Fibre Marketing

Tag: seo strategy

Fibre Predicts The SEO Landscape for 2020

Posted on by Ella

In 2018 alone, Google made over 3,200 changes to search, and while this figure is yet to be determined for 2019, it does show how much can change in the space of a year. And with another busy year nearing ever closer, the team at Fibre can only guess what might be in store for the SEO landscape.

So without further ado our Director, Adam Adlkish, kickstarts our SEO predictions for 2020.

Adam Adlkish – Company Director

Prediction: ‘It’s all about brand. I believe brand strength is key to success with organic traffic, especially for online and e-commerce enterprises. There will be less focus on anchor texts orientating around brand offerings, which has been an SEO strategy since 2003.’

Tell us more: More recently, organic listings have been pushed further down the results page with featured snippets, map packs and Ads dominating the top positions on the SERP. After this, usually the first few organic results are well-known, high authority brands, leaving little wiggle room for a smaller company to make their mark and persuade users that they too can be trusted.

This is where branding strategies are key. Building brand awareness and credibility can be done through undertaking numerous tasks such as, comment and review maintenance on GMBs, achieving quality, authoritative links for the client that are relevant to the user, and displaying signs of E-A-T across as many aspects of a site as possible.

Edward Ziubrzynski – Search Performance Manager

Prediction: ‘For E-commerce category pages, I predict that content heavy SEO strategies will slowly become less important. Instead, Google will better rank pages that immediately satisfy the intent of the searcher,  favouring pages that offer immediate access to products and/or services as opposed to typical keyword optimised content that will interfere with the user experience of the page.’

Tell us more: While Ed’s prediction goes against the content-first rule of thumb for SEO strategies in the mainstream, we are currently seeing some success with one of our clients who have strayed from the norm. Originally, heavy blocks of content were placed at the top of the page and while this did give the client a small boost in rankings, it certainly wasn’t enough. We then decided to cut down the text so that the user could find the product listings quicker, and we’ve been seeing steady improvements in rankings ever since.

Google likes to see fresh content that marries providing value with a great user experience. If users struggle to find your products, it’s compromising on their shopping and that’s not going to help bolster brand visibility.

Ella Morley – Search Engine Marketing Executive

 Prediction: ‘The gap between average desktop (46.52%) and mobile (45.98%) market share in the UK is rapidly closing. While website rankings are still primarily orientated around the desktop version of a site, we’ve seen some significant hints from Google in the past couple of years or so pointing towards the need for a more mobile-friendly SEO approach.

 It’s been a slow slog towards Google ranking mobile content alongside desktop, but I think that 2020 will be the year we see more progress. With Google defaulting mobile-first indexing for new sites this July and other tools jumping on the hype, SEO’s will start to direct more attention to their mobile SEO strategy and harness that 51.51% of web traffic.’

Tell us more: As an SEO agency, we cannot stress enough the importance of mobile SEO. If your website is not optimised for mobile you’re missing out on roughly half of your traffic potential. Slow user load times, difficulty navigating the site on the go and poor adaptation to a smaller screen size, are big red warning signs indicating that your user experience is not up to scratch.

Chloe Price – Content Marketing Specialist

Prediction: ‘Content creators are increasingly desperate for links and seeing as interest in SEO continues to grow rapidly, more journalists and bloggers have become aware of the true aim of guest posting. Publishers will be putting up as many barriers as they can, including increasing guest posting prices, paywalls or demanding more link-for-link exchanges. However, as this goes against Google’s guidelines, sites that ‘sell’ links will see decreased traffic and SEO performance sooner rather than later.

 Link relevance will also be the top priority now that branding is becoming more of a focus. In order to encourage brand awareness, the links need to place clients as authoritative sites in their industry so that consumers make a connection with the company and will want to return. If a link does not encourage engagement, then it will be rendered useless.’

Tell us more: As we mentioned earlier, there were many updates this year based on link trust, and affiliate sites were knocked down the rankings and disavows grew in significance. These updates certainly tell us that link quality is far more important than quantity, and so a few links on incredibly good sites will be worth more than hundreds of sites with hardly any authority.

Before, links were inserted into articles just for ‘link juice’ purposes, but when users followed them through there wouldn’t really be much interaction on-site following that. Now that brands are needing a push, any links built must provide value, even if that makes finding accurate sites more of a challenge.

Jamie Smith – Search Marketing Specialist

Prediction: ‘In regards to local search, I believe we’ll see even more of a push towards Google My Business (GMB) pages.

