Fibre Marketing

Category: SEO

Link Building During The Coronavirus Outbreak

Posted on by Chloe

Coronavirus hasn’t just affected the daily lives of billions of people across the globe.

It has also forced businesses to make numerous changes in the way they operate. Many have been forced to adjust to social distancing regulations, figure out remote working, and understand how they can keep their heads above water.

That’s why, we’ve been sharing with you several SEO tips over the last few weeks that can help your business get through these challenging times. Hopefully, they’ll also help you to see the glimmer of opportunity that lies in this crisis and help your business thrive.

So far we’ve covered what the coronavirus means for your SEO and why you need to keep creating content during the outbreak.

Today, we’re going to turn our attention to link building and explain why it matters, and which factors you need to take into consideration now.

What is link building?

You can think of link building as a way of building connections online.

Put simply, it involves asking another website to add a hyperlink to your website as a valuable resource for their users. Usually, the better the website that links to you, the better your rankings.

These are just some of the reasons why link building forms such an important part of any search marketing strategy.

How do you build links?

Building effective, high-quality links isn’t an easy task, despite how we’ve made it appear above. Changes to the search engine algorithms mean that digital marketers are constantly adjusting their strategies according to what is getting the best results.

Some of the main ways to build links include:

  • Outreach. Just tell someone else in your niche you have content that they might love then share it with them, then hope that they’ll share it with their readers. That’s it. This can be a great way to earn a natural link.
  • Guest posting. Guest posting involves approaching a high-quality website in your chosen niche and offering to create content for them for free. You’ll earn a link back to your website and help boost your traffic too.
  • Content marketing. Content marketing involves creating content, contributing to expert publications, collaborating with other experts in your field and repurposing your existing content.

There can be a significant overlap between these so most digital markers use a combination of several to help their  clients achieve the results they are looking for.

Why does link building matter?

As we’ve mentioned above, link building is a great way to help improve your rankings. But that’s not all it can do. It’s also an excellent way to build relationships with other experts in your niche, build trust, increase your referral traffic and establish you as an authority in your niche.

Because of coronavirus, link building has become more important than ever. We need the support of community, of other professionals and businesses in our niche if we want to survive these difficult economic times.

Four great tips to help you navigate link building during coronavirus

Although many bloggers and marketing departments have been furloughed, links are still being built. In fact, many businesses and organisations are viewing these times as an opportunity to reconnect with their audience, tune in to the unique needs of their audience, add extra value, and position themselves as experts in their niche.

Here at Fibre Marketing, we’re proud to help that happen. Here are four tips for link building during COVID-19, based on our personal observations and research.

1. Show that you care

Real human connections and mutual support is more important now than ever before.

Because regardless of whether you’ve fallen sick or not, coronavirus will have taken its toll on your life.

That’s why it’s so important to stay friendly, approachable, and human when creating content for link building purposes and doing outreach. Provide real value to your audience. Make a difference to their lives.

Remember, link building isn’t just about hyperlinks- it’s also about building relationships and providing value to your audience. What better opportunity than now?

2. Choose who to reach out to, carefully

Although there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to who to approach for link building, we do have a few tips to share based on what seems to be working.

For obvious reasons, healthcare links haven’t been an issue as they are very timely and can work well if you’re a specialist in a certain field with facts to share.

When it comes to other industries, we’ve seen a bit of a mixed bag.

For example, although travel is an industry that has been hard hit, there have been a few publications wanting new travel content to stoke the flames of wanderlust. But note that this hasn’t applied to every site in the industry.

Again, this is likely to change over the coming months and years as we come out of lockdown and adjust to the new realities of the economy.

3. Consider the most effective topics

We’ve noticed that certain topics have become very popular over the last few weeks and are worth focussing your efforts around. This includes anything relating to gardening, mental health, and working from home.

Clearly, these are very general ideas and could spark any number of possible content titles that would resonate with the audience in question. To narrow down these ideas, first consider whether your business has a unique angle to offer, advice to give, or can provide further value to your target audience.

It’s also worth having a look at what people are talking about. Topics that seem to work well during coronavirus seem to be related to:

  • Social distancing
  • Helping the sick and those in need
  • Positivity and self-development
  • Parenting/homeschooling during a pandemic
  • Technology: how it can help your business to continue and maintain social connections

4. Use what you have

Do you have any existing content that has resonated with your audience in the past and is relevant to the current situation?

If so, consider using this content for link building purposes or editing/rewriting it to provide even more value.

This could help you save valuable time and money and could also help you build your authority as an expert in your niche.

Summary

Navigating the current coronavirus pandemic isn’t easy for any of us. But that doesn’t mean that your digital marketing efforts have to crumble.

