Short Form Video for Business

Short-form video is having a moment. From TikTok to Instagram Reels, businesses are flocking to these platforms to connect with audiences in a new and exciting way. But what exactly is short-form video, and why is it so important for businesses?

What is Short-Form Video? 

Short-form video is essentially any video that is less than 60 seconds long. These videos typically appear as TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. They are usually highly engaging and shareable, making them perfect for capturing attention and building brand awareness.

Why is Short-Form Video Important for Businesses?

It not if you don't want to engage with your customers and market, but if you do want to engage with them, here's some benefits you see fairly quicky.

It's highly engaging. Short-form videos are designed to be watched quickly and easily. This makes them perfect for capturing the attention of busy consumers.

It's shareable. Short-form videos are often shared on social media and other platforms. This can help you reach a wider audience and build brand awareness.

It's cost-effective. Short-form videos are relatively inexpensive to produce. This makes them a great option for businesses of all sizes.

It's versatile. Short-form videos can be used for a variety of purposes, such as product demos, customer testimonials, and behind-the-scenes content.

How Can a Business Use Short-Form Video

Not sure how to use short-form video for your business, here are a few tips that might help you:

Start by identifying your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your videos? Once you know your target audience, you can create content that is relevant to them.

Keep your videos short and sweet. Remember, you only have a few seconds to capture your audience's attention. Make sure your videos are concise and to the point.

Use high-quality visuals and audio. Your videos should be visually appealing and easy to hear.

Use a strong call to action. What do you want your viewers to do after watching your video? Make sure to include a clear call to action, such as visiting your website or following you on social media.

Promote your videos. Share your videos on social media and other platforms. You can also use paid advertising to reach a wider audience.

OK, I'm convinced that I need to use Short Form Video, but for what?

Product demos. Short-form videos are a great way to show off your products and services.

Customer testimonials. Use short-form videos to share positive customer feedback.

Behind-the-scenes content. Give your audience a glimpse into your company culture with behind-the-scenes videos.

Educational content. Use short-form videos to teach your audience about your products or services.

Interactive content. Encourage your audience to participate in your videos by asking questions or challenges.

Short-form video is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes connect with their audiences. By following these simple tips, you will create engaging and effective short-form videos that will help you achieve your business goals.

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Really Simple Keyword Research

Let's remember that Googles aim is to deliver to the user the most relevant results possible. So keyword research should focus around INTENT and TOPIC RELEVANCE to your business.

HEADLINE KEYWORDS

Single words or acronyms i.e. "Beer" - these are the worst type of keywords to optimise for (mainly because the intent is not clear, and typically usersresearch and more information), as intent is not clear, traffic will be poor and conversions will be low, but worst of all is that competition will be massively high and you'll need a ton of money and manpower to rank successfully for them.

BODY KEYWORDS 

Typically these are 2-3 word keywords i.e. "Best Beer" - while the intent of the searcher is a little clearer, it's still not 100% clear what they are trying to achieve with their search. These terms are often very competitive, because as keywords they are generally easier to find, this high competitiveness and therefore expensive in time and money to rank well for.

LONG TAIL KEYWORDS

4 or more words i.e. "Best Beer From The Supermarket" , these are the best type to optimise for as the intent of the searcher is much clearer. It will also be a much less competitive keyword.

It's important in the early stages of keyword research that 100% of keywords identified should be based on INTENT, yes search volume is important, but INTENT will ensure that anyone that finds your site WILL BE more likely to purchase. Your conversion rate will be higher, and will likely generate more good quality leads, plus competition will be lower, meaning ranking high for these keywords will be much easier.

PHASE 1 - EXISTING KEYWORDS

Use your existing searches and keyword data to give you inspiration for your keyword analysis, the easiest place to find these is in your Google Search Console, Google is already suggesting that you are ranking well for these keyworks, so it will be easier for you to take advantage of them.

Categorise these keywords into:

LOW HANGING FRUIT - keywords that are currently ranking from positions 2 to 15. Remember to prioritise keywords that based on INTENT and RELVANCE to your business.

EXISTING KEYWORDS - these are ranking from position 16 to 50. Make these your second priority keywords to look at.

POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITIES - these are keywords that are ranking from position 51 to 100. These keywords are outside of the top 50, so would suggest that you are simply not putting enough effort into these pages. On these look at the long tail key phrases and consider writing a blog post around each phrase.

PHASE 2 - KEYWORD DISCOVERY

Use SEMRUSH to help you discover new keywords (you can create a free account).
Navigate to 'Keyword Magic Tool' to discover for free some new ideas for keywords.

• Start looking at Keywords that are ranked at VERY EASY.
• Create a list of possible new keywords for you to rank for.
• Once you have a list of possible keywords, I sometimes like to search for these on Wikipedia and that can sometimes provide you with additional topics and keywords that are highly relevant to your site.  Use these new and related phrases in SEMRUSH to get more keywords.

PHASE 3 - ALSO ASKED

At the bottom of any Google search is a section that is often forgotten about called 'People Also Searched For', you can use some of these as your keywords, or try alsoasked.com to get a clearer picture and more potential keywords. 

Again, enter one of your best keywords into the search bar and it will provide you with a list of relevant phrases and questions that searches are looking for right now. These tend to make great topics for blog posts, and the chances are your competitors will not be using any of these terms.  Now while these won't bring you lots of traffic, they will make your site more relevant in the eyes of Google.


IMPORTANT:
When it comes to creating content one your website, remember to use only ONE PRIMARY KEYWORD.
Your Primary Keyword MUST address the intend of the searcher. To help decide what your primary keywords should be consider:

• What are you currently ranking well for
• Aim for keywords that have a search volume of at least 200 searches per month
• Only choose a primary keyword with a low competition
• Consider the intend of the searcher
• Make it hyper relevant to your offering
• Click potential - linked to intent, if someone searches for this primary keyword and finds your listing, how likely are they to click through to your site!

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Is Your Business Known For Being Reliable and “Getting The Job Done”? – Then Beware!

It’s a myth in modern business that having a reputation for being “reliable” and being known for “getting the job done” makes you valuable and indispensable to your customers.

It’s all part of the fabric of business, but you need to be known for more than this because if your customer ever looks for more, they won’t come banging on your door.

Today, as a business you need to be known as someone that can improve and enhance the results of customers, you need to prove that you can solve their problems and move them forward.

If you fall at any of these fences, then your customers could cut you loose if they ever need a supplier that can go that extra mile for them, and because they see you as a capable business that does a great job, it could be a difficult decision for them, but it’s a decision that they WILL make if they need to.

The truth of the matter is that today you need to be known as a business that adds value – there is therefore an importance to define where and how you can add this value.

Most of this stems from having a real partnership with your customers and truly understanding them and the market(s) in which they operate; this will allow you to not only fully understand any problems that is given to you (so you can provide the very best solution), but you can also add value by spotting opportunities for your customers before they do.

Working in this way will lead you to become indispensable and ensure that your customers never want to lose you as a partner.

>>

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn in July 2017

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New, unconfirmed Google ranking update ‘Fred’ shakes the SEO world!

"New, unconfirmed Google ranking update ‘Fred’ shakes the SEO world!"

I love this headline from searchengineland; we get this news a couple of time a year and it never fails to make me laugh!

It looks as if Google could have released yes another algorithm change that take a long hard look at the quality of a websites links before deciding whether that sites ranking needs to be improved or demoted.

But again it, this new ‘Fred’ update seems to have caught the SEO industry off-guard as is sending waves of panic across the community, but why this always makes me laugh is that if these SEO practitioners did their job right in the first place and looked to place good quality content on webpages with good quality (not spammy) links linking to the content then there wouldn’t be a problem.

The worry look on the faces of SEO professionals out there is a clear sign that they know that they have done something bad (black hat SEO) in the past and they are scared that their past is going to come along and bite them in their @rse.

I for one (as well as others like me), sit back and actually watch our ranking improving; I was struggling with one competitive term that seemed stuck as #8 suddenly yesterday leapt to #2, and I’m seeing positive moves across a range of sites and keywords.

I’m sitting pretty, I just wish all of my colleagues would learn and start doing their jobs properly!

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Why is it so hard to rank well on Google?

I have recently been involved with a discussion about ranking on Google on LinkedIn, it has become more difficult to rank highly now, but why, these are my notes on it.

