Why you need an experienced content writer in 2016

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

2016 is set to be the year of content marketing, as high quality content because the new key to SEO, gaining Google’s trust and climbing the search engine rankings pages.

And the best way to ensure you gain quality content is to hire a professional and experience SEO copywriter, or if your need is large then a team of content writers.

The Content

The content on your website homepage and other pages, as well as on your blog if you have one, is not just there to fill some space and make the place look pretty as many people assume. It in fact serves several far greater purposes.

Not only does it give your brand a voice and a personality when visitors come to your site looking to learn more, but it also sells your brand values and if written well can be the tipping point between visitor and customer.

It can also instil loyalty in visitors if they like what they read about the brand, so it is important that it is written in a persuasive and engaging manner.

It is also of course a tool for SEO, as Google’s new Penguin update is now valuing quality content more than ever in its searches.

However, over optimised and poorly written (bad grammar and spelling) content will lose your credibility with both site visitors and Google.

Therefore hiring professional experienced content writers is a must to avoid this.

Signs of Experience in an SEO Writer

Anyone can SAY they have plenty of experience, but the proof is in the writing. That is why when hiring a content writer it is advisable to ask for a paid test piece from candidates that seem to have what you are looking for on paper.

If the content writer say they can have it to you in the next couple of hours, I would be wary, unless they are of course experts in the field they are being asked to write about, which is rare but does happen.

Signs of a good content writer are the amount of time they say it will take them to produce it, and the research they put in.

They should not only take time to research and get to know your brand, but also the field in which you operate, even looking at your competitors.

They should then be able to create a piece custom written for you that conveys your brand message and values, engages the readers and is SEO optimised to the right weight, not over or under.

If all the signs are there in the test piece, you can trust them to write well for your company in future, but if they aren’t, then you just pay them for the piece and move on.

You may have lost money on the piece, but you save thousands overall by not posting bad content on your site.

Why it pays to hire an experienced Search Engine Optimisation Company

Posted on January 30, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

The internet is constantly changing and adapting to the needs of the world, and with those changes comes the need for businesses to adapt they way they function and advertise using the web.

For people running a business, keeping up with the every change of the internet is not an easy task nor is it a priority for them, but it is needed if they want their online marketing to remain relevant and successful.

Therefore hiring an experience SEO company is a worthwhile option for businesses, as the company make it their business to know the up to the minute changes of Google and the web, and translate this into effective new strategies for their clients.

Guarantees

Search engine optimisation companies have a bad name due to the many that operate on ‘guarantees’ and over promise what they just cannot possibly deliver.

The truth is when it comes to SEO there are no guarantees, only ‘goals’ and ‘expectations’ to work towards.

An experienced SEO company cannot and should not offer you a guaranteed outcome, but will be able to forecast the expected goal with a relative time frame based on their experience and your company’s personal situation.

Legal Requirements and Standards

Hiring a professional SEO company, they not only know the latest changes that are coming to the internet and search engines, but they also know what the basic standards are for online presence.

For example, simply copying and pasting copyrighted images and content from Google with no permission or reference will not only get you in trouble with Google, but it could also land you in court as you are responsible for the content that is on your website, no matter who put it there.

An experienced SEO company would know all of this, and take the necessary steps to ensure your website meets all the legal requirements and search engine standards.

They Know What’s Best

They also know how to gain Google’s trust. Rather than rocket you to the top with unethical ‘black hat SEO’ tactics and cheap quick fixes, only for you to come crashing straight back down with severe penalties from Google, they will ensure you take the ethical and deserving route to the top.

They know what makes a site worthy of high search rankings in Google’s eyes, from engaging and well written content to unique tags and quality links.

So investing in an Experienced SEO Company will not only save you time, effort and money, it will also save your website’s reputation and put you in good standing with Google for life.

Why you should keep an eye on your seo and backlinks on at least weekly basis?

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

I hardly check our Google rankings, at least I do not and there are number of reasons including “I do not have time” but this is not an excuse, I should check rankings of our own website and see where it ranks.