There has never been a better time than now to build those valuable connections with your community, demonstrate your expertise and support your audience.

Coronavirus Outbreak: Resources For Your SEO

Posted on by Chloe

Right now, we are living in a period of uncertainty. The outbreak of coronavirus has changed the world in ways that many of us never thought would happen, and various industries have been affected, including the search industry.

As we all try to navigate our way through this outbreak, we’ve put together this list of resources to help you through these circumstances, including tips for your SEO, updates from Google and links that may be valuable to you.

We will update each section as we continue to post tips and tricks on our site and social media channels.

Our recent posts exploring the effects of coronavirus on SEO:

What you can do to help your SEO:

Link building (internal & external):

Update site security:

Create and repurpose content:

Update your GMB:

Google’s updates:

All local updates including social media, TripAdvisor, and Yelp here.

Resources for local businesses:

Health organisations

What people are searching for during the coronavirus outbreak

Working from home:

 

Follow us on Twitter and Linkedin for daily updates on all things SEO. If you’re struggling with your SEO efforts right now, please get in touch here. 

 

Internal Link Building: What Is It, And Why Does It Matter?

Posted on by Chloe

Every site has – and should have – internal links. Though they’re easily forgotten, they’re a fundamental way of improving your site’s performance in search engines. To put it simply, internal links are what they sound like – hyperlinks that go from one page to another on the same domain or website. We’ll be looking at what they are in a little more detail, show you the SEO benefits and give you a quick rundown of how to use internal links on your own site.

What internal links do

They’re most commonly used in main navigation and allow your users to move around the domain according to a hierarchy that makes sense for your site. They also help distribute link equity/ranking power across websites. Though external links are important – those “backlinks” that take visitors to other sites – internal links are another – and arguably easier – way to significantly boost your site’s performance.

How they help your SEO performance

To put it simply, a search engine like Google has “spiders” or web crawlers that trawl the content and pathways of a site when deciding to direct visitors there. If you publish new content that isn’t on the sitemap and has no internal or external links, then the search engine has a harder time “seeing” it, potentially ignoring entire chunks of content simply because it cannot quickly locate a path to them. In other words, link equity will be unevenly distributed across the site.

Internal links can be a clever way to get traffic to pages you can’t naturally link to in any other way. A properly organised and logically hierarchical site distributes the ranking power evenly, resulting in a better ranking overall for each page. The more internal links, the more trust and equity for your site.

How to use internal links

The best way to build a high-performance hierarchy that’s navigable for both users and search algorithms, is to create internal links and supplementary URL structures. The links can be images but are more commonly anchor texts that the user sees and clicks. Try the following tips to boost performance:

  1. Structure your hierarchy with the most important pages at the top, going down the pyramid in importance. Create “silos” or logical subcategories to organise pages that naturally belong together – each topic cluster is linked to the main hub and so to the rest of the hierarchy. You want natural, relevant links, which will perform better than simply trying to shoehorn various keywords into content. When in doubt, it’s better not to link than to create an irrelevant link.
  2. Use good anchor texts – they don’t need to be an exact match. Make the text clear, specific and as natural as possible in context. Make sure to keep internal links in mind every time you publish new content, and avoid using the same anchor text over and over again.
  3. Conduct a comprehensive site audit to find any broken links, links pointing to blocked or deleted pages, “orphan pages” (those with no links), links going to irrelevant pages, or links written in the wrong format. Alternatively, audit tools are simple to use and will help you understand your redirect traffic.
  4. Don’t overdo it. It can be a bad idea to have too many internal links. Prioritise your user experience and link only when it’s natural and helpful to do so – 10 or so is a rough limit (this page has 8).
  5. Remember that your site needs to be user-friendly, too. Regularly check that your site architecture, user experience and navigability is what it should be, especially if the site is expanding.
  6. You could conduct your own Google search to help you decide exactly where to link from. Use the search operator site:yourdomain.com “keyword or phrase related to page” to see how often the phrase appears in your site’s posts. If you find a keyword with no link – put a link there. Your SEO team can help with this.
  7. Identify your power pages: those pages that have the most backlinks and highest authority. Your most important sites should have the most internal links to tell web crawlers how important it is. A tool like Screaming Frog can help you filter out your top pages.

At Fibre Marketing, we’ve found that Internal link building is simple once you understand the basic principles. As with most SEO, you’re essentially finding ways to make your site as visible, relevant and valuable to users as possible – and this is a question of understanding the rules search engines use to determine this.