Any web marketer or somebody who owns a website realises (or should realise) the importance of high search engine rankings. Any webmaster who is serious about succeeding online should know that you need to be on the first page of Google results, but more importantly you need to be at positions 1, 2 or 3.

There was a time when achieving high search engine ranks was not really very difficult, all you had to do was create content, didn’t particularly need to be useful or of high quality, dump some keywords in it loads of times and *BANG* you were done and could with little effort rank highly.

Google changed a few its indicators around 2005, so with the same content you just had to throw some links in (predominately from link farms, article networks, blog networks and directories) and you ranked well.

From about 2007, things really started to get really difficult, and as every year marches forward Google just keep making the SEO role more and more difficult.

Today, there is a huge amount of competition out there in all markets. Achieving a page one rank in Google (and the rest of the search engines) has become extremely tough, unless of course you are working smart.

Working smart will often mean here the ability to choose the right set of tools – tools that can rocket your web visibility by taking your website from the lower ends of search engine results all the way to very top. See a previous post - Internet Business Promoter (IBP) Axandra Software Review.

A page one rank is all you need to rocket your web traffic that will blow your mind, however, traffic is just one side of the coin and if you want to convert traffic then you need to look at Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), but that’s a completely different subject.

Anyway, the real reason why it’s more difficult to rank on Google is that they want to present the very best results to us searchers, and their tweaks and modifications to their algorithm is all just designed to ensure that the sites that are well liked, with the best content rise to the top – it’s that simple really.

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Internet Business Promoter (IBP) Axandra Software Review

I’ll say right from the start that the way that most SEO software products try to rank your webpages doesn’t work; sure they can help you decide which keywords to use and where they should go in your webpage, but other than that they really can’t push you to the top of Google.

 

I’ve been working in digital marketing for more years than I care to remember and to be honest with you; Internet Business Promoter, or IBP as it is popularly referred to, is the best thing for ranking since sliced bread!

 

Obviously it’s a good idea to analyse your pages to ensure that they are perfectly optimised for the given keyword(s), but unfortunately Google simply doesn’t work like that.

 

Google doesn’t care about your optimisation in silo, they want to know how good your site is against your competitions sites, it quickly works out which sites are worthy of being on the first page of their results; so it would make perfect sense to optimise against these top 10 results – and that’s exactly what IBP does.

 

Once you enter you primary keyword, IBP does a search (either on Google or your preferred search engine) for that term then analyses the top 10 sites to see where they have put their keywords, how many times, are they in bold, the title, description etc., and then it presents you with the results in an easy to follow report that is your roadmap for updating your page to be as good as these on the first page.

 

This on-page SEO analysis isn’t the end of it for IBP; it also looks at the inbound links so you know if there is room for improvement there too.

 

One of the great things about IBP is that it will never offer any advice that will be a short-cut to SEO success. It may take some time (as any SEO does), but if you follow its advice your website is more likely to succeed. But remember, just like life, there is no guarantee that it will actually work.

 

IBP is actually a suite of tools from Axandra. These tools allow you to do the following:

 

1. Research the most potent keywords in your niche/market
2. Optimise your website for these keyword(s)
3. Generate high quality back links for improving your Page Rank and rankings, and
4. Track the position of your website as it improves its search engine ranks.

So all in all it’s an excellent piece of software that I use in my professional role on a day to day basis, the only thing I would say is that you shouldn’t expect magical results, the software is excellent and keeps updating itself as Google releases changes to its algorithm, but even if your page(s) were exactly like pages in the top 10 with more links into it, there could still be indicators that Google looks at that could still put these sites above yours (i.e. design, architecture, bounce rate, times on site, previous penalties etc.)

 

But all in all, if you are serious about ranking well on Google then you need to invest in this software.

Download it for a FREE trial now.

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SEOPressor Review: How to dominate Google search rankings when using WordPress

Effectively SEOPressor vs Yoast SEO

The first time I managed a WordPress site it came with Yoast already ready for me to continue the SEO, and for a long time I really didn’t know any different; but I became concerned that my SEO work wasn’t having the effect that I needed, so I started my search for a new WordPress SEO plugin.

