Fibre Marketing

Category: SEO

How to Know if You Should Outsource Your SEO

Posted on by Chloe

Any business that understands the importance (and potential) of digital marketing knows that getting your SEO right is one of the most crucial elements. After all, if potential customers cannot find you via the search engines – or worse – if they find one of your closest competitors first, the rest of your hard work seems pretty pointless. Being found online by the right people at the right time is vital and this is where SEO can help.

It might be possible for you to manage your SEO yourself, and many people do – if they have the time and passion to do it. But some businesses benefit from out-sourcing it. So, how do you know when the time is right to be outsourcing your SEO?

1. If it’s not your ‘thing’

At the end of the day, some people enjoy doing SEO and some don’t. But if you want your business to have any sort of web presence, SEO is essential. Although a lot of the concepts around SEO are straightforward, it can be time consuming and involve a lot of analysis, keyword research and trying things out (and changing things), meaning that it can be tricky to fit in around everything else that you have to do. Good SEO requires dedication, and this isn’t something that is possible for everyone.

So, if SEO just isn’t your ‘thing’ or you simply don’t have time, don’t neglect it, it’s time to outsource it. Let somebody else spend the time and give you the results that your business needs.

2. The ever-changing world of SEO

Whilst the concepts around SEO generally stay the same, the world of SEO is always changing. Search engines like Google are always changing their algorithms (the set of rules which decide which results come top of their search rankings) with the intention of giving their `searchers` the most accurate results for what they are looking for. This, however, means that businesses need to stay on top of their SEO and local SEO, to ensure that they are ranked up there in those all-important search results.

3. The have the skills 

Basic SEO, is, well, pretty basic to get your head around. But just like anything else in life, unless you’re prepared to spend time and energy learning about SEO as well as dedicating yourself to practice, it will be difficult to get the best results. A specialist SEO expert, however, will be able to jump straight in with the skills that they already have fine-tuned and get your SEO up to scratch.

4. You can’t afford to pay a full time SEO-er

As businesses grow, it’s not always possible to pay someone who has both the expertise and time to dedicate to SEO, so by outsourcing your SEO, you will get someone with the skills and talent, who you only have to pay for when they are working for you. You don’t have to worry about paying holiday, pensions or how productive they are, but can expect them to work closely with you to get great results that properly reflect your business.

5. You’re struggling with your existing SEO

You might feel like you’re doing everything right with your SEO, but still not ranking near the top of those searches. It might be something that you hadn’t even realised that you should be doing, or something that you aren’t quite doing right, and this is where outsourcing your SEO can help. By letting the experts have a look over it and make the changes that are needed, you can ensure that the SEO efforts that you are making are productive and effective. They can also help you to plan long and short-term marketing strategies to ensure that you get the best results now and in the future.

You’ve run out of ideas

Whether it’s what to do with your website, content or blog post ideas, it can be difficult to be continuously creative, even when it’s something that you feel passionate about. Outsourcing your SEO can bring a fresh perspective on things. By letting the SEO experts analyse what you already have and build on that, they can come up with new ideas in terms of general marketing strategies as well as content which will rocket you up the search results.

For any growing business it can be difficult to let go of certain aspects. There comes a stage though where it is better to let the experts take over and bring the best results for you. Whilst SEO is something that is manageable to certain size businesses, it can be difficult to keep on top of, and effective, especially as your time becomes taken up with other things. By knowing when it is time to outsource your SEO, you can ensure that you get the most effective outcome for your business.

The rise of voice search optimisation: what you need to know

Posted on by Chloe

Voice search is becoming increasingly significant in terms of SEO, as right now, 20% of search queries on Android devices and Google’s app are conducted by voice search. It’s changing the way businesses need to think about their SEO, indicating that they will need to apply voice search SEO if they want to succeed.

 

Voice search allows users to find out what they are looking for without actually loading up a search engine and typing in keywords to generate results. People who use voice search prefer it because it allows them to multitask and they can get information immediately, which is handy for when you’re cooking or driving.