But I have been so busy in customer’s website optimisation that I hardly had a chance to look in to it

I have been previously blogging about Google Update January 2016 and have uploaded few videos about what an seo consultant can do and 12 key questions to ask your seo consultant but other than just that I have been hardly blogging and was looking in to different ways to repair search engine rankings and online brand reputation of those companies that have been affected by Google Update recently made live by Google (Call it refresh or whatever you call it but it was one of the most important update made by Google in the last 10 years

Anyhow, whilst checking for ranking for one of our keyword “link building” which was previously on page number 1 and #3 to be very precise on google.co.uk and also “seo” which was previously #8 on google.co.uk I have found these keywords below 5^th page, I should have thought about the Google 2016 update and its effects on us but rather than blaming Google I looked in to what happened “from the date when the rankings were there and when the rankings were not there” and what I found was just amazing!

Someone has placed over 10 links on some gambling and porn sites and I have found our home page linking to it, which was just great? But why someone would do it?

I have been able to find out when the domain have been placed/linked there, with what anchor texts and if you look in to what I have been looking, it is pretty simple to find that Google should have considered it as a paid link or a link that is not relevant which had affected our website rankings, which I find fair

But I do not blame Google for what they do, I have never done that, I understand how good they are and as they are helping those which do good work and the rest we get free (I am often said someone that just praise a lot when it comes to Google but I am just realistic).

Anyhow, I am looking in to these backlinks and I have sent an email to the webmaster requesting the link removal to be done as soon as possible and I have been told, It would not happen as the domain is live (expires)

Okay! I have chatted with that guy on Skype (I was able to find their phone number, address in India, as well as the name in Skype profile and I was told, someone has paid this guy.

I am not leaving this matter and I plan to look in to it, I am using Google tool to remove these links of no value (disavow link tool), but at the same time, I am involving law firm and police and also reporting this to Google.

I am aware of the fact that we would get our rankings where they were as the good work pays, but I am going to find out the person that has asked this guy to place our links on those sites, looks like fun? Yes it is

I will keep you guys posted about it soon, I am planning to go on holidays soon and before I go on holidays I am meeting a content writer in Leeds and I might go to Wales/Cardiff to see a transportation customer, the weekend seems to be really busy but let’s see how it goes

I will be next blogging about Google disavow link tool which you can use via webmaster tools, the real benefits of this link removal tool for small and large businesses, it is a really effective tool which makes webmasters and brands safe from bad link building strategy as well as bad seo practises, I will be also writing about bad links and good links discovery as well as you can learn a lot when it comes to search engine optimisation by leading brands and by looking at their seo and link building strategies and what they are doing. Too Hard? Not, its very easy!

How you can use internet marketing to help grow your business

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Natalie Wilson

The internet has become the driving force of marketing for many companies, and although traditional marketing methods will never and should never be replaced, they have somewhat taken a backseat to the phenomenon of digital marketing.

The following are just some of the main ways in which you can utilise the powerful tool that is internet marketing to help grow your business:

The Website

The heart and soul of your company’s online presence should be the website. It is the place where everything will centre back to and it will be the hub of information regarding your brand, products and services.

You don’t have to accept sales transactions online; the need for this will depend on your industry and the services or products you sell. Ensure you have prominent contact details somewhere on the homepage of your site, as people like to know they can contact a real person at some point when dealing with companies online.

Email marketing

Gaining prospective customer emails and current/past customer emails is a great way to keep the sales relationship fresh. There are many ways to gather this, be it from them contacting you with a query, them signing up to an email database to receive a newsletter or offers, gathering business cards at networking events, any way in which they surrender their contact information.

You can send emails regarding current offers, news and updates, etc.

Press releases and Content Marketing

Online press releases work in the same way as print press release would, its emailed to news publications and contains interesting information about your brand that could be considered newsworthy.

However with online press releases you have the freedom to include multimedia attachments in addition to the traditional images. This could include video, audio, and more, and you then send this to online publications.

Content marketing involves writing about your industry rather than your company itself. Popular topics include ‘how to’ articles and informative articles relevant to your products or services.

It is advisable to enlist the services of an internet marketing company regarding the writing of this articles as they will know what is required to create an article made for the internet, and will be able to improve your search engine rankings through SEO in the process.

