interests, answered their questions, and capitalised on new, untapped searches to bring in organic traffic.

This was done in the forms of dedicated COVID-19 sections, which included resources designed with customers in mind. For our elderly care client, this section included: arranging support during lockdown, how carers and customers are keeping safe, and even a video on setting up a Zoom account so family members can stay in touch with their loved ones.

A shipping container client’s section is catered towards medical facilities that urgently require extra storage or modular hospital buildings. The content section explores the options available, offering discounts to both medical and charitable organisations. The portable hospital page, which is linked in this guide, now ranks 2nd for the term ‘portable hospital.’

Link Building

As more and more news updates, theories, and advice emerged daily, the type of content that users found valuable changed drastically. So, we had to quickly change our link building strategies to ensure that we’d continue building great backlink profiles.

To do this, we shifted the focus of our content to suit users’ demands and needs, including working from home and mental health. We also monitored Twitter for story requests from journalists and bloggers, recommending our clients as a valuable resource for their articles. For example, a journalist was on the hunt for recruitment experts who could provide tips on writing CVs. One of our clients – an engineering recruitment company – had a blog article already on their site, providing the information the journo wanted, so we reached out, shared our blog with her, and thus gained a link on a top-tier site.

This wasn’t the only campaign we created. Other campaigns included a guide to making care packages, a dedication to home carers to name a few – all of which positioned our clients as experts.

Managing Your Marketing Efforts with a Smaller Budget

Posted on by Chloe

The coronavirus outbreak has changed everything for businesses across the world.

Some sectors have had to close their doors, send their staff home, and cut costs as much as they can. Others working in sectors like online learning, delivery services and conferencing tools have seen a surge in growth that has exceeded business forecasts.

But one thing is certain, digital marketing has changed overnight.

Numerous businesses have slashed their marketing budgets and paused their contracts as the lockdowns, social distancing and economic strains take their toll.

And given such an uncertain future, who can blame them?

However, this is a huge mistake that could haunt them for years to come.

By neglecting their marketing, they’ll allow their business to fall behind. They’ll miss out on this opportunity to tweak their SEO efforts, build their brand, and create a solid, loyal customer base that will drive future success.

In this short article, we’d like to share with you some effective ways you can work with a smaller marketing budget during times of coronavirus and continue to get results.

1. Stay calm

Even though we certainly have seen the markets fluctuate wildly over the last few months and some industries crash, things will return to relative normality eventually. For this reason, you definitely shouldn’t panic and pull the plug on your marketing efforts.

Instead, see this global crisis as an opportunity. Refine your existing marketing strategies. Learn more about what your customers want and need, then go about putting your knowledge into action.

That way, when normality does return, you’ll be ahead of your competition and ready to hit the ground running.

2. Make Google Trends your friend

Search behaviour, engagement and conversion rates are always in fluctuation, even more so at unstable times like these.

That’s why it’s even more important than ever to keep your ear to the ground and find out what people want. What problems do they have? What are they searching for? What are they buying?

Use Google Trends to monitor search habits and you’ll understand current market conditions as they happen. By doing this, you’ll be better able to make key decisions that relate to the marketing of your business.

This includes where to focus your marketing efforts, how to invest your budget, which tools you will use to reach your goals and even what kind of content you could create to meet these changing needs.

The same applies to keywords. Monitor Google Search Console and Keyword Rankings more closely than you otherwise would to understand the nature and volume of searches.

3. Consider reducing your PPC budget

If your research has shown that search volume is significantly decreased for your industry or niche or that your business is currently closed, it can be worth reducing your PPC budget for the time being.

This allows you to funnel your existing marketing budget into other marketing strategies that provide a better ROI, such as SEO.

Because, as Brad Geddes, co-founder of PPC management tool Adalysis says, “If you have to leave the house to engage in the service, it just seems like it’s not converting right now.”.

If you absolutely don’t want to cancel your Google Ads, Facebook Ads or other PPC ads, consider how you could refine your efforts to make them perform better. Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Which campaigns are providing the best results?
  • Can we review our CTAs and update copy to become more relevant to the current situation?
  • Do we need to add new information to our ads? This includes changes to opening hours, delivery, pickup options.

4. Invest in SEO

To maximise your marketing efforts, consider allocating a greater portion of your budget to SEO.

When you do this, you’ll be marketing to those who already intend to buy. For obvious reasons, this means that every penny you invest is more likely to lead to conversions and profit for your business.

Effective SEO also makes it much easier for you to connect those potential customers with your product, even if they’re currently stuck at home and unable to physically buy your product or service at the moment.

Remember, your customers haven’t suddenly stopped wanting your product or service. It’s only their buying behaviour that has.

Tailor your marketing to them in a way that solves these problems and offers solutions and you will continue to build your brand and improve your organic visibility, regardless of what the market is doing.

If you can adapt to these current conditions, switch, or grow your SEO strategy and become as flexible as possible, you’ll be in a much better place to ride out the storm.

Here are a few ways you can improve your SEO marketing strategy

  • Conduct a content audit. See what you have of value and see if you can repurpose this content, rework it to meet your customers’ current needs or make it more relevant.
  • Tweak your on-page SEO. Can you optimise your CTAs? Could you add more internal links? [Request a free website audit here].
  • Create new content. Create new blog posts, videos, webinars, and other content to expand your audience, grow brand loyalty and help solve your customers’ problems. [More on Building Your Content Marketing Strategy here.]
  • Invest in link building. Build connections with others in your industry to increase your exposure and expand your audience. [Read more about this in our article ‘Link Building During the Coronavirus Outbreak’ here.]

Summary

Despite what your social media feed might be telling you right now, the downturn many businesses have faced thanks to the coronavirus won’t last forever. But how you react now will influence the success of your business for many years to come.

So stay calm and try not to react. Invest wisely in SEO to maximise your ROI. Be flexible, refine your efforts and you’ll be more likely to bounce back.