How to Pick Your SEO Search Terms

One of the most key elements during the sign up process is your choice of Search Terms. It’s important to get the right balance. Too broad and the competition is fierce and results very hard to achieve (but generally not impossible). Too long and the search volumes may not be high enough for it to be worthwhile. In this article we’re going to give you the information required to make the right choice and how long you will realistically have to wait to see noticeable impact.

What is your lead search term?

One of the most important elements of your digital marketing campaign

During sign up (or editing your search terms in the control panel) you will notice that the first search term you enter is called the lead search term. Although all of your search terms are important, the first term you enter is the most important which is why we call it your lead search term. This is the term that we will gear most of the home page around so it needs to be given a great deal of thought.

What is a long tail search term?

More words equals faster results

Long tail search terms are basically longer sentences. They are generally defined by 3 or more words. So, using Click Submit as an example a long trail search term might be “What is SEO” or “Reputation Management Company”. The average time to see impact on a long tail search term is roughly 3 to 9 months but must be taken on a case by case basis depending on competition.

What is a broad search term?

You must be patient but they can be extremely rewarding 

A broad search term is generally defined as either 1 or 2 words. So, again using Click Submit as the example one might be “SEO” and another “Affordable SEO”. It’s very hard to put a time frame for impact on broad terms as the competition differs greatly but on average it ranges from between 6 and 14 months.

Keep geographical where possible

Go local for faster results and more targeted traffic

Where we see the fastest results is when you’re able to make your search terms geographical. The minute you add in a geographical location you cut down the competition dramatically while at the same time creating a much more targeted campaign. Volumes are lower but far more relevant. For example Click Submit may target a search term like “Digital Marketing Agencies in Manchester”. We are normally able to achieve results within a 3 month period on a geographical search term.

How many should you enter?

Less is more

You can have up to 10 search terms but we recommend trying to keep it to around 5 initially. The rule of thumb is that generally less is more.

Short and long term goals

Get the right blend for fast and then consistently improving results

During sign up you will be able to enter up to 10 search terms. This gives you the ability to mix it up a bit. What we suggest is going with a selection of short and long term goals. So, you may go with 5 geographical search terms and then 5 broader search terms. This means you will most likely see a consistently improving campaign.

Useful tools

Some help on making your choice

Try Google?! When you have a list of potential search terms you can then search Google for each of them. Generally the total number of results gives you a good idea of the competition. For example “Digital Marketing Agencies” (https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Digital+Marketing+Agencies) has 31,300,000 results whereas “Digital Marketing Agencies in Manchester” has 726,000 results (https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Digital+Marketing+Agencies+Mancester). So this correctly suggests that adding the word Manchester cuts down on the competition dramatically and will lead to faster results.

We also have our very useful search term checker tool which you have access too during the sign up process. This will give you an indication of the timeframe to expect on each search term across all of our digital marketing services.

Ranking Uplift Given To Sub URLs

On Thursday the 1st October we started to get some interesting reports from our clients. The reports were a combination of people suffering either a lowering or uplift in ranking. We immediately got to work on investing the situation. Then late last week we tweeted some breaking news:



After some quick analysis we saw a definite pattern where main URLs were suffering a drop and sub URLs an uplift in fortunes.

Let’s use Click Submit as an example:

At the start of the week we were on page 8 for our home page "clicksubmit.co.uk" on the search term “SEO” (remember this is the probably the most competitive search term in the world). On Thursday we noticed we had jumped to page 5 for our sub URL"clicksubmit.co.uk/seo". Since then we have made even more progress and are now page 4. We also went to position 1 for our search term “Resell SEO” on the sub page "clicksubmit.co.uk/reseller-seo" see: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=resell+seo.

If you go to Google and type in any search term you will now find the first page pretty much loaded with sub URL results. An example would be for the search term “SEO”. Take a look at the results at: https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=seo. There is now only one listing that resolves to a home page!

To be honest we're amazed it's taken this long because it does make sense. Google want to connect their users with the most relevant content as quickly as possible and it’s more likely that a page within your site which contains more detailed information on a subject is more relevant.

We launched our Sub URL optional extra around 2 years ago with the forethought of this update and now many of our clients are getting their reward. We have also been suggesting for the last 4 years within every clients initial report that trail pages (depth of content) is crucial. Here’s a snippet from an example initial report:

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3. Trail content. We would suggest creating pages of text based information for each of your keywords with a link to each one of these pages from your home page. For example, one of your keywords/phrases is 'Search term 1', so why not create a page on your website called 'Search term 1' with some general content on it, then add a link to this page from the most relevant pages on your website. This may not be possible for all of your keywords and phrases, but where you have a keyword or phrase that you could write some content about, it can be of great benefit.
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We can say with some confidence that our users were well prepared for this update and we have seen on the whole a lot of uplift over the last few days!

We hope you found this article insightful and if you have any questions please get in touch.

Start Your Own Digital Marketing Agency

A digital marketing reseller purchases services from a larger company and then resells the services to their own customers. This is similar to the typical wholesaler-retailer business model. Until recently it was very expensive to set up as a digital marketing company but Click Submit has changed the landscape offering the first turnkey solution.

In this article we are going to look at the basics of how to get a digital marketing business started.

Research

All good business plans begin with adequate research: How much competition is there? How successful are they? What are they doing right? What do consumers want that these companies don't already provide? Research of digital marketing companies is relatively easy compared to some other businesses as they all have an online presence, and the information you need is literally at your fingertips.

Create a Business Plan

Digital marketing resellers can sign up for a Click Submit Reseller account and be "in business" in a matter of minutes. The very ease of getting started leads many of these businesses to fail. Many people start with unrealistic revenue and work expectations and no plan. Customers don't automatically flock to a new company. Plan how you will market the company.
To write a proper business plan, determine how much money you will need to get the business running and how much will be needed for the first year. There is a lot of competition, so identify a specific customer base or genre, such as local businesses. You may already have a customer base that you wish to upsell digital marketing services too, which is perfect. An example of this would be a web design agency wanting to up sell digital marketing to their new and existing clients.

Select a Digital Marketing Partner

There are a few digital marketing agencies offering a referral system but no one offers the level of automation and unitized servcies that Click Submit do. Our product offering is totally unique and the way in which we deliver the service is bullet proof. Most importantly thought the results are great which means you keep your clients happy!

Get the Word Out

The most challenging part of starting any business is marketing. Thousands of digital marketing companies are selling services on the Internet, so standing out from the crowd is difficult. Use every opportunity to get the word out about the new business. Use social networking sites, blogs, and online message forums to spread the word while at the same time adding you own site to the Click Submit service.

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Are Domains Still An Important Ranking Factor?

Never has there been such a variety of domains on the market. Only a year ago you were stuck with .com, .net, .co.uk, etc. Now you can have .hotel, .photographer… the list goes on!

So, how important is a domain and what things should you be considering before you make a choice?

Should Your Domain Be Descriptive?

Back in November 2012 our guys at Click Submit blogged about Google’s first EMD update. EMD or Exact Match Domains were an absolutely crucial factor in getting a head start on your ranking across all the major search engines.

So how can you take advantage of an EMD domain? Let’s take a photography company as an example who’s most important search term is “Photographers in London”, they then look and see that the domain name photographersinlondon.co.uk is available. Although this domain isn’t the name of their company does it make more sense to purchase it? In short yes. It’s still a good idea to purchase a descriptive domain over a none descriptive domain, but it’s not as important as used to be.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that although we live in a very Google focused market there are many other search engines out there that still regard EMD’s as a very important ranking factor. Yahoo would be an example of one of these.