 With the SERPs continuing to evolve to show more local results, we are seeing local map packs reign as the top dogs. Ensuring that businesses have this profile updated and continuously interacted with will be a stand out factor in comparison to those who don’t. 

 I can also see the GMBs becoming more of a one-stop-shop. As with the current hotel format (showing increased filters, resources, and an additional fourth map pack addition), Google allows you to book without even visiting the website. It won’t be long before we see other businesses actioned in the same way.’

Tell us more: Google My Business is certainly becoming more and more of a competitor for businesses, as features are constantly being added that have the potential to steal organic traffic, which has been kickstarting a lot of controversy in the industry. This illuminates the fact that in order to give your business a boost, you need to optimise your GMB listings to the best possible state.

Local packs are taking up more room on SERPs, and if you’re not included, you’re going to see the effects with your traffic, and looking at the way Google’s search features are going, businesses will need to work harder if they’re involved in the travel or hospitality industries. Booking flights, rooms and orders are being integrated into search. Jessica Bowman from Search Engine Land has previously commented that Google is becoming more of a portal and less of a search engine – and it’s certainly plain to see across many searches.

Emma Howell – Content Marketing Specialist

Prediction: ‘I think that building a brand up through a natural network of links will become more of a priority. Furthermore, relevance of the anchor and context concerning the link will be very important.’

Tell us more:  Emma’s prediction aligns with the theories of the general SEO community: that branding is one of the strongest aspects to be considered in any search strategy. As mentioned earlier, this suggests that link builders will play a role in gaining placements on sites that will drive traffic and conversions, as opposed to creating links that simply sit on the page for SEO purposes.

The anchor of a text is certainly an interesting one. Ever since the Penguin Algorithm Update, Google has been paying close attention to anchor text and the keywords used, which is why nowadays most SEO’s play it safe and work to build a more natural linking profile.

Eryk Kilianek – Junior Search Specialist

Prediction: ‘Small high street businesses will struggle to attract new customers without appropriately optimising their Google My Business listing. Google has made it relatively straightforward to achieve some local visibility and build trust with your target market using their free tools such as GMB and website builder. In my opinion, 2020 is the best time for local businesses to build up their listings and trust with local customers before the competition.’

Tell us more:  We all know what a difference having a Google My Business profile can make – after all, 86% of people look up the locations of businesses on Google Maps, and it’s your GMB listing that helps you sit on top of that map pack. It has also been estimated that a whopping $10.3 billion worth of sales are lost every year due to false or missing local listing information.

How To Future-Proof Your Website Against Black Friday Mayhem

Posted on by Ella

Black Friday has become increasingly popular in the UK over recent years and the number of consumers partaking in the furore of discounts and sales grows year on year. In fact, sales are expected to top £7 billion this year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the UK alone. What’s more, e-commerce platforms generate 300% more sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday than on an average day in November. No business can afford to miss out on this incredible opportunity to boost sales and maximise profits ahead of the new year lull.

The Black Friday event provides every business with the chance to enhance profitability and revenue potential. However, high volumes of traffic can put significant amounts of pressure on websites, rendering them more susceptible to problems such as poor user load times, crashes, and so on. This can lead to a high bounce-back rate and lost sales, which will negatively impact your profits. Particularly considering the fact that purchases made during November and December account for around 20% of the retail industry’s average annual sales. For that reason, retailers must utilise SEO to leverage this traffic, avoid site issues from occurring, and capitalise on sales. Below, we have compiled the ultimate optimisation checklist to help your business get the most out this Black Friday.

1. Don’t disarm a ‘sold out’ product page

Disabling a product page once it has sold out can harm sales for several reasons. Firstly, you are less likely to be able to sell customers an alternative product once they land on a 404 page. Often, potential customers will just leave your site after seeing this. Secondly, disabling the product page without implementing a redirect for the user will impede the link equity of respective backlinks to your site. Backlinks that point to a 404 page ruin the user experience and will affect your SEO. Hence why you must have an SEO strategy in place to manage out of stock products efficiently.

2. Use the same URL every year for Black Friday

It may seem like a good idea to create a few new web pages in the lead up to Black Friday, however this can have a detrimental effect on your success during the event. In particular, newly built pages often take longer to rank than older, more established ones. This means newer pages are less likely to perform as well in the SERPs as a page that’s been attracting quality backlinks

and visitors for many years. Avoid this common mistake by using the same URL every year on Black Friday.

3. Optimise the page months before and months after

Research shows that consumers start looking for the best Black Friday deals as early as September. You should, therefore, optimise your website as early as possible. Get creative with your content and use marketing strategies like discounts and exclusive access to deals, to entice customers to make early purchases. You should also keep your Black Friday page running for a few months after the event. Remember that many consumers continue to look for deals after Black Friday, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to capitalise on sales.