 

And so, due to the increasing amount of usage, search engines are beginning to emphasise voice search optimization.

 

One of the many advantages of voice search optimisation is that it’s a great way to gain brand awareness. When someone asks a question in voice search, the answer usually begins with ‘According to…’, thus informing the listener of your brand.

 

Voice search SEO is different from traditional SEO. For example, voice search uses long tail keywords and a conversational tone, as they are often questions instead of exact keyword searches, like ‘What is the weather like today?’ instead of ‘Cheltenham weather.’

 

It is therefore vital that you should know how users speak about your business and its products. Your content should be written for people, not search engines. Answer questions directly and try and make it obvious that a paragraph is an answer to a question. An example of this type of content is blog posts – many article headings’ feature a question that the post itself then answers.

 

And, of course, you must know your audience and what they are likely to be asking.

 

Making sure that your site is optimised for mobiles is just as important – this is where voice search comes from after all. Mobile SEO needs to be good and page content needs to be high-quality, as your content should be as relevant to the desired search query as possible. Using sections with lists, bullet points, and heading tags can be read easily by Google and thus perform better, and are more likely to be used for voice search.

 

Local SEO is essential as the most popular types of search queries for voice search are location-based – users want to know things like opening times, locations, and what products are available where. So if a site and its content are optimised for local searches, then it’s more likely to succeed in the voice search industry. One way to work out what sort of local content you ned is to think of the popular search phrase ‘…near me.’ Most voice search queries are essentially that but in question form, and that’s the type of information your website will need to provide.

 

In conclusion, voice search optimisation is making changes to mobile SEO, making it something that business owners need to consider when designing their websites. It is speculated that voice search will be a huge trend this year, proven to improve brand awareness and purchases. It’s usage is still on the rise, so by optimising your site for voice search now, you are sure to see results that will help grow your brand in the long-term.

 

See more thoughts about this voice search optimisation here.

Google displays ‘empty’ search pages to European users

Posted on by Chloe

Recently, Google shared screenshots of proposed search engine results pages that would display if the EU passes Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. The search results appear empty, as if they have failed to load correctly, and only links are displayed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Image from Search Engine Land 

These types of results were then shown to European users, as discussed on Twitter:

 

The experiment was, according to Google, ‘to understand what the impact of the proposed EU Copyright Directive would be to our users and publisher partners.”

Two provisions that are part of this proposal are Articles 11 & 13. Article 11 would mean that Google and other search engines are required to pay licensing fees when displaying snippets of content. Article 13 requires certain platforms, such as Google and social media sites including Facebook and Twitter, to monitor content uploads for potential copyright infringement.

The full Twitter forum is below:

Google teams up with WordPress to speed up the web!

Posted on by Fibre Agency

This week, in the next step of Google taking on speeding up mobile internet, saw Google announce the beginning of a new partnership with WordPress. But why is it such a big deal? Should we have seen it coming?

Over the past few years we’ve seen Google turn their attention to page speed for mobile users. Take a quick look around you and it’s easy to see why. We use mobiles for general browsing more than ever. You may even be reading this on a phone right now. Unsurprisingly, total browse time for mobile users has even surpassed that of desktop users, and is projected to continue growing by 6% per year.

And yet – many websites still aren’t accessible for mobile users. Sites optimised for desktop, or even those adjusted for mobile view, are typically large and slow to load when not accessed via WiFi. For example, even over a 3G connection average mobile loading speed is 19 seconds. This may not sound like long but over 53% of users abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. For online businesses, this is a massive loss. But for Google it’s a huge opportunity to access a large, growing and poorly tapped market.

Google’s biggest effort over the past few years is Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP. This technology aims to optimise sites for mobile access by improving loading time. AMP primarily achieves this by banning bandwidth heavy JavaScript in favour of a narrow set of web technologies and hosting via dedicated AMP servers, among many other processes. And, it’s successful: AMP sites have been shown to load up to 85% faster on 3G than non-AMP sites. As expected, since its release in February 2016, AMP users have steadily increased, this has been incredibly successful in increasing mobile traffic and has been shown to be associated with a 20% increase in sales.

