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Cedarwood Digital @ Sheffield DM!

by Cedarwood Digital News

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!

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New Client Alert: Bobbi Beck

by Cedarwood Digital NewsDigital PR & Outreach tipsUncategorised

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

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Cedarwood Win Three Awards In Europe

by Cedarwood Digital News

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.

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Cedarwood Digital At MissingLink LIVE!

by Cedarwood Digital NewsUncategorised

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:

  1. 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
  2. “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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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!

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Cedarwood Nominated In Two Categories At The UK Ecommerce Awards

by Cedarwood Digital NewsUncategorised

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

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Cedarwood Win Small Integrated Agency Of The Year At The UK Digital Growth Awards

by Cedarwood Digital News

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!

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Cedarwood Win Twice At European Search Awards

by Cedarwood Digital News

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!

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Cedarwood Nominated For Six European Search Awards

by Cedarwood Digital News

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…)

You can find the full list of nominations here


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Cedarwood Win Silver At The Northern Digital Awards

by Cedarwood Digital News

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.

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manchester marketing agency

Why We Love Being A Manchester SEO Agency

by Cedarwood Digital NewsSEO

Our Director, Amanda Walls, set up Cedarwood Digital after working in digital marketing for several years. Having created training courses for Google and training thousands of individuals through Facebook’s Digital Skills Program, she knows more about SEO than most people know about themselves. After travelling all over the world, Amanda tied her flag to Manchester’s mast and decided to start her own digital marketing company.

A different SEO agency

It’s the norm nowadays to have account managers who are assigned to individual clients. Common belief is that they tie things up neatly and ensure one point of contact. But what if the norm isn’t necessarily the best way? 

At Cedarwood, we take a unique, hands-on approach. Every team member works with every client and gets to know them as a person, not an account number – becoming an extension of your in-house team. So, if your DPR needs a push, you speak to our PR expert, and if you’re interested in Google Ads, our PPC whizz is at the end of the phone (or video chat). No matter where you’re located, we’re here to help. Our clients are based all over the UK and we build personal, lasting relationships with every client. It’s what sets Cedarwood apart.

We’re based in Linley House, in the heart of Manchester

Where We Work

Our office is located well and truly in the heart of the city – just seconds from the Palace Theatre, and minutes from St Peter’s Square. We share a building with other SMEs which brings a strong sense of community and people bringing in their dogs is also an unexpected perk. Amanda chose Clockwise in Manchester because it’s the right mix of work and play, and gives us the space we need to be creative and focus on growing.

Manchester also plays host to several digital marketing award ceremonies. We’re proud to have been finalists in many of them, including The Northern Digital Awards. Obviously there’s friendly rivalry and we find a bit of competition is a great motivator, but it’s also great to be able to celebrate the achievements of the numerous digital marketing agencies in Manchester.  There are over 200 in fact, and the city’s thriving business scene makes it a real hub for marketers. There’s always a networking event to attend or industry talk to learn from. It’s a bustling city known for its vibrant culture and we can’t forget the impressive number of choices for after-work drinks. 

Our team comes from the North, the South and even Australia but we all agree that Manchester’s booming SEO sector offers the perfect place for us.

A kitchenette in the Clockwise office

The growth of e-commerce and the turn towards a much more digital world makes working in SEO and digital marketing challenging but exciting. We never want to rest on our laurels and being in the cut and thrust of a thriving city, in an industry that continues to grow, is more than worth the early morning tram ride and occasional rainy day.

Find out more about our team on our About Us page and have a look at what our Manchester based SEO Services can do for you.

Cedarwood Digital: a year in review

Cedarwood Digital: a year in review

by Cedarwood Digital News

As 2018 draws to a close, we at Cedarwood are reflecting on what has been our most successful year to date. For both ourselves as a company, and for our clients, we have achieved exceptional business growth and development, and generally have a lot to shout about!

New client wins & successes

This year we have taken on a range of new and exciting clients, including the international brand design consultancy Elmwood and Ovo, the UK’s leading positive energy supplier. Our PPC campaigns have seen great success, increasing transactions for Casa Bella Furniture by 51.66% and revenue by 41.41% in the year period. Aided by the introduction of the new display campaign, we also accomplished increasing paid traffic for Patient Claim Line by 465.89%.

Always striving to stay current with marketing techniques, we were quick to utilize Google’s new creation of “Smart Shopping” which was introduced in the second half of the year. This has already seen great success, bringing in impressive revenue at 800% Return On Ad Spend for Hayes since its introduction in July. Our Smart Shopping campaign for Casa Bella also brought a fruitful 900% ROAS.

This year Cedarwood have continued to build strong media relationships, which we hope to maintain and evolve further in 2019. Through tactical content and outreach techniques we have secured numerous features for Hayes Garden World in high profile publications, including The Telegraph, The Independent, and The Daily Mail. Our link strategy has proven effective, and we have secured prime time TV coverage for key products, increasing brand visibility and relevance.

       

The Cedarwood team

In November, we were delighted to attend the Northern Ecommerce Awards. It was an honour to be involved and to have our progress recognised, as we were shortlisted for the Small Agency of The Year award for 2018. We were also thrilled to expand the Cedarwood family, and welcome three new members of the team – Anna, Ed and Alex. Each of them have brought their own unique skills and expertise, making our marketing abilities even stronger and more diverse. A bigger and better team calls for a bigger and better office space, so 2018 also involved upgrading the Cedarwood HQ and relocating to a shiny new office space.

The Cedarwood Digital team has continued to grow this year 

 

Finally, our managing director Amanda has done some impressive work with Google Digital Garage this year. Providing training courses to marketers across the North West, she is sharing her invaluable expertise across the region, and doing Cedarwood Digital proud.

We would like to say a huge thank you to the whole team and to our wonderful clients who have made 2018 a sparkling and successful year for Cedarwood. Here’s to an even brighter 2019!

Cedarwood Digital staff photo

Cedarwood Digital shortlisted for the Northern Ecommerce Awards

by Cedarwood Digital News
We are excited to announce that Cedarwood Digital has been shortlisted for The Northern E-commerce Awards – Small Agency of The Year 2018. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at the Hilton hotel on the 6th November. Speaking about the awards, Director Amanda Walls said:
“We are delighted to have been shortlisted in such a strong group of agencies for the Northern E-commerce Awards. The team has been working incredibly hard on our e-commerce campaigns and it is great to see their work gain the recognition it deserves.”
We have been recognised for our work with Hayes Garden World which is one of the UK’s leading independent garden retailers. The team have worked hard to grow Hayes’ online presence through SEO optimisation, paid search and online media. And we’ve secured incredible results; Hayes has seen 200,000 additional organic visitors and a revenue growth of 110%. Check out our full Hayes Garden World case study for more details. We look forward to hearing the winners announcement.