Market Research

You can also use internet marketing as a means of researching your target markets. Conducting online surveys, making use of your email marketing database to ask for feedback, encourage comments on your website and blog, etc.

Doing market research on the internet can be cost effective and reach a wider audience than traditional market research.

There are many other ways in which internet marketing can help you to grow your business, and for it to be effective it is advisable to enlist professional internet marketing services from companies who have experience and proven track records.

How to achieve top search engine rankings quickly and for free

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Natalie Wilson

Yes, there are ways to beat the system and get fast and free high search rankings, through growing low quality links fast and furiously. Through doing this however you would not be practicing ethical SEO, something Google frowns upon, and is not cracking down hard on.

So although it can be done, there are great risks and it isn’t necessarily worth it, as if you get caught by Google the penalties are severe.

If you want to climb the Google ladder and get high search rankings in a slow and steady but ethical way, a way that wins Google’s trust and has ample benefits in the long run, here is how its done:

Quality Link Building

Whereas the unethical SEO way goes down the route of quantity and sacrifices quality, the ethical SEO way does the complete opposite.

Google rewards link building, but people took that the wrong way and for over a decade decided to build thousands of links, regardless of quality, thinking that was what would help them soar to the top SERP (search engine ranking page) and fast.

However what Google actually meant was link building is good when the links are quality, and actually bring something of use to the site.

A link to a badly written article that is purely there for the links is a low quality link.

A link to a well written article on a reputable site that is relevant to the website its linked to is a high quality link. Just having one of these high quality links will get you further with Google than 100 of these low quality links.

Try to aim to build one new quality link a day, and you will be well on your way to the top page of Google in no time!

Content Marketing

Another thing Google praises is content, but again it needs to be of high quality and purposeful. If content is badly written and over optimised, and quite obviously just there for SEO purposes then it will no longer be considered by Google’s search algorithms.

If however the content is useful and interesting, relevant and weighted properly with the right keywords, it will get you far.

Ensure you are posting this content on quality website(s), but beware that the sites are reputable; as if they have a bad reputation with Google they could damage yours.

Social Media Marketing

Social media now also has a good impact on your SEO. Posting regular links to relevant content on social media channels, as well as engaging with your audience will improve your reputation with Google and help you build more links.

So it may take longer than fast and furious link building, but overall slow and steady will always win the race, so get ahead with ethical SEO and watch your website climb the Google ladder.

Inbound digital marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound, so why are CEO’s still sceptical about the switch to digital?

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

A study by Hubspot has brought to light interesting facts about the world of digital marketing that CEOs are still sceptic about, including the fact that an inbound lead from the internet, such as a search engine result, costs the company a staggering 62% less than a traditional outbound lead gained from telesales or print advertising.

It reveals far more interesting and thought provoking facts for those who are unsure of digital marketing, referring to it as ‘just a trend’.

The amount of companies who believe Facebook and other social media plays a crucial role in their marketing strategies has risen by 83% over the past 2 years, and continues to rise as social media grows in popularity with businesses.

The reason social media is playing such a large role is due to the fact that the majority of society, regardless of age or occupation, use social media in their everyday lives, meaning companies can reach millions of people at once with just one post, aiding in increasing brand awareness and inbound leads with little to no cost compared with traditional marketing methods.

Another good reason for companies to go digital is the fact that 78% of consumers who use the internet are conducting product research and price comparisons online.

Companies are picking up on this and replacing business cards and flyers with the online equivalent, Google.

Getting your website into a high rank on Google is the best way to gain leads online, and as with social media optimisation, it is far more cost effective than traditional methods.

Just because a company has already adopted digital as an inevitable part of the future of marketing, doesn’t mean they have it all right yet or that they have discovered all there is to internet markeing.

57% of companies report having acquired custom through their blog and content marketing strategy, and companies that blog get 55% more traffic than those that don’t blog.

High quality and engaging content sells and helps improves a website’s visibility to search engines, with little to no cost.

Many companies are forgetting or ignoring the fact that mobiles and tablets are growing in popularity and are frequently being utilised for browsing.

