We’re absolutely delighted to announce that we have been nominated for two awards at the UK Ecommerce Awards 2022 for:
📍UK Ecommerce Small Agency Of The Year
📍Ecommerce Search Campaign Of The Year (With Hayes Garden World)
After winning Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year at last year’s awards we are absolutely delighted to have been nominated again, especially for awards which are so well recognised within the UK Ecommerce community.
The last 12 months has been a period of significant growth across the business but particularly within our Ecommerce clients, not only have we grown accounts with our existing clients, but we have brought on a range of new ecommerce clients during the year selling a range of products from vapes to desks to jewellery to furniture.
Additionally we have brought to market some great processes and updates internally that are streamlining a lot of our work across Google Shopping and Display Advertising,
Ecommerce has grown significantly since lockdown and we’ve been working closely with our clients old and new to keep them at the forefront of the user search, through both SEO and PPC, to ensure that they are maximising their visibility and increasing their sales.
We look forward to attending the ceremony in November and you can find a full list of all the agencies nominated here
In August, Google updated its Page Quality Rater Guidelines. This is something it does from time to time to reinforce the key principles it looks for when evaluating the quality of a page. In SEO circles, these Quality Rater Guidelines are somewhat of a bible. Although most SEOs won’t have read them from start to finish (there’s over 300 pages!) many will take excerpts from them as a way of trying to understand what Google is looking for. They can then use this information to determine how they should present their websites to make them more ‘SEO-friendly’.
In recent years, a number of key concepts have come out of the Quality Rater Guidelines, with perhaps the most significant one being the concept of E-A-T or Expertise, Authority and Trust. While the principle of this has been around for years, it’s only in the last few that SEOs have started to look towards it as a way of ‘optimising’ a website and putting it as a key focus for their SEO campaigns. The little known sibling of E-A-T is the acronym Y-M-Y-L, otherwise known as Your Money or Your Life. There is far less conversation about YMYL but, in many cases, it is significantly, if not more, important than the concept of E-A-T. In this blog we are going to look at what YMYL is and how you can apply the principles to your website to benefit your SEO.
What Is Your Money Your Life?
Let’s start with a simple definition and understanding of what YMYL is and how it applies to websites. The concept of Your Money or Your Life was defined by Google to highlight websites which fall into a specific category; that is, websites which impact either your money or your life. As these websites and the topics within them could have a substantial impact on a person, their pages, and the website as a whole, are held to a much higher standard within the Quality Rater Guidelines. If there is an issue with any of the content on a YMYL website, it can have a significant and detrimental impact on an individual.
With the recent update to the guidelines Google has aimed to simplify what it designates as a YMYL website. They have supplied the following guidance and examples, and whilst there are no hard and fast rules, this information helps to demonstrate what might fall into the YMYL category and what might not:
As you can see from the guidance, YMYL really refers to websites which give information that could impact an individual’s money or life. Therefore, if your website or one of your clients’ websites fall into this category, then you need to get to grips with the Quality Rater Guidelines and start understanding what YMYL is really all about.
So How Do I Optimise For YMYL?
Optimising your website for YMYL focuses around creating great quality, trustworthy content. This content should show Google that your website is a trustworthy place for users to come for information, and to convert and potentially engage in your services or buy your product. There are a number of factors that come into play when it comes to optimising for this, and we will go through them in the guide, but one of the best places to start is to look frankly at your website and ask these questions:
Does my website answer or fulfil the user’s purpose?
Do I have well-written authoritative content on my website?
Is it clear who has written my content and what their expertise is?
You can conceptualise these questions into three key areas:
By taking the above approach we can see three key consistent themes across YMYL:
Have we matched User Intent? Are we giving clear information and expertise early on in the piece, and are we also giving reassurance of expertise throughout the content
Does the website have a clearly defined purpose? Can users reach what they need to and is the content up to date?
Who has created the content and what are their credentials? What is their reputation and the reputation of the website as a whole?
With these concepts and ideas in mind you can set about creating a practical SEO strategy with these key themes at the forefront.