Coronavirus: What It Means for Your SEO

Posted on by Chloe

In a short space of time, Coronavirus is having a massive impact on the world. We are seeing changes in how people are using the internet – whether it is for communication, ordering food, looking for information, or entertainment whilst they are isolating themselves. We are also seeing businesses – and indeed industries – having to adapt, with more people working from home and a greater focus on deliveries.

SEO is an important part of any marketing strategy in the world today and it is closely linked to trends and local, national, and international events. It is inevitable, therefore that Coronavirus is having an impact on the success of the search marketing for your business.

Changes in Searches

With changes in the way that people are conducting their lives, we are seeing a change in the searches that are being made. We already know, for example, that there are fewer searches being carried out for many industries, especially around travel and luxury goods, for example, but massive growth in searches related to media, food, healthcare, and finance. This is mainly centred around the general public’s quest for the latest information, help, and guidelines.

Here’s an example from Google Trends, which shows increases in search frequencies for terms ‘elderly care coronavirus’ (blue) and ‘elderly care’ (red):

But drops for ‘coach holidays’:

The conversion rate also appears to be mirroring these changes, with people less likely to be spending money on travel and holidays, for example, and more on food, cleaning products, and media.

When it comes to Pay Per Click, it seems that we haven’t seen much of a change in the cost per click, but as we have seen people holding back on some purchases, the cost per conversion is going up generally – unless you are selling ‘essential’ items like baked beans or toilet roll.

Google SERPs

Google is adapting their search engine results pages by doing what they can to ensure that accurate and up-to-date information is ranking highly. This means that in addition to the search results given as a result of their normal algorithms, they are prioritising data from informative and objective organisations such as the World Health Organisation, the NHS and the government.

They have also launched a new search experience to help people find information more easily.

It seems that at this unprecedented time, Google is doing what they can to ensure that accurate, objective and helpful information is circulated.

Reviews

Google has also announced that during the outbreak, they are suspending new reviews, replies and Q&As on Google My Business (GMB) listings. This means that you should be taking this into account when you are thinking of your content strategy and local SEO especially. It may be worth re-auditing your listings to see if any improvements can be made in the meantime.

What can you do?

You might be working from home, or your work might have dried up during these difficult times, but it is important to remember that we will come out of this the other side. You can be preparing your business for this time and the one thing that you shouldn’t be doing is ignoring your search marketing efforts, as this is vital to ensure that you’re not being left behind your competitors.

When it comes to organic search, it doesn’t matter how your industry is doing as a whole, what is important is how you are doing compared to your competitors. There is, of course, the chance that budgets or time is tight, but it can be very useful to use this time to get ahead with your online marketing.

With this in mind, here are some ideas of what you can be doing to help your search marketing now, and in the future, and get your business ready for when things begin to pick up again.

  • Think about content ideas – maybe you could interview employees or think about what kind of FAQs you have. Coming up with content ideas now will help in the future.
  • Consider webinars or videos – these are a great way to boost your SEO and reach out to new customers
  • Think about how you can respond to both positive and negative reviews thoughtfully whilst getting your brand messaging across
  • Ensure that any changes in your businesses due to Covid-19 are explained on your website – changes in opening times, whether you are delivering, contact numbers, etc.
  • Remember that while many people aren’t going out, they are spending a lot of time online, so consider cutting back on your offline marketing and focusing on your online efforts

The Covid-19 pandemic is dominating the world at the moment, but it can be useful – for both your business and for your own mental health – to focus on the end of it. It is important for search marketers to be up-to-date and aware of the changes that are happening, as they happen so that the SEO strategies can adapt and your business will be ready to shine as we come out of this difficult time.

Back to Basics: Building Your Content Marketing Strategy

Posted on by Chloe

Developing a rock-solid content marketing strategy is essential when it comes to marketing your business online. It helps you to focus on the unique needs of your customers, allows you to connect with them more effectively and get the results that you are looking for.

Without it, there’s simply no way you can be sure of success.

Even if your content is smoking hot and provides a ton of value to your target audience, there’ll be no way of knowing if you’ve invested your time and money wisely. It’s akin to playing roulette with the future of your business.

However, we understand that it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mere thought of building a content marketing strategy. That’s why we’ve decided to put together this short guide for you. You’ll learn how to get the fundamentals of building a content marketing strategy so you can reap the rewards.

Here’s what’s we’ll cover:

Step 1: Outline your goals

Step 2: Decide how you will measure your performance

Step 3: Create buyer personas

Step 4: Assess your current position

Step 5: Decide on your content channels & content types

Step 6: Identify and allocate resources

Step 7: Create a content calendar

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Step 1: Outline your goals

Start by deciding what is most important to your business and developing a set of content marketing goals.

Do this and you’ll develop a laser-like focus on what matters most to your business and increase the chances of achieving what you set out to do. You won’t waste time. You won’t waste money. But you will get results.

