If you’ve landed on this blog, or on the website, then chances are you are looking at your options for online marketing and, more specifically, SEO. As one of the most hotly debated forms of digital marketing, SEO often gets a bad rap. The lack of regulation in the industry doesn’t help but, when done correctly, SEO can be an incredibly powerful tool to grow your audience, sales and leads. In this article we’re going to look at how effective SEO can really help to grow and develop your business offering.
What Is Search Engine Optimisation?
Before we get started on why it’s important, let’s look at what SEO actually is. In general, SEO is defined as optimising your website with the aim of improving the overall quantity and quality of the traffic. There are a number of different ways that you can do this and, with Google having over 400 ranking factors, different SEOs approach it in different ways. For the most part, the main elements include improving your key expertise, authority and trust signals, answering user intent and purpose, and building a strong reputation.
Why Is SEO Important For My Business?
Often when we meet clients for the first time they aren’t sure which marketing mix is right for their business. They look to us primarily for advice and honesty as not one size fits all. When considering which type of marketing strategy to utilise, a lot of people look straight to PPC for instant returns, overlooking the long-term benefits a solid SEO strategy can provide. That said, if you’re on the fence about whether or not to go with SEO, here are five reasons why SEO is so important to grow your business:
It targets all areas of the funnel
Unlike other marketing channels which tend to focus predominantly on one section of the funnel, the beauty of SEO is that it has the ability to target users at each stage of the funnel. So whether you are looking to be visible for a very specific high volume search term, or you are looking to increase your overall brand awareness by targeting a range of long-tail keywords, SEO has the ability to do all of this and more.
When we take into account a typical marketing funnel it looks something like this. As we can see, at each stage of the funnel there is an opportunity to target users through an effective SEO strategy:
By targeting users in this way you are also helping to ensure that your brand is visible at all target touchpoints. In fact, according to Hubspot it takes around eight touchpoints before you make a sale. So, reaching users at every stage of the funnel will help to get this number up a lot quicker. SEO isn’t always an easy sale because it’s harder to measure the direct ROAS (return on ad spend). However, by putting yourself in front of your audience at each touchpoint you are giving yourself the best possible chance to attract them at the exact time they are searching for your product or service.
2. It’s the gift that keeps on giving
SEO isn’t a one stop shop, and while many people refer to PPC as a tap that you can switch on and off, the beauty of SEO is that it really is the gift that keeps on giving. Once you have a campaign that is working effectively it creates a long-term sustainable method of marketing that will drive traffic to your website at all stages of the funnel.
Take for example one of our long-term clients that has been investing in SEO since 2015:
By creating a sustained and effective SEO strategy with continued investment (even during COVID) we’ve seen great growth across their marketing performance. It has continued to grow YOY and provided a consistent and sustained level of traffic (and leads), which has really underpinned the growth of this brand.
SEO also generates a buildable income. What I mean by that is you are building incremental leads and sales rather than paying for them on a monthly basis. For example, if you spend £10k per month on PPC for 12 months and each lead costs £1k, you’ll generate a consistent £1k per month unless you either spend more or make substantial efficiencies. By contrast, if you spend £10k per month on SEO and generate 10 leads but then you grow incrementally, the resulting traffic may result in 12 leads the next month and 14 leads the month after for the same monthly cost. So, again, you can scale without necessarily having to increase your overall investment.
3. It puts you in front of your audience when they are searching for you
Search is one of the most effective forms of marketing because it has the unique ability to put your website in front of an audience at the time they are actively searching for you. Imagine you’re a Digital PR agency and someone is searching for a “Digital PR Agency In Manchester.” As a Digital PR agency that’s exactly the type of user that you want to get in front of at the time they are searching. Therefore, appearing in the search results for that term, specifically in the top three positions, puts you front and centre:
SEO is very effective at targeting users with high intent. These users have indicated they are looking for a particular product or service as they are actively searching for it. Therefore, the type of customers you bring to your website through SEO tend to be a little more engaged and go on to convert. Essentially, investing in this channel can bring you users that have a good level of engagement and are likely already in the market for your brand/service.
SEO does work best for brands and services where there is already search volume. If you are a DTC brand selling a very specific product then there’s a high chance you’ll need to generate some awareness before you use SEO as a strategy. That said, it’s still a valuable long-tail proposition, which allows you to get in front of an audience that might be researching and wanting to find out more about your product.
4. Good SEO will naturally build trust and credibility – enhancing your CRO
By their very nature, SEO strategies, when done properly, will help you to build natural trust and credibility for your website. This doesn’t just enhance your external reputation, it can also help to build all important on-site trust signals which can help to naturally grow your conversion rate. The core principles of good SEO relate to E-A-T (expertise, authority and trust). This means looking at the website’s authority and trust as well as the expertise that it conveys. By enhancing each of these signals you will naturally boost the trust of your audience.
Matching user intent and purpose is another key SEO principle. By updating your content, to ensure you match user intent and purpose, you will naturally create better content that is more engaging. It will also give the user more of the information they need to make an informed decision. Implementing faqs and other additions which further boost the expertise of the content will add to this further. Thereby helping to establish a better overall user experience, and giving users an insight into your expertise at the same time.
Finally, one of the biggest elements of SEO is trust and reputation. By nature of building this through SEO campaigns you will enhance the trust signals your users get in the form of better reputation content and reviews. Research shows that users spend a lot of time researching reviews and reputation before choosing a brand to go with – especially with so many options now on the market. Enhancing these signals from an SEO perspective can add a lot of value to your overall user experience and conversion rate.
5. It will be around for a while
Although technology is constantly evolving, SEO, in the main part, is here to stay. People will always search online, and though the search engine they use might change and the way that they search might change (cue the rise of voice search), the basic concept of looking for something online and placing your business in front of the user at this time is here to stay.
PPC, paid social and other advertising platforms are constantly evolving with new products, updates and changes to advertising structure. Although these other methods have been somewhat consistent over the last decade, SEO has remained virtually unchanged. With the exception of some small additions to the search results and some additional ads at the top lowering the organic visibility levels, the way SEO operates remains the same, and will likely continue to do so.
SEO is a long term investment, but with the stability of the search results you know that your investment is unlikely to change or go away. When you’re investing in SEO you are looking for a long term benefit and return, and once you get there it will most definitely be worth it.
Finally – How Do I Measure SEO?
Measurement in SEO is key. A lot of people give up on SEO or don’t consider it because they don’t see an immediate return. Good SEO takes time, but being able to measure it incrementally plays an important role in proving why it’s a solid investment.
According to HubSpots State Of Marketing Report 2021 around 50% of marketers said keyword rankings and organic traffic are the top ways they measure the success of their SEO strategies. However, this is missing a key ingredient: leads. You can bring all the traffic in the world to a website, but if it doesn’t convert then the value is zero. SEO isn’t just about traffic and keywords, it’s about making real world ROI, which is where the value in an effective SEO campaign really kicks in.