Google backs up this approach in section 3.1 of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. This outlines the most important information that Page Quality Raters should be looking for in this category:
On-Page SEO For YMYL
On-page SEO is a great place to start on your path to YMYL greatness and is also one of the most important areas when it comes to sending the right signals to Google. It is a key area where Google will be looking for you to showcase your expertise and trust, as on-site content is likely where users will start to get an understanding of your brand. Effective on-page SEO is a mix of content with a solid structure that has been created with the user in mind. It is not written for search engines. So, it’s important to remember throughout your on-page optimisation that you are writing to gain the trust of the user and, as a result of this, Google will look to trust your website too.
Matching User Intent
Matching user intent and purpose is a key element of the YMYL concept. While this is also a part of E-A-T, its role in showcasing a website’s trust and being able to answer the users’ questions confidently is very important here. Definitions and FAQs, alongside a clear and concise demonstration of your expertise, will go a long way to matching user intent. To bolster this you should create a website which is easy to navigate and makes it clear how users can contact you should they need more information.
When creating your key pages, such as product or category landing pages, always keep user intent in mind. This can guide how you lay out your content and in which order. It’s worth remembering that users don’t always scroll to the bottom of your page and so Google might not either. Therefore, ensure that you are matching as much user intent and relevancy as you can at the top of the page, to maximise the benefit.
We’ve recently done a project with one of our legal clients on matching user intent. As a client that sits firmly within the YMYL category we know it is important that they demonstrate to Google that their site is a trusted source able to answer user queries. In this case, it was something as simple as identifying that high performing competitors had a clear definition at the start of their content and were, therefore, directly answering the user’s query. We were then able to optimise our content accordingly.
Authoring Your Content
A key concept of YMYL has always been about who has authored your content. In the most recent update, Google has gone even further to highlight how important the concept of authorship is and, additionally, the reputation of the author. This is a clear signal to show how trustworthy a piece of content or a page is
Authoring content became popular in the SEO community after the Medic update, where we saw a good uplift for content which was well authored by experts. Google now stipulates clearly within the Quality Rater Guidelines that it wants to understand not only who the expert is that has written the content, but also their credentials. Google wants to know what makes this person an expert in the field and do they have the level of trust and expertise to be giving out this information?
It’s not enough to just add a ‘Written By’ with the name and photo of your expert, you now need to qualify this expert. This could be with a short snippet or excerpt of information on the page, or a link through to an expert profile with further details and information. This expert profile could include qualifications, industry accreditations or the number of years’ experience. To further qualify this, external links pointing out to trusted websites, such as accreditation boards or websites where they have contributed expert opinion, allows Google to see from trusted third party sources that the person in question is an expert in the field.
By taking the time to build out author profiles, you’re not only showcasing to Google the level of expertise that your business has, you’re also showing it to your potential audience. This can be a significant benefit from a CRO perspective, in addition to boosting your YMYL signals.
Refreshing Your Content Regularly
Up-to-date content and statistics are a great way to showcase your expertise. If you have content on your website which is out of date, even by just a few years, this can cause issues from a YMYL perspective. Worse still is content that contains information that is now incorrect because it is so out of date.
It’s not practical to be consistently updating your content, especially if you have quite a large website. Refreshing key elements of it, including statistics, expert information, relevancy and commentary will go a long way to ensuring that the information on your website is fresh and correct. Auditing your content regularly to ensure that the data is up to date and adding in new external links to data sources (as they become relevant) is a great way to prevent your content from becoming outdated. Additionally, identifying your top 5-10 traffic pages & putting in place a plan to optimise these regularly is well worth it. If they are driving traffic they likely have rankings that you want to maintain. So, prioritising the update and refresh of content on these pages will go a long way to keeping you where you need to be.
Including External Links
Many people are reluctant to include external links across their website as they feel it sends their valuable ‘link equity’ to another website. While links do pass equity the amount is often nominal, and is far offset by the value of having your website point to other reputable websites and information sources. Linking out to external sources can help to back up your expertise and qualify a lot of what you are saying, as you are linking to sources that can verify the point you are making. As a result it can actually enhance the overall expertise and trust level of your website.
If you are externally linking to other websites, the only caveat is that you need to ensure that the content that you are linking out to is relevant, current and that it doesn’t end up as a broken link. A simple crawl which checks your external links is a great way to keep on top of this.