After a fair bit of searching and testing I landed on SEOPressor, and loved it, but if you want a little more detail then hopefully this short review will help.
Start taking a closer look at SEOPressor today, click here for more information.

So which SEO plugin is best for your WordPress website?

If you’re just starting out or you’re simply looking to make the most out of your website content with videos, articles, categories, tags etc. then Yoast SEO should be good enough for you.

On the other hand, if you are serious about marketing your website and squeezing that little bit extra out of your SEO, then I would highly recommend using SEOPressor Connect.

For the basic stuff they can both pretty much do the same thing, but never versions of SEOPressor now comes with some really great features that really does push your rankings higher.

For a FREE eBook about speeding up your WordPress site (to improve rankings), just enter your details below.   Name:   Email:

click here for your free autoresponder

Choose up to 3 Keyword/Phrases
OK, it’s the free Yoast SEO plugin that only lets you choose a single keyword/phrase for SEO purposes, but to get multiple keyword focus on Yoast costs a minimum of $69. Whilst you do pay for SEOPressor, the standard version lets you focus on three keywords. Making it easier if you don’t know (or not sure) which term to rank for immediately.


Real-time LSI Recommendations

The best part of the latest version of SEOPressor is real-time LSI recommendations; it will actually recommend Latent Semantic Indexing keywords to use, this is important as Google uses LSI to better understand what your webpages and website is all about. Once you enter your primary search term(s) into SEOPressor the LSI keyword recommendations start suggesting other useful keywords and terms you should be using in your content to get Googles full attention and to ensure that you really dominate the rankings for your chosen term(s). This is not available on any other WordPress SEO plugin and is a priceless addition to WordPress.


Real-time Keyword density

If you’re heavily into your keyword density (which I’m not) then this is a really useful feature as you see your keyword density on the fly, it can be really useful if you want to get the keyword density down you can see it going down as you add more content in real-time rather than having to ‘run’ a request.


Over optimisation alerts

If you are working on a page that is overly optimised (which could seriously damage ranking), you’ll get a real-time alert letting you know that something has gone wrong and you need to look more closely at your optimisation.


Social SEO

Usually when you share content, the social platform you are using will automatically pick and display the Description of the page, whilst this can sometimes be all you need, but social channels are more personal that webpages and Google search, so it makes sense to alter key landing pages to add a little more personality into your description. This is particularly true if you sell to Businesses and Consumers – typically Businesses might only see you on Twitter and LinkedIn (SEOPressor doesn’t actually support LinkedIn yet), but you could in theory have a more professional description on Twitter to that on Facebook to help talk to your different target audiences.


Internal Link Manager

SEOPressor allows you to effortlessly fix, build, and manage the perfect internal link structure to increase your reader’s retention and reduce bounce rate.


Other great features:

SEO Score: SEOPressor let's you set a lower limit for SEO score, if the content you have created doesn't pass the limit it won't let you publish it.

SEO Checklist: SEOPressor uses a checklist approach so that it becomes easy to create great content time after time, useful if you have a team of content developers and you want the same quality from the team.

Overall

SEOPressor just seems to have been built with Google rankings in mind, and take it for someone that has been in the digital marketing space for more years that I care to remember, this works the closest to how Google actually thinks and ranks, making it a clear winner in my books.

For a FREE eBook about speeding up your WordPress site (to improve rankings), just enter your details below.   Name:   Email:

click here for your free autoresponder

SEOPressor Review

This is a quick video I put together that explains some of the key differences.

 

Best of luck with your SEO :-)

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Get Google reviews easily

Reviews on Google could have a small (and positive) impact on your search engine rankings, but more importantly they allow potential customers to see what a great service you offer, which will help drive traffic to your website and aid conversions.

We all trust what other people say about businesses (we tend to ask for personal recommendations ourselves), so the reviews act to reinforce the positive messages that you put out to the market. In addition, businesses can strengthen their relationship with their market by engaging with them directly through their reviews on Google.

Leaving a review is quick and easy to do, and can be left on a desktop, smartphone or tablet and you’ll start to see those wonderful review stars in your listings as reviews get left for you, they make your business really standout from the crowd.

Remember, people can leave a review for you on Google whether you like it or not, so you are best engaging with the reviews to ensure that you get the most from it.