To measure SEO effectively you need to take into account business goals first; what is the business trying to achieve, what generates revenue and what goals do they need to hit? Once you’ve established this, you can turn it into online goals and targets where you can set incremental improvements. These could start with raising overall visibility, acquiring a certain number of high quality, relevant links or simply completing certain pieces of work. By measuring incrementally you are able to effectively measure impact vs return – something that’s important for any marketing strategy.
Before you start work on your SEO campaign, have a clear measurement strategy in place with your agency. This will help to ensure that you’re aligned on what you are trying to achieve and that you have assigned clear values on how you can prove SEO ROI.
Still unsure about whether SEO is right for your business? Get in touch with our team today to find out more about how it could work for you!
Digital PR has become a major buzzword in the industry over the last 24 months, and while it’s always played an important role in visibility, traffic and driving brand awareness (and sales!), the value of Digital PR has never been more important than over this time.
As brands start to recognise the value of Digital PR and more companies turn towards using it, the competitive space has become more and more crowded. Journalists have become increasingly inundated with a wide range of press releases, from fake jobs to top 10 lists and huge data-driven campaigns.
If you’ve wanted to take a leap into Digital PR, chances are you have looked at it for one of two reasons:
a) you want to drive brand awareness in the online space OR
b) you want to use it to help drive great quality links, authority and trust into your website from an SEO perspective.
If the latter is the main reason that you’re looking at Digital PR activation, then here are 6 great Digital PR techniques which can really help to turbo charge your SEO campaigns and drive your ROI further:
1. Thought Leadership
Thought leadership has been around for years and has long been a staple of PR, both traditional and digital. If you are looking to boost your SEO value from Digital PR then thought leadership is a great place to start. One of the key pillars of SEO performance is E-A-T or Expertise, Authority and Trust, which is created on-site but also off-site through link optimisation and acquisition. It’s a great way to showcase your expertise as you will often put forward an expert from your brand. This can then help those all-important external ranking signals, by allowing them to understand that your brand really holds expertise in this space.
What is Thought Leadership?
Thought leadership is essentially where you tap into the talent within your brand to answer some of the most pressing questions that your users or the external public might have. You take your own expertise, experience or data and put it out into the world to help educate and inform others. Establishing yourself or your company as a thought leader is essentially working to put yourself out there as a well-known resource and expert across a particular vertical which, in turn, can help to educate and inform an audience about you and your brand.
You can do this in a number of ways:
with tools that connect you to journalists who are looking for information, responding to their queries and putting your thought leader forward
on Twitter by responding to hashtag searches which are very popular with journalists
pro-actively researching a particular topic, perhaps one that’s trending in the news, and outreaching this with a suitable angle to journalists
Each of these approaches is designed to put your expert at the forefront of a particular topic.
Increase reach
Thought leadership doesn’t just have to be linked to one vertical either as you may find that there are a range of verticals your brand can offer expertise in. Founded a business? You can offer business expertise. Got a HR team? They can offer HR expertise. Got a finance department? They can offer financial expertise. You don’t just have to limit your thought leadership to one individual and one vertical; by broadening your reach you can provide more well-rounded expertise signals for your business.
Increase traffic
Thought leadership is incredibly effective for SEO too. In the latter half of 2022 we worked closely with in-house expert, Angela Slater, at Hayes Garden World to create a range of thought leadership pieces on highly relevant publications. This resulted in a significant increase in traffic and visibility for the brand as well as establishing Angela as a thought leader.
Quick searches of Google demonstrate that she has now contributed to most major publications within the gardening industry as well as some great nationals:
The resulting outcome for Hayes Garden World was a significant jump in visibility, in addition to landing top 5 rankings for major terms including “garden furniture” and “garden furniture sale” – right up there among major nationwide retailers! You can read all about our work with Hayes Garden World in our case study.
We know that a lot of Google’s Core Algorithm updates recently have looked at E-A-T signals so, if you’re looking to really enhance those off-site trust signals, a solid thought leadership campaign is a great place to start.
2. Proactive Newsjacking
Jumping on trends is a really great way to utilise Digital PR to build relevant and effective high-quality links back into your website. We approach newsjacking in two ways: proactive and reactive. We will go through both in this blog, starting with the proactive side of things.
What is Proactive Newsjacking?
Proactive Newsjacking is looking to jump on emerging trends before they happen, to offer data, insights or expertise and be early to the conversation. Essentially, you need to read up on the media to understand when something is going to happen that could be relevant to your client or your business. You can then put yourself straight into the conversation by offering some great information, or a new angle on an existing story, to add value to an emerging trend or storyline.
Proactive newsjacking, when done correctly, can help to drive SEO in more ways than one as it has the potential to drive high quality referral traffic to your website. Proactive newsjacking is, therefore, one of the more powerful Digital PR techniques. By getting to the front of the conversation you are also more likely to attract more media interest with the potential for follow up interviews and comments and, as a result, even more coverage! Timing is critical here, so planning in advance to release your content to journalists at just the right time can often make or break this approach.
If you’re looking to use this method, we’d usually recommend that you build out a calendar that allows you to plan for these events in advance. A calendar will also ensure you have PLENTY of time to allow for any potential issues, i.e. getting sign off on comments or producing data-led reports. By planning in advance you can not only ensure you get all of your content together in time, you’ll also be able to schedule each push of your content/release at the just right time.
Proactive planning
Timing is absolutely crucial across any newsjacking but with proactive newsjacking, given that people have likely known about it for a while, it’s even more important as there could be many other PRs trying to jump on the same trend. In addition to researching the journalists that are likely to cover the topic and the types of content they’ve written, you can work with tools like BuzzSumo to understand the times they are most likely to publish this content and how quickly they turn around a piece after news has broken. This is useful information that will help to inform your publishing schedule and your email pushes.
Proactive newsjacking is a great way to get your brand in front of an audience in a planned manner, tying together nicely the visibility of Digital PR with the high quality link acquisition and E-A-T signals of SEO, to drive a great ROI from your campaigns.
3. Reactive Newsjacking
On the other side of the coin we have reactive newsjacking. While this still falls under that holistic “newsjacking” umbrella it takes a very different approach to proactive newsjacking and can often have a very different outcome.
What is Reactive Newsjacking?
Reactive Newsjacking is when you jump on something that has just broken in the news, or that is trending in the news and you bring your brand or client into the conversation by offering a new angle, expert opinion or new data that might not have previously been identified. It’s a great way to showcase your expertise on a given topic and it can get great coverage for your brand by putting you front and centre of the conversation. Reactive newsjacking is also popularly syndicated as it generally talks about a very topical issue and so people are more likely to have a need to cover the topic.