Digital PR For YMYL
Enhancing YMYL signals on the website doesn’t just stop at traditional on-site SEO and content. To give a proper level of authority and trust this should be extolled throughout the whole website and also the inbound link profile. Strong Digital PR should play an important role in amplifying these signals & helping to drive expertise-driven links into your website, while improving your overall website authority.
Although in many instances Digital PR is about driving high quality links, there are cases where agencies will build links for links sake and this doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t benefit the reader as what they are reading about may be unrelated to your website and so there is low user intent. It also doesn’t benefit you, as the links that you are drawing to the website don’t have that all-important element of relevancy.
Digital PR for YMYL websites should look to really drive relevancy and expertise where it can. That means choosing topics which are closely linked to your website’s purpose, product or service. Then ensuring that any coverage or Digital PR, that you are putting out to garner links back to the website, are related to this.
In addition, you should be utilising your Digital PR where you can to extoll the virtues of your expertise. This can be done in a number of ways from thought leadership through to product-led campaigns. Whatever you choose, this strategy can be a very effective way to continue building those all-important off-site trust signals which Google really values.
If you’re looking for inspiration for Digital PR that fits well with YMYL, you’ll find some examples of recent expertise-led coverage that we’ve landed for our clients. These links are great value; not only because they are from trustworthy websites, but also because they showcase our client’s expertise on an external source, thus delivering great overall value to their campaigns.
Check out some of our most recent Thought Leadership campaigns for our client Hayes Garden World here:
Although technical SEO isn’t always seen as effective as on-site content or Digital PR for sending good YMYL signals to Google, it still has a role to play. Good technical SEO means Google can effectively and efficiently crawl your site, and clearly and easily recognise the trust signals. This ensures the reputation of your website remains strong.
Optimising your website technically for YMYL follows a lot of the traditional technical SEO elements, but with an emphasis on ensuring that what Google is seeing on your website reflects a good reputation and authority.
Schema Mark-Up
Schema Mark-Up is a really nice way to tell Google about factors which enhance your reputation, such as on-site FAQs or reviews. This can be a really nice way to help Google easily and concisely interpret your reputation information.
There is a wide range of Schema Mark-Up options that you can use to help Google understand your trust signals, from product and organisation information to reviews and FAQ mark-up. While each of these is valuable, we would recommend undertaking a schema audit to really understand what information you have available and how you can effectively mark-up.
Not sure where to start? If you’re new to Schema Mark-up and haven’t done it before, we’ve included below a couple of ideas to get you started:
FAQ Schema – This is a great way to showcase your expertise which is a key element of YMYL. Whether it’s product or information pages, FAQs are a great way to show that you are matching and answering user intent. Mark these up with some delicious FAQ Schema and show Google that your website knows what its talking about!
Review Schema – Product reviews? Business reviews? Trusted external third party reviews? Whatever you have you should be telling Google about it! External reviews are a really great way to validate the expertise and trust in your business so why not shout about them? If you display reviews on your website you can utilise Review Schema to mark these up and let Google know all about it.
If you’re not sure how to check the schema that is already in place on the website, or you want to audit it, then a great place to start is with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. By using the tool you can evaluate your existing Schema implementation, check that it’s all correctly implemented and identify areas where further schema can be placed.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis plays a key role in ensuring that your website is YMYL friendly. While traditional crawlers will help you to gather trends around how Google crawls your website, log file analysis will allow you to see how Google is actually crawling your website. This helps you to identify any issues or pain points which might not have been picked up by your regular crawler.
Log Analysis allows you to conduct a deep dive into the way that the Googlebot and other crawlers are moving through your website. This means you are able to analyse which pages are being most heavily crawled and, therefore, which pages Google is potentially looking towards to gain trust signals. It also points you towards any crawl errors, such as broken pages or redirects, which could be impacting crawl efficiency and wasting crawl budget. Crawl errors will send poor quality signals to Google which is, of course, something we are keen to avoid.
We often find during a log analysis that crawl budget is being wasted and if crawl budget spends too much time on pages which don’t add value to your website then it’s likely that Google starts to view your website as this as a whole, so it’s critical that every signal you send Google is a good one and analysing log analysis to see what signals you might be sending is a good place to start.