Your goals depend entirely on the unique needs of your business and where you currently are in terms of growth. Startups, for example, will often develop a vastly different set of goals to an established business with a great reputation.

That’s why it’s so important to consider what matters to you at this point in time. Do you want to increase revenue? Drive more business to your website? Boost engagement? Build authority in your field?

Whilst doing this, it’s a good idea to consult your team for suggestions on how you can grow your business. They usually have insight into specific areas of your business that you might not.

Once you have put together a few ideas, also consider how these could potentially benefit your clients and your business.

Step 2: Decide how you will measure your performance

The only way to understand whether you are achieving your goals is to develop a series of KPIs (key performance indicators) that will tell you whether all that hard work is paying off. These usually include measuring things like:

  • Mentions, shares, likes and comments
  • Time on page
  • website/ webpage traffic
  • Newsletter sign ups
  • Lead magnet signups
  • Revenue targets

By tracking this data, you will also be able to better develop your content marketing strategy and display the right information if you need to develop regular reports.

Step 3: Create buyer personas

You’d never try to teach a 10-year-old kid about the water cycle by using the kind of language or even content you’d find in a university lecture hall for adults, would you?

The same goes for when you create your content.

You need to understand exactly who you’re talking to and what they need so you can create your content with them in mind and become more strategic. It also vastly improves your chances of getting results.

This idea is echoed by content marketing experts The Content Marketing Institute who say;

“In light of what your customers likely look for in the content they choose to consume — not to mention Google’s ever-changing algorithms that aim to keep online content relevant and of a high quality — you can’t go wrong if you follow this golden rule: Write compelling content about the things your target audience would be most interested in.”

In content marketing, you do this by creating something called a buyer persona or customer avatar.

By gathering data on a range of factors such as key demographics (age, gender, education, income, etc) and factors such as interests, problems, preferred social media channels and so on, you’ll be able to better understand your customer and create content for them. You can find this kind of information from any analytics your business currently uses. Customer feedback, reviews and surveys also play a big part in the process.

Step 4: Assess your current position

By now you’ve figured out your goals, key metrics you want to track and who your customers are. Your next step is figuring out where you’re starting from.

Conduct a content audit, looking at what you already have including blog posts, guest posts, videos, and so on. Then consider how effective this content is by asking yourself:

This will enable you to better understand what improvements need to be made and help you identify your strategy moving forward.

Step 5: Decide on your content channels & content types

By doing this research, you should now understand who your audience is and what their needs are better. This will help you develop your content marketing strategy further and decide what type of content you should create and where.

Technology is continually developing, so trends are likely to come and go. However, blogging should remain a core part of your content marketing strategy, provided that you’re always creating highly actionable, high-quality and very useful content.

It’s also worth considering video marketing and live streaming as these look set to grow over the coming months and years.

Step 6: Identify and allocate resources

There’s no point creating a rockstar content marketing strategy if you don’t end up delivering the goods. That’s why you should make sure you plan the delivery phase as much as building your content marketing blueprint.

Yes, it might be dull, we know. But it’s the only way you can ensure you achieve those content marketing goals and continue to grow your business. Consider the following:

  • Who will be in charge of producing and maintaining the content?
  • What tools and resources will you need?
  • What will the workflow look like?
  • Are there any tools that you could use to simplify and streamline your workflow?

Step 7: Create a content calendar

The final step in building a content marketing strategy is planning the content itself. But beware- it’s not enough just to throw a few content ideas onto a spreadsheet and be done with it all. You need to be strategic.

Decide first how often you want to publish this new content and what channels you will be using to market this content. Once you’ve done this, you can plan exactly what to plan and when.

Many businesses are tempted to skip this step and end up struggling when they realise that they have just a day or two to come up with an idea and to create it. Don’t let this happen to you!

First gather your content ideas by brainstorming, looking at customer feedback, reviewing your FAQs, looking at keyword search terms and asking your colleagues. Then you can slot them into your content calendar and stay ahead, reduce your stress and be more likely to crush those content marketing goals.

Building a content marketing strategy can be complex and time-consuming. But any investment you make at this stage pays off significantly in the long term. Work through these steps and you will create a robust content marketing strategy that gets you results.

If you’d prefer to hire an expert, reach out to our team here at Fibre Marketing. We’d love to help.

A Day In The Life Of Search Marketing Specialist, Jamie Smith

Posted on by Chloe

We’re now into the third instalment of our ‘day in the life’ series. Our Search Performance Manager Ed and Content Marketing Specialist Chloe have shared their days with us, so now, it’s the turn of Search Marketing Specialist, Jamie Smith.