Here is my simple three step process for getting more positive reviews on Google and use it to create more business for yourself.

Step 1: The most important thing is to ensure that your business information is verified on Google as only verified businesses can respond to reviews.

Here is more information on how to verify your business on Google (https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778)

Step 2: Encourage customers to write a Google review for you.

Simply remind your customers once they have had a positive dealing with you to write a review for you on Google, reviewers do need a Google account, so it can sometime mean that not everyone can write a review for you (I know, it seems crazy that some people out there don’t own a Google account!).

If they search for your business name on Google, they should see a full panel in the results with your businesses details on them, they just need to click the “Write a review” button.

You could always email them a link to your page to make the whole process easier for them!

Step 3: Be active and engage with reviewers

It helps people to decide to leave a review if they see that you engage and thank reviewers, others will see that you value the input of customers and will want to leave you their reviews too.

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How to rank for RankBrain

Launched in early 2015, RankBrain is Google’s machine learning technology, it uses artificial intelligence to help Google understand exactly what you want to find with your search and delivers you highly relevant search results.

So how do you rank for RankBrain?

Actually the answer is rather simple and something that I’ve been advocating for years now, we know that RankBrain is effective for the 15-20% of the queries that Google has never seen before; this clearly indicates that these are natural language queries, typically long typed out queries or more likely voice queries asked on smart devices (smartphones, tablets etc.).

So optimising for these is easy, just write in natural language, write for humans, write for your target audience. If in doubt read your content out load to see if it makes sense (again, something I’ve been advocating for years), if it doesn’t make sense then your content isn’t correctly optimised and it need rewriting.

As a content writer, you tend to find that the highest quality content is written in a very natural way that is conversational.

So that’s it, check your content, check that it reads well and you will improve your Google rankings.

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Data or Creativity?

Had an interesting chat with an old colleague of mine the other day who came through the old school marketing ranks (to be fair, so did I), he spent a lot of time in a senior data role in a telecoms company we both worked for; and he has kept the strong ethos that marketing should be strongly data-led first and foremost, it should be the driving force behind the strategy and tactics of the business.

I disagree to some extent, there are obviously times when data is incredibly important (predominately if you are doing some qualitative research on what your target market(s) think about you or you are analysing analytics from campaigns or web site etc), but this should only inform you and not be the single driving force behind any major business decisions or campaigns.

Data (just like technology) enables opportunities for marketers, but the creativity is where the real value is created.

I think we see this problem occurring everyday, big brands push their flashing advertising on us, but very little of it sticks in the minds of the consumers – they lack the creativity needed to be memorable (and therefore successful), I’m sure the data says the execution was perfect, but if it doesn’t hold consumers interest or create that desire, you’ve lost the war.

So yes, data is important, let it drive discussion and debate in the boardrooms (I’m all for that), but never let it drive business decisions; creativity is what’s needed to drive the creation of the value, and it’s this value which will ultimately decide whether your strategies and tactics are successful.

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From Just One Pound

Going off at a slight tangent this post, but at a recent networking event I became interested in the scalability of businesses and in particular how businesses can start from nothing and grow into huge financial concerns.

I was talking to a group of small business owners, one of which was the very proud owner of small retail business that literally started with one pound and had grown it from there into a very sizeable business indeed and is now turning over many thousands of pounds in about 18 months.

Unfortunately, she had some to a sticking point in which she was struggling to get the business to grow further; it all seemed to stem from the fact that she had started the business with no real vision of what she wanted the business to be or do and so she didn’t really have any idea on how she wanted it to grow in the future.

We talked for a while and I realised that as well needing some assistance with asking the difficult strategic questions (who is the customer?, what do they value?, how is she value better than her competitors? etc), she needed something very visual to grab hold of in order to help her move forward.

As she started the business with just £1, I started to look at business milestones from the point of view of how that simple one pound coin, had grown. How quickly did she double that pound? With that £2 how didn’t did she double that to £4 etc, I started to draw it out for her and she liked the concept.

I’ve replicated it below, the simple idea is that from a single £1, doubling your money each step, it’s just 21 steps to you making your first £1m.