An effective Log Analysis should allow you to review the crawl across your website and make updates, so that you are left feeling confident about how the reputation of your website is shown to Google. You can even do it with as few as seven days log files. Get asking your server host for those log files and do some digging into that data to analyse how effectively Google is crawling your website!
Summary
YMYL is a key consideration for a lot of websites. Yet there are still people within SEO who focus on the pillars of Technical, Content & Links. They are potentially missing out on clearly defining the underlying principles within their strategy and understanding what Google is really looking for from a trust perspective.
Hopefully you have found the above useful. If you’d like to find out more about how you can utilise YMYL for SEO, or if you website falls into this category and you’d like some help optimising it for SEO, then get in touch!
We were delighted to attend the UK Digital Growth Awards a few weeks back – an awards night designed to celebrate UK agencies who have seen significant growth over the last 12 months – and as we’ve experienced nearly 50% growth over the last year it was a great night to spend celebrating industry growth in a post-COVID climate.
It’s always great to be back at awards ceremonies after such a long period of time doing them remotely from home so it’s great to catch up with old friends and undertake some networking at the same time. We were delighted to share a table with some great companies in the fields of analytics, social media and web design and get to know more about their business and successes over the last 12 months.
On the night we had four nominations in the following categories:
🍒 Best SEO Agency 🍒 Best PPC Agency 🍒 Best Small Integrated Agency 🍒 Best SEO Campaign (with our client Patient Claim Line)
We were delighted to have been nominated after a period of significant growth over the last 12 months, along with other businesses that have seen substantial growth during this time.
On the night we were delighted to take home the award for Best Small Integrated Agency with some amazing feedback from the judges…
We were also delighted to take home the large glass award – although not so delighted to have to carry it back to Manchester all the way on the train from London!
We had a great time on the night and look forward to seeing everyone there next year!
Newsjacking has been a popular option for a close, we thought we’d have a quick look back at five recent quick turnaround newsjacking campaigns which have delivered high-quality, relevant, super expertise driven links to our clients with very little prep or turnaround time.
Knowing how important our E-E-A-T signals are, particularly for some of our clients in Your Money Your Life verticals, building high quality, expertise-driven links is important to our client’s SEO success. Here we’ve rounded five great examples where jumping on the latest trends has helped us to deliver solid links for clients with a quick turnaround time.
Cheapest Roast Dinner
Links: 112 / Average DR: 55
The Cheapest Roast Dinner campaign for our client Cash Lady was one of our favourites – a super simple campaign to carry out with a clearly defined purpose and an outcome which had a great hook for journalists and relevant at a time where the cost of living is increasing and general costs are going up. This campaign involved researching which supermarket offered the cheapest roast dinner, compiling the data together and then presenting it on our client’s website. We created some juicy angles around the data and seeded it out to our media lists.
The campaign was a great success placing well across a range of regional publications, in addition to a number of key dailies including The Daily Record, The Daily Star and Birmingham Live.
New Years’ Resolutions
Links: 23 / Average DR: 82
If you’re like us then the New Year is a great time for change and New Years Resolutions are one way to at least encourage yourself to change or improve something (or just give something up) from the year before – but we all know that these never last – so we looked into search data for one of our ecommerce clients MIST, to find out exactly how long people manage to hang onto those New Year Resolutions before they start slipping back in to their old habits.
The answer? Not very long – after reviewing and analysing search data it turns out that February 19th is usually the key date – less than two months after the resolutions have started! To reach this conclusion we analysed five years’ worth of search data and evaluated when specific keywords spiked that related to an ending of a specific resolution. With most resolutions revolving around health – it was easy to see when a spike in keywords such as “takeaway” rose that people were starting to give up on these habits…
Once we had the data we pulled together some great press release angles and sent it out to our media lists. A super quick piece to turnaround which landed over 23 links across some high tier publications including AOL and Yahoo!
Childhood Hepatitis
Links: 29 / AverageDR: 70
As cases of childhood hepatitis rose towards the start of the year it was something that was trending broadly within the news. We worked closely with our medical negligence client Patient Claim Line to produce expert comments on how parents can help to identify if their child could potentially have meningitis and what to look for – as well as what to do if they find that they have suffered from misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis.
