Instagram is now allowing a select number of e-commerce brands to add a new shopping bag feature to their Instagram Stories. This feature will display more images and include more details about the product, including a description and pricing information. Instagram reports 300 million people are using Instagram Stories daily,...
Google has confirmed that it has decreased the length of search snippets. Danny Sullivan of Google tweeted: “Our search snippets are now shorter on average than in recent weeks, though slightly longer than before a change we made last December. There is no fixed length for snippets. Length varies based...
The Google Featured Snippet Box, which allows increased brand exposure, has significantly altered the way in which SERPs are being presented. Despite the fact that many SEO experts were initially quite concerned that Featured Snippets would reduce the click-through-rate, they have fortunately had the opposite effect. The question is; what do...
GDPR is the biggest change to data privacy and processing in the last 20 years, and will be coming into force on the 25th May this year. It is essential that your business is ready and compliant by this date, or you risk fines of up to 20 million euros...
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on the 25th May this year – your school will need to be ready to comply with this new regulation by this date, or risk significant fines. What is GDPR? In short, GDPR is a piece of legislation that aims...
If you run a business, there’s no better time than Christmas to take advantage of the countless marketing opportunities on offer. There is plenty of scope for retailers to capitalise on the goodwill of their consumers, who are much more responsive to a larger volume of emails and whose spirits...
Google have been encouraging webmasters to add SSL/HTTPS to their sites for the last 3 years, even offering SEO benefits to people who adopt the 2048-bit key certificates on their sites. Most recently, Google have sent out email notifications via Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) to let site owners know...
Hot spots in SEO are always fought over – previously position 1 got the majority of clicks with around 30% of visitors relying on the top spot alone. More recently, position 0 was the most coveted, offering the most exposure for your content and even doubling organic traffic. But AI...
This is something business owners fear most – a complaint isn’t dealt with, the customer tweets about it, then suddenly it spirals out of control and your business’ reputation is tarnished with people who had never even heard of you before. The truth is, while most businesses are concerned about...
Losing rankings isn’t just disheartening – it can have a huge impact on your business and profits if you rely on organic traffic for sales. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses experience a sudden and dramatic change in rankings and don’t always know how to find the reason behind it. This...
Google have released a video with their official advice on how to hire a SEO. The 11-minute talk goes over the basics, including how to tell whether the SEO agency you’re speaking to is legitimate, how to hire an agency, and how to make sure that you actually see improvements....
Working with a digital agency can make a huge difference to any business, from opening up new channels to reach potential customers to drastically decreasing the cost per acquisition online. However, it is important to properly manage your relationship to ensure that you get the most out of your agency...
Until very recently, the majority of SEO efforts were focused on ranking on page 1 and in position 1 for chosen key terms, usually based around your products, services, and service location. Two years ago, Google introduced Featured Snippets, which are slowly changing how people use Google and therefore changing...
A new website can give your business a boost, especially when it is properly planned, well-written, and has sound SEO foundations. Concentrating on good content and user experience can provide a huge improvement in both rankings and conversions, but relying on the new site alone isn’t enough for sustained growth...
A year on from the launch of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), Google have announced a global rollout in mobile search results. Now that there are over 600 million AMP-enabled pages online from top publishers such as Washington Post, Slate, Gizmodo, Wired, Pinterest, eBay, and Reddit, Google are moving to the next...
Businesses can’t ignore social media – the vast majority of consumers check out companies on social networking sites before buying, and a huge 93% of consumers want companies to have a social media presence. That’s probably why we have so many businesses, large and small, coming to us asking how...
One of the biggest pieces of digital marketing news this week is Google’s format change – namely, removing ads on the right-hand side of search results. This change also means that they’ve added one more ads to the top section of search results for high volume/competition search terms. So what...
Lately quite a few of our clients are asking us if they should buy URLs that have keywords in them. Here’s what we have to say about keyword presence and search visibility. What’s Happening to My Precious Keywords? Google functionality is ever working to outsmart those who skimp on quality...
As consumers we can bemoan the Christmas decorations hitting shops mid-October, but as business owners we can’t wait until December to start preparing for Christmas. Did you know that a quarter of shoppers have already started buying gifts and decorations this month? By Cyber Monday (which falls on 30th November...
Protein World has made marketing headlines with a brand strategy that has been aligned with every value from integrity to gross moral turpitude. It started with this. This ad just got them a bomb threat. Yes, a bikini-clad woman stood against a glaring yellow background and the slogan ‘ARE YOU BEACH BODY...
