Fibre Marketing

Tag: Advice

6 Misconceptions About SEO 2019

Posted on by Ella

Anyone who has a website or knows anything about marketing will probably have heard of SEO – or Search Engine Optimisation. In a world where we use the internet for everything from buying Christmas presents to booking holidays, it is essential that your website can be found amongst the great expanse of the internet. And that is what SEO is all about.

There are two important concepts behind SEO – being able to give searchers what they are looking for as efficiently as possible and understanding how search engines, like Google, produce their search engine rankings.

The world of SEO is ever-changing and full of misconceptions, and here are 6 of the most common ones…

1.   It’s a ‘trick’

Some people believe that SEO is all about trying to trick search engines into putting your website at the top of the rankings. Actually, it’s about trying to provide the best and most useful information to the public by ensuring that the right content is found easily.

An understanding of the technical side of SEO will help the right people find your website, making a search engine more effective and bringing you the quality traffic that you need.

2.   It’s all about the keywords

Back in the day, SEO was all about stuffing your content full of keywords. Today, however, things have changed. It is no longer about getting as many keywords into your content as possible, but about creating content that’s valuable to the user while strategically placing well-researched keywords in the text. This ensures your searchers will get straight to the information that they are looking for and not click away (increasing your bounce rate).

With recent algorithm updates being released, such as the BERT update, search engine optimisation focuses now on answering users’ queries in the best way they can, while being concise and visually-appealing. This balance can be tricky to uphold, but when mastered, it can make all the difference to the reader.

3.   SEO, tick!

Another common misconception of SEO is that it’s something that you do, then tick off the list. Just like any other sort of marketing, SEO is something that needs to be continually worked on and updated.

Not only will you find that search engines like Google, are regularly changing their algorithms which decide on website rankings, but your competitors are also likely working on improving their SEO too. And, frankly, if you don’t keep on top of it, you will find yourself being left behind.

An SEO consultant will be able to continuously look at your website to determine exactly what needs to be done to help you rank at the top of the search engine results.

4.   SEO isn’t very important

Of course, we’re going to say that SEO is important. But it really is.

75% of online marketers never scroll past the first page of search engines, and to get to that first page, you’re going to need SEO in order to compete with the hundreds of sites in your industry. Furthermore, showing up on the first page doesn’t just help you to get new customers; it also builds your brand, credibility and trust. When people read over your website and receive useful, accurate information from you, even if they’re not your customer now, they could turn into one in the future.

5.   Linking doesn’t help

You might think that linking both external and internal, is annoying and unnecessary, but hear us out. In fact, linking and link building are major players in the way that search engines like Google determine popularity and therefore where they are going to rank your website.

But it’s not that easy. There are many tricks to gaining links for your site and it is a multi-faceted task. Google is aware of black-hat link building strategies and understands that some links are included in content purely for SEO purposes, which goes against their user-orientated values. Not only that, bloggers, journalists and marketers are becoming more and more aware of this strategy which makes it harder to get that desired link. It’s an ongoing, ever-changing process that needs to be done in the right way – so take your time and get those links in ethically and organically.

6.   First Place or Nowhere

Although ranking first is certainly not something to turn your nose up at – and you will receive significantly more traffic just by appearing on the first page – Google has been making it harder to improve organic traffic for websites. One reason for this is because, over the years they have released SERP features that continue to take up space on the page, such as featured snippets. Simultaneously, ads continue to dominate the first part of the search results, with Google altering their appearance so that they blend in more with organic listings. Therefore, not only have you got to gain a first-page ranking, you also need to master the art of optimising for other SERP features. Statistics show that the first ranking is being increasingly pushed down the results page, reducing the number of search queries that result in organic clicks to just 40%. Read more on our blog about Google’s latest design of the results page and how this could impact you.

 

BrightonSEO September 2019: Key Highlights For Fibre Marketing

Posted on by Ella

Last week, a few members of the Fibre team attended BrightonSEO – one of the world’s largest SEO conferences – where we spent the day listening to talented speakers’ tips and advice as well as seeing some big SEO names (Greg Gifford was a highlight). Preceded by a pre-party that allowed attendees to DJ and followed by a grab-all-the-free-stuff session the next morning, we can say that it was certainly a full-on, exciting couple of days.