Reactive newsjacking ties in nicely with your SEO because it brings that combination of super high quality links and really strong E-A-T signals, especially on the expertise and authority side. Additionally, it helps to establish your brand as a thought leader and build that all important brand awareness and recognition. It can also help with semantically themed external links; we know how important relevancy is to SEO, both on-page and off-page, so newsjacking something that’s highly relevant to your brand is a great way to tick this box as well.
Get ahead
Reactive newsjacking doesn’t have to take a lot of time either – rather it’s about being first to the conversation with a great angle. Using tools like Google Trends and setting up Google Alerts are great ways to ensure you’re at the forefront of the news. We also monitor Twitter hashtags and the BBC Breaking News page, to ensure that we can jump on stories quickly as they happen. Another great way to track this is getting your team to run an open channel, such as on Microsoft Teams, where they can pop trending news that the Digital PR team can pick up on. You can also have some fun with reactive newsjacking. Just after lockdown ended we ran this reactive newsjacking campaign for Hayes Garden World which we labelled “Lonely Plants Club.” It focused on explaining how houseplants could become lonely after lockdown ended and the steps that owners could take to make life a little easier for them. It was a light hearted piece but incredibly relevant at the time, and obviously super relevant to our garden centre client. The piece landed really well, generating over 23 top tier links across national and industry publications including the Daily Star and Country Living.
The great thing about reactive newsjacking is that it can be such a quick turnaround if you have the right processes in place. Focus on honing in on and improving those processes, and add this technique to your Digital PR and SEO tool belt.
4. Industry Report Analysis
Reports are a really effective way of utilising Digital PR because they help to build one of the most important aspects of a Digital PR campaign: relevancy. We can analyse reports which are really relevant to our clients and industries to clearly show how our expertise and analysis ties closely to the brand.
We know that Google loves relevancy. There’s been a lot written about the topic, most notably this content from Cyrus Shephard on MOZ about the concept of link relevance and Google rankings. In the article he talks through a range of scenarios where link relevance has played an important role, and has some great takeaways on how we can improve overall link relevance. This is crucial to ensuring we have great semantically themed content throughout the article, and using an approach like industry report analysis is a great way to showcase this.
Speak to your client
There are a number of ways that you can approach industry report analysis but, most commonly, speaking to your client and being aware of popular reports within their industry is a great place to start. This could be anything from a state of marketing report, to an NHS Digital report, through to a Government report on pedestrians and cycling. With most of these reports being freely available there is usually a mine of great information that you can fill your news story with too.
Find your angle
Finding juicy angles plays a strong role in getting reports covered and often you don’t have to dig deep if there are some standout or alarming statistics that are in the public interest. Building a story around this and analysing data to further back this up can be a great way to pull together a nice data analysis piece. From an SEO perspective the data side of this analysis offers some really strong expertise and trust signals, as well as providing some great supporting data which can back up any on-site content.
If you’re looking to boost your Digital PR through an industry report analysis then the first step is to find any free industry reports that are available and note down the dates they are published. Jumping on and analysing this quickly will allow you to get to the front of the conversation and help to cement the brand’s position.
5. Google Search Trends Analysis
In addition to looking at industry reports and trends there are other great tools available that provide mounds of free and interesting data to analyse. Google Ads Keyword Planner and Google Trends are two such tools, and both offer tons of information around search habits relating to specific queries. They can help you identify what is trending, and what isn’t, compared to different times of the year or year on year comparisons.
Google Ads Keyword Planner contains a range of data pertaining to individual keyword search trends. It allows you to see how that keyword has performed over time and also breaks it down into mobile and desktop users so you can understand how people are searching differently for specific search terms. Below we can see that the term “seo agency” has grown substantially over the last year, from just under 5k searches per month in November to nearly 8k searches per month this year – a news story in itself!
If we were to layer that data with countries that have searched specifically for “seo agency,” we would be able to build a narrative around which countries have seen a spike in demand for seo agencies over the last 12 months. For example, in Australia I can see that while there was an initial rise around the middle of the year, demand has really started to tail off in recent months:
And if we add the USA into the mix we see a trend very similar to that in Australia:
In isolation, these three pieces of information might not seem to generate a news story, but when pulled together we can analyse that searches for seo agencies in the UK have continued to rise over the last six months in contrast to searches in Australia and the USA. It’s a simple piece of data analysis but one that you can write a piece of content around.
In addition to Google Keyword Planner you can also use the Google Trends tool to analyse data and draw comparisons between different services and products. Google Trends allows you to compare trending keywords against each other and see how a particular keyword has trended over time. An example of this would be using the tool to evaluate how each of our key services ranks against each other as a trending topic:
From this we can evaluate that SEO is by far the most popular service, followed by PPC and then Digital PR. We could then pull each of these services out individually to analyse their performance over the last 12 months.
Each of these examples shows very simple and quick data analysis. Yet with the right data and the right angle, you can turn this into a great piece of Digital PR content that is super relevant to your brand and likely to land those all important high quality relevant links.
6. Product Placements & Round-Ups
Rounding off the top 6 we have product placements and round-ups – an absolute stalwart for the ecommerce sector. Although this point is last it is most definitely not least! Product placements can be a really powerful way of getting your product in front of the right audience and driving crucial referral sales through to your website. At the same time they have the opportunity to build some really high quality links from incredibly relevant domains, i.e. domains that your target audience happens to be on.
There are a number of different approaches you can take to product placements, from looking at the Top x lists for specific products (these always tend to rank well) to working closely with journalists who you know are going to be looking to cover a particular product or product range. In most cases they are just looking for a hi-res image of your products, and so having this type of image to hand is incredibly helpful; we often keep them all in a Google Drive so they are ready to pull out at a moment’s notice. It’s also valuable to have visuals over your stock levels to ensure you aren’t promoting a product which is unavailable or low in stock.
If you’re looking for referral traffic then there’s nothing better than a placement like this…
… to really get you in front of your target market. In addition, the product review style of the content is only helping to add to the authority and trust of the overall product. These are key elements of E-A-T which feed heavily into Google’s Page Quality Rater Guidelines.
Getting your products out there in front of your audience is a great way to gain visibility among the right market and to gain high quality links back to the website, all while enhancing key SEO signals. Driving in referral traffic sales is just the icing on the cake!
Digital PR has continued to play an increasingly important role in the growth of SEO campaigns – after all, who can forget when John Mueller said this?
So, if you are looking to take your SEO strategies to the next level then a solid, relevant, expertise-led Digital PR campaign is bound to put you on the right track!
We are absolutely delighted to have brought home three awards at the UK Search Awards last night – the UK’s biggest awards night for the search industry! With a record number of entries this year, competition was fierce, but we are delighted to have collected a number of awards on the night to recognise our search performance throughout the year.