Does The Suffix Make Any Difference?

Yes! The higher perceived prestige a domain suffix has the easier it is to obtain a high ranking on. Although we think this will be watered down over the coming months / years similarly to exact match domains.
Geographical suffixes are important too. For example if you had a .com then you would have a better chance of obtaining a better ranking than someone with a .net but if your site is only targeting the UK then you would have a better chance of obtaining a higher ranking with a .co.uk or .uk domain.

If you’re a UK business then domains in order of ranking are:

.co.uk / .uk
.com, .net, .org, etc..
.photographer, etc…

Do Forwarders Help With Ranking?

No, but they’re still very important from an intellectual property point of view. If you have 100s of domains forwarding to your website it won’t make any difference to your ranking but it will stop any potential competition on a similar domain name. Protecting your intellectual property is particularly important when using an exact match domain.

Should I use spelling replacements?

A spelling replacement is when you use a number like 4 instead of the word four or maybe you spell a word incorrectly (eg. Catz, ur, etc) instead. People do this in order to get around the correctly spelt domain not being available. We don’t recommend using them for two reasons. Firstly, it can affect the search terms that you will be ranked on but also from a more practical point of view one of the most powerful methods of free marketing for a website is word of mouth. If your domain isn’t spelt correctly it makes letting someone know the web address verbally a bit awkward.

Conclusion

Although the search engines (in an attempt to level the playing field) are watering down the emphasis on domains as part of their algorithm they are still an important factor. So, if a descriptive domain with a good suffix is available then snap it up, but if you’re in a competitive market and domain availability is low then don’t worry, the playing field is a level as it’s ever been and is only going to level out further in the future.

We will update and release further posts on the subject of domains and how they’re affecting over the coming months and years.

We hope you found this post informative and if you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with either Cloud Next or Click Submit.

Can You Get Away With A Negative Review?

With a variety of online platforms such as TripAdvisor, TrustPilot, Feefo and Trusted Shops at our fingertips, we now live in a culture where we are instantly able to read a comprehensive list of customer reviews about near enough any product or service.

This user feedback helps many of us to decide which products to buy, which hotels to book and which restaurants to eat in, and this is often without ever feeling the need to read a single ‘expert’ opinion or review.

But for some businesses this rising phenomenon can have just as many negative effects as positive, as a crushingly bad review can damage a brand, something that is beginning to worry many businesses.

We have conducted a survey of 100 clients asking them a simple question: 'If the first page of reviews were all positive bar one, would you read the negative review first and if so would it put you off the company?'

The results were very interesting! 78% said they would read the negative one first and just over 50% said if it was negative enough it would put them off a purchase.

There was however a silver lining. We contacted a few of those surveyed and they stated that if the company responded in a dynamic way to the review then it would most likely offset the negativity considerably. We also learnt that if the review was negative, but not that negative, then it added authenticity to the product as long as the overwhelming feeling from other reviews was positive.

So, it's more important than ever to motivate your happy clients to post reviews, while at the same time making sure that channels of communication are opened with unhappy clients before they go public, but wouldn't it be nice to have an automated solution? Yep you guessed it we have one, and it's called Positivity!

Positivity is a simple system allowing you to verify whether a client is happy or not, before you suggest that they submit a review via a public website like Trust Pilot, Review Centre, Trip Advisor etc. It’s totally unique to Click Submit and is included as part of our quarterly service.
So, how does it work? During set up you will be able to create up to 5 questions, on which your clients will give you a score of between 1 and 5, via our white labelled client feedback site: www.feedingback.co.uk. You will then be able to set a positive threshold. This threshold will dictate the message that they see after they submit their feedback. So for example, you may set a threshold of 4 stars of above. This would mean that if the result averages 4 stars or above your client would be asked to submit a public review. If the result averages 3 stars or below your client would be presented with a message that you create during set up. This could be a message to ask them to contact you with their details to discuss their dissatisfaction and try to achieve a more positive outcome.

We have set up a Positivity profile for Click Submit, to show you how it looks to the end client. We would send the following link to all of our clients: feedingback.co.uk/www.clicksubmit.co.uk.

To conclude, online reviews are an increasingly crucial part of your overall online marketing strategy. It's key to get positive momentum as soon as possible, but what surprised us about the survey was the impact that a small amount of negativity can have on your business. Now is the time to take control of your online reputation!

We hope you found this article interesting and if you have any questions then please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Capitalise On Your Following With A Good News Story!

Do you have a large following on Twitter or Facebook? Maybe you have a large database of clients that you regularly e-mail?

If so, then you know the importance of engaging your follows / clients with interesting information, but wouldn’t it be nice to engage them with an exclusive deal that can help their businesses succeed while at the same time delivering you a recurring revenue stream?

Well, we have the solution!

It’s called the Promo Code Reseller Solution is perfect for anyone looking to create an instant recurring revenue stream from an existing following.

It’s simple

We give you a promotional discount code that you pass on to your followers/clients. It’s a good news story as it entitles them to an exclusive discount (up to 100%) off their first quarterly payment when they sign up to Click Submit. Your clients are then linked to you via this code for their entire life cycle and you will earn 40% of all revenue generated. It’s totally transparent! You can monitor all of your statistics via a Control Panel. You can even download your client data in order to cross reference with your database.

For example

Our largest Promo Code reseller currently has 568 active clients and we are currently paying them on average £3,786 per month, which we forecast to double to over £7,000 per month within the next year.

What to learn more?

Check out our knowledge base article

How To Choose What Keywords To Use For SEO

 
In last week’s blog we gave some tips to AdWords beginners and in the article we discussed the importance of keyword selection, but only very briefly. It got us thinking and reminded us how often new SEO clients contact us with queries about their keyword selection. So it made sense for us to put together a blog that focused solely on the keyword selection process and hopefully we can introduce you to a few tools and amazing websites that will help you pick the most suitable keywords to advertise your business on.

Short-tail Vs. Long-tail keywords

When a new client signs up to our service, one of our jobs is to vet their keyword choices. The most common mistake our clients make are to select too broad, way too competitive search terms. On the flip side we sometimes see clients using exceptionally long-tailed keywords in the hope of avoiding the competition and reaching position 1 quickly, but this often results in low traffic levels and a low amount of conversions.

As an example, one of our clients worked as a plumber in Manchester so amongst his keywords were ‘Plumber’, ‘local plumber’, ‘plumbing’, and so forth. To SEO newbies and plumbers all around, it would make sense to use the keyword ‘Plumber’ as it does best describe what he is. However, when it comes to SEO and online marketing, it’s worth enlisting some more long-tail but still relevant keywords that better reflect your service. The plumber was based in Manchester, so it would have been preferable for him to select geo-targeted search terms such as ‘plumbing services in Manchester’. This would be more relevant to his service, more relevant to his website content, it would cut out the broader competition and therefore, his site would be more likely to rank high on Google and other search engines as a result.