To improve mobile access, Google already gives priority positions to sites that utilise AMP (keep an eye out for the grey lightening symbol!). And at some point in 2018, mobile page speed will begin to be incorporated into Google’s ranking factor for websites.

Which is where we get to WordPress. Like mobile customers being an untapped market, it seems that the same can be said for WordPress. Currently, WordPress have almost 60% of the market share and about 1/3 of all – all – published content online utilises WordPress CMS (content management system). Despite its size and popularity, WordPress is often found by users to be slow and buggy. In WordCamp US 2017 – one of the biggest events in the WordPress calendar – Google presented a complete overview of WordPress ecosystem performance metrics. And it was a sad picture. Among some circles it even has a reputation for being less secure but there’s not a lot of evidence for this notion. Yet, if Google can turn their attention to improving the web experience for WordPress users, they have the potential to reach a massive part of the market and potentially help it to grow.

So yes, maybe we should have seen it coming.

It’s thought that Google’s interest in WordPress isn’t just about speed though. It’s about pushing Progressive Web Apps (PWA) or the ‘’appification’’ of the web. Like AMP, this technology incorporates app like features such as push-notifications, security features and identity management, among others. It aims to standardize user experience across different websites by making them fast, app-like and consistent across all platforms. Yet, PWA is still in the early days and needs a lot of work. Right now, PWA have been poorly deployed effectively, perhaps because they are code heavy and difficult to develop. Yet with WordPress 4.5 release, working PWA simply into the core code looks like a realistic possibility. And for Google, working in tandem with WordPress allows them to roll out Progressive Web Apps as well as AMP to up to a 1/3 of online content.

To kick-start their partnership with WordPress, Alberto Medina, a developer working for the Web Content Ecosystems team at Google, announced on his blog last week that Google will be expanding their team to include a core group of WordPress experts who will work on generating PWA plugins for WordPress while simultaneously working with Google to improve speed, performance and (most likely) AMP compatibility.

 

SEO – it’s more than you think

Posted on by Fibre Agency

Gone are the days when SEO equalled keywords. With frequent technological innovation and increasingly restrictive Google algorithm updates, SEO has become substantially more complicated. Now, with Google using over 200 different parameters to assign rank, to claim one of the elusive top spots a website needs to be optimised for users and search engines on multiple fronts.

 

Content

Creating good, high quality content, is the most fool proof way of generating traffic & revenue. This is because website visitors reach the site organically, that is: your target market arrives at your site through browsing material that is relevant in your section of the market. Whether this is through blog links or shared online material such as infographics and viral videos, creating something that people want to read provides you with free advertising that naturally generates traffic.  With new developments in Google algorithms that are now able to recognise synonymous keywords, website content is now becoming more topic rather than keyword orientated which further bolsters the need for good quality content. If you can produce good content that serves a particular topic well, you will be rewarded both by google and by attracting new customers.

 

Mobile Optimisation

Despite more than 50% of website coming from mobile users, there are still large numbers of websites that have not been designed to be suitable for viewing on a mobile phone. Seeing that a site can be rendered virtually unusable if it isn’t optimised for mobile use, it’s not surprising that a large amount of traffic can be lost if the site isn’t optimised. This also comes underneath the umbrella of SEO because this is a factor that Google considers when calculating rank level. Mobile optimisation can be a simple as new scaling rules of the site design for when the site is accessed from a mobile via responsive page design, or can be a completely different code for a mobile site. The former, responsive page design, is often argued to be better because it allows mobile and desktop users to access the site suing the same URL and is also better navigated by Googles algorithms. However, it can dramatically increase page loading times. There are, however, many different options for how to approach this problem and there are bound to be many more if mobile browsing takes over that of desktops.