On the night we took home:
💥 Best Use Of Search (Finance) 💥 Best SEO Agency (Silver) 💥 Best Use Of PR In Search (Silver)
We were especially delighted to be recognised within the Best SEO Agency category among a list of some of the best agencies in the UK. 2022 has been a phenomenal year for our SEO & Digital PR offering so it’s brilliant to have this recognised.
We also recieved some great feedback from the judges on the night in each of our winning categories:
💥 Best Use Of Search (Finance)
💥 Best SEO Agency (Silver)
💥 Best Use Of PR In Search (Silver)
We had a great time at the awards and it’s a great way to reflect on a huge year for our SEO & Digital PR teams. We look forward to continuing to work and deliver great results for our clients and can’t wait to see what 2023 and beyond has in store!
Technical SEO is an important pillar of any SEO campaign. If you’ve recently had an audit done by an SEO agency, it’s likely that one of the things they’ll have recommended is a review of your Schema Mark-up. In recent years, SEOs have looked towards Schema as a way of helping Google to understand key elements of a website, both in terms of their content and their structure. It’s a language, if you like, that can be used to present information in a way that Google understands. Implementing a schema ensures that all the valuable work you are doing to enhance your website for the search results is being understood as best as it possibly can. For this reason, it has become an increasingly popular implementation by SEO experts.
When I talk to clients about schema I often get a blank face, especially when we talk about the way that it is implemented. In truth, schema is just a structured data language that is quite simple to understand and work with -it just looks like machine speak. However, with it being such an important part of SEO, and one that we feel is a valuable addition to any website, let’s take a look at what schema is and some of the most popular implementations used across the SEO industry.
What Is Schema Markup?
Schema mark-up is a coding language which most search engines understand. It helps to tell them more about the content of your website and comes in a range of different formats. The most common are JSON-LD, RDF-a and Microdata. Schema uses a unique semantic vocabulary to help outline key themes, elements and structures among your content. This enables search engines to more easily digest your content, and encourages snippets of your on-site content to appear in the search results. A great example of this is FAQ structured data appearing under your listing within the search results, if it has been marked up correctly:
By utilising this form of markup you are making it easier for Google, and other search engines, to understand what your content is as well as the context of the content. You’re also making it a lot easier for them to find the information and pull it through to the search results. This can give you an enhanced CTR (click through rate) and helps to showcase your expertise to new clients at an early stage.
How Is Schema Markup Used?
Schema markup is used through an implementation within the code of your website. Essentially, you wrap the content you are looking to markup with HTML or relevant coding. This then signals to search engines the copy you are looking to highlight and the style that the copy is in, eg, lists, FAQs, organisation etc… It can be implemented in a number of different ways, either through Google Tag Manager, a website plug-in (depending on your content management system) or directly within the code through a web developer. There is plenty of guidance on the Google website for support with the implementation of schema, which can be really useful for anyone who hasn’t used it before, or who is perhaps looking to implement it for the first time.
Most Popular Schema Markup Types For SEO:
Schema comes in a lot of different formats, and if you’re not sure where to start then Google has a handy list of schema formats right here. In some instances, there are websites which lend themselves better to more widespread use of schema. Examples of this might be:
Job listing websites – which could utilise key elements like estimated salary and jobPosting OR
Cooking websites – which would benefit more from the recipe carousel
Regardless of the type of website you have there are some great common types of schema markup, such as FAQ, How-To, Review and LocalBusiness markup which can all contribute to improving your search presence.
Product Markup
Product markup is perhaps one of the most popular types of schema markup for anyone who is operating an ecommerce business. It allows you to feed information to Google about your product, pricing, availability and other key attributes. The bonus of product markup is that it also enables you to turn on automatic updates in the merchant centre, helping to avoid product disapprovals and keep your products feeding well.
Adding product markup allows a product to appear within the product snippets section of the search results. It can therefore be a really powerful way to showcase additional information about your product to your target audience. This includes things like reviews, ratings, price, availability and so on and so forth. Displaying this information in the search results is a good way to get it in front of your audience, helping to engage them a little more before they click through. If your product is coming up against others in the search results and you are price competitive, then this is also a great way to get an edge.
In addition to the basic product markup, there are some other options available to further enhance your listings; these include pros and cons lists, product pages with offers, and additional shipping details. This bonus information can all enhance your product listing. If you do have an ecommerce store, then it’s well worth looking into product schema to see how you can further optimise your listings and add additional value.
Review Markup
Review markup is a commonly used form of schema markup. It’s a great way to tell your audience about your great customer service and reviews, while also helping to improve your CTR. We know that Google’s seller ratings (reviews that appear on Ads) can boost the CTR by up to 10%. So, it’s a given that presenting your reviews within the SERP snippet for your search result is highly likely to have a similar impact.
There are two main types of review markup:
A specific review of a specific item i.e. a book review or a recipe review – in this instance the review is just for one product or one service and the reviews collated are only about that particular item.
The second type of review markup relates to aggregate rating. This is where you are collating a range of reviews of a product or service and aggregating them to give an overall score (usually out of five). This is most commonly seen when you have a large number of reviews about a specific service or a specific brand, and is the one we most commonly use in SEO.
When utilised correctly, review markup can help Google and the user understand more about the trust and authority of your website, and it can be a really great user signal to display reviews within the search results.
Review markup, however, does come with a number of guidelines and it’s important that you adhere to these to get the most out of the markup. These guidelines include:
Making sure you refer to the specific product or service that your review markup relates to. This has to be defined within the code and can’t cover a “range” of products and services
Making sure that any reviews you are highlighting in your markup are clearly accessible from the page that is being marked up, and that the page you are marking up contains the relevant review content
Review schema can be an effective way to showcase your great customer reviews in the search results and enhance the CTR. Just make sure that you adhere to the guidelines along the way.
FAQ Markup
FAQ markup is a great way to inform your audience and to help fulfil that all-important user purpose and intent. By adding FAQs to your website you can help to answer your audience’s most pressing questions. Then by marking them up with schema you help to ensure they display within the search results. There are two main benefits to this:
a) showcasing your expertise to an audience before they even click on your website b) taking up a lot more real estate on the search results page, which is especially valuable for enhancing your CTR.
Before you implement FAQ markup it’s a good idea to undertake some keyword research to understand common questions that your users might be asking. A great way to do this is to look at the “People also ask” section to get some ideas from Google of similar, or related, searches. If these are relevant to your content and your audience then they can be a great place to start.
Other places to look to find good FAQs can be the small box at the bottom of the search screen:
Alternatively, external websites like alsoasked.com, or tools like AHRefs, are great at providing a wide range of questions that your audience could potentially be asking. The latter also provides search volumes so you can evaluate the opportunities for targeting that term.