Key Considerations

First and foremost, there are a few questions that you should ask yourself when trying to choose your keywords:
Location - If you’re services only cover a certain radius or you’re based in a specific city/ county, make sure you add these as extensions to your core keyword (as suggested in the aforementioned example)
Price - Whether your services are free, cheap, luxury and so on; these terms could help further elaborate your service/ products
Time - Question whether you need to make reference to time in your keyword too
Purpose & Intent - Including words such as ‘buy’, ‘sell’, ‘shop’, ‘find’ could further refine your search term and will make sure that your site appears when a searcher is actively looking for your product/ service

Keyword Planner tool

Google’s Keyword Planner is a great tool to use when researching your keyword selection. It’s only available to use in Google AdWords but it’s worth opening an AdWords account just to utilize it. Although the tool isn’t always 100% accurate, and for organic keywords some columns (such as estimated CPC) won’t be relevant, it’s great for providing insightful information about keyword search volume and it’s also good for inspiring themed keywords. All you have to do is type in the search term that you are thinking of using, what locations you wish to target, and it will hit back with a ton of suitable suggestions. Because it’s designed for AdWords, it will piece together the terms in ad-groups so you will get a clear insight into keyword concepts and it will also show you how competitive the term/s you’ve chosen are.

Google Instant

Google Instant is another great way to suss out popular and appropriate keywords. You may have noticed that when you search on Google, it tries to predict what you’re going to input - this is Google Instant. This little tool can help you discover commonly used but long tail keywords. If you type in your main keyword, for example ours would be SEO, see what comes up next to it immediately; it’ll give you an indication of what are the most commonly used phrases next to your main term. You can literally go through the alphabet doing this! As an example, if we type in ‘SEO a’, it predicts that we are going to type ‘SEO agency’, ‘SEO analysis’ or ‘SEO audit’ etc. These are terms we might not have considered using as keywords without seeing their popularity through Google Instant.

Ubersuggest.org

Ubersuggest.org is a fantastic website for helping you brainstorm keywords. Although it doesn’t give you information on the terms popularity like the Keyword Planner, it is extremely helpful when you’re experiencing brain block. Again, it’s a totally free site. Just type in your main keyword and a huge amount of associated terms will be bounced back.

Google Trends

Google Trends is simply a site built by Google to display their engine’s search trends and it can also be really helpful for SEO. If you type in your chosen keyword/s it will display how often that term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. The information provided will inform you of the keyword’s popularity and it may also allow you to spot trends. For example, if some of your keywords are seasonal, such as garden furniture, it will display the time when the seasonal keywords are used and in which parts of the world.Social Media
Using social media sites can also give you an indication of the terms that are popular with your target market. Researching keywords using the hashtag tool and researching trends on social sites will also give you a better understanding of what your potential buyers like, want and search for.

Can you compete?

When we discuss keywords with our clients we always encourage them to use a mixture of short and long-tail keywords. The term ‘long-tail’ is often mistaken for meaning irrelevant, but it just means to extend your core keyword. That way you are able to compete with your largest competitors by trying to rank highly on search terms that are still popular and well used but not dominated by the biggest brands. For example, if you own a women’s clothing shop and want to advertise online, using the keyword ‘women’s clothing’ may not be wise because the top pages of Google are dominated by ASOS, New Look, Topshop, River Island and so on. So considering keywords outside of the core of your business is definitely worthwhile.

If you have made use of the sites and tools we have listed above, you should have a pretty extensive list of suitable keywords. Now it’s time to take a look at the brands/ businesses advertising on your favoured terms and assess whether you can compete. For example, does your site provide better content than those listed on page 1 & 2? Is your website of a higher quality? This is another way you can refine your keyword selection and work out how reasonable it would be for you to expect to gain page 1 rank.

In conclusion, we hope that the information we have provided will help you in your keyword selection process. One thing we have mentioned in previous blogs that have addressed SEO keywords, is that you must imagine yourself in your in your searchers shoes, which will help you establish whether your keywords are relevant. If you have any keyword concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Have a great day,
The Click Submit team

www.clicksubmit.co.uk

Google AdWords for Beginners: Simple Tips for Adwords Beginners

It was only until recently that we managed many Google Adwords accounts. For numerous reasons we decided to stop offering a management service but mainly so our team could concentrate on developing more of our own, free products for our clients. This doesn’t mean that we’ve ruled out offering AdWords management forever, or feel that it isn’t worthwhile to pursue. So we intend to construct a few educational articles to help those of you who are new to AdWords but aren’t in a position where you can afford/ are willing to pay a company to develop and manage a campaign for you.

After reviewing hundreds of Adwords accounts in our time, we have come across many that have an incredible ability to burn money but don’t generate a ROI. In this blog we shall highlight a few simple ways you can make sure that your site only receives the most relevant traffic and fulfils your campaign’s aims.

Search and Display Networks

When you start to create your first campaign, you’ll be asked to select whether you wish to advertise on the Search Network or on the Display Network. Google will automatically set the campaign ads to appear on both networks, but this isn’t something we would advise, even if you wish to advertise on both.

A Search Network campaign will allow your ads to appear next to Google’s search results and they will only appear to customers searching for your products/ services, which will be determined by the keywords you select. This is the network most appropriate for those wanting to generate conversions. First and foremost, the browsers are actively looking for the service/ products you have available. Therefore, if you match their search criteria, a conversion is likely.

A Display Network campaign is great for building awareness of your brand. Your ads will appear on websites that are relevant to the services you provide or the keywords you have selected. This is also the network where you can implement image and video ads and even select what websites your ads appear on. However, immediate conversions aren’t usually generated through advertising on this network, but it is good for targeting a broad audience and grabbing the attention of browsers who may not have come across you otherwise.

Keyword Selection & Targeting Options

In every campaign, you will want to develop an ad group for each of the products/ services you offer. Within these ad groups you should attach a handful of relevant keywords. We have often seen people stuff hundreds of keywords into their ad groups, when you should only concentrate on the most relevant terms. When it comes to deciding what keywords to select, position yourself in your client’s search; imagine what they would input and what you would want to appear for. Sometimes, more long tail keywords are the most cost effective and generate more conversions. For example, if you sell cameras, rather than using ‘cameras for sale’ as a search term, specify which brand of camera you sell and if there’s enough search volume on the term, specify what kind e.g. ‘Canon compact system cameras’ and so forth.

When you input your keywords, Google will automatically set the match type to ‘broad’. However, a broad match setting is the most common cause for why people’s budgets get drained so quickly with little to show for it. There are four keyword match types to consider:

Broad: Broad Match will allow your ads to appear even if the browser’s search includes misspellings or if it is a relevant variation e.g. if your keyword is ‘women’s hats’, your ad is likely to appear for ‘buy ladies hats’. Often though, a broad search term generates a lot of traffic, but because your ad will appear for a number of variations of your keyword, the traffic can be of low quality, resulting in few conversions. We would only advise broad match to those wishing to increase awareness of their brand or to those who have a very large marketing budget.

Modified Broad Match: If you position a + symbol in front of your keyword e.g. +seo +companies, this ensures your ads will only appear to those who specifically search with those keywords. Your ad will still appear if a user searches with other words in addition to them, but the keyword/s must appear in the user’s search phrase.

Phrase Match: When you position a “ on either side of your keyword, Google will only allow for your ads to appear if a user matches or inputs a close variation of your phrase e.g. if I were to input “SEO companies” as my keyword, it would still appear if someone were to search for ‘UK SEO companies’. It’s more restricted than modified broad match but still allows for some flexibility around the browser’s search term.