She’s pinned this on her office wall and she marking out these 21 milestone steps, dating each step as see goes, she has found visualisation of her business incredibly powerful, she is also undertaking a proper strategic review to ensure that she is making her money doing the very best activities.

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Volkswagen cannot possibly survive the emissions scandal unscathed

The emissions scandal surrounding the battered car manufacturer, Volkswagen, will hit such heights that the brand will be unlikely to survive as it is today, it will have to change.

It’s been about ten days now since the use of a “defeat device” by VW to cheat emissions tests around the work surfaced, in that time we have learnt that over 11m vehicles are affected which in turn have been spewing millions of tonnes of emissions and poisonous gases into the atmosphere.

Their CEO has already gone, and at the moment three other senior executive are under investigation, all their brands have been implemented and it will cost them £billions to sort out.

Not only will they have to recall all of their cars for fixing, but they have fines coming out of their ears and VW owners are clamouring for compensation.

Volkswagen had one of the strongest brands in the auto industry before all this, so what is likely to happen to it?

The brand impact

Volkswagen were a trusted brand, but the admission that they purposely cheated the emission tests to con the car industry and consumers will hurt them badly, VW deliberately set out to break the law.

On a positive note, it looks like consumers still some faith in the brand as retailers in the UK haven’t noticed any major dip in the public looking to purchase the brand, although now we know for a fact that this isn't just a US problem and we have 1.2m of these vehicles in the UK – this may change.

But experts do expect sales to decline considerably.

So can Volkswagen survive?

Volkswagen has promised to spend at least £4.7bn to help “restoring consumer trust” in the brands they control, my gut feeling is that they need considerably more than this.

In a statement the brand said its “top priority” was to avert damage to customers and it will inform the public constantly and transparently on further progress.  They want to win back trust and credibility.

But whilst the Volkswagen brand is unlikely to die as a result, it’s not impossible that it could disappear!

What is more likely is that the country could be restructured and broken up, some of its brands could be sold off.  The global fines could be anywhere between £15bn and £25bn – selling off parts of the business could help the Group to recoup much of that money.

It could turn into a case of not just protecting the brand, but protecting the car business from going under!

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Link Building in 2015

Links, the lifeblood of websites, without these your website will not not highly on search engines, if you can't be found on search engines then you'll not get the visitors your business desperately needs.

Link building is fraught with difficulty, recent Google updates mean that if you get links from a poor website, then it will negatively effect your ranking.

But how can you get these all important links?

Two recent posts on LinkedIn help show the way:

• Link Building For A Brand New Website
• Link Building in 2015

These articles offer practical advice to help you improve your search engine rankings.

Good Luck

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Web Design tips to make your life incredibly easy

Learn from the best. Leading web design experts reveal the secrets of the trade, these are now yours to learn, follow, implement and win.

Every great web designer has a true secret or two that they use time and time again to provide the best service for their clients, this insider knowledge is vital when you are looking at your own design project.

It's quite a collection. Enjoy

The Optimum Line Length

The Baymard Institute suggest that 50-75 characters per line. This sort of length energises readers and keeps them engaged in your content, and we know that the more engaged readers are, the more likely they are to stay on your page and take the action that you want them to take.


Use Video to show visitors something real

Kendra Gaines at WebdesignerDepot.com rightly argues that visitors are wanting a connection to business and brands, video allows us to do this by showing them something real and of substance. I couldn't agree more.


Use only Appropriate Images

Graham at Effective Website Design makes the sensible point that images need to be carefully selected, and the process itself shouldn't be overlooked or undertaken quickly. “Do not use images indiscriminately, lots of images can lose the page focus.” says Graham, and he's right, there is nothing off putting that images on pages that have no context to the subject matter.


Responsive Design - it's the future

Nick Pettit at treehouse wrote a compelling blog post last year about Responsive Design, and steps readers through the concepts in a very practical manner.

User Flow in Web Design

Adrian Fraguela at Silver talks about thinking about the user experience in web design, one of the more interesting areas they look at briefly is User Flow, that is the need to consider exactly how users will move around your site and ensuring that your design allows them to interact with the site successfully.

That's it for this post.  Do you have a secret to your web design success? Don't be selfish, share it with others in the comments below!

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Digital Marketing Predications for 2015!