Local SEO plays a significant role in any search marketing strategy. In fact, 86% of people look up a business’ location on Google Maps, while 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to reach out to a local business if they have a site that’s mobile-friendly. And this is set to grow; last year saw the rise in Google My Business (GMB) features, a rare local SEO update, and only this past month did Google confirm that all sites will switch to mobile-first indexing by September. It’s therefore critical that a local search strategy is implemented for your business.

So without further ado, let’s hear from Jamie what it’s like to operate within the Local SEO sphere.

What does your morning routine look like?

The first thing I do when I get into work is go through my emails to check for any client queries. I read through industry newsletters and check for any important updates, paying particular attention to anything local-based.

Then, I review my clients’ ranking positions, assessing areas across each of my clients, and focus attention where required. As I specialise in Local SEO, this review will include both organic and Map Pack rankings.

What are you responsible for?

I’m responsible for monitoring each of my clients and am the head of Local SEO at Fibre. I regularly set objectives to ensure consistent good performance, ensuring that we are pursuing the correct keywords, optimising on-page content, and managing a site’s local presence.

Another of my core responsibilities is keyword research, which includes assessing key terms that users will search for and formulating a plan to target them, ensuring first position rankings.

What does a typical day at work look like for you?

Each day brings a new challenge – there is never a consistent day due to the constant changes within the industry.

Most of my days consist of assessing client websites; articles and on-page optimisation; reviewing of current strategies, and optimising for Local SEO (including GMBs, Bing Maps, and others).

There are many days that require full attention of keyword research or local planning, which includes reading around those topics and developing my knowledge around them.

What’s your most memorable work moment?

Watching a client improve organically due to my work is always memorable.

For this particular client, their website URL structure was changed in the previous year, resulting in a decline of organic sessions. After I picked the client up, I managed a strategy to restore and improve their organic sessions, which included on-page optimisation, building backlinks, and improving their local online presence.

The client is now 20% up for the period shown YOY (March – Feb), and saw their biggest month yet in Feb 2020!

What do you get up to after work?

I like to wind down from the day by socialising with friends, usually with a few drinks at the pub. Cheltenham’s great because it’s a thriving town that has lots to offer – The Miller is one of my favourite locations right now.

What do you want to achieve in your career?

Growing with Fibre has been a fantastic experience so far, and continuing to progress within the company is a core career goal. I want to be able to lead my own local team and continue to develop and further my knowledge of Local SEO.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone wanting to work in SEO?

Read! There are so many things that you need to know to work within SEO. The only way you can do this is to follow the industry experts and improve your knowledge, listen to podcasts, watch videos…try and learn as much as you can.

If you’re interested in SEO and want to know more about working in the industry, follow us on LinkedIn to see what we get up to here at Fibre. You can also find us on Twitter, where we share the latest updates within the search marketing industry.

Recent Events That Have Impacted SEO

Posted on by Chloe

The world of SEO is always changing. It’s developing and adapting to make sure that it keeps up-to-date with what’s going on in the world – ensuring that the public can get all the information they need as quickly and efficiently as possible. That is the point of search engines, after all!

It is important to know how the on and offline world interact with each other, and how this will affect your website’s traffic and conversions.

When events impact search engines, you must be prepared. Some of these changes can happen organically, over a long time, and some are reactions to more specific events. To be able to market your business properly, having a good understanding of SEO is vital, knowing how people search at different times and how it can help you attract customers.

Here are some examples of recent events that have impacted SEO and the way that the internet is – and will be – used.

Google SOS Alerts

One of Google’s features is known as an SOS Alert. When something happens in the world where information needs to be given out, Google creates special search results which help spread this information. Recent situations that have warranted Google SOS Alerts include the tornados in Tennessee and Coronavirus.

A typical SOS Alert features a red box at the top of the screen, followed by ‘top stories,’ then a series of useful links followed by either  local Twitter updates or the usual search results (pictured below), with authoritative sources taking the top rankings. They can also display information about how to donate to help to support relief efforts. All of this information is made clear, so that it’s easy to see and share with those also searching for the particular ‘SOS event.’

Coronavirus

Coronavirus is having a much more significant impact on the virtual world of SEO than you might have thought. This is due to how it’s affects on the outside world.

Some of the effects of Coronavirus on search and SEO include:

  • More people searching and buying online as people self-isolate, spending less time outside
  • Changes in what people are buying – face masks and hand sanitiser sales, for example, are going through the roof
  • More people looking into how to stream events and communicate with colleagues online, from home
  • An increase in people working from home
  • Predictions of a slump in the travel industry, with fewer people searching for travel information and people looking into travel insurance
  • The impact of a slower economy

All of this means that the trends of the search terms are different than usual, and you should try to take this into account when you are considering your content marketing strategy.