Exact Match: If you place brackets around your keyword e.g. [SEO companies] this will make sure your ads only appear to those who search with the exact phrase you have chosen. This type of keyword match often generates the highest click through rate, but does limit your ad from appearing to what could still be relevant traffic.

Keyword Bidding/ Planner

In our time, we have also seen a number of campaigns in which the keyword bids are set really, really low e.g. to £0.02. This may just about be possible on keywords where the competition is extremely high and the max ROI low, but it’s unlikely you’ll ever pay as little as £0.02 to receive quality traffic on any search term. Google have millions of people using their engine every day so to appear at the top of page 1 on the terms you most desire is unlikely to come cheaply. On top of which, their targeting methods and free analytical software are seriously advanced, so they can demand a high price point. Don’t let this dishearten you, but be aware that if you’re serious about advertising on Adwords, it will require an investment. However, if the campaign is set up properly, that investment should be returned and profit should be acquired.

Another point to make is that every keyword demands a different bid. The most expensive keywords to advertise on Google AdWords are those relating to loans, insurance and mortgages, all of which can demand CPC’s above £10. The keyword CPC’s aren’t plucked from the sky but are determined by the likelihood of a conversion post click and the potential ROI. In your Google Adwords account, under the tools tab, you’ll find the Keyword Planner. This is a great little tool that will provide you with all the important information about your potential keyword/s, including search volume and the estimated CPC. Using this tool will give you an indication of how much you’re expected to spend to rank on the terms you wish to, and will show you the level of competition surrounding that term.

Location Targeting

If you’re only able to provide your services in certain cities or areas of your country, make sure you only advertise in those locations. You can do this in two ways:

Make sure that all your keywords include the location you service. For example, if we only offered our services in Manchester, we may select for all our keywords to include ‘Manchester’ in them e.g. ‘SEO companies Manchester’.
When you opt to select where your ads are shown, input the areas you service and that will make sure your ads only display to those in your preferred radius. In this instance, you don’t have to include your location in all of your keywords.

Negative Keywords

Underneath the Keywords tab, in the bottom right hand corner, you’ll find the option to add Negative Keywords. Negative Keywords are those you do not wish to appear for. For example, if one of your keywords is ‘SEO companies’, you won’t necessarily want to appear if someone searched for ‘free SEO companies’, so you would add ‘free’ as a negative search term. Adding negative keywords is a good way of further ensuring only the most relevant traffic reaches your site.

Conversion Tracker

Although not always 100% accurate, a conversion tracker gives a really good insight into how many conversions Adwords generates for your business. This is most straightforward for ecommerce websites and less so for those where conversions aren’t immediate. However, for ecommerce sites it’s practically an essential tool, which you can use to determine what keywords generate the most conversions, which drain a lot of budget but don’t encourage sales, and so on. It’s really simple to add a conversion tracker! There’s a lot of detailed information available to view here:

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722054?hl=en-GB

You may need a small amount of assistance from your web developer, to paste the code in the right area, but it should only take up five minutes of their time.

We hope this article has been useful. We have a ton of educational articles available for our clients in the Knowledge Base section of our website. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Have a great day,
The Click Submit team

The Most Common Misconceptions of SEO

In the ever-evolving world of SEO, there are always new myths being formed or misconceptions being construed, so we thought it would be apt to generate a blog that addresses the most common misconceptions of SEO. It’s interesting to ponder as to why there are so many lies manufactured in this industry, but we can only conclude that perhaps it’s because the industry itself isn’t exactly tangible, or possibly because many SEO companies share slightly differing views on how best to optimize your site for the search engines. However, the points we are about to share require no debate, they are simply putting fact to fiction.

 1. Guarantees

Oh, this one is a goody. Let’s just quash any debate: No SEO company on the planet can guarantee your website a rank, nor can they give you an exact time frame for when you’ll see their results. We have had a few frustrated conversations with existing clients explaining that they’ve received a call from an SEO company who have pretty much offered them the world (for nothing), and they’ve guaranteed them page 1 for all their top search terms. Thus, they don’t understand why we’re unable to offer the same. First and foremost, be wary of any SEO company that cold calls you in the hope of gaining your business. And secondly, if it were possible to make such guarantees, we wouldn’t be here writing this blog for you because we’d be drowning ourselves in our millions.

 2. Speed

When it comes to SEO, the phrase that springs to mind is always, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’. Nor, do we imagine it was an easy peasy, straightforward process to construct such an architectural dream. So, trying to understand search engine’s incredibly complex algorithms isn’t easy, nor can our work be carried out and rewarded overnight. We always say to our clients that it can take between 3 and 9 months for them to recognise the impact of our SEO, and that’s only if they’re utilizing all the services we offer and follow the instructions outlined in our reports. It can take time for the search engines to even index your site, let alone position it at the top. So, don’t give up on your SEO company after just a matter of weeks if the speediness of their results is the only aspect of the service you’re disappointed with.

 3. You only need SEO until you achieve your goals

It can be quite tricky to convince potential clients that SEO needs to be considered as an on-going factor in their marketing strategy, and it can become more difficult to get existing clients to stay with us if/ when we’ve actually helped them achieve their SEO goals. Of course, for us, the comfort of recurring revenue is great, but honestly, that isn’t why we think SEO should be carried out long term, even if you’ve made it to the position you want to be in. There are a number of reasons why:
Search engines are in a constant state of flux, so how their algorithms function alters and updates regularly. It’s crucial to work with a company that will be able to prepare you for and assist you when these updates happen to make sure that your website’s ranking/ performance isn’t affected by them.

On top of which, search engines ranking factors expand and are re-prioritised all the time, so you want be sure that your site stays appealing to them, as well as potential clients.

Finally, any links gained aren’t necessarily going to stay there forever, so new ones need to be acquired.

 4. A PPC campaign will benefit your ranking

When we used to manage Google AdWords campaigns, it was quite common for new clients to ask if it benefited their SEO in anyway. Sadly, it doesn’t, nor does any PPC campaign for any search engines/ social sites. (See What are some myths about SEO in number 5.)

 5. Search engines hate SEO

Search engines do not hate SEO, what they hate is when people try to trick their algorithms. For example, keyword stuffing, hidden text, content plagiarism and so on, are all tactics that, long term, will ultimately get you nowhere with the search engines.

Here are a few videos from head of Google’s Web Spam team, Matt Cutts on SEO:

What are some myths about SEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9Xt5PohgU

Google on WordPress and SEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P-m2cBCJSk

Here is a link to Google’s SEO Starter Guide: htttp://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.co.uk/en/uk/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

 6. Link building falsification

It’s strange; there are two ends to the spectrum when it comes to our client’s queries about link building. Some potential clients want a thousand built in a day because they believe this will improve their rank, others think that link building has a negative impact on their ranking and it’s not even a crucial SEO element anymore.

To begin with, building huge amounts of links all at once is known as a ‘black hat’ SEO technique, where you are clearly trying to manipulate the search engine’s algorithms. Search engine bots have gotten pretty clever over the years and your site will be penalized and face suspension if it’s evident that you’re trying to cheat the system. Even if you were to build hundreds of links in a short space of time, you may notice a quick jump up the search engines, but we promise you won’t stay there and the pros of a short-term boost are not outweighed by the cons.