4. Optimise your search for the term ‘Black Friday’

It is extremely important that you optimise your site’s search for the term ‘Black Friday.’ Make sure that you direct your visitors to the right places when they search for terms relating to Black Friday, instead of just showing a ‘no results found’ page. Otherwise, you risk customers abandoning your site as they can’t locate any information on Black Friday deals.

5. Optimise landing pages and structure them correctly

Remember that shoppers will enter your site from different pages. For that reason, you must optimise all of your Black Friday pages, not just the main landing page. This will help ensure that all visitors have the best experience possible. Furthermore, try to limit the number of clicks necessary for your user to get to their desired product page (AKA your link depth), to avoid shoppers becoming frustrated.

6. Have an omnichannel strategy and optimise for mobile

More and more consumers are using smart devices to browse the internet and make purchases online. In fact, nearly 40% of all Black Friday sales came from mobile devices in 2017. This statistic is a clear reminder of how essential it is for retailers to optimise their website to fit the smaller screens of mobile phones and other smart devices. This helps ensures that all customers have a positive experience while using your site.

7. Improve page load time

If your website has a low page load time, then shoppers are likely to become frustrated and abandon your site. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to improve your page load time by

optimising your code, file compression, reducing redirects, and upgrading to a faster server, for example.

8. Set tags for the pages

Setting tags is a great way to group related pages together and make it easier for shoppers to find the content they’re looking for. Tags will allow visitors to quickly narrow down your content and focus on just your Black Friday deals. Make sure that you install the right buttons to take shoppers to pages quicker.

Final thoughts

Black Friday can be a massive opportunity for your business to make the most of consumer spend. All retailers should take advantage of the fact that an increasing number of UK consumers are getting involved in the Black Friday event each year. However, you must be prepared to handle the Black Friday spike in sales. Use the above tips to optimise your website, maximise sales, meet customer expectations, and get the most out of this Black Friday!

7 SEO Mistakes that You Should Avoid

Posted on by Chloe

Anyone who is involved in digital marketing and a business’s online presence will know how important SEO is to the success of its website. SEO is the key to your website being found online, and it is therefore essential that you get it right.

The world of SEO, however, is ever-changing. With new trends, new tools and new algorithms coming out all of the time, it is easy to overlook things and make mistakes.

By dealing with these mistakes, you can give your website a new lease of life, enhance your SEO and see your website shoot up those search engine rankings.

Seven of the most common SEO mistakes which are made include:

1.   Not using Google Search Console

Google’s Search Console (or Webmaster Tools as it used to be called) has been gifted to webmasters to give you everything you need for good SEO. Search Console allows you to monitor your site with regards to SEO, submit content for crawling, see the search queries that people are using to find your website and check backlinks.

It is also where they would be able to communicate with you and advise you of any problems – such as manual penalties, crawling errors, any malware that has been detected, and increases in 404 pages.

Everyone can sign up to Google Search Console, meaning that you don’t have to guess anymore. You should also sign up to Bing’s Webmaster Tools who can also give you similar information about your website’s performance on Bing.

2.   Not getting the H1 tags right

It can sometimes be difficult to understand when to use H1 and H2 tags. More than just a font size or making a page look nice, H1 and H2 tags tell the search engines what your pages are about. If you don’t use them or aren’t accurate in the way that you use them, you will be giving the wrong information to the search engine, and, ultimately get penalised because you are not giving their searchers what they want.

Use the H1 tag as the title of your page, and only once. Make it clear and related to the information that is being given – like the title of a book. Any sub-headings should then be made under the H2 tag, and then H3 for sub-sub-headings under H2 and so on.

3.   Not using the Google Keyword Tool

Another useful tool from Google is the Keyword Tool. This gives webmaster details about what queries people are making before they are directed to your website. Keyword research allows you to see what is and isn’t working, and then change your content accordingly.

It is important to remember that businesses with a big online presence are likely to be focusing on the most popular keywords, so try to focus on long-tail and low completion keywords to get your presence higher.

4.   Not having great content

Good content is all about creating trust and authority. As Google continue to develop their algorithms, content is no longer about stuffing it full of keywords, but more about being useful and interesting.

Make sure that you have a good content marketing strategy and that the content is well written, packed with information and something that people will want to read.

5.   Not having a plan

It is important to be consistent when you are posting content for SEO purposes. Search engines hate inconsistency and the best way to be consistent is by having a plan.

