Write a blog on Algorithms they said.
What ARE algorithms? I asked?
And, with a heartfelt, ‘sorry it’s a tough one’ …research them, they said.
So, I did, and this is what I came up with.
Now, if like me, you are a complete algorithm virgin, but you want to find out about what exactly are algorithms, it will be worth reading on. Read More
Well have we got some exciting news this week for you?!? Yes, you’ll be relieved to hear that this week’s blog is not about boring old SEO stuff this time…instead, they’re letting us all out of the office!
Next week – Thursday 26th April 2018 – the GT team (well, the larger part of it) will be de-camping down to Bramhall Lane for the Sheffield Business Show. And we’re all a little bit over-excited about it to be honest. Read More
Are you looking for some quick and easy tips to get your website to rank?
Well checking out our Easy Guide to SEO Infographic will be a good place to start!
Every successful business started from an idea. In fact, everything we interact with, touch, wear, eat, read etc started from an idea.
Ideas are powerful and can be the start of something amazing. But they don’t mean anything if you don’t act on them.
Whether you have had a Eureka moment, an inspirational chat with a friend, or a slow burning germ of an idea, let’s assume your idea is there. You just need to figure out what to do with it next.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how blogs work from an SEO perspective and one of the core things I’ve been experimenting with recently is length. Specifically looking at blog word count.
There’s quite a lot of information out there about how long a blog should be and it’s something I’ve been experimenting with recently. Read More
Self-employment is a goal a lot of people have-just imagine not having to answer to anyone, working around your own priorities, and doing things the way your own experiences have shown you are right. It really can be a stress-free way of making a living.
But for many it is not possible to simply give up work and set up a business. There are bills to pay, after all! This is when a side-line business can be an excellent first step.
GrowTraffic are expert SEO consultants in Lancashire and Yorkshire and have seen our fair share of start-ups, and people making real money out of their hobby. Hey, we have even been there ourselves!
We’re going to share our top tips and ideas for setting up a side business.
Often in SEO, we discuss the issue of duplicated content. It’s something that many people working in the realm of digital marketing and copywriting are aware of, however, what do we know about the real impact of duplicated content?
Probably one of the most common myths in SEO is that duplicate content is penalised. Google reads the content of a page from an HTML perspective and when you take into account all the replicated elements shared between each page including templates etc most of the content on a page appears duplicated to Google. Read More
Google’s keyword tool was originally developed with Google Adwords users in mind. I’ve been using Adwords for more than ten years now and whilst it’s essential for this task, it’s also the basis for SEO research and many other business decisions including product development.
From the perspective of gaining rankings in Google SERPs, and thereby increase the number of visitors to a website through SEO, Google’s keyword tool can be used in a number of ways.
Before going any further I should point out that I’ve been in this game so long I still call it Google Keyword Tool when it’s proper name is now Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
The way we think about keywords has changed dramatically over the years. However many of us are still guilty of thinking about keywords too much. I think you could probably argue that our focus on keywords is a vestige of the bad old days of SEO and digital marketing. Read More
There’s going to be a huge impact to the way we do business and the way we carry out our marketing activities when The EU’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) comes into force on 25th May 2018. This got me questioning what the implications are for SEO consultants and SEO managers. Read More
I’ve been working in marketing since 2003. I created my first website in 2000. Sometime around 2004 / 2005, I started to get interested in SEO. It was during this time that I was managing a magazine called Professional Van and Light Truck Magazine. It was also around this time that I started noticing the impact promoting press releases had on our website’s rankings. Read More
So you have been running your small or medium business for a year or so and you’re doing well. Maybe you have a bit of money in the bank and want to branch out? Or perhaps you don’t have as much money in the bank and want to grow your client base. Possibly you have just hit that sweet spot of fluency and are craving that challenge and friction entrepreneurs thrive off. Whatever your reasons, you know it is time to grow your business. Right?
Us GrowTraffic folks are SEO consultants, which means we have helped our fair share of businesses grow online (and offline-we can’t help ourselves, we’re passionate!). We have put out heads together and come up with the 5 most important first steps to take when deciding how to grow your business.