Implementing the FAQ markup is fairly straightforward and just involves wrapping the questions and answers in structured data markup. Once this is done you’re ready to start presenting your FAQs within the search results.
How To Markup
How-To markup is another great way to showcase your expertise in the search results and also to give your website an additional opportunity to perform within the featured snippets. Videos, images and text are all eligible for how-to markup. It’s best applied for content where the ‘how to’ is the main focus of the page, and where there is a clearly structured and ordered process which instructs the user how to do something.
How-to markup allows you to explain the content in your website in an easily digestible step by step process. It also helps you to display it in a more pictorial manner if you need to. Creating content with a how-to markup in mind will also encourage you to display this clear style of content on your website, which is often popular with readers. As an added bonus, it sends great signals to search engines as it helps to demonstrate your expertise and authority on a topic in a very user-friendly manner.
In addition to presenting your how-to markup in a list format as above, you also have the option to present it as a carousel. This can be really valuable if you are looking to visualise your content, and is also a really nice way to present the content if you want to use imagery to describe a certain situation or set of actions.
In summary, if you are writing any guide style content it’s definitely worth considering the how to schema markup. Not only can it help to better structure and style your content, but it also encourages your content to appear within the search results.
LocalBusiness Markup
Local business structured data is invaluable for anyone who has a physical store presence and is looking to either attract people to their store or improve awareness about their store. This type of markup allows you to tell Google about different elements of your business, including reviews, opening times, departments and much more. Google can then show an enhanced card of information about your business when a user makes a local search result.
There are a number of options available for this type of markup, but the main option is to present a simple card markup which looks something similar to this:
This markup is visible across any local search on mobile or desktop and can also be visible when you click on a specific location within the Google Maps search. It can therefore be particularly useful if someone is coming to look at your store and needs to know key information like the exact address, the menu or opening times. There is also the option to markup a restaurant carousel, although this is a limited feature currently.
As with any markup it’s important that your site adheres to the latest guidelines and that you adhere to the Search Essentials, General structured data guidelines and also the Carousel guidelines if you are looking to feature in that. Note that the carousel feature is currently in restricted use and you need to sign up to be able to use it.
So, if you have a local business and are looking to get visibility for a physical store, or stores, this markup can be a great way to improve your presence in the listings, as well as feature your business in specific listings that are set up just for local businesses.
Breadcrumb Markup
Breadcrumb markup is a great way to signpost across your website and give a very clearly implemented structure and hierarchy to your key pages. We know how much Google values internal linking as a way of signposting your most important pages, and breadcrumb markup is another powerful way of doing this through quite a simple implementation.
How you generate your breadcrumb markup will depend on how many pages you have within the given breadcrumb trail and that will sit within the breadcrumb list category. If you find that you have just one page then you will require only a single breadcrumb trail, but if you are looking at pages that sit within a folder or multiple folders, then you will need a multiple breadcrumb trail.
Regardless of implementation, this is another great way to send strong signals to Google about the content you are looking to prioritise. It helps in pulling together key topical clusters with a clear navigation, while also helping to ensure that the Googlebot is able to crawl and process your content effectively.
How Do I Implement Schema?
When implementing schema, regardless of the type of schema that you implement or the process that you use, it’s important to note that you need to adhere to both Google’s Search Essentials and General structured data guidelines policies. These must be followed in order for your schema to show, and to follow the best practice guidance.
It’s worth doing your research before implementation to understand the style of schema that you want to implement and the best practices around it. That way, you should be able to choose which of the implementation options suit you best. If you aren’t sure how to implement your schema, here are some suggestions below:
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is an interface program that allows you to work directly with your website’s code without needing the knowledge or access of a web developer. GTM allows you to input code directly into the website and is a great way to implement schema markup. You can wrap the appropriate content and implement the code that you need quickly and effectively.
If you are looking to implement through Tag Manager there are definitely a few safeguards that you can put in place, bearing in mind that you are likely to be working with the code directly. Firstly, it’s important to check that the code you are implementing is correct from a structured data perspective. One of the quickest ways to do this is to run it through Google’s Schema Markup Validator to check that it’s valid markup, before you implement it into GTM and then into the code itself. The second step here, once you have it in GTM, is to make sure you run through the debug menu. The debug menu is put in place to help you test the website before sending something fully live. As you are making code changes, it’s important to test that the functionality of the website continues to work effectively and that there isn’t a conflict with any of the existing code.
GTM can be a really effective implementation if you don’t have access to a dev team, or if their time is tied up elsewhere. Just make sure you put the correct processes in place so that it’s implemented without causing a conflict on the website.
Website Plug-Ins
Website plug-ins are another option if you are looking for a relatively clean and simple implementation. Depending on the CMS that you are using there will likely be a number of options available to you. Developers will often have built a shell, in which you simply input the information or text you are looking to markup, and it will then mark it up directly for you.
WordPress, Shopify, and a range of custom CMS platforms can offer some great plug-ins that slide straight into your website and have a super friendly user interface. In most cases, these plug-ins allow you to input the text directly, and the plug-in itself has built the framework into the website to allow the schema to display properly. This can make your job a whole lot easier, and can often ensure that the schema is implemented to best practice guidelines.
As with anything, if you are implementing a plug-in make sure that you test it thoroughly before sending it live. You need to be checking that it doesn’t conflict with anything else in place on the website. It’s also important to ensure that you keep the plug-ins up to date so that you avoid any potential vulnerabilities or issues.
Direct To Code
Direct to code is another way that you can implement schema and is best done in the hands of a professional web developer. If your developer has experience implementing schema markup then that’s a bonus. If not, then thankfully Google gives some pretty handy guidelines, in the format of codelab, which can be a huge benefit for anyone who is looking to implement schema direct-to-code for the first time.
Direct to code can be one of the cleanest ways of implementing schema. It means that you are able to do it whilst utilising minification and other elements which help to ensure that additional code doesn’t slow the website down too much. It also means that you can implement it in the way that best suits the structure of your website.
As with any type of code implementation, it’s important to test before you push the changes live. It’s therefore worth setting the code up on the development server, then testing it with the structured data markup tester before you implement the changes on the live site.
How Do I Test If My Schema Has Been Implemented Correctly?
There are a number of different ways that you can test if your schema has been implemented correctly. These range from tools that are provided by Google directly, through to tools that you might already have, such as Google Search Console. Either way, we’d always recommend checking the implementation of your schema or auditing your existing implementation. Not least because you may find areas of further opportunity, or simply discover areas where you could update existing implementations, to remove duplicates or add in fields that might be missing.