With regards to link building not being an integral part of SEO anymore, this is a lie. There’s a ton of evidence to support the fact that link building is still a vital element when it comes to SEO. Link authority and anchor text signals are key components in all search engine algorithms. However, as we have stressed above, building and generating links has to be done in a natural, organic way. At Click Submit, our partner web masters will only place a backlink if they feel the site has relevance, and crucially, they’re not obligated to place any link. See our knowledge base article on link exposure for more information on this.

 8. Bad links will cause your site to be penalized

Whilst we’re on the topic of backlinks, it’s worth acknowledging that you will never be penalized for a poor quality backlink, despite the rumours. If this was the case, businesses might build ‘harmful’ links to their competitors in an attempt to cause them problems, and this is something Google could never condone. If you do have any backlinks that are of particular distress, you can use Google’s disavow tool to remove them: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main

 9. Google are clever enough to find us without SEO

Although there’s no doubt that the search engines algorithms are super clever, they have yet to make magic, and we wouldn’t advise you to rely on the fact that they will find your website, crawl, index it, and push you to the top pages all on their own. If it were oh so simple, there would be no need for us guys or the heaps of other SEO companies out there.

10. ?

Well, we just thought we’d add on a number 10 so the article was a little more rounded. We hope this blog has been useful to read and cleared up any of your SEO doubts. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Our blog has a great deal of other educational articles and if you have any blog requests, let me know @Annabelle_CS

Google's Mobile Friendly Algorithm

Back in February, Google announced their intention to improve the “friendliness” of their mobile search results and explained that they were working on adapting their algorithms to make this possible. In the Google Webmaster blog post they explained,

‘As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns /.../ Starting April 21st, we will be expanding our use of mobile friendliness as a ranking signal /.../ Users will find it easier to get relevant high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.’

Since these words were shared, website owners and online marketing companies across the globe have been waiting with baited breath to see how greatly this would impact mobile search results. And they have most likely spent the past couple of months trying to forecast and accommodate Google’s algorithm update.

So, yesterday the update started being rolled out and we expect website owner’s to notice a difference in their rankings in the next week or so. We imagine many of our clients will have a few concerns, for example, Google’s ethos has always been to return the most accurate results to a users query, so how can they decipher between mobile friendliness and relevant content? What if my website has better content than another’s but isn’t mobile friendly yet? And if you’ve missed the forewarning of the update altogether, you might be asking, what do Google mean when they refer to mobile-friendly websites? Don’t panic, we will help calm your nerves and make sure that you come out of this update unscathed.

Yesterday, Google explained that mobile-friendly sites would be ones,

‘Where the text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.’

They also included that this update only affects search ranking on mobile devices but it does affect search results in all languages, and it’s applied to individual pages, not entire websites.

Every person making use of the search engine will be eager to see the effect of the new algorithm. And it’ll be interesting to learn how Google will calculate whether it’s “friendlier” to rank a site page higher where the content is detailed and highly relevant to the users query, but wouldn’t be classed as entirely mobile friendly, or a site page where the content is less rich but provides a better user experience. Over the coming weeks we’ll be able to monitor how this update affects our 4000 strong client base and we will make sure to report on it and educate you further.

Google have said that they will still use a variety of signals to rank mobile search results and that the intent of the search query is still very strong. We already know that there are a multitude of factors that determine a website’s rank and there has been no suggestion that this one would gain more prominence over any of the others. So if you haven’t yet managed to make your site fit within their latest guidelines but have done so otherwise, this shouldn’t impact your mobile page rank dramatically. That saying, it is not an update to be ignored.

Google have provided a number of guides, YouTube clips and tools so that you can check whether your site is classed as mobile friendly and if it isn’t, you can discover how to make it so. Below is a link to their mobile friendly test:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly

There are also a few factors to consider when trying to make your website mobile friendly:
Responsive web design: Around a month ago we blogged about ‘What to consider when developing your website’, in which we touched upon favouring a responsive web design. If the term responsive is entirely new, it’s one you should learn. A responsive web layout will allow your web pages to adapt to all devices, and this is Google’s recommended design configuration. This however, does not mean that your site has to be responsive to be considered mobile-friendly, but if you are developing a new website or thinking of upgrading your existing one, Responsive is definitely the way forward. It is likely to cost you more for development but it will certainly make for a sound ROI.

JavaScript Adaptive & CSS: Make sure that Googlebot can access JavaScript, CSS, and image files. If a website requires JavaScript, JavaScript Adaptive is recommended by Google. And, helpfully, the mobile friendly test will highlight any blocked resources.

Dynamic Serving: Dynamic serving is a setup where the server responds with different HTML on the same URL depending on who requests the page. Google have recommended for the server to send a hint request to their bots for smartphone, which can be implemented using the Vary HTTP header.

Avoid silly errors: Put simply, make sure:
All your resources are crawlable
You do not use robot.txt to block search engines from accessing important files on your site
All playable/ video content works
You fix or remove any faulty 301/ canonical redirects
Your pages loads quickly on mobile
More detail on the above points can be found in Google’s Mobile SEO guide, here:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/

Many website owners have also been concerned about the length of time it will take Google to recognise any changes they make to their website now. However, Google have confirmed that once your site becomes mobile friendly, they will automatically re-crawl your URLs and index your pages. If you wish to expedite the process you can do so here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812

* For our SEO addicts, it’s worth us mentioning that there’s no benefit in linking to sites that are mobile friendly. Unlike the Panda and Penguin updates, this one does not take into consideration link building of any kind.

To conclude; Google’s majority search market share is so dominant that it often seems as though web developers, digital marketing companies and website owners are living in fear of what update they might conduct next. There’s no denying that historically, their updates have caused uproar and frustration across the board. But ultimately, their intentions are only good. Realistically, how annoying is it having to zoom and squint at your phone screen when looking at a website online? And also, how frustrating is it when your finger selects the link to a page you didn’t mean to select? We’d say on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a definite 7. And on the flipside, when it comes to generating conversions, very few will happen on websites that don’t make the experience for a user easy and straightforward. So, overall, it is important that developers and site owners start to improve the mobile user experience and we guess Google have just given everyone a kick up the backside.

If you have any questions about the contents of this blog, or any SEO related queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Should we be 100% Google?

‘Google it!’ We bet that’s a phrase you’ve heard before and one that you’ve used yourself. Considering Google launched less than 20 years ago, it’s pretty impressive that they’ve embedded themselves quite so deeply into our day-to-day lives. At Click Submit, even if our mother’s or father’s don’t know the answer to a query, they might not use the search engine themselves, but they’ll ask us to ‘Google it’. In fact, it’s practically expected that nowadays you’re to search on Google to find an answer before asking the person stood next to you. So it’s no surprise that when it comes to search market share, Google dominate.

As of March 2015, the search engine market share in the UK displayed as follows:

Google: 88.12%
Bing: 7.09%
Yahoo: 3.61%
Others: 1.18%



*Whatever happened to asking Jeeves, hey?

With the above stats, there’s no wonder why advertisers, marketing professionals, and businesses across the board are so eager to use Google’s services to their advantage, and focus their efforts on gaining a top spot position in the search results for their favoured keywords. Google’s seriously intelligent algorithms and advanced ad programs like AdWords have pushed them to the forefront of all things search. But, and there is a but, should we be putting all of our eggs into one basket? I.e., what about the remaining 11.88% of the market share? It seems like a small percentage, but when you think of the amount of people who use the web world wide, there are still millions using Bing/ Yahoo/ Others.