The life of a busy digital marketer is a varied one, and knowing where to put your marketing effort is an important factor, but where should you plan to put those efforts?

Everything is changing - and will continue to do so - remember that the only constant is change.

Technology, business models and consumer behaviours change in the blink of an eye; old tactics no longer work (or aren't as effective as they once were).

So as a digital marketer, what should you be considering for the year ahead?

In this article on LinkedIn, I've tried to capture some of the key elements that are important to Digital Marketing in 2015 - enjoy.

Digital Marketing: My Crystal Ball Predications for 2015

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Stop asking ‘How’ Google rank websites and start asking ‘Why’.

Seriously, if you are interested in improving your ranking for your website then you must stop trying to guess what ingredients are in the Google ‘secret sauce’.

What makes up the Google algorithm takes up way too much thinking time, just accept the fact that Google pushes websites through their machinery and out pops the ranking for your site.

A better question to ask is “Why do Google rank sites the way that they do?”

From a users perspective Googles aim of is very simple; it wants to understand what information you want to see when you query its search engine and then it wants to ensure that it shows you the very best results.

Why is understanding this a better way to understand Google? 

For Google to do it's job properly it needs to ensure that:

1. It understand what your site is all about
2. When visitors get to it they engage with it (good time on site, low bounce rate etc)
3. They potentially share your content

This all means that you can stop focussing your precious time on tying to get others to link their sites to you, spamming forums and blogs with your links and stop tweaking META Tags and focus on the important area … your content.

With the right content Google will understand your pages and be able to determine whether you can satisfy a search query well.  So your content needs to be able to answer visitor’s questions, the content needs to be exactly what the visitor is expecting to see when they click on your link in the search results.

This means that you need to ensure that you answer the questions you think that the market has for your products and services – this might actually mean developing a formal FAQ section, but it also means ensuing that they easily understand what your website and pages are all about, and how exactly you can help them.

Seriously, understand what Google is trying to do and help them to help you, and you will start to rank well within Google. Period.

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Web Site Usability - what do you need to consider!

Web usability is all about taking a look at sites, pages and designs to better understand the customer journey - the reasons why visitors are there in the first place, understanding any barriers that stop visitors from taking their desired action.

In essence, your web site should provide your visitors with an efficient and enjoyable user experience.

Web pages should be self explanatory and obvious.

The MUM Test

When considering the basics for web page usability, I like to ask the following simple question 'Would my Mum be able to use it!'. You see my mum wasn't a tech head, she wasn't particularly well educated in these modern technologies, so she wasn't at all web savvy; and if we think of our potential visitors in this way then we will always ensure that our sites are a simple (and easy) to use as possible.

Basically, if my mum could navigate a web site and get what she wanted, then it was a good site.

Key Areas to consider

Intent - what are you visitors intending to do on your site?

Web site Structure (appearance) – what your visitors see and interact with.

Whitespace – clean space that makes your site easy to view, read, understand and use. Good use of space can draw the visitors eyes to the important parts (and links) of the site.

Noise – is information fighting for attention or does any other element vie for the visitors attention (strong contrasts next to text for example (i.e. bold graphics or images next to key information can force eyes away from this text)).

Length – short page length, visitors shouldn't have to scroll too far to get to the information that they want, information “below the fold” will not get seen as much as information above it.

Consistence – across navigation, fonts, layout, colour etc

Images – need to be relevant and compelling.

Functionality – how well the site interacts with visitors and visitors with the site.

Organisation of information – and links. Do users know where they are and where to get to the common information they might need? Can visitors get to the action you want them to take easily.  Are the web pages split into clearly defined areas.

Speed – how fast the site loads (< 2 second is ideal) as customers may leave if they have to wait to view the information on your site. Site speed is also important for good Google rankings.

Interactivity – how well can visitors interact with your site, does search work well for example?

Things visitors should never ask themselves

• Where am I?
• Where do I start?
• Where did they put ….?
• What information do I need on this page?
• Why did they call it that?
• Why is that there?