If you are looking to check whether your schema has been implemented correctly we would recommend the below options:
Google’s Schema Markup Testing Tool
Google’s Schema Markup Testing Tool is one of the quickest and easiest ways to troubleshoot your schema implementation. Freely available to use, you simply input the URL that you are looking to test the schema markup on. The tool will then tell you whether or not the schema is implemented correctly. It will also go into more detail around if you are missing specific elements and how you can fix it to ensure that it adheres to guidelines.
This is one of the most popular tools in the SEO community for evaluating the performance of schema on a particular page and for identifying where further improvements can be made. It feeds back the information in an easy to use interface and is a great way to create an audit of your existing schema which you can look to fix and implement:
Hopefully, if your schema is implemented correctly, then it will look something like the above. If not, then it will highlight the areas where improvements can be made and you can action these to get your schema working how it should be.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is another way to check the implementation of your schema and to check that there are no errors or issues with the implementation. Within Google Search Console you have the option to review individual areas of schema which will appear in a graph over time. You’re able to easily see which of your schema has been valid and invalid on certain dates, allowing you to evaluate updates or changes that you have made:
By viewing it in graph format, you can easily identify the impact that your changes might have made:
This is a great way to keep your schema in check and to ensure that any issues that arise are dealt with quickly.
Are There Any Restrictions To Schema Use?
While schema is quite widespread there are some restrictions on the way that you can utilise schema and, also, how it appears within the search results. In particular, there are certain industries which are restricted when it comes to the Google rich results. These include tobacco, vaping, gambling-related products and recreational drugs.
If you do have websites that fall into the aforementioned categories then it’s worth checking if you can utilise structured data, or whether you need to look at other approaches to improve the way that you appear in the SERPs.
Schema is a great way to tell Google (and users!) more about your website, and to improve the way that your website is showcased in the SERPs. It’s also a great way to highlight important E-A-T signals on your website and, perhaps, even capture an additional audience by displaying your content in new formats.
If you haven’t tried schema yet it’s definitely worth giving it a go. If you do already use it, why not audit it and see where the further opportunities are! For more information about how schema could help you check out our SEO page and learn more about our SEO agency.
💥We won! – Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year 2022💥
What a great way to end the week announcing that, after a great year with our Ecommerce clients, we were named ‘Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year’ at the UK Ecommerce Awards! It’s back to back wins too after we took home the same award in 2021. As you can see, the award still takes pride of place on our window ledge
2022 has been a really solid year of growth across our ecommerce clients (and the agency in general!). We’ve onboarded some great household names, whilst continuing to deliver for our longer-term clients. Ecommerce has faced its own challenges during the year, especially in the face of an economic downturn, so adaptability has been the name the of the game. This year, more than ever, we have had to think fast to produce maximum ROI on our ecommerce budgets, and innovate with a range of products and automation that ensure that our strategies are closely aligned to our client’s goals, margins and available stock levels.
We got some great feedback on the night from the judges, highlighting our strong growth during the year as well as our commitment to making Cedarwood a great place to work with strong staff development and culture.
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to attend the events as they were rescheduled last minute due to a train strike, but it looked like a fantastic evening! A big shout out to fellow nominees and a big thanks to Don’t Panic Events for organising the awards. We can’t wait to celebrate once the award arrives & look forward to driving more ecommerce success in 2023! 🎊
So you’re pulling together an SEO strategy, either for a client or for your own website, and you’re not quite sure where to start? With SEO being an ever-evolving field there are so many different elements that go into a successful strategy and it’s important to remember that not one size fits all. When it comes to SEO you really need to tailor a strategy that matches the needs and goals of the website and the framework in which it exists. Even more than this, SEO is a team effort, and while having a good SEO agency plays a key role, the in-house team, customer services and even external reviews go a long way in ensuring that you hit those all-important quality rater guidelines.
In July this year, Google updated its Page Quality Rater Guidelines to give more guidance around what Google’s quality raters are looking for when evaluating a website. Although Google never tells us the factors they most value when ranking a website, this is definitely a great place to start. The guidelines can help to identify ways to improve and strengthen how your website is seen, as well as the user experience it provides. When taking this into account alongside guidance from recent algorithm updates (September Core Algorithm Update, Helpful Content Update and Product Reviews Update), we can create a solid strategy which keeps the concept of quality content, great user experience and purpose, and a strong website reputation at the core.
So, if you are looking to pull together an SEO strategy with all of this in mind, here are the top 5 elements that you should look to include, to ensure that your SEO strategy has the best possible chance of performing:
1. Relevancy
Relevancy is key and perhaps one of the most important elements across both your on-site and off-site SEO strategy. Relevancy comes in a number of different formats, from ensuring that your on-site content matches user intent and purpose, to ensuring that any quality links you’re building back into the website are relevant to your brand. These links will, after all, add a lot more value and have the added bonus of potentially bringing in relevant referral traffic at the same time.
Relevancy plays an important role in both on-site and off-site SEO. From an on-site perspective, it helps to ensure that your content is right for the user. This means that it answers their intent and purpose and gives them the right type of information they need to make an informed decision about your product and service. From an off-site perspective, building high quality relevant links into your website helps Google to understand that you are an expert in that particular space.
There has been a lot of discussion around how important relevancy is to links. As we push more towards semantic search, it’s not enough to just have great quality links, they have to be relevant to your brand, product or service i.e. they need to belong there. This should form the foundation of any solid SEO or Digital PR strategy.
2. Reputation
The reputation of your website and the creator of the content on your website are two of Google’s most important factors for page quality rating. This is especially true of building a reputation externally where other websites are saying good things about you, hosting your expertise or linking back to your website in an authoritative manner.
I recently spoke at MissingLink LIVE about how to do a quick reputation check. Two of the simplest ways to do this are quick Google searches removing your own website to understand how other websites are talking about and linking to your brand online:
By undertaking these quick searches you can get a really clear understanding of any potential concerns around your reputation. It also gives you a good idea of any external websites where you might want to look to improve your reputation, including third party review sites, social platforms, or industry leading blogs/publications within your niche.
Reputation is built on-site and off-site. From an on-site perspective, building out author profiles and justifying your content and the expertise of your authors, with a mixture of authoritative external and internal links, is very important. As too is any information around what makes them an expert.
From an off-site perspective, a strong Digital PR campaign can play a crucial role in helping to build your expertise in the wider market. A nice mixture of thought leadership, expertise-driven newsjacking and data-led campaigns can really help to push key E-A-T signals across your website. This will highlight your reputation and expertise to your audience and to Google.
A lot of brands focus heavily on their on-site reputation rather than considering off-site reputation and how Google (and other brands) might see it. By keeping an eye on how your reputation is viewed externally you can be more aware of any external review sites or news publications that might be speaking about you. In addition, you’ll gain an understanding of how your audience may see your brand when they encounter it for the first time.