The piece was quickly picked up by mainstream media and landed 29 links with an average DR of 70.
Holiday Savings Tips
Links: 42 / AverageDR: 66
Brits love a summer holiday and as summer holiday season started to ramp up we saw that a lot of newspapers and publications were starting to publish savings tips and tricks which would be particularly effective in the current economic climate. With this in mind we teamed up with Instagram Mum Emma Stretton to deliver some great holiday savings tips at a time where everyone was looking to make their money go a little further.
Once we’d spoken to Emma we pulled this together in press release form with some great hooks for journalists and outreached it to our media list. The content landed really well with over 40 links generated on high quality publications including Wales Online, The Sun, MSN and the The Birmingham Mail.
Gardening Hacks
Links: 15 / AverageDR: 74
As we approach summer, gardening has been a hot topic of discussion across a lot of news channels, working with our client Hayes Garden World we have jumped into numerous conversations and added our expertise to news jack and build high quality links into our client’s website. Topics that we have contributed to include: “How to fertilise without chemicals”, “Everything you need to know about planting trees”, “How to prevent weeds growing” and “Making the most of your garden in March”.
Our expert commentary and news jacking has been featured across a range of high profile publications including House Beautiful, Daily Express, The Mirror, Ideal Home and the Yorkshire Post.
Newsjacking is a great way to land solid links by jumping on a trending topic and it’s also a great way to push expertise driven links into your website, adding that all important E-E-A-T value! To find out more about our newsjacking service and Digital PR or how we could help to gain you brand coverage and valuable high quality links enquiry today!
Last Thursday we headed to Barcelona for the European Search Awards. We were delighted to have been nominated for six of the awards & were looking forward to celebrating the best of search across Europe & beyond.
On the night we were over the moon to take home the awards for:
🎇 Best Small Integrated Agency 🎇 Best PPC Campaign – For Our Work With Hayes Garden World
It was great to receive such positive feedback from the judges after a great year of growth & also successful client campaigns. In particular, having worked with Hayes Garden World for over five years we were delighted to see the joint success with our client off the back of a hugely successful 2021.
And of course, we were unable to evade a trip up onto the stage… so here is a lovely photo of us collecting our award on the evening!
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Barcelona & look forward to heading off to a new destination next year for the European Search Awards 2023!
PPC, as one of the more measurable ways of digital marketing, provides a great platform for people to understand exactly how much they are going to spend. Within reason, and by utilising data, it gives them an understanding of the type of return they can expect, as well as any growth opportunities. This makes it highly appealing to people who are looking for a directly measurable approach
As someone who studied Specialist Mathematics, I’m not afraid of some number crunching, or longer more complicated equations. However, after ploughing through endless spreadsheets I was convinced there must have been an easier way to do this – enter Google Data Studio. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s still quite a bit of maths involved here, but, the data visualisation beauty of Google Data Studio means that trying to explain it to clients just became a whole lot easier. By combining the equations & letting Google do the working out for you, you can not only leverage the data that’s available, you can also present it in a way which is pleasing to all key stakeholders.
Now I’m aware there are many different ways to do this & there are also a number of tools within the market that do this for you. So, today I will share with you how I approach PPC forecasting when it comes to growth &, also, starting to understand the type of return you can expect on both ad spend and leads when launching campaigns.
I want to caveat that there are two different ways to tackle this & today I will only be looking at growth forecasting – that is forecasting when you have pre-existing data that you can work with. If you are looking to forecast from scratch then that is a whole different ballgame (& a whole different blog)! For the purpose of today we will be focusing on utilising data that you already have to predict growth.
Forecasting – Search Growth
If you have an existing Search Campaign & you’re looking to grow your business & drive new leads, chances are that you will have undertaken some growth forecasting. This can come in a number of different formats, from Google’s own tools, Excel spreadsheets or through in-house technologies. For the example below I’m going to show you how we can do that with Google Data Studio (with the help of Google’s “Opportunity Lost” template).
You can download Google’s “Opportunity Lost” template within the Data Studio templates &, once you have it, you will see that it’s a 13 slide template enabling you to see where the opportunity is within your Google Search & Display campaigns. (Note: I haven’t yet found one for Shopping but I am in the process of looking to create one).