Creating a publishing schedule which details how many times you will be publishing content and having a few back up articles which are ready to go will help you stay consistent and help push your website to the top of the search engine rankings.

6.   Not having internal links

Internal links are crucial to good SEO. Not only can they direct your visitors to other pages on your site – which can help you to engage with them better, but internal links will also show the search engines about other pages that you have.

It is easy to create an internal link from any content that you have, and both your readers and SEO rankings will thank you for it.

7.   Having a slow website

We all know how infuriating a slow website can be. It is enough to put people off reading it, making your bounce rate higher, which in turn will lead to lower SEO rankings.

Check that your loading speed isn’t being affected by the formatting on your website and seek help if you can’t make any difference to your website’s speed.

Getting your SEO right is no mean feat, especially as the criteria keep on changing. But there is a lot of help out there – even through the tools that search engines are supplying, and by making a few changes, you could see your website charging up to the top of those search results.

DA Update – Here’s What You Need To Know

Posted on by Chloe

Moz announced that they will be releasing an upgraded and improved version of their popular SEO tool Domain Authority, or DA, next month. For those of you that don’t already use it, DA estimates how valuable a certain domain is in terms of how well it ranks in Google or other search engines. According to Moz, the upgrade will create a more accurate and trustworthy measurement through its improved ability to catch link sellers and other spammy links designed to cheat the metric.

Why is DA so important?

A website’s DA score allows marketers to gauge the strength of their websites compared to their competitors. They can then use that information to make smarter, data-driven SEO decisions. As we’ve explained before, creating a website, or developing a social media presence, is only the start. In order for your digital content to produce results, you need to be visible and for people need to engage with your brand. SEO is the art of understanding how your business can optimise its online presence, to engage with its customers, and to attract high rankings in organic search results.

Since so many SEO professionals rely on DA to evaluate the effectiveness of their website, the announcement of a change to the core algorithm of Moz’s popular tool has certainly caused some concern. But don’t worry! Here’s everything you need to how about the new update and how it will affect you:

So what’s changing and why?  

Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist at Moz described how the company has made several technical changes to how they calculate DA – “We can remove spam, improve correlations, and, most importantly, update Domain Authority relative to all the changes that Google makes.” Moz has done this by switching from a complex linear model, to a neural network. This offers several benefits including a much more nuanced model which can detect link manipulation. What’s more, they are reestablishing the components of what gives a website a high DA. Usually, DA is determined by link counts, but now, they are focusing more on links based on quality and traffic, along with a range of other factors.

What does this mean?

Focusing on quality, rather than just using the amount of links to determine a website’s DA, means that the system will deliver an improved, more trustworthy metric, as well as refining the users’ experience. This should reduce spam, and improve connections between sites and users.

What should I do?

Remember to use DA as a relative metric, not an absolute one.

Don’t forget that DA is meaningless on its own, and is only effective when you compare it to sites that matter. It doesn’t matter if your site’s DA increases or decreases – what matters is if it increases or decreases relative to your competitors. You shouldn’t think of DA as a grade. Instead of aiming for a DA of 100 (the highest possible score), you should be aiming for a score that is higher than similar sites that appear in search results for your target keywords. You should therefore make sure to check competitors’ DA scores as well as your own.

Expect some disruptions, and communicate changes to people that matter.

With change, there is always some level of disruption. It is therefore essential that you communicate these changes and improvements to DA with clients, colleagues, and stakeholders before any concerns can arise. Perhaps create a flyer with information about the update, and answers to any potential questions you may be asked. Have these left around your office for staff to read.

Have a refresher on Domain Authority.

This is the perfect time to have a refresher on the basics of DA, to look at what makes a great website, and reaffirm your strategy on increasing DA, so that you can make the most of the update. Here are some simple ways to increase DA on your website:

  • Interlink to your old posts when writing new content.
  • Ensure that your website is responsive and mobile-friendly.
  • Have an active social media presence.
  • Remove any bad backlinks to your website.
  • Post good-quality, engaging, and relevant content regularly.
  • Only include high-quality links that will generate traffic.

Expect Domain Authority to make future changes.

Google makes hundreds of changes to their algorithm every year; Moz intend to keep pace with Google and make DA responsive to any changes. This means that DA will remain relevant and up to date. You should therefore expect DA to make continual changes and be prepared for these future improvements.

We hope that our guide has assured you that this update should not be a cause for concern or panic in your business. You will most likely see fluctuations in your DA, but remember that this update will result in a better, more trustworthy metric than before, which will allow you to make smarter decisions about SEO strategies going forward.