3. Expertise, Authority & Trust
Over the last few months I’ve spoken at length at a number of conferences about the concept of E-A-T and how important it is with regards to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines. We can see this expressed within the guidelines in section 3.1, which discusses general Page Quality Rater Guidelines:
Although the concept of E-A-T isn’t anything new for SEO agencies, the way that it is understood and adapted into use has changed over the last few years as we have come to better understand the depth of E-A-T signals and how these can be implemented across a website. The aim now is to ensure we provide a great user experience and really focus on not only answering the user’s purpose and intent, but also demonstrating that our websites are trustworthy and authoritative enough to be experts on the subject matter.
E-A-T isn’t just about on-site content or building high quality authoritative links, it’s about drawing it all together to ensure that the website as a whole is seen to carry this level of expertise, authority and trust. Internal linking and building semantic themes, creating high quality, relevant external links, creating strong on-site content and ensuring the website is easily accessed and crawled, all play their own role in supporting E-A-T. It’s important to get each piece of the puzzle working correctly to give that great overall experience.
In the last few months we’ve had more Google algorithm updates than I can remember, but there has been one consistent theme throughout them. Whether it’s aiming to drive more “Helpful Content” or looking to improve “Product Reviews” we can see that each of these updates is tied together by this underlying theme of ensuring a website has strong E-A-T signals; the algorithms are just set up to test it in different ways.
So if you haven’t got to grips with the concept of E-A-T, or perhaps you’re missing a few pieces of the puzzle, now is a great time to pull all of this together. If, in particular, external linking is one area you want to improve you can read here more about the value of external link building in E-A-T
4. Crawl, Indexation & Internal Linking
In SEO we often get caught up talking about links of the external variety but frequently forget or overlook links of the internal variety. In the majority of new clients we take on, the one thing I find above all else that needs improvement is the internal linking across the website.
Internal linking isn’t just about connecting your content together and building semantic themes (although it does a great job of this) – it’s mainly about using it to signpost to Google which of the pages on your website are most valuable, almost like drawing a map.
Google’s John Mueller reaffirmed in a recent Google Hangout that internal linking can be one of the most important aspects of SEO as it helps to signal the importance of your pages to both Google and the user. It should be used in a strategic way to think about what is most important to you and how you can signal that through effective internal linking. It’s also a great way to really build pillars around your key pages and highlight your expertise by linking related articles, key blog posts and data pieces. These can all back-up and reassure your audience of your expertise, authority and trust in these sectors.
However, we don’t just use internal linking to help signpost Google and pull together our content in pillars and semantic themes, it also plays an important role in ensuring that Google can effectively crawl and index your website. Internal links are one of the main ways that the Googlebot moves through your website, so giving it a clean and sure path through, especially to all of your key pages, plays an important role in SEO success.
Strong internal linking also helps Google to effectively index your website. If your website isn’t within Google’s index then chances are it won’t rank for anything; it needs to be in the index in the first place to be able to rank! You may have come across errors in Google Search Console where Google has crawled but not indexed your pages yet, and often through choice. This can be incredibly frustrating for webmasters as often there is not the easiest of fixes available. Having strong internal linking can help signpost to Google how valuable new and existing pages are. Additionally, it points Google in the direction of any new pages to ensure that these are quickly and effectively indexed, giving them the best possible chance to perform.
5. Great Content
Save the best until last? Solid content is a very important part of your SEO strategy and it’s important that any content you create is aimed first and foremost at your user – answer their questions, meet their purpose, deliver their expectations. By adhering to each of these elements you are able to ensure that you are delivering great content that satisfies the user’s query.
It’s important to add that great content doesn’t equal lots of content or content that gets added to a website everyday. Rather, it looks at the query contextually; is there enough content to answer the user’s question and does it do this effectively (i.e. does it get straight to the point)? Is the content laid out in such a way that the user can easily understand what is going on and does it help to make it digestible? Are you addressing your content in a conversational manner with questions and answers?
It’s also important to evaluate whether your main pages need supporting content; so looking at how you semantically link content together on the page to ensure that the user can be fully informed. If you have blog articles or news articles that relate to your main content pages, ensure that you link them closely or pop a related articles section at the end of your page. This helps you to “pillar” your content and create effective content cluster groups, showcasing your knowledge, expertise, data and analysis around a given topic and adding value to that topic’s main page.
Google is a search engine. By nature its purpose is to answer a user’s question or query. So, implementing different styles of content, such as lists or FAQs, can really help Google to understand that you have content which addresses these queries. You can enhance your content further by the implementation of Schema mark-up, which is designed through code to highlight key features of the content, this in turn can also help you to exhibit SERP features when presenting on Google.
There’s definitely a lot more to a traditional SEO strategy than just technical, content and links. If you’re looking to put more depth into your strategy, or perhaps your website is in a YMYL industry where you need to place additional focus on your key E-A-T signals, find out more about our SEO service today!
After a very busy couple of weeks at Cedarwood HQ we are finally sitting down to celebrate our recent nominations at the UK Search Awards. After our biggest year yet and off the back of landing some great new clients, we are absolutely delighted to announce that we have been nominated for 13 UK Search Awards – reflecting on our client work over the last 12 months!
The UK Search Awards are an industry recognised awards where our peers and experts from the industry come together to judge campaigns and agencies from across the country based on their performance over the last 12 months.
Our full list of nominations are:
🌟Best Use Of Search Retail (SEO) – Hayes Garden World
🌟Best Use Of Search Retail (PPC) – Hayes Garden World
🌟Best Use Of Search Finance (SEO) – Little Loans
🌟Best Use Of Search B2C (SEO) – Patient Claim Line
🌟Best SEO Campaign – Patient Claim Line
🌟Best SEO Campaign – Little Loans
🌟Best PPC Campaign – Patient Claim Line
🌟Best PPC Campaign – Hayes Garden World
🌟Best Use Of PR In A Search Campaign – EZ Shopper
🌟Best Use Of PR In A Search Campaign – Little Loans
🌟Best SEO Agency
🌟Best PPC Agency
🌟Best Integrated Agency
We look forward to seeing everyone on the evening & celebrating what has been a really great year across digital marketing! You can find the full list of finalists here
Now that we’re heading into the winter months snuggling down into a nice cosy jumper is definitely the way to go and that’s why we’re delighted to announce that we are working with ethical cashmere brand Loop Cashmere across SEO, PPC and Digital PR to help grow and develop their online store and product offering.
Founded in 2020, the brand champions the style and quality longevity of cashmere as well as being both kind to the planet and also to consumers.
Featuring timeless classics alongside a range of luxury wardrobe staples and statement styles, the cashmere is designed to look and feel good for longer and the entire creation process is focused around sustainability – leaving the planet a little bit better than how we found it.