 

Social media presence

The 70% of internet users that have at least one social media account, spend at least 28% of their time online on social media. As time taken away from time to make your business heard, it’s unthinkable now to not have a presence on these platforms. This is because like producing good quality content, presence on social media platforms can organically promote new customers. In fact, gaining followers or fans on social media is also one of the factors used by Google. They can even detect and factor in the quality of your followers. Companies that gradually generate support from on social media by engaging directly with their customers, naturally attract more customers via link sharing and are also viewed more favourably by Google.

 

Link Building

This is arguably the most important component of SEO because links influence Google rank more than any other factor. For a good rank, your site needs to be linked to by other sites. The more, the better. But not just any old site, it must be a reputable site. Long ago when backlinks were first introduced to Google algorithms, so-called ‘link-farms’ cropped up solely to fulfil the purpose of providing backlinks. Now, with more sophisticated algorithms, link-farms are defunct because Google Penguin now accounts for the reputability and relevance of the sites that provide the back links. Now, links must be achieved by more genuine means. This is another reason why good quality content will serve you well. If you manage to get your good quality content published on a site with a high domain authority, and you’re good to go.

 

Pay Per Click

Although, technically, PPC and SEO are usually considered as different entities – a good SEO strategy often incorporates PPC. The reason for this is two-fold. First, and this is especially true for emerging businesses, PPC can give a company the exposure that it needs to attract new customers. Even if there is great content on the site, it needs to reach an audience before the content can begin to be shared. And second, results from PPC can be used to inform the SEO tactic. For example, using PPC a website owner can play around with keywords to find that one that works best, and then use these keywords or headings with SEO for best results

SEO, what it is and why businesses need it

Posted on by Fibre Agency

What is SEO?

Simply put, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is a way to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your website via organic results from online search engines.

Both technical and creative elements are incorporated in SEO work, as a way to drive traffic to your website and ensure you are visible to your target audience in an extremely saturated market:

Content Quality – Not only should content on your website use keywords that are relevant to your audience, it should also be totally original and user friendly.

Internal Links – A tactic used to push traffic around your site, lowering your bounce rate and consequentially improving your relationship with search engines.

Clean Website – A clear, concise, easily navigated website with relevant content is an SEO essential and can make a real difference to your organic search traffic.

Meta Descriptions and Tags – These very simple practices are designed to succinctly explain what your website and its content is about.

Domain Names – Selecting the appropriate domain name for your website is also an essential for Search Engine Optimization. Choosing a domain with too many hyphens or an irrelevant title will leave you a lot of work to do before search engines notice your website.

Community Engagement – Interacting with your users, either by way of a comments section or a contact page will not only ensure returning users but will also demonstrate to search engines that you are a consistently active website.

Headlines – Finding the perfect balance between a succinct title that is descriptive enough to reach your target audience is a tough ask but can be mightily rewarding for SEO purposes.

Reading Guidelines – Google and Yahoo!, the two most frequently used search engines on the web have best practices guidelines that will help you to specify and prioritize the elements needed for a superior search ranking.

Why Do Websites Need SEO?

While social media, print and online advertising are all satisfactory marketing tools to generate visits to your site, the primary method of internet browsing for users is through search engines, whatever your sites content may be. Research has shown that investing in SEO has unrivalled return in publicity, exposure and most importantly, revenue.

Search engines provide targeted traffic to your site; they direct consumers to your product. If your website’s SEO is not up to par with competitors, you will be lost amongst the everlasting pages of search engine results.

Nearly 100% of established online websites will have an SEO specialist or consultant that are constantly updating site content and exploring new ways to ensure full search engine optimization. A specialist employee of this type is now essential to most companies who wish to establish themselves in the market. Without a constant focus on SEO, competition will have the edge on your audience base.

Considering the way search engines are developing, it is unlikely that SEO will cease to be effective in the foreseeable future. Even the growing market of video based content requires SEO to gain enough exposure. That is why it must be a priority for any website that has yet to discover the wonders of Search Engine Optimization to explore its benefits immediately.

 

How to find the best SEO consultant?

Posted on by Fibre Agency

With the online market expanding at an unrivalled rate and competition for placing in search engines at an all-time high, it is vital that your company’s website has an online presence – SEO really is more important than ever.