Bing only launched in 2009 and in a short space of time they have established themselves as a rival to Google, and more importantly, they are growing. Yahoo appointed Bing as it’s exclusive natural and paid search platform in 2009, which means that both engines return the same results. So, it’s worth considering that factor when reviewing the search market shares.

So where do the Bing and Google differ?

First and foremost, the search results they provide differ. This sounds obvious, but for SEO newbies, it might not be. The search results on all engines are calculated using complex algorithms, and even though Bing and Google’s are similar, there are key variants, such as:

Google are certainly more advanced when it comes to interpreting a pages subject/ theme. Bing’s bots don’t address the whole page of a website, which most likely affects the relevancy of the results.

However, Bing’s algorithms seem more capable of recognising pictures, videos, audio and flash. Google’s algorithms focus primarily on HTML/ text based content. So without including text alongside any image or video that appears on your site, they simply won’t be recognised by Google.

It would appear as though Bing’s bots don’t focus so heavily on external backlinks and place more emphasis on social media and internal links with anchor text. We do however; think Google are starting to incorporate social media more heavily into their algorithms.

With all the above differences in mind, there are still a great deal of similarities between all search engines. For example, manipulated links will not be tolerated, duplicate content won’t be recognised but good quality content will be rewarded.

Evidently, Google are like the Jesus of the search engine world, but it’s worth making note of what appeals to it’s disciples, especially as the market share across the pond is more even than in the UK. So, if your businesses services are supplied in the US/ worldwide, or you’re aim is for them to be, this particularly applies to you. comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, released new stats on Wednesday (April 15th 2015) that shows Microsoft’s engine Bing has achieved a 20.1% share of the U.S search market, which is a seriously positive result for them and supports our view to utilize other search engines too.

http://www.comscore.com/esl/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Releases-March-2015-US-Desktop-Search-Engine-Rankings

However, there’s also another network that have always suggested that they will, at some point, move into search; and that’s Facebook.

Facebook Vs. Google

Previously, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook receives around a billion queries per day, without even trying. Plus, they have over 1 billion active users worldwide. So if they were to/ when they decide to move into the search market, could they pose the biggest threat to Google of all? Check out these stats:

As of December 2014, it was logged that 890 million people log on to Facebook everyday

Five new profiles are created every second

Average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes

It would be so convenient for active users to query Facebook instead of opening a new tab or leaving the mobile app to search Google. However, when they do decide to launch their own search engine, Zuckerberg will want to make sure that it is ready to compete.

Google haven’t been hugely successful in their attempts to enter the social network market. Google+ in fact, is probably their most public failure to date. So it’ll be interesting to see whether the king of social can develop algorithm’s advanced enough to return accurate results and give Google a run for their money.

Almost a year ago now, Facebook launched their Places Directory, which allows you to search for a city and see if any of your friends are checked-in there, or have visited previously. At the same time you can view information about the city, read hotel and restaurant reviews, view posts and photos. If you’re logged out of your account, you can still access the publicly available information. So, could the introduction of this local form of browsing suggest that Facebook are looking at ways of incorporating search into their social network seamlessly?

They have been triumphant in developing a PPC program that rivals AdWords with enormous reach. And one thing’s for sure, when Facebook does decide to launch their own search engine, businesses and SEO companies will be eager to learn what makes their algorithms happy.

We make sure every corner is covered

When it comes to digital marketing and attempting to satisfy the search engines, we have every corner covered for our clients. Our product offerings include:

Totally white hat, transparent SEO that follows a simple 3 step strategy

A unique social product called Like to Follow, which means all of our client’s can opt in to like and follow one another on their social platforms

A reputation management product called Positivity, which helps you gain good reviews online and allows you to assess your customer’s experience

And, we even have our own mini-search engine called Connect, which allows our clients to purchase from one another and also pursue business relationships

We also offer managed on site changes. So if we find that your site lacks any of the elements we consider the search engine’s algorithms to be looking for, we will update your site to make certain it’s relevant enough to achieve a great rank.

We hope this blog has provided an interesting read and please let us know if you have any questions. Tweet or follow me at Annabelle_CS

Have a great day!
Annabelle

The Importance of Your Online Reputation

Every so often, something or an experience totally unrelated to your subject matter can provide inspiration, and that is certainly the case for this week’s blog. The Click Submit team have been loving the BBC2 six part series, Back In Time For Dinner. Starting in 1950, the Robson family were forced to consume the food of each decade up to 2000, and take on the traditional roles of the family. In the episode that re-enacted post war Britain, it was mind blowing to see how little food we were allowed to consume, how limited our lifestyle was and what a minute amount of choice we had as a consumer in the UK. Tea time consisted of bread with dripping and the weekly meat ration would equate to one nights for a family in 2015. The general consensus of the decade was simply, to make do with what you were given. Fast forward into the 21st century and we have never had more power as a consumer, nor have businesses ever had to work harder to gain a client’s trust or seal of approval. It’s interesting to consider the factors that have contributed to this, but importantly, we want to make sure that you recognise how vital it is to protect & build your online reputation and we’re about to advise you how to do so!

Search Engines

Nowadays, the first thing a potential client is likely to do when considering using your service, is to search for you. And by search, we mean via a virtual engine like Google. What is said about your business online has become an immediate reflection of the quality and ability of your service/s. So you want to know that the results being returned are honest and above all, positive. Thus, go Google yourself! And suss out what people are saying about you online. Even if your business isn’t built online, it’s highly likely that if you type in your businesses name, there will be relevant results. It’s crucial to stay in the know when it comes to what people are saying about you in the realms of the virtual.

Monitor Social Media

If you have read our previous blogs and followed our words of wisdom, you should be pretty social savvy by now. If you’ve created your profile pages and have started publishing content/ engaging with your clients, you should also start to monitor what people are saying about you. Cue burning ears. This will give you an indication of how well you’re performing and whether your product offerings are being received well and the content you’re delivering is engaged with. If a client has raved about one of your products or your service via a tweet/ status update, respond to it. It could encourage them to write a review. Equally, if there are any signs of negative criticism, address it and deal with it (we’ll discuss negative reviews later). As your company grows and more people begin sharing feedback about it online, the more difficult and also important it will be to monitor it. It’s critical that you manage this element of your business pro-actively.

Independent Review Sites

If you’ve mastered the social portals, you need to address your presence on independent review sites, such as uk.trustpilot.com or www.reviewcentre.com. Although you’re likely to be collecting testimonials for your main site, there are a number of sceptics out there who will want further reassurance that your on-site testimonials are genuine. And if you have a good amount of off-site testimonials to add into the pot, you’ll be helping your potential client/s feel confident that utilizing your service or purchasing an item from you, is the most advantageous, reasoned choice.

Encourage online testimonials

People are always far quicker to write negative reviews online than to write positive ones. Usually, as a means to vent anger and frustration. So encouraging positive online testimonials is likely to require more effort than simply providing a great service. You can approach long term clients, for example, ones that have been using your service for over 6 months, or those who have bought from you at least 5 times previously. By contacting a client once they have had an ample amount of time to sample your offerings, you’re more likely to gain reward. Encourage them to be as specific as possible too. It’s important to note that regular online reviews will assist with your SEO (win, win) and the more recent the review, the more likely a potential client will recognise that you’re hot right now.