Our work with Loop Cashmere will cover the full range of performance marketing including SEO, PPC, Digital PR and also Paid Social campaign activation across Meta platforms, designed to create a holistic marketing strategy to drive sales and visibility for the brand.
Katrina Urwin, Head of Marketing at Loop Cashmere said
“It was difficult to choose between the final agencies, but we ultimately felt that Cedarwood Digital were a great fit for the brief, and we were impressed by the people who would be working directly on the account.”
Anna Simpson, Paid Media Manager quoted
“Loop Cashmere is a great example of a business that not only creates great products, but also takes into account sustainability, showing how you can create a great quality product while also being gentle on the planet.
We’re looking forward to working closely with the brand to deliver a full performance marketing strategy to help showcase their cashmere range to consumers.”
On Wednesday night a couple of members of our team headed over to Sheffield for the bi-monthly Sheffield DM meet up – a meet up aimed at improving and building up the marketing community and Sheffield, hosted by the wonderful team over at Evoluted.
This was in fact the 23rd meet up that had been held – each of the meet ups are free and a great way to sharpen up your digital skills knowledge with talks from a range of industry speakers as well as a round table event.
Our Director, Amanda Walls, spoke at the event about the recent updates to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines and how you could develop an effective SEO and Digital PR strategy with these ideas in mind – the talk covered a number of the updates specifically related to Your Money Your Life websites and went through some key points for on-site page quality rating and how you could build expertise-driven links to support this from an off-site perspective as well. The talk will be available on the Sheffield DM website soon and we will post a link to it here.
There were some great speakers during the night including Will Hitchmough talking about three golden rules for achieving SEO success and a great roundtable hosted by Azeem Ahmad talking about digital marketing career choices. We got some great takeaways from the evening including:
The importance of identifying quick wins – in addition to building a long-term strategy for SEO, if you are limited by time and/or budget, being able to identify those quick wins is really important – and there’s a whole host of tools out there that can help you to do that!
Not being afraid to change your specialism – in some cases you might start off in one specialism but after having exposure to another realise that actually your skillset and enjoyment levels are far more preferable to that one – it’s ok to make the change, have the confidence and conviction to do it!
Relevancy is key across Digital PR – all too often we spend a lot of time focusing on building a certain number of links but we don’t look at how relevant they are – relevancy here is key in terms of building up that all important trust and expertise, so it’s important that we are paying attention to this when pulling together our Digital PR strategies.
All in all we really enjoyed the night – and look forward to the next one!
Here at Cedarwood we love a bit of interior design and are over the moon to welcome on board one of our latest Digital PR clients: Bobbi Beck. Bobbi Beck are sustainable wallpaper brand who create beautifully designed wallpapers which are eco-friendly and made right here in the UK!
The wallpaper brand focuses on producing premium wallpapers without causing any harm to the planet and every roll is crafted and packed by hand from their dedicated design and print studio based in Cornwall.
We will be working closely with them to deliver a high growth Digital PR strategy designed to gain valuable coverage for the brand and also drive some high quality links back into the website to boost SEO performance.
Jason Arrowsmith, CEO & Digital Director at Bobbi Beck said:
“After shortlisting and speaking to 5 agencies, we chose to bring Cedarwood on board as our chosen Digital PR partner. They stood out because of their complete transparency and because of their flexible approach to strategy. They took the time to listen to our requirements and goals, and presented a strategy that really aligned with those.
We’re looking forward to working together and driving great results!“
Amanda Walls, Director at Cedarwood Digital said:
“We are delighted to be working with the team at Bobbi Beck. Their ethos, approach to the environment and just beautiful designs make for a really great product that we are looking forward to working with.
Our dedicated Digital PR service and experience in the sector means that we’re well-placed to land some great coverage and content for the brand which will help to deliver great results “
To find out more about our Digital PR service head to our dedicated Digital PR page here
After a busy week on the road delivering talks at a couple of industry events it great to be back in the office and celebrating not one, not two – but three wins at last weeks’ European Paid Media & Ecommerce Awards.
We’re delighted to have been recognised alongside some amazing agencies across Europe and are even more delighted to have taken home three awards in some very coveted categories. Unfortunately we couldn’t be there in person to collect the awards due to having previously planned industry events – but we’re excited for the awards to arrive to share the success with the entire team.
The awards that we took home last week were:
European Paid Media Awards:
Retail Campaign Of The Year – Cedarwood Digital & Hayes Garden World
Small Paid Media Agency Of The Year
European Ecommerce Awards:
Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year
We are absolutely delighted to have taken home all three awards in recognition of our work over the last 12 months and look forward to continued success over the next 12 months.
Last Thursday the team headed down to MissingLink LIVE – a great free event hosted by JBH and Prowly – which brings marketers together with some great guest speakers to discuss the latest industry trends.
It was one of the first face to face events that had been held in Manchester since the lockdown so we were certainly happy to be out and about again and it was great to see such a strong turnout as people were keen to head back into the networking space.
On the night there were a number of topics covered from using Digital PR to drive trust and debunking the myths of personal branding through to understanding the value of SEO.
Our Director, Amanda Walls spoke about the recent Quality Rater Guideline updates for Google and what that means for marketers – she looked specifically at websites that fall into the Your Money Your Life category and how they can improve their websites and the way they present content to adhere to the higher page quality standards.
The night was a great success with lots of pizza eaten and wine drunk, but it was also a great opportunity to gather some key takeaways from a very valuable knowledge sharing evening.
Here are our five key takeaways from the session:
That SEO drives long term value and often people give up before they start to realise what that value actually is – a lot of businesses get impatient if they don’t see results from SEO quickly so they pack it in, but in reality they are only just getting started and could in fact be turning away their most valuable source of revenue before they have even got started
“What is common knowledge to you, is a game changer to someone else” – this was a great quote from Philip Ossai – we often under value our own knowledge because we are constantly surrounded by people in our industry, but as a result of this we forget how valuable it can be to people who don’t do our job day in day out, and how much others can gain just through sharing this knowledge
Reputation matters – whether it’s on-site or off-site, Google and users are looking for information about your reputation as a key trust signal. Sometimes we spend so much time looking only on-site that we forget to look off-site and understand what our potential customers (and Google) are reading about us
Build expertise through your links – look at factors such as relevancy, credentials of the article author and the relevancy of the publication to the topic and client that you’re covering. Rebecca used a great example of placing a healthcare client in Men’s Health Magazine, in the healthcare section by the healthcare editor – the value of quality links such as these is high in that they add those key E-A-T signals that we are often looking for
In person training sessions are BACK! This was probably one of the biggest takeaways and in this industry there is no substitute for in person learning from other industry experts.
Speakers L-R (Rebecca Moss, Amanda Walls, Philip Ossai and Andy Holland)
Image: JBH
We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and look forward to the next one!
Shopping Basket
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