Millions of people use search engines every day, looking for answers to their questions or solutions to their problems. In terms of customer exposure, getting yourself ranked among the top results in a search engine could be the difference between success and failure.

If SEO is nothing more than technological jargon to you, then finding someone to help with this side of the business can be crucial.

Here are some essential tips on finding the best SEO consultant to ensure that you beat the competition and reach your intended audience.

1.     What Matters to You?

Whether it be a content genius, a technical whizz, or someone who is experienced with social media, it is vital that you work out what kind of SEO consultant you want.

While many prospective consultants will have experience in all of the aforementioned criteria, these can often be expensive choices. For example, if you know that your content is generally sound but your social media presence is below par, look for someone who has experience in the latter.

These early choices could determine the quality of consultancy you receive.

2.     Search Your Own Network

Finding an SEO consultant with experience in your industry field can be a real coup. They will be familiar with competitors and will have prior knowledge of what it takes to impact your search engine rankings.

Make use of your social media networks like LinkedIn and Twitter to find your ideal consultant; perhaps that connection with a long-lost former colleague will have been worthwhile.

3.     Use Online Marketing Communities

If you fail to find someone appropriate within your network, try heading to a major marketing community online. These forums will help with recommendations of legitimate, trustworthy SEO consultants, while also offering advice on pricing, technical questions and more.

4.     Individual or Company?

There are positives and negatives to working with an individual, freelance SEO consultant. The same can be said for working with a consultancy firm.

An individual will likely be much cheaper to hire and more flexible, both in terms of working hours and your direct input. However, working with a consultancy firm will likely offer a more comprehensive improvement to your SEO, as they will likely have technical, content and social media experts working together.

The decision on who to choose entirely depends on your circumstance. However, if finance is the priority, an independent consultant may be a more prudent choice.

5.     Ask Questions

Even if you are SEO illiterate, you must ensure that the consultant you hire knows exactly what you expect from them. Ask them for a detailed strategic process about how they plan to improve your SEO, ensure that they are providing daily feedback of their work and quiz them on their past clients.

Some consultants will claim that they are able to get you to the “very top” of Google or Yahoo! This could either be unappealing arrogance or a serious red flag. Consultants have been known to use “Black Hat” tactics. This underhand way of SEO works in the short term but will usually be discovered by the search engines and your website would subsequently be de-indexed or removed.

Consultants who are honest and explain that optimization will not produce results immediately are far more trustworthy and are likely to be abiding by standard SEO practices.

If you’re looking for an SEO consultant then please feel free to contact us to have a quick chat about your project – 01242 898401

Why is SEO important to a marketing strategy?

Posted on by Fibre Agency

The domination of today’s online consumer market means that SEO has become an essential part of any business with an online presence.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is a way to increase the amount and worth of traffic to your website via organic results from online search engines.

Both technical and creative elements are integrated in SEO work, as a way to drive traffic to your website and ensure you are visible to your target audience in an exceedingly saturated market.

SEO is a vital part of the marketing tactic of any online business. Firstly, it is more than likely that your competitors will have a clear SEO strategy. To ensure that you are competing at the very top, keep site content relevant and update as often as possible. Search engines are constantly reviewing your website to ensure that you are remaining active and you are likely to drop off the radar if you fail to adhere to this.

Plan your content and ensure that you are pleasing your target audience. Instead of just reeling out old news stories that you have re-written, create some fresh, exciting, unique content that will help you climb up the search engine rankings.

Optimizing your website for search engines is an absolute essential for any legitimate business wanting to increase their organic traffic. Do you research and find out how people are searching for sites like yours. For example, if you are a company selling second hand car parts, think about what key words people would type into a search engine to get to your site. These keywords should be integrated into your sites content to ensure that the line between you and your customer is as straight as possible.

Perhaps the most important part of ensuring that Search Engine Optimization is a key part of your marketing strategy is the credibility that it will bring to your business, not only from industry peers, but customers as well.