Elections and Political Advertising

In a world of fake news, micro-targeting and social media, political advertising can have a massive impact on society – especially in the outcome of elections and referendums. With the targeting of certain demographics of people, we have seen some political parties or viewpoints having a massive impact and the internet is really only just beginning to get to grips with this.

Media in its many forms has always played a big part in affecting how people see the world and ensuring that the media that we consume online is fair and true is vital.

In November 2019, for example, we saw Google announce that they were to ban political advertisers from targeting British voters except on characteristics of gender, age, and a rough geographical location in an attempt to create a balanced perspective for people.

Another way that elections have affected search trends is the nation’s quest for information. During the last election, for example, Google saw massive rises in searches for information about Jeremy Corbyn, party manifestos and what certain political parties stand for. It also saw surges in searches regarding how to leave the country after the election…

Changes in Copyright Law

The online use of content is an issue which the internet has never really got its head around. Whether it is a blatant forgery, the use of art and music without paying for it, or illegally downloading films, there is nowhere else in society where this is happening to such a level.

The EU has laid out a set of rules which are designed to help to prevent these – what many people consider to be – unethical practices, through their copyright reforms. The laws involve those who display snippets of material having to pay licensing fees, as well as forcing companies to police the content that they publish. It is important if you are carrying out any sort of content marketing, that you are fully up-to-date with these new laws.

Google had tested new SERPs to ‘try to understand what the impact of the proposed EU Copyright Directive would be to our users and publishing partners.’ The results looked sparse, like they hadn’t finished loading.

It’s predicted that the new laws will full roll out in 2021, meaning that next year will certainly be a memorable one for the internet.

As the world moves forward, we will always be coming up against new challenges. Whether it is a long or short term issue, it is important that for your business to succeed online, you keep updated on how these issues are impacting SEO.

How to Perform a Site Audit

Posted on by Chloe

How do you know when it’s time to perform a website audit? Well, if you’ve never done one before or even thought about it, the time is probably now. Even a very basic website can have many moving parts, which means there’s plenty to go wrong. If you’ve ever found a broken link or similar on another site, you know how frustrating it can be – but site issues can also undermine your SEO efforts and end up costing you money.

Firstly, realise that there are an endless number of optional steps, but we’ll be covering only the basics here. Here at Fibre we offer a free internet marketing audit and can also take a more detailed, technical audit of your site to see what’s working, and what isn’t. But if you’d like to have a go at it yourself, here’s a few key steps to get you started with your audit.

Is your design fresh and functional?

Yes, your design matters. Don’t put customers off with a dated looking site. Get an external opinion or try looking at your site in Google’s incognito mode to see what your customers are seeing. Kill popups, obnoxious ads, illegible fonts, and boring colours. Next, scan the copy. Are your CTAs clear, above the fold and repeated throughout? You need to be able to glean everything you need to know about your company from the images, colours and branding alone. Finally, double check that everything is looking as it should on mobile – there are now some apps available to help you do this quickly.

Is your navigation easy and logical?

Again, put on the perspective of a visitor and see how quickly you can navigate around the site. Your menu has to be visible, make sense, and preferably be quite minimal. Be honest about what your customer really wants to read (authentic reviews!) and potentially downplay things like blog posts, About Us sections or news.

Are you using HTTPS?

A site audit is also about safety – you need to make sure that potentially sensitive data going to and from your site is encrypted so it can’t be intercepted by others. Using HTTPS (or getting an SSL certificate) is a non-negotiable if you’re selling on your site or collecting customer info, but it will also result in better Google rankings.

Is your loading speed OK?

It’s not fair, but visitors have very little patience and will simply click away if made to wait too long for your page to load. Google’s PageSpeed Insights is free and can tell you how you’re faring, as well as give you recommendations for how to improve.

How good is your content?

After you’re happy with the overall design and user experience, making sure your content is performing well might take the bulk of your audit time. You’ll need to make sure your content fits your overall strategy (is it offering unique, genuine value?), that it’s structurally sound (grammar, spelling, formatting) and overall high quality (skimmable, with other media mixed in, at the right reading level). Add proper headings and be honest about how well-written and informative each piece is. Could you reuse the content in an updated format like a social media post or video instead? Perhaps it’s time for an edit.

Do you have any broken links?

Dead end links or error pages can make a site feel neglected. Do this manually if your website is small or try a professional service or specialised software to help you weed out broken pages.

Is your SEO up to scratch?