Common questions to ask

• What is the first thing you notice on the site? Is your USP clearly visible?
• Is there a clear visual hierarchy? (headers, important information etc) – newspapers do this REALLY well!
• Are the pages consistent (everyone knows instictively how to read a newspaper and what the headlines mean, bold intro text, main story, caption under images, we know to go to the back pages for the sport and somewhere close to the middle for TV listings etc). Familiarity is reassuring.
• Do you think it's too cluttered?
• Are you having a hard time finding the information you want?
• Does the site feel well organised?
• Do you have to scroll to get to important information?
• Is the site slow?
• What do you think of the fonts, colours and images?
• Can you easily search for product information?
• Can you easily find the contact information?

The Search Engine Ranking factor

I've already mentioned that site speed is important for Google ranking, but also IF your site doesn't look very good to visitors they are likely to press the BACK button on their browser quickly.  This visitors action is classed as a Bounce by Google, and a high Bounce rate will go against you in rankings!

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Panda 4.0 and how to survive it

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Learn from Politicians!

In the UK the local elections are happening this week, so it gives us an opportunity to take a leaf out of our MPs' books and raise the profile of your business and website?

Just like our politicians, you too can build a professional online brand and profile for your business with some very simple tips; and changing the way your website portrays and promotes you could do wondered for your sales too!

The Personal Statement

Just like the political parties your business should employ a personal statement. Your personal statement and the way your present it on your web site is critical as this is one of the first ‘things’ that a visitor who doesn't know you very well will seek out (whether they are aware of it or not!), and it has the added benefit of helping them understand more about your business.

Your company's personal statement simply needs to be the top 2-3 things that you want your visitors to know about your business, they should show how you can help your prospects.

For example, you might want your visitors to be aware of your huge selection of products, the fact that you are an award winner, your customer service stats, your low prices etc – whatever it is that you think your market will go wild over and that you can satisfy.

Once you've decided on what your business personal statement should be you need to ensure that it is easily and quickly seen on your site. Are these 2-3 statements obvious on your site? Are they mentioned at all or hidden in your navigation?

Put them to your homepage and make them easily viable throughout your site.

Your Professional Profile

You only need to take a quick look at any of the political parties web sites to see what views, experience and values their leader has.
You can find out about their history, achievements, what they stand for and how they believe that they can personally help you.

Does your site portray its top Directors in the same way? Is it easy to find out about them, what skills, experience and background they have, and what they think that they can do for your prospects?

If you don’t talk about the top people in your business then you are missing a trick; research constantly shows that the “About Us” pages are usually one of the top pages that prospects visit on your site and these pages can help sell yourself and your business if done correctly.

Say what you want about our political system, the parties and politicians, they do know how to promote themselves and how to get us following them and believing in them, and by following these simple tips you will be able to better promote your site and make you more appealing to your prospects.

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POTS and PANS!

What type of site so you own or manage? Is it a Pretty Ordinary Trash Site (POTS) or a Pretty Amazing Natural Sites (PANS) site?

Obviously you don’t want to own a POTS, these tend to be trashy, thin content, poorly linked to sites, where as the more superior PANS have lots of lovely content that visitors want to read and share, their content also attracts links naturally.

A site needs to have a clear and definite purpose; if this can be portrayed successfully to visitors then half of the battle has been won.

Sleek, modern design is a winner. Visitor needs and design trends change often, sites that don’t follow these will look dated very quickly and will be an instant turn-off.

Content needs to be unique and fresh and needs to speak concisely to your target market – avoid waffle and clutter and keep the messages as simple and as concise as possible.

Ultimately for any website to be successful it needs people to use it; site design and appearance are very important, but they will never replace the need for excellent usability.

A websites navigation affects how usable it is, and when developing or redesigning an existing site then the navigation (how you visitors are doing to find the great content) should be your primary concern.

In Summary

	POTS	PANS
Site Design	Designed in the 80’s/90’s. Cluttered.	Appealing Modern – fresh, clean.
Content	SEO focused. Doesn't read well.	User focused. Clear, well-written content.
Clarity	Visitors confused. Unsure what you site is about.	Purpose clear. Visitors feel happy on your site.
Usability	Confusing leaving visitors impatient. They will leave.	Simple to use. Customers stay and look around.
Navigation	Visitors can’t find what they need. No structure to site at all.	Visitors can find what they need quickly. 1-3 clicks and they are there.

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