We’ve come away inspired to try out new tools and strategies throughout our company and see what results they bring. With that in mind, here are just some of the talks that stood out for us.

Link Building

Creating Sexy AF Outreach Emails To Land Sexy AF Links – Carrie Rose

Carrie Rose claimed that she wasn’t 100% during her talk as she was hungover, yet she had so much energy that we could barely imagine how charismatic she is when she’s feeling more like herself!

Carrie offered great advice throughout her talk, exhibiting screenshots of her outreach emails and providing an insight into the day to day of journalists and bloggers. Essentially receiving around 600 emails a day – Carrie highlighted the need for outreach emails to really stand out. Carrie then provided tips for crafting the perfect subject heading as well as going through the best time slots to send emails each day, along with other valuable SEO wisdoms.

Takeaways:

  • Top-tier journalists receive around 600 emails a day, so it’s essential that your outreach email stand out.
  • Create stories within your content – something that bloggers/readers will be interested in and will be considered, ‘resourceful, useful or different.’
  • The relevance of what you’re pitching should be stated near the top of your email.
  • Match your tone of voice and title to the publication’s.

Carrie’s slides are available here.

Email Anatomy: How To Get Top Tier Links – Alex Cassidy

Alex Cassidy’s talk on building top tier links was one of the most insightful sessions in the conference for us. He broke down the perfect outreach email, accompanied by screenshots, and shared his methods that he and his team created based on the 100,000 emails they sent out last year.

He titled his method ‘SLLAM,’ an acronym for Subject, Lede, Link, Angles and Methodology, as these make up the structure of outreach emails. He also shared how to chase writers to include links in already-published articles, but encourages his team to state the link needed in the email to minimise constant back and forth. Some of the most memorable screenshots of his talk however were the many, many blunt rejections that ‘outreachers’ receive that everyone in the room could relate to – we’ve all been there!

Takeaways:

  • If you’ve tried a subject line 25 times which hasn’t received much traction, then move on to a different technique.
  • Constructing the perfect email is an ‘art’ – you need to cut down large amounts of content to something digestible yet intriguing for the reader.
  • You want to keep your emails short and sweet, but provide enough information to eliminate back and forth conversation.

Alex’s slides are available here.

SERPS

Mining The SERPs: How To Make The SERPs A Powerful Weapon In The SEO Armoury – Rory Truesdale

Rory Truesdale explored the language of SERPs during his talk to explain how they can show you what customers/users are looking for.

Using certain tools, Rory explains how you can analyse the language of search engine results in order to improve your own online performance. Conductor composed a study which revealed that Google rewrites 84 % of SERP-displayed meta descriptions, so the meta description displayed on search pages can differ from what’s defined in the page’s HTML.

Takeaways:

  • Google has data that helps it make sense of what the user is looking for, so it will pick sections from the content that it thinks best meets the criteria of the search. So by exporting this data, we can take the content pulled from SERPs and gain insights into how Google is interpreting queries, which can thus be used for webpage content.

Future Of Search

Bettlejuice’s Guide To Entities And The Future Of SEO – Greg Gifford

In his talk, Greg Gifford explores the evolution of Google and it’s algorithms, starting from a simple matching keywords-to-keywords basis to now understanding real-world signals. An insightful talk with a horror movie theme that made his session even more enjoyable for our team.

Greg explained that Google originally used keyword matching for search queries – meaning that their bots considered the keyword patterns instead of the meaning behind the query itself. It wasn’t until 2012 when Google then started to evolve towards the latter, stating that they were ‘moving from keywords towards knowledge of real-world entities and relationships.’ Reflecting on past major algorithm updates, we can see that Google continues focusing on semantics and entities.

Takeaways:

  • When thinking about the future of search, it’s obvious that rankings will be based on real-world signals. This means that the weight of keyword matching is decreasing as these signals cannot possibly be faked by anyone.
  • Furthermore, these changes tell us that SEO will be less concerned with writing content for search, but instead will focus on ensuring that websites have the best answer for the search query. We are already seeing this today.
  • Local SEO is also becoming more and more significant, especially for mobile searches. Make sure your Google My Business Listings are updated and monitored, focusing on images and reviews.