So put down your snooker cue, grab a pint of Pale Rider, gi’or wi thesen, and read on to see what SEO actually is and why you need it for your business.
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
Being a freelancer has always been hard work – it requires a lot of graft and dedication to pull off being your own boss and successfully running your own business – but these days the slog is potentially even harder than it was before. Not only do you still have to do all the things that you already had to do – such as all your own sales, marketing, accounts and, obviously, the actual work – but you also now have to compete against so many other people doing exactly the same thing that you do (albeit not as well, clearly).
The reason for this increase in competition is simple; the age of the freelancer has arrived. In recent years, the freelance economy has grown exponentially (so much so, that the freelance economy is now an actual thing) and there are now more freelancers than the human race has ever experienced before. But far from this being a negative turn of events, we at GrowTraffic think this is brilliant. We love a freelancer, so it’s a case of ‘the more the merrier’ as far as we’re concerned. But what exactly has happened to facilitate this sudden explosion in freelancing, and how will it affect the way we all work as a result? Read More
I’ve been working in marketing since 2003 and a lot of that time has been spent carrying out search marketing activities. Over the years, when working on the seo of websites we’ve got closer and closer to working on the quality of the content. If you’re managing your own website you’ll have heard about the fabled Quality Content Google suggests makes sites rank in its listings, but as quality is a subjective concept I thought I’d review how to create quality content that will help your website rank. Read More
This week has seen a really interesting change in the way Google’s SERPs are being laid out, seeing Google remove the PPC ads from the right hand sidebar with immediate effect. Read More
Every business owner I’ve ever met has explained to me the things that make their business different from their competitors, however when it comes to targeting their Google they naturally want to rank for the most competitive, generic search terms. The thing is, for most businesses the best place to start is to try to target their website to those things that make their business different in the first place. The rest will come in time. Read More
I still talk to clients who want me to build them hundreds, if not thousands of links, and this comes back to a general misunderstanding about what search engine optimisation is in 2015. As a freelance seo consultant I often have to go through a phase of education, or perhaps re-education! Read More
On 26th February 2015, Google published the following announcement on their Webmaster Central Blog;
“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.”
As more and more people are now accessing the internet via mobile phones or tablets, websites need to be responsive to this so that they can be returned in the search results and viewed on any media. To makes sure that users continue to get the best results for their searches, Google’s mobile ranking factors will now not only be used to label a site as mobile friendly but will be actively used to rank websites too.
In plain English, that means that all websites will need to be responsive by 21st April 2015, otherwise they will be penalised and may even fall off the rankings altogether.
The fact that Google gave webmasters almost two months’ notice is a good indication of how significant a change this is. Clearly, they want to ensure that those websites that need to change have sufficient time to be altered or updated.
In addition to this, a couple of our clients have received email notifications advising them of the upcoming change, again ensuring that all sites are given the option to comply before the algorithm update is rolled out.
Google have actually been quite friendly about this too and have provided links on their blog to resources that will help webmasters: all the information that you will need on making your site mobile ready, including a Mobile Friendly Test for your website, can be found in Google’s Guide to Mobile-Friendly Sites. Besides some other useful tools, this guide also includes a little guide to Mobile SEO too, which is always helpful (but not as helpful as me!).
The long and short of it though is that you are just going to have to bite the bullet and make your website responsive, if it isn’t already, and that I’m afraid is going to cost money. As the majority of small to medium business owners have no idea of how to redevelop a website to get it past these new rules, most will have to go back to their web developers and pay a few hundred pounds at the very least.
Although we’re primarily a Freelance SEO Consultancy, optimised web design is intrinsic to effective SEO and so it’s something that we offer for what we think are very reasonable prices. We work with a few select Freelance Web Designers, whom we have worked with for years and whose expertise and knowledge we know we can rely on.
As such, we will be offering all of our relevant existing clients an upgrade to ensure their websites will ride out the upcoming algorithm updates and maintain the high position in the search results that we have worked so hard to achieve.
If you are not a current client of ours (you must be mad!) but are in need of some advice on the upcoming changes and how they may affect you, or if you know that your website is not mobile ready and need to take action urgently, then please do get in touch today and we will steer you through the process from beginning to end. We look forward to hearing from you.
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