Tip: Think outside the box & reward longevity

This isn’t a fresh idea, it’s one used in marketing strategies globally, but rewarding your loyal clients occasionally will boost their experience, encourage returning revenue and hopefully, generate rave reviews online. Businesses are always so eager to encourage potential clients to sign up, but once they’ve stepped on the bandwagon, the offers usually end there. So, think outside the box and we’re confident by doing so, your online reputation will be 5 star.

Negative press

As painful as it can be sometimes, it’s better to maintain the mentality that the customer is always right, even when they’re wrong. The downside to the growth of the internet, is that instead of an unhappy customer relaying a negative experience to their friends or family, they can share it with the world. Although this gives a consumer more power than ever, it can mean a business might not get the opportunity to address its error before it’s out for everyone to witness. Whatever happens, don’t ignore any negative press. If you respond to it efficiently and with the intention to resolve the issue, with the customer’s best interest in mind, it can actually result in a positive outcome all round. Businesses are not machines and there will inevitably be errors along the way, but how you choose to deal with the mishaps will reflect your brand and affect how it is perceived.

Tip: Ask for feedback and don’t shy away from criticism

Whilst monitoring your online reputation, don’t hesitate to ask your customers what they like and what they feel could be improved in your business. Showing that you’re eager to please your clients and are continuously brainstorming ways of advancing your service/ products can only be received positively.

Since we don’t like to end our blogs on a negative note, we’ll mention our latest product, Positivity, which is centred around reputation management. First and foremost, this product was introduced to assist our clients with their SEO, because it appears that online reviews are now a key factor of search engine algorithms. But it was also born with the intent of helping them generate positive public reviews.

It is a really simple tool that allows our clients to verify whether their client’s happy or not, before asking them to submit a review via an online review centre. If a client is unhappy for any reason, it also gives our client the opportunity to rectify the situation.

This is another way for our clients to learn from and engage with theirs, and hopefully improve their brand/ reputation at the same time.

*This additional product is included in our existing quarterly fee and more info is available here

We hope this blog has been a useful read and please let us know if you have any questions. Contact or follow me on twitter @Annabelle_CS

Have a great day!

Business-to-Business Social Networking: Featuring LinkedIn & Connect

A couple of weeks ago we published the article ‘Help grow your business with social media, for free’ and focused our attention on Facebook and Twitter, the two giants in the social media field. In this weeks blog we’re going to discuss Business-to-Business social networking using LinkedIn and Connect as our guinea pigs.

LinkedIn

As we have mentioned time and time again, improving your social status will assist your SEO, but importantly, it’s a free way to connect with your existing/ potential clients and gain more business. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, whose free business marketing options are mainly used to interact and engage with your clientele, LinkedIn’s ethos is to encourage collaboration between professionals. With over 53 million users, it’s certainly at the forefront of business-to-business social networking, so if you’ve yet to tackle this platform, we’re about to help you head forth and conquer.

Here’s a guide to what steps you’ll need to take to do so:

Setting up a profile

Sign up: Once you’ve signed up for an account, you’ll be asked to provide some information for your profile, similar to, but more basic than what you would display on your CV e.g. work experience, qualifications, a personal statement and valuable skills. Then you can add a pretty picture of yourself too.

Shout about it: Inform your existing contacts that you’ve arrived on LinkedIn. You can do this through email or another of your social platforms.

Get recommended: You can invite existing contacts or other work colleagues to recommend you. If they do, you can display their rave review on your profile page. And these can act as testimonials and references.

Get Endorsed: You can list your skills on your LinkedIn profile and clients/ work colleagues can endorse your skills. You can list as many skills as you think you possess but perhaps stick to around 10 of the most relevant ones to begin with.

Cross-Market: You can promote your company/ website, blog and other social pages from your LinkedIn profile by providing the links in the contact section of your site. Also start to integrate LinkedIn into all your marketing.

Tips:

If you link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile, you can post your LinkedIn updates to Twitter, and vice versa. Peachy! It’s really simple to do:

- Scroll over your thumbnail sized profile pic, in the top right hand corner of your profile page
- Select to manage privacy and settings
- Sign into Twitter & manage Twitter settings
- Add your Twitter account
- Select whether you want this to appear on your LinkedIn account in the contact information area

Some online guidance articles for LinkedIn explain that you’re able to import your blog RSS feed but these are past their sell by date. Previously, if you wrote blogs that were relevant to a LinkedIn group you were apart of, you used to be able to import them automatically into the news section, but sadly, this is no longer possible. There are other ways to go about it:



The more you optimize your profile, the more times it will get viewed because you’ll appear in the search results more frequently. Hopefully, leading to more business contacts and potentially, new clients/ business partners. You can add a ton of information to further help you do this, for example, you can add what languages you speak, what causes you care about, projects that you’ve been apart of, and so on.

Networking on LinkedIn

Groups: Once you’ve setup your profile, you can start networking. The best way to do this would be to join relevant groups and start sharing your knowledge and contributing to conversations. The link to all groups appears beneath the interests tab at the top of your profile page. You could also create your own group. This would offer you another way to reach out and engage with potential/ existing clients.

Tip:

If you’re going to create your own group, we would suggest creating one for your industry rather than your company. Your group reach would extend past your clients and attract/ engage other businesses. You can create topical discussions, write about relevant news and send announcements. Invite your contacts, colleagues, customers and even industry pros to join and start discussions about relevant topics.

Stay regular: Whether you decide to create your own group, or simply join others, or whether you decide to only focus on your profile page, make sure your updates and contribution stays regular. Just like Twitter and Facebook, it’s best not to leave your LinkedIn page deserted.

For SEO

When creating your LinkedIn profile, there are ways you can customise your profile that will complement your SEO, such as:

Customise your public profile URL with your name. On your profile page, click ‘edit’ next to your public profile URL, and then click ‘edit’ next to where it appears on the right hand side. And then you’re done.

Add custom anchor text to your links. You can have up to 3 links on your profile leading to other websites.

Make sure to include a selection of keywords in your summary section and possibly in your work experience section too.

LinkedIn offer premium paid services and pay per click ads as well. We like to enlighten our clients on how to make the most out of all the free online marketing tools, but if there’s room in the budget to accommodate paid advertising, then it’s definitely worth considering.

Connect (our marvellous, mini search engine)

Connect is a totally unique product on the SEO market. It seems as though we’re bragging, but because we have almost 4000 clients utilizing our services (not 53 million yet, we know), all whom want to grow their businesses, we thought it would be wise to produce a way for them to interact. So, Connect was born. It’s our own mini search engine, solely for our clients, developed so that they can connect, either to pursue business relationships or shop from one another. Pretty handy, huh?

All of our clients who opt into Connect can offer other Click Submit clients a percentage discount for their services/ products. It’s really simple to create your profile and we have published a step-by-step article to assist you through the process.

So, if you are a client of ours and you’re not making use of this free tool, you really should be. And if you’re not a client of ours, I guess this product is pretty inviting.

If you have any questions, please let us know, or tweet me: @Annabelle_CS

The Importance of a Long Term, Sustainable SEO Strategy

When it comes to SEO, there’s a vast amount of the web occupied by articles relaying information on how to appease the search engines and their complex algorithms; mainly because everyone with a website wants to claim the prolific top spot. Often words like ‘penguin’, ‘panda’, ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ crop up, and such terminology can be quite confusing and intimidating for an SEO novice. This weeks article aims to simplify the SEO process, focusing on link building, and enlighten you on why developing a long term, sustainable SEO strategy is of great value and importance. We promise, it isn’t all that complicated.