For the purpose of this blog we are going to be focusing on Slide 3 (Search Bid Lost Overview) & Slide 5 (Display Bid Lost Overview). Let’s start with Slide 3 (Search Bid Lost Overview).
When you first load up the presentation it will look something like this:
Now, while this dashboard in itself is incredibly useful & contains a lot of valuable information, when it came to forecasting I wanted to neaten it up to make for a more digestible board, which I could quickly & easily pull out in client presentations. Also, in the example below, as the client didn’t have an Ecommerce arm I removed all reference to Revenue, preferring to focus on the three main areas:
Impressions Lost
Impression Share Lost
Conversions Lost
By focusing on the above I was able to simplify the dashboard & also tailor it so that I could break it down by different dimensions, including “Day Of The Week” & “Device” to help with my optimisations.
So, after a little work I adapted the Data Studio to look like the below (please note I’ve removed the client data hence the white gaps):
The beauty of this style of diagram is that not only does it give us absolute figures (in the middle) where we can understand what that growth looks like, it also allows us to segment by a dimension to help us identify where the real growth comes from. In the example above I segmented the Impression Share column by “Day Of The Week” so I could understand on which days I needed to bid more & in the Impressions & Leads columns I segmented by “Campaign” so I could understand which Campaigns had the biggest room to grow & improve. You can also segment by Device & other dimensions to really understand where your opportunity is & to drive the growth in the most efficient manner.
To do the above you simply need to change the “Dimension” section of the Google Data Studio report to “Day of week” or “Campaign” or “Device” depending on what you are trying to analyse.
Now, in terms of the calculations from Google’s perspective these are already input into the Data Studio, but for an understanding of how we can change these to suit different dimensions I’ve listed them here:
For Impression Share – Search Lost IS (Rank)
For Impressions – Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost IS (rank)
For Leads – ((Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost IS (rank))* CTR) * (Conversions / Clicks)
By using the three equations above we are able to use simple metrics within the account to estimate growth capabilities based on key data such as Conversions etc… As you can see from the top sheet you then have the option to choose between specific campaigns, and drilling down on the details here will get a better analysis of the campaign.
Changing Between Impression Share, Top Impression Share & Abs. Top Impression Share
Now in some situations you may just want to know the Impression Share that is available to you & how much your clients can grow, but in others you may want to know what more is available to you. That’s where editing the equations to incorporate Top Impression Share & Abs comes in. Top Impression Share can really help.
Let’s take a look at the equation for Leads:
If we change: ((Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost IS (rank)) * CTR) * (Conversions / Clicks)
To: ((Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost Top IS (rank)) * CTR) * (Conversions / Clicks)
We are now forecasting the potential if each ad is in the top positions (i.e. above the Organic search rankings), as opposed to if the ad just has the opportunity to show 100% of the time. By doing this we are able to identify not only visibility growth, but also growth patterns for higher ad positions & also top ad positions using Search Abs. Top IS (rank).
By utilising the above approach you can get a good understanding of how your Search campaigns are currently performing & where the potential growth areas might be. This is a great way to plan your upcoming campaigns.
Forecasting – Display Growth
Now that we’ve looked at how to forecast Search growth, we can roll out the same principle to forecast Display growth – although generally with much bigger metrics. I’ve created a similar dashboard here for Display, which you can view below, & focused solely on any campaigns which sit on the Display Network. What’s most interesting to note here is that dimensions such as “Day of the week” & “Device” are more pronounced. This is a much easier way to digest & get that data than trying to source it manually.
The dashboard above works in exactly the same way as the Search dashboard, except that it displays content related only to the Display campaigns. The equations work in a similar manner other than they use Display Lost IS as opposed to the search variation. All in all it’s a great way to see the overall performance of the Display Campaign & identify any areas of opportunity.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a way to effectively forecast then there are a whole host of tools out there that you can use. However, if you are looking for a quick way to utilise the power of Google Data Studio for PPC forecasting then the ideas above should help you on your journey to find out the PPC potential of your campaigns & your website!
What better way to start our new financial year than by celebrating in style with SIX nominations at the European Search Awards!