78% of people check their email messages or browse the internet on a mobile or tablet, so internet marketing tactics need to be optimised for this. And the emails not only need to be optimised, they need to be engaging.

91% of those who subscribe to a website’s email newsletter or database unsubscribe due to uninteresting or irrelevant content.

There is much more to come from digital marketing in the future, as 2016 is set to be a great year if the previous stats are anything to go by.

With the help of internet marketing services many companies can and already benefiting from society’s inevitable gravitation towards all things digital.

SEO Tips and Techniques for 2016

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

With the Google Penguin search algorithm update in 2015 replacing its predecessor Google Panda, the way we search engine optimise websites has changes somewhat.

The following is a guide to the latest SEO techniques:

The Old Rule That Still Stands: Create Unique Quality Content

As always, content plays an important role in Google’s searches, but now more than ever it is vital that content is unique, resourceful and information rich.

No longer can thin, blabbering content with plenty of keywords pass the Google search algorithm barriers, as Google Penguin proves to be the most ‘human’ algorithm update yet.

The Next Big Thing: Content Marketing

Due to Google taking quality content so seriously, it makes sense to spread the content and use it to create quality backlinks for your site. That is why content marketing is becoming the next best thing when it comes to Google SEO.

Ensuring your content is published on a variety of quality sites frequented by plenty of people is hard but worthwhile as it holds substantial SEO value.

The New Vital Metric: AuthorRank

Google’s seriousness about high quality content and squandering bad backlinks is a continuing theme throughout, as it’s new AuthorRank system defines the quality of the content based on the reputation of the author/publisher.

The Debatable New Ranking Factor: Social Signals

As social media marketing increasingly becomes a part of every marketing strategy, social signals such as ReTweets, Likes, +1s and more are being considered as valid factors for search rankings.

Although the topic is still debatable, can’t hurt to get ahead of the game and start collecting those social signals for when the inevitable occurs.

The Growing Preference: Localisation

As location marketing becomes ever more popular, so grows Google’s preference for local websites and information.

Google can now pinpoint the location of the person performing a search and rather than bringing up global results no matter what their location, it now offers up pages that are localised to the person’s geographic location.

So get on board this trend now by adding local SEO content such as map data, citations, and links on local information sites to get ahead.

The New Content Favourite: Media

The growing popularity of multimedia has lead to Google favouring search results containing images and video in its searches.

Media with relevant tags and meta data are consistently being brought up and ranked higher than text heavy sites and it is only expected to increase, so ensure you have relevant media on all pages of your site if you want to keep up with Google’s preferences in 2016 and beyond.

How to win Google’s trust in your link building profile

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

Google’s latest Penguin update means many changes are needed to be made to way we gain the trust of the search engine.

Not only do we need to ensure that we are partaking in quality link building but we must now also be wary of the rate at which we increase our links and the reputation of the publications and authors publishing our links.

Quality ~~Not Quantity~~

No longer does the quantity of links, regardless of quality, that you have on your site and linking back to your site have an advantageous effect on your search engine page rankings.

In fact, it has quite the opposite, as Google are now cracking down on sites with too many poor quality back links and links on their site, penalising and punishing as they go.

So one way to ensure you earn Google’s trust is to ensure all links on your site and all backlinks on other sites are high quality.

More Haste, ~~Less Speed~~

No longer is doubling and tripling the number of links you have and trying to keep up with competitors numbers an issue for websites. Google are now looking out for those who are building links at a realistic rate, and whose links are high quality.

Those who are increasing the number of links at a ridiculous rate will sooner or later get caught out by Google, and in the end slow and steady will always win the race and Google’s trust where SEO and link building is concerned.

Appeal to Google’s Human Side

AuthorRank is being referred to as Google’s human side, as it is a system designed and integrated by Google as a way to consider more than the cold hard statistics when it comes to search.

Anyone can write babble and stick in relevant key words in any subject field that is why Google wanted to find a way to separate the nonsense from the credible information.