This is a question clients ask us all the time; will the resources used to maintain their social presence provide results in SEO too? The short answer is ‘it depends’ – it depends on the platform, how you use it, and what Google is going to do in the next...
Personalisation marketing customises products, services and communications for potential consumers. This is done in a variety of intelligent ways from measuring need to fulfilling it via advertising, friendliness and the latest technology. Personalisation has always helped to fuel sales. Successful shopkeepers know to remember their customers’ names, welcome them back...
A great photographer has an eye for composition and can evoke warmth and a genuine expression in a subject. He or she will know how to position you in a variety of settings that will best reflect the goals and personality of your company. Instances that you would need a professional photo...
Great content has always been at the heart of compelling messages; from landmark speeches and ground-breaking novels to the finest internet landing pages. Leaders like Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou and Winston Churchill knew how to engage audiences through language. The principles they used still apply in business today. So...
Conversions are essentially the reason why most business sites exist; while traffic and engagement metrics are important in understanding how people get to the site and travel through it, everything that we do when working on a site is geared towards getting those enquiries or sales. The Challenge and the...
Choosing the right social media channels can be a challenge for small businesses; the biggest mistake businesses make is setting up accounts on far too many different platforms and then leaving them dormant after the initial push. When it comes to social, an abandoned account is worse than none at...
Small businesses in the UK are involved in over £600bn in commercial transactions, but an estimated 50% don’t even have a website. Not having an online presence can severely stunt business growth, or even reverse if it your competitors are easier to find. Unfortunately, simply building a website isn’t enough...
What is a Manual Penalty? A Manual Penalty is when Google removes your site from search results (or pushes it way to the bottom) due to unnatural links. They wreak havoc with businesses, who see a sudden and significant drop in traffic as almost all of their organic visits disappear...
Getting traffic to your site is only half the battle – once you have their attention, you need to push your audience towards converting. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t improve this process and lost a huge amount through lost traffic and abandoned carts. A huge 68% of people abandon their shopping...
Just 24 hours after launch, ShipYourEnemiesGlitter.com is up for grabs. The viral sensation gained 1 million visits, 270k social shares, and five figures in sales after being shared on social networks such as Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook. Online news sources were quick to pick up the story, which further fuelled the...
Pinterest is one of social media’s latest success stories. In 2013 it was already delivering more traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit combined, and it just keeps on growing. Now, a third of users follow a brand and 52% of daily users look on Pinterest for guidance while...
There are a lot of factors that contribute to your local SEO and a good placement on Google Maps (and the maps within search results) is a major one. Some businesses are having trouble getting their listing to come up in local searches, even though the profile is properly optimised...
Digital marketing is a fantastic way to reach a huge audience with much lower set up and maintenance costs than ‘traditional’ media. That said, there are still a lot of challenges to overcome, and businesses often have the same issues when it comes to increasing engagement and conversions online. That’s...
January is a great time to make lifestyle changes and set goals for the next 12 months, but why limit yourself to making personal changes? When it comes to digital marketing, most businesses can make a few resolutions to improve their presence, increase their conversions, and get more customers in...
How do you know if your website is usable? More companies are testing the same way their clients are buying; remotely. In your quest to improve conversion rates, crowd sourcing can save you the money and time you’d otherwise spend building your own test environment. Here are 5 options for...
Writing’s easy – we all learned it at school, right? Getting the right words on paper (or screen) can be surprisingly difficult, especially when you’re counting on the vocabulary, tone, and register to tell the reader who you are and what you stand for. Finding a brand’s voice is an...
Content is the lynchpin of SEO, but you don’t necessarily have to create written content for it to work. In fact, a multimedia approach can provide more traffic variety and increase your gains. That’s why video provides fantastic opportunities for SEO and general online exposure. Why Make Videos...
Christmas is a time for food, drink and a whole lot of watching TV. I couldn’t help notice this year how many TV adverts contained links persuading you to download apps, website addresses pushing you online, mentions of social media hash tags to discuss and the prominence of mobile alongside...
Moving film called “Abita”about Fukushima children who can’t play outside because of the radioactivity.… by Shoko Hara
Simon Mott has become the first Big Issue seller to allow his customers the ability to pay online via his smart phone. Using a mobile payment device from Swedish company iZettle Simon can securely take money from people in the street after finding few of his customers now carry cash....