After a solid 2021 we are delighted to see that our growth & great results for our clients have been acknowledged among some very fierce competition. We’re also looking forward to a fun trip to sunny Barcelona to celebrate at the awards in late May.
The categories we have been nominated in are:
🎇Best Use Of Search – Retail/Ecommerce (SEO) 🎇Best SEO Campaign 🎇Best PPC Campaign 🎇Best Small PPC Agency 🎇Best Small SEO Agency 🎇Best Small Integrated Search Agency.
We’re really looking forward to the night & hopefully bringing home an award (or two). (We’re also looking forward to the Sangria…)
Last night the entire Cedarwood team took a trip over to Leeds to celebrate our 6th Anniversary at the Northern Digital Awards where we were lucky enough to be up for FOUR nominations!
On the night we were nominated for:
🎇 Best Use Of Ecommerce – Retail (SEO) 🎇 Best SEO Campaign 🎇 Search Agency Of The Year 🎇 Best Small Digital Agency
It was great to get the team together to celebrate the best talent & work that the north has to offer & it’s always lovely to have a team night out – especially one that fell on the same date as our 6th anniversary.
We were absolutely delighted to walk away with the Silver Award for Best Small Digital Agency on the night, especially as we were up against some really strong competition & this has been a great reflection & reward for the team after our best year to date.
Having worked in the medical negligence industry where CPCs can be as high as £40 or £50, I’m very familiar with how valuable utilising competition graphs to find those lower volume cheaper – but equally as effective – CPCs can be. When we’re talking CPCs as high as the ones I’ve just mentioned it’s easy to burn through budget, even with a great Conversion Rate, so finding those gems within the lower volumes becomes even more critical, especially when it comes to building out campaigns or trying to find more areas to cover.
It’s not just PPC where competition graphs can be a valuable addition & today I want to look at how we can utilise these very popular Excel graphs within SEO strategy, to understand where the opportunities lie to drive growth/visibility across both SEO & Digital PR.
Fortunately, there are a number of different ways that you can work with Excel & data from some of our favourite digital marketing tools to really understand what’s available in the market & where the opportunities might lie.
Let’s take an example…
A few months back I was drafted in to pull together a proposal for a promotional products company. This company specialised in a wide range of different promotional products, & one of the tasks I undertook as part of the proposal process was to identify key areas of opportunity so we could see where the value lay for our clients. This would form the foundation of not only our SEO strategy but also guide our Digital PR strategy when it came to link acquisition & where we wanted to focus our efforts.
I reference the Excel spreadsheet below – pulled together with data just from AHRefs & plotted on a three axis graph, by overlaying CPC data with Search Volume & Difficulty.
Now this graph can be utilised for both SEO & PPC – for SEO it’s even more useful as you can use AHRefs “competition metric,” which for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, judges how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword given the number of higher Domain Rank websites that currently rank above that term. Essentially, it gives an overview of the volumes of specific keywords mapped against keyword difficulty to give you an idea of how achievable it might be to rank for that given keyword.
From the data above we can quite clearly see a number of significant trends. Initially, we can see that the market place has high search volume for branded pens, but also that this has super high competition & trying to rank on this term might be quite difficult. By contrast, if we look at other branded products such as lanyards, umbrellas or notebooks we can see a similar search volume level but a much lower level of keyword difficulty – an area of opportunity.
From utilising a simple graph above (and there’s many more products that we can populate in there) we are able to draw deductions around how to create an effective SEO/Digital PR strategy to maximise opportunity for the client, while still keeping in mind commercial intent & ensuring we are also applying adequate focus to commercially important terms.
Now we’ve seen this work for branded promotional products, how does it work for higher CPC terms like “medical negligence?”
In this example we can see a far more pronounced difference for the high volume terms – but again we have some great areas of opportunity. We can see from this data that the popular “medical compensation” term is, in fact, low search volume for very high competition, compared to something we perhaps wouldn’t target, such as “medical negligence nhs” or even “medical negligence lawyer” which despite still having reasonable keyword difficulty has a much more established search volume (or reward!) to match.