Doing a site audit necessarily means appraising the performance of your SEO strategy. Are your titles for each page descriptive, unique and optimised? Make sure you’re including your keywords here where possible. For a thorough SEO check, you might need the advice of an industry professional to help you examine your organic search ratings, your LSI, and any buggy code to see how you compare to your competitors. A more in-depth exploration can check on the health of your meta-descriptions, images, overall site architecture, URLs, tags and backlinks. You need to gain a comprehensive idea of exactly how “healthy” your site is, inside and outside, and how it’s performing out in the market.

You may be surprised by what a comprehensive audit turns up – some people are shocked at the hidden ways their rankings were being lowered, or how many ways they were losing customer interest. Maintaining smaller websites is not too difficult with a little know-how, but you can make the process even easier by scheduling regular automated site “crawls” to do the work for you, or getting some expert human eyes on the site once in a while.

Site Security: How to Keep Your WordPress Site Safe

Posted on by Chloe

It’s a sobering fact: Google blacklists tens of thousands of sites every single day for malware or phishing. Getting hacked is something many of us would like to believe can’t really happen. But if you own a website, it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re up to date with site security.

Why WordPress, specifically? Simply, it’s the biggest CMS (content management system), arguably the most popular (28% of all global websites are WordPress hosted, with 60% market share!) and the best platform we know of for optimising SEO.

But hackers can interfere and seriously damage your business reputation, jeopardising your revenue or even stealing customer information. Though WordPress is pretty secure already, you can always reduce risk, even if it seems a little intimidating and you’re not 100% tech-savvy. Here we’re sharing our 10 must-have safety tips as a great place to start.

Keep WordPress updated, and back up, back up, back up!

WordPress is open source and will automatically install smaller updates, but needs your say-so to go ahead with more major ones. Make a habit to install updates diligently, including any third-party plug-ins or themes.

And, as always, regularly do backups. There are free WordPress plugins that will help you backup to a remote cloud location such as Amazon or Dropbox on a (at minimum) daily basis.

Use strong passwords

Take the time to change to stronger passwords across the board. Limit who can access the account (think guest posters or freelancers) and if you must, use a password manager and commit to regularly refreshing passwords.

While you’re at it, change the default “admin” username!

Change your WordPress Admin URL

A simple but effective way to discourage minor hacking. If you’re worried about compatibility issues, you can always use a separate plugin to hide your login URL and convert it to a personalised one.

Rethink your WordPress hosting service

The right shared hosting provider can shield you from significant risk at the backend, on the server-level. Consider Bluehost, Kinsta or Siteground, which will continuously monitor activity, offer automatic updates and provide more sophisticated protection. A good host can detect attacks and automatically ban suspicious IPs, but also offer support in worst case scenarios.

Use a plugin

It’s not enough to rely on built-in WordPress security mechanisms. Yes, you’ll have to pay for these (sometimes quite a bit) but it’s worth taking the time to understand exactly the functionality you’ll get, and whether it’s appropriate for your site and business.

Security Ninja, Google Authenticator, Vaultpress and Jetpack are all popular options and will monitor your files, record failed logins, blocks bots and spam, or scan for malware. Sucuri is also a great option for those wanting a free plugin. Chat with your SEO team to hone in on what’s most important to you – easy to use interface, value for money, simplicity, two-factor authentication or an advanced, comprehensive solution?

Choose HTTPS

If this is not installed, then you run the risk of sharing your login details. When submitted on HTTP your sensitive information is simply passed to the server in plain text and so can be intercepted. Enable SSL encryption (Secure Sockets Layer) and use HTTPS when possible.

Enable WAF (Web Application Firewall)

A firewall blocks suspicious traffic before it can do any damage; there are two main types – DNS level or application level, the former being a little more robust. DNS firewalls send your site traffic through a cloud proxy server first so only genuine visitors land up at your site.

Disable file editing

WordPress has a default code-editor that lets anyone tweak the themes and plugins from the admin dashboard – an obvious risk when it comes to hacking. Disable it with a simple addition of code.

Limit failed login attempts to 3

WordPress default is unlimited failed logins, giving hackers endless time to guess. Instead, visit Settings > Login Lockdown and choose the retry number, the retry time period and the period your site will lock for after that. You could alternatively consider a plugin for this.

Also consider automatically logging out idle users, and add security questions to your login screen.

Change your WordPress database prefix

The default is “wp_” but change it to something that’s less easy for hackers to guess your table name.

For those starting out, or the self-confessed tech-phobes among us, tightening up online security can seem like an daunting prospect. Luckily, there’s plenty of support available and our experts at Fibre are always at hand to answer your questions. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Take it a step at a time and put yourself in the shoes of someone trying to get in – how can you make it as difficult as possible?