You can see Greg’s slides here.

Rethinking The Fundamentals Of Keyword Research With The Insights From Big Data – Tim Soulo

Tim Soulo from Ahrefs gave us an insightful talk that took a deep dive into keyword research by providing us with data based studies composed by the company.

We knew we were in for a session of discoveries when the first statistic was presented to us: the average #1 page position in Google rank for about 1000 other keywords! While we all knew that pages rank for multiple keywords, but it was still a shock to know exactly how many. Tim continued his talk by offering advice on applying this data to websites and what effects they can have.

Takeaways:

  • 88% of webpages receive no traffic from Google, which serves as a reminder of how essential keyword research is.
  • In their study, Ahrefs concluded that there are two reasons why pages are not ranking in Google. The first being the number of backlinks (links are a major major ranking factor), or, the page isn’t targeting a topic with a decent amount of search potential. Essentially, if no one is searching for what your webpage is about, you’re not going to get any traffic for it.
  • This demonstrates that search intent is one of the most important aspects of gaining that first-place ranking.

We’ve absolutely loved BrightonSEO this year, and we’re looking forward to attending the next conference in April 2020 and seeing what else we can learn.

How Will SEO Help My Business?

Posted on by Chloe

SEO might sound like something other people think about. Why would you want to know about this when you run a business in a different sector? How will it help your business?

The truth is, if you can get your SEO practises right, your business will grow. In today’s world in which more people search for goods online than ever before, you need a website, and if you have a website, you need it to be noticed – particularly in you are working in an area that has a lot of competition. Getting noticed is all about SEO. Here’s how it can help your business grow, be noticed, and thrive.

Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

When you search for something online, the likelihood is that, unless you know exactly which website to head to from the start, you are going to use a search engine. The most used search engine in the UK is Google, so much so that ‘to google’ has become a verb that we all use with hardly a second thought.

Using SEO correctly means that you will be seen higher up in the search engine (and particularly Google) rankings. You may wonder why this matters, but it is actually hugely important for the success of your business. People don’t have a lot of time – when they are searching for something it’s because they want to find the answer. The first page of search engine results are where they will concentrate their ideas, clicking on the top few links. They might, if nothing useful has come up, venture to the second page, but it is unlikely they will go much further – they will change their search terms instead.

Being on that first page of results is crucial, and being as near to the top as possible is something to aim for. SEO can get you there.

Conversion Rates

The number of people who visit your website compared to the number of people who buy when they are there is your conversion rate. Clearly, the more people who buy, the better your conversion rate will be, and the better it is, the more profit you will make.

Properly targeted, well thought out SEO campaigns will help to increase that ratio and give you a better conversion rate. This is because targeted SEO will bring people who are genuinely interested in what you are selling; they have already half decided that they want something from you, and you simply need to finish the process. This saves time, money, and effort, and all stems from the correct usage of SEO.

Brand Awareness

Every business needs to be more visible if they want to be more successful. This means working on ‘brand awareness’ so that, even if people don’t need what you are selling right now, when they do need it they will immediately think of your brand and your business.

Again, SEO will help with this. It links back to getting better rankings on the search engines, as this is certainly a good start. But it is also about using SEO to place your website and your ads in other places so that they begin to be noticed all around. A great example of this is social media and your blog.

Engagement

In order to become more successful, you need to ensure you have good customer engagement. SEO can ensure that this is possible. The more people who see your website, your social media posts, your blog, and your adverts, the more people will get in touch with you. This gives you the perfect opportunity to find new customers and to engage with them.

Social media is particularly good for this; people can see the questions that are asked, and your responses (assuming they are made public). This will show that you care about your customers and that you want to work with them and help them wherever possible. In some cases this caring side of your business can be the reason that people turn to you rather than a competitor, and therefore it is imperative to get it right.

It isn’t just the public forum of social media that counts when it comes to engagement, of course. Even if no one else sees the question or the answer you provide, it is just as important to answer any question that comes your way. You should also acknowledge any feedback, pay attention to reviews – positive or negative – and always remain professional at all times.