All in all the graphs above are very simple to produce & incredibly easy to pull together utilising the following steps:
Login to your AHREfs account
Navigate to the “Keywords Explorer” tab & input your list of targeted keywords
Download the Spreadsheet
Remove all columns except “Keyword” “KD” & “Search Volume” & pull these into Excel using a multi-touchpoint graph
And there you go… a quick & easy way to pull together an effective graph which allows you to easily identify areas of opportunity, quick wins or perhaps more long-term gains for your clients which ties in with real-word metrics (search volume) to see achievable gains.
This year, all businesses have had to navigate through a very rough terrain, therefore effectively capitalising on the holiday season is essential for many. Our Director, Amanda Walls, recently spoke to Fleximize to share her top tips with SME’s looking to make the most of the holiday season.
Amanda is a digital marketing expert and has worked in Digital Marketing for over a decade. Over the last four years, she has nurtured Cedarwood Digital into the award-winning agency that it is today.
If you need help optimising your digital marketing strategy this holiday season, we have summarised Amanda’s top tips below or check out the full article on Fleximize’s site here.
How to capitalize on holiday marketing trends
1. Experiment with dynamic adverts
Throughout the holiday season markets are flooded with retailers, so it can be difficult for consumers to hear your brand above the noise. Amanda suggested that one simple way to stand out from the crowd is to make the most of Google’s ad extensions. Below are a few examples that have worked well for us in the past…
Reviews: “…we tested seller ratings for a gardening centre client and found that ads with seller ratings have a 41% higher CTR than normal text ads.“
Structured snippets: “…showcase more information from your website“
Countdown timers:“People have a natural fear of missing out and so the countdown timer extension is great for creating a sense of urgency around your product or service“
2. Create shopping feeds
“If you’re an ecommerce company, using product feeds in the run up to a holiday season is a no brainer“, Amanda explained. They help to quickly generate engaging ads, showcasing products that are directly pulled from your catalogue.
Where can shopping feeds be utilised?
Google Shopping Campaign Ads
Facebook Dynamic Product Ads (these show on both Facebook and Instagram)
3. Invest in retargeting advertising
Retargeting allows you to show personalized ads to returning customers, customers who have browsed your site without buying and people similar to existing customers.
“Retargeting not only allows brands to reach out to interested customers, but it also helps to increase brand visibility during noisy holiday periods – something that could encourage a potential customer to buy from you instead of a competitor.“
Below are a selection of tools that you can utilise to retarget your customers:
Google’s Display network
Google’s Dynamic Remarketing
Facebook’s Retargeting
Facebook Lookalike Audiences
4. Don’t neglect customer reviews
Although the holiday season may be your busiest time of year, customer service must remain paramount. Don’t neglect the long-term goal for a quick win in the holidays.
A few of Amanda’s top tips for maintaining great customer service and positive customer reviews include:
Invest in customer service for the pre-buying process, not just the shipping
Utilise live chat windows on your site
Respond to any queries promptly
Enhance the buying experience and increase buying intent with tailored landing pages and gift guides
Create landing pages for specific terms you want to rank for during your specific holiday season such as ‘Christmas Trees’ or ‘Valentine’s Day Gifts’
5. Celebrate delivery
Customers are starting to expect free AND fast shipping. Be sure to communicate your shipping offering clearly to your customer. Amanda advises to “…factor delivery charges into your sales model and ensure that this service is featured clearly across your website and marketing channels.“
6. Prepare for traffic spikes
Amanda notes that “[c]ustomers will not hang around on websites that are slow or crash”. Ideally, load times should be under 2 or 3 seconds on a desktop. Here are a few ways that you can speed up your load times:
Enable GZIP compression on your web serves
Compress images
Minify Java experience
7. Optimize for mobile
Customer trends are changing. What once was a research tool before buying a product is now being used to make purchases, therefore optimising for mobile is essential.
“The bottom line is that if people have a negative experience on mobile, they’re less likely to purchase from you in the future – no matter how great your website is.”
8. Plan early
Planning holiday campaigns well in advance is crucial. It takes time to build up SEO rankings and prepare a campaign that is going to stand up against a competitive market.
Christmas shopping can begin as early as September, so to maximise on the holiday period your campaigns must be ready before then.
“Plan early for each holiday season and you’ll be putting your business head and shoulders above the competition.“
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