A website user is far more likely to trust a website that appears in the first 2 pages of a search engine, than a site that isn’t even ranked. A high ranking site will attract a very high number of your target audience but it will also interest people who are perhaps not your core customer base. The one-off visitors will be motivated to use your website if it is at the top a search engine ranking. They will have very little interest in scrolling through page after page of website if they are not interested in the industry in question.

The best way to measure the success of your websites SEO, other than customer analytics is to type your primary keywords into a search engine, look at the top listed website and, if it isn’t you, discover what they have been doing that puts them on top of the tree. Is the layout of their website clear? Is their content original and targeted? What keywords are they using? Finding the answers to these questions and adapting your website to ensure that you are optimized in a similar way should help you eventually rise up the rankings.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive SEO Agency then speak to us today!

Contact Fibre

Organic vs Pay Per Click, which is better?

Posted on by Fibre Agency

When you’re getting started on building your online presence, building traffic can seem daunting. When your content barely ranks on search engines it can seem like a mountain to climb. Organically building traffic from search engines is just one way of ranking in search results, the alternative is pay per click (PPC).

Getting Clicks

You can rank highly on search engine results far more quickly using PPC than building ranking organically. There is no question this is true. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is dependent upon people clicking on the adverts.

Users are increasingly less likely to click on PPC adverts. Despite their prominent placement on search results, users prefer proven, valuable content (i.e. content that has ‘earned’ its spot high on the search results). Only a small proportion of users click on advertised content when searching.

It’s all About Value

Web users trust your content and attach greater value to it if it has made the 1st page of search results on merit. Users understand your content has earned its place through being useful to many, many other people. Pay per click is a sales pitch and users trust this source less.

PPC is Ranked too

You’re being ranked even if you’re using PPC advertising. Google ranks everything. It identifies the most useful content and ranks it accordingly, this includes PPC adverts.

PPC doesn’t necessarily buy your advert placement on the top of page 1. Your advert is given a quality score which assesses the rate of click through, relevance and the quality of the content on your landing page. This quality score (and the price you have paid) will determine where your advert is placed.

Both Strategies have a Place

Organic traffic is the long term goal. Achieving high ranking on searches infers credibility when it’s done organically. On the other hand, organic search is a long term strategy and you may not see a return on your investment for some time.

PPC is a tried and tested method of kick-starting your digital marketing and helping you get traffic. PPC can only be effective however if you have the relevant, quality content people are looking for.

 

Is Google the best search engine to rank with?

Posted on by Fibre Agency

Google is the Daddy of all search engines with over two thirds of all searches being carried out on Google. Of course there are others. The main second string are Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ask.com and Baidu. But they are small in comparison.

 

Size Matters

You cannot argue with the dominance of Google in the world of search. It is the biggest search engine in the world by far, and is often cited as the best.

Millions of websites rely on Google for traffic. Changes to Google’s search ranking system to improve the quality of search results can lead to seismic changes in how businesses carry out their digital marketing the world over.

People focus their efforts on Google because its numbers speak for themselves. Web users choose Google, so websites choose to focus on ranking highly on the site.

 

A Victim of its own Success?

Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to rank on popular search terms.

SEO specialists are continually seeking better ways to optimize ranking for clients, using less popular key words, or local SEO for example. But ultimately, if you want to rank highly for your chosen search term, it is a long term investment.

Google, of course, isn’t in business to help businesses improve their sales, they earn their money from being the most useful search engine to users.

 

A Niche Approach

In the context of such high level of competition for popular search terms on Google, could there be some merit in targeting the less popular search engine?

It all depends on the numbers. If you are in a competitive marketplace, perhaps a high ranking for a popular search term on a smaller site could bring in better (and quicker) results compared to targeting less popular keywords on Google.

This niche approach has regularly being used to sell products and services, why not digital marketing and search?

 

Google is King

Search is a numbers game and when it comes to search engines, Google is way ahead of its competitors. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to rank for popular search terms. There is an alternative strategy however, target more popular search terms on less popular search engines.

The proof of the strategy is in the outcome of course, but the choice is yours.