The best way they could find to do this was to develop a system that would take into consideration the author/publication by which the content was posted, and how many followers they have on social networks, how much and how often content is shared, the amount of acknowledgement they get (in terms of social signs such as Likes, +1s, ReTweets, reblogs, etc.) and how people react to their content.

The best way to make use of AuthorRank is to have a Google+ profile, and ensure you are posting quality content to there and other linked social sites regularly.

Google’s New Image Search Could Wound Search Engine Marketing Efforts in 2016

Posted on January 26, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

Google revamped their Google Image Search for mobile and tablet in 2015, and the simplified experience was such a big hit that they are bringing it to their desktop Image Search.

This however is not all together good news for search engine marketing as this could make life a whole lot harder when it comes to driving web traffic to company websites.

When Google launched their new Penguin update, which showed preference to sites with multimedia content such as images and video by bringing up these results in normal searches, many digital marketers rejoiced as their search engine marketing efforts appeared to become a whole lot easier.

They got to work on implementing organic SEO tactics based around the multimedia shift, adding and optimising images and video with meta data to their websites.

Now however all that effort could be in vain, as the change to the new Google Image search format implies that the sites hosting the images may see a large reduction in visits, as the new search function allows people to browse and download the images without actually accessing the host site?

Google have counteracted these worries by saying that the change has actually added more new ways to reach the host site which will according to them increase traffic to the site.

The changes they believe will help increase traffic include making the domain name clickable and adding a new button which allows the searcher to visit the site that hosts the image.

This brings the amount of clickable targets for the host site up to four, where as with the old image search there were only two possible ways to access the host’s site.

Google also believe that by no longer loading the website with the image, they will no longer be creating “phantom” visits for websites, something that was one of the most common complaints from websites about the old Google Image search.

“That was causing problems for some webmasters, and so we thought we can do away with that. That’s gone now,” said Google webmaster trend analyst Pierre Far.

There is an option for search engine marketers who do not believe Google’s new image search will help their campaigns, they can block Google from indexing any images on their website.

There is also the option of boosting results through paid search engine marketing and pay per click advertising, as well as plenty of other SEO tactics such as the growing trend of using social media.

And of course, Google may be the world’s biggest search engine in terms of revenue, but from a search engine marketer’s point of view there are always its large scale competitors, Bing, who have yet to cause uproar in the online marketing world.

What your business should do to get ranked on Google?

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Bob Sanderson

Google is the world’s largest search engine, and it isn’t surprising that businesses find it extremely difficult to get ranked anywhere near the top pages as it searches billions of results in seconds every time. But there are tactics that can be implemented by businesses to help their websites get noticed and ranked by the search giant and its bots.

Be Unique

Google favour unique and high quality content and will always reward you highly for it.

This stems from marketers reproducing low quality and far too keyword heavy content in an attempt to increase rankings by abusing the system. Because the main purpose of the internet and search engines for the general public is to source relevant and useful information, it is important that Google are able to provide high quality results.

Build Good Links

There was a trend in the online marketing world not so long ago where marketers took Google’s ‘link building’ tactic to a new and unethical level. They built thousands of low quality links in the hopes that sheer quantity over quality would gain them a fast climb to the top.

This is however backfiring on them now, as Google are cracking down on this behaviour and penalising those found to be doing it. The moral is, if you want to improve your business SEO, build good quality links.

Numbers aren’t an issue anymore, as one high quality link will get you further than 100 or more low quality links. So keep it slow and steady, say one link a day, and you will climb to the topic in an ethical and rewarded fashion.

Analyse Your Competition

The best way to know what works is to analyse the competition, mainly the ones that are where you want to be, to determine what they are doing right and what you could take from that.

You may not be able to compete with the major conglomerates and corporations as they spend millions of points on SEO and online marketing each year, but it can’t help to take note of what you could copy from them, as well as looking in depth at competitors who are the same sort of league as you but are maybe ranking slightly higher or much nearer to the top than you.

Seek Advice and Help From Professionals

There are online marketing companies who know Google like the back of their hand who can offer you help and advice, from just a friendly nudge in the right direction for your in house marketing department, to taking on your business SEO entirely to help you get to the top rankings of Google.