Since the dawn of the internet, businesses have been collecting data about our online habits. These organisations have a huge amount of information about us, but Google knows more about you than most. Read More
The way to effectively create a well-known brand is exposure. Numerous small businesses are created fall mostly as a result of their neglect to consolidate the online showcasing of their product or service. Read More
Marketing is changing with the changing face of the way we consume content and media and it’s important that marketers, and especially online marketers step up and take more proactive leadership roles within businesses. Read More
According to the latest search market share numbers released by ComScore on 14th August 2015, Google’s share of the US search market has dropped slightly. Before we all panic and predict the demise of the search giant though, I must qualify that statement by admitting that the fall is not significant; nevertheless, the latest figures do show a loss of ground on Google’s part, to the benefit of its two largest competitors, Bing and Yahoo.
So, let’s take a closer look at the most recent figures and statistics and see what they’re showing us about the performance of the largest search engines globally. Read More
I’ve been a little bit quiet on the old blog front recently because, to tell you the truth, I’ve just been swamped with work (which – as Simon Dalley says – is a good problem to have!) but I wanted to tell you about a fabulous event that I attended last week courtesy of Alder Grange School Sixth Form College in Rawthenstall.
As part of their Enterprise Week for Year 10 pupils, and representing GrowTraffic, I was lucky enough to be able to spend a morning with pupils as a business mentor, offering support and advice for their project on Tourism in Rossendale. Not only did I enjoy myself much more than I was expecting to, it was also really heartening to see such enthusiasm and dedication from all the students involved. Read More
(This article was originally written and published in May 2014)
OK, so you’ve paid your fancy web designer a small fortune and you’ve got the whizziest website on the World Wide Web, but your sales haven’t increased and your boss thinks you’re crazy for wasting all that money. Don’t panic! There’s one simple thing you can change to instantly improve your snazzy new website; the content.
Whether it’s content or copywriting, it needs to be good and it needs to be plentiful. Yes, a website needs to look good and it always helps to be innovative, but what you say on your website is even more important than how it looks. As the research is now proving, without well written, relevant and regularly updated content your website will fail to climb in the rankings or to produce those all important conversations. Read More
Following in the footsteps of Facebook and Instagram, Twitter announced yesterday that it will shortly be autoplaying all videos by default, meaning that we can now all look forward to many more wasted hours of our lives watching cats fall down toilets or rhinos making friends with lambs. Read More
Yesterday, I read a really interesting blog post on Search Engine Journal by Tom Demers entitled 5 Reasons Why It’s OK To Mention Competitors In Your Content. Funnily enough, this post struck an instant chord with me, as it almost word for word echoed a conversation I had with one of my clients a week or so ago. So, I thought I’d share it with you so that you can see just how right Tom Demers is about this very valid point!
As the title of the blog suggests, Tom’s post listed 5 reasons why writing about your competitors in your content marketing can be a positive thing; I obviously don’t want to go over everything again that Tom wrote, as he made his points very eloquently and you’re perfectly capable of reading it for yourself. Instead, I’ll give you Tom’s reason’s summarised and then relate them to my client and the answers I gave her. Read More
About 6 months ago, I embarked upon my first project management of an SEO web build. As a Freelance SEO Copywriter, the building of websites is not usually my domain and that was a state of affairs that I was perfectly happy with, but the boss said project manage and so project manage I did. Well, I tried. Read More
Well I’ve been a very busy little bee over the past couple of weeks, so much so that I haven’t even found time to pen a little GrowTraffic blog post; my clients have had loads but the GT world has been woefully neglected. Fortunately, Simon Dalley’s been stepping in to fill the blogging void, so I think we’ll probably survive, however it’s about time I started to pull my blogging weight so here’s a quick little post to keep you going. Read More
Most business people will understand the difference between paid for listings and organic listings on Google and most of them will be determined to appear highly in the organic listings as they generally percieve this (often erroneously) to be the cheapest way to get online traffic. Read More
Google’s going to start ranking websites higher that make their websites secure by utilising encrypted HTTPS connections. Read More
This is less about SEO and search marketing than I normally talk about, however much in the same way as digital marketing is part of the digital revolution I think it’s important as a freelance seo consultant to be knowledgeable about the things going on around us and those potential future trends. Read More
You may already be familier with Google’s Patent that modifys the search results when they pick up an SEO technique (if you’ve not take a look at SEO by the Sea). The new patent is essentially designed to confuse people using spamming techniques by making those techniques difficult to report on. Rand Fishkin in his private blog seems to suggest that this is solely based on link spamming, however having read the patent I’m nnot convinced this solely relates to links. Read More
Instagram, a photo sharing app and community for iPhone users and also for those with an Android, is a great way to show off your best photographs while meeting new friends. Although you can use Instagram as an easy way to transfer pictures to your favorite social networking sites, Instagram can be so much more than that. Over the last few years as an seo consultant it’s become more apparent that social media marketing is becoming crucial to running a successful seo campaign and Instagram although relatively new is definitely one such community that needs to be tapped in to. Read More
With all of Google’s recent updates there has been a flurry of SEOs out there that have repositioning themselves as Negative SEOs – that is people that can intentionally hurt the rankings of your competitors. Read More
At the begining of the web, directories were one of the main ways in which websites owners and proto-seos could promote themselves. it now appears that Google has begun to de-index directories, much in the same way they de-indexed blog networks earlier this year. Read More
You may have noticed that in the last few days there has been a bit of a shift around in the rankings. Some people have gained, some people have a bit of work to do. I’m pleased to say on this occassion Grow Traffic seems to have gained, or at least it seems to have regained some of the rankings that we’ve always been strong for. The new update is called Google Penguin, there was a movement in the search community to get it called Google Titanic update however that seems to be out at sea a bit and Penguin Update has stuck. Read More
This is the next SEO technique that Google appears to be going after (or has gone after big style in the last couple of months). A blog network is a group of blogs – normally bog standard wordpress installs, with basic wordpress templates and lots of content. Generally this content is generated explicitly for the purposes of creating links back to a website. Read More
Recently there has been a flurry of people reporting they have been hit with a Webmaster tools penalty that focus’ on the backlinks coming into the site – as this coincides with the most recent update to the Google Panda update (Panda 3.3) I’m assuming it’s part of this update.
Google’s Panda updates exist outside Google’s normal algorithm changes, they are run regularly to tidy up the rankings and the aim of them is to hunt out wrong doers and penalise them for their wrong doings. Read More
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