Your Next Biggest Competitor Is Google: What You Need to Know About Zero-Click Search

Posted on by Ella

The search engine results page (SERP) stands firmly at the centre of organic traffic generation. If you have a top-notch SEO team behind you and you’re lucky enough to land a placement on the first page of Google, you will likely be reaping the results. However, the SERP is changing, and it’s changing fast.

We had the arrival of black ‘Ad’ labels on mobile and the ‘How-to’ structured data markup in May 2019, not to mention the featured snippet deduplication change earlier this month, improved knowledge panels, and suggested content for long-tail search queries. Add to the mix video carousels and related product recommendations, and you’ve got yourself a very saturated SERP offering minimal visibility and poor click-through rates (CTR) for deserving websites.

As a result, for the first time, zero-click search (searches that end on the SERP because the user successfully found the answer to their query) has exceeded the number of searches resulting in organic clicks, at 50.33% to 45.25%. It’s not the best news we’ve heard, but not the worst either – it just means us SEO’s will have to work that little bit harder, and who’s not up for a challenge?

Crowded SERPs and zero complacency

SEO’s and digital marketers need to be one step ahead when it comes to SERP updates. If you think optimising your Google My Business profile once, or drafting your meta descriptions and incorporating a key term or two will earn you that top spot, you are mistaken. The Google SERP is a merciless territory, and you need to either adapt your strategy to suit users’ needs or face falling into the abyss on page 2…3…10…67!

Google is going to do what Google does, and that’s moulding the SERPs to maximise user convenience. If that means whipping a couple of websites off the first page and onto the second then that is what they will do. However it is important to stay resilient and have faith in the ability of your website. If it hosts the right content, is optimised correctly and technically sound, you might be ok.

There is also some comfort in knowing that this tech giant can only go so far. Back in June 2017, the European Union handed Google a €2.42bn fine for manipulating the SERP to favour its own comparison shopping service. Lyric website, Genius, also instigated a lawsuit for $50 million, claiming that Google had violated antitrust law by copying song lyrics from its website through a clever watermarking scheme.

Evidence that the SERP ship will keep on sailing

Amazon

Despite Google already dominating 90% of search engine market share, there has been increasing concern over the majority of product searches starting on Amazon, and unsurprisingly, Google is now working to follow suit. The search giant recently launched a new shopping platform that aims to be the go-to when finding items not available on Amazon. This comes after the revelation that only 22% of consumers are satisfied with their online shopping experience – a fact that Google has decided to improve in its own way.

Google lists similar products together with their prices encouraging the consumer to opt for the cheapest offer. When the user clicks on the product (through the shopping widget) they will be directed to the Google shopping platform. From here they can further click to view the product, see price comparisons and buy the product directly (all while being covered by a Google guarantee). There is no need to visit the retailer site at all.

Google’s BERT algorithm update

The long-term effects of the BERT update back in November are only just beginning to rear their heads. BERT was partly designed to target the results derived from long-tail searches and have since increased the number of featured snippets in 25 different languages. Featured snippets (FS) are special boxes where the format of a regular listing is reversed, showing descriptive content first. They usually hog the first part of the SERP and push organic results further down the page.

Furthermore, since Jan 2020, if you do succeed in obtaining a snippet, that URL will no longer be shown in the organic listings underneath. SEO’s have to choose between one or the other, depending on how much value each brings. This deduplication has resulted in severe drops in CTR for many sites across the board.

Growing Google SERP accessories

  • Ads – Up to four ads can be displayed at the top of the SERP and up to four at the bottom, leaving a lucky few organic results sandwiched between the two.
  • Rich Snippets – A rich snippet sits below the blue title on the SERP. It can include a picture, rating and extended description. They stand out from other results and usually generate a higher click through rate.
  • People also ask – This box is full of related queries to your original search and appears on the first page for pretty much all searches no matter the length of the query. When clicked it can answer your questions with no need to delve further to find the information’s original source. Written a short essay on how to boost your organic traffic? The likelihood is that the user will only read the most relevant paragraph regurgitated in the designated slot on Google and move on – that is, if your content is lucky enough to be featured in the first place.

The SERP epidemic is spreading to all corners of industry. Google job listings, flight price comparisons, hotel suggestions, Google thesaurus and dictionary not to mention the weather and Google reviews are all piled on the first page, distracting your target audience from executing your desired call to action.

What can you do to combat zero-click search?

Combating the zero-click epidemic is no easy feat. It takes a dedicated SEO team, a deep understanding of your niche, constant analysis of the changing SERP and the realisation that content must be produced for the user, not the search engine.

Get this right and you’re on the right track to effectively compete with Google and win back lost organic traffic. Contact us to talk about getting your metrics right first time around and help set your website on the right track for SEO success.