We've chosen to concentrate on the link building aspect of SEO because it’s the area we find people are most worried about and ill informed on. Because the search engine’s algorithms change frequently, website rankings can fluctuate. This is because the algorithm determines the search results and how they calculate a websites relevancy alters. When a website suddenly drops to the bottom of the search engine results, it’s usually associated with poor quality backlinking, AKA black hat techniques. This is every site owners fear and with a great deal of SEO companies out there, it can be tricky to know which one to trust with such an important task, especially if you’re not fully informed on the subject.

First and foremost, what is a backlink?

It’s all fine and dandy if an SEO company explains that gaining backlinks is a crucial part of improving your search engine rank and the more of them the merrier, but if you don’t know what one is, you can be totally flummoxed. A link acts as an avenue that leads a user on another, usually relatable website, to yours. As an example, if your website sells health foods, a link from the National Institute for Nutrition would be really valuable. The backlink would be created if the Institute mentioned your health food site on their website/ blog/ social network and provided a way for the user to reach your site. Pretty straightforward, right? The difficult part is gaining enough links from other websites to show the search engines that yours is the one to rank well on your chosen keywords.

How can SEO companies assist the link building process?

No one knows, apart from the search engines themselves, exactly what makes up their algorithms. From experience, we have a pretty great idea and with almost 4000 clients, we’re able to spot trends really quickly. So, it’s the norm for SEO companies to alter and update the way they build links and each may favour different techniques. Commonly, SEO companies will try to create backlinks by publishing content that inspires sharing, emailing bloggers, submitting sites to directories, or sometimes paying for links to be placed on relevant websites (the latter we wouldn’t advise). Here at Click Submit, we advertise your site to webmasters of relevant websites. It is up to them whether they decide to link build or not. For us that is the key element in our SEO; only webmasters who want to link to your site and who think it appropriate, will do so. This is a very natural, white hat (AKA moral) SEO method.

The more the merrier

The assumption that the more backlinks you carry, the better your site will rank is quite true, but the type of backlinks you gain play a large factor in this too. Any links that appear spammy or manipulated will be picked up by the search engines and not recognised. An example of a poor quality link would be one that you’d placed yourself, such as a comment on someone else’s blog. So if you were to build 500 low quality links overnight, you might notice a quick bump up the search engine rankings, but you’d be foolish to think you would stay there.
When the search engine algorithms update, this is the time many businesses notice their rank fluctuate. If you concentrate your efforts on building a portfolio of relevant, good quality links, you should have a positive outcome from any update because the links won’t be discounted. Also, Google/ Yahoo/ Bing are only trying to improve their search results so if you’re ticking all the right boxes and working alongside their SEO guidelines, you should be rewarded for doing so.

How soon should I expect to see results? I need results NOW!

We’ve been in the SEO world a while, and if we’d been given £1 for every time a client had asked us how long it would take for them to be on page 1 for their desired search term, we’d be millionaires, all of us. And if we could make all our clients appear on page 1 overnight and stay there, we’d be billionaires. So, let’s make it quite clear that to see the best, most consistent results, SEO is a long-term investment. Because every keyword has a different level of competition, it’s impossible to give an exact time frame for when you’ll start to notice an impact from our service, so we always suggest between 3 and 9 months. We aim to build between 150-300 links per quarter; this is where we have found optimum results. We’ll also make sure those links are categorized and even geo targeted where possible. Links will decay over time so SEO needs to be an on-going process to maintain and improve your rank.

How you can further help your SEO:

If you’re eager to progress the SEO process yourself, there are loads of ways you can do so. Here are a few suggestions:

Create a blog: Creating a blog is a great way to engage your clients. Evidently, we think so. If you can publish interesting content, it may encourage existing and potential clients to interact with you. You can share these blogs on your social profile/s as well. If people interact with and share your blog on their websites, the search engine algorithms will recognise this. If someone were to share your blog and create a link back to your website, it would count as a backlink. Yippee.

FYI: You could always contact bloggers who are well followed in your industry and ask them to test your product/s and agree that if they like them, they’ll write about them.

Go social: In last week’s blog we went to town on explaining how growing your social profile can help grow your business. It can really help your SEO too. If you can build up a popular social network, this will help improve your rank. Plus, if you’re a client, you can take advantage of our free Like to Follow product. This will help you gain likes and follows from trustworthy businesses.

Link to your customers: If you regularly work with another agency/ company/ client, displaying their logo on your website that links to theirs and vice versa is a great way of growing your backlink portfolio. These are people you know and trust so you can be assured that the link will be of a high quality.

Viral: Every business owners dream is to create one piece of content that goes viral. So keep brainstorming because if you manage to achieve it, you’ll have hit the jackpot for SEO and your business.

With all the above in mind, don’t spend all of your time trying to please the search engines. If you create/have created a fantastic website that’s developed with SEO in mind, and you’re exploring avenues like social sharing, blogging, gaining testimonials, then you’re the perfect top rank material.
Please let us know if you have any link related questions. We hope we have explained backlinks clearly and helped increase your SEO knowledge. If you have any blog requests, contact me via twitter @Annabelle_CS.

Have a great day,
Annabelle

Help Grow Your Business With Social Media, For Free!

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that our blogs have become even more content heavy. There are two reasons for this. Most importantly, we’re eager to educate our clients on how to achieve their online marketing goals and assist their SEO. Secondly, with almost 4000 clients, we’re able to spot search engine algorithm trends and we are certain that developing a strong social profile is becoming an increasingly large focal point of SEO. It does appear that the search engines are placing more and more emphasis on social signals as a way to determine their search results. Therefore, this blog is tailored towards social media and how to use it to benefit both yourselves (our clients) and your clients. And I guess it’s helping us with our SEO at the same time!

Quite literally, social media are websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. The two most well known of these are Facebook and Twitter. They are the perfect platform for engaging, communicating and interacting with your clients outside of your website, in real time. If used productively, they can help you further build your relationships with your clients and show off what amazing services you provide. In turn, this should help your company’s growth and search engine rank too.

If you think that your industry doesn’t suit social media and you’re not confident that your customers are online, then let us look at a few stats that would suggest otherwise:

1.) 72% of all Internet users are now active on social media
2.) There are now over 1.15 billion Facebook users
3.) And over 550 million registered Twitter users
4.) 93% of marketers use social media for business
5.) 89% of adults between 18-29 use social media, but 60% of 50-60 year olds are active and so are 43% of people over the age of 65! So it’s not just youths online

It is most definitely an avenue you need to explore and use to your advantage, and if you haven’t started doing so, it’s about time that you did!

FYI: There’s one thing you must make sure you’re prepared to do before creating a social media profile, and that is to commit to using it. We will warn you now, there’s nothing less appealing than a potential client finding a half pulled together, irregularly updated profile page. Firstly, there will be a competitor doing a better job and secondly, it will poorly reflect your business. You need to remember that everything you create outside of your website, visible to the public, is an extension of your brand and service. And it will require time and energy to make sure it displays how ace you are.

Where to start?

Let’s begin by addressing two of the most powerful and influential social media networks, Facebook and Twitter. If you’re totally new to social media marketing, these are the two we advise you to crack first. Both parties allow you to create ‘pay per click’ advertising campaigns, but below we’re going to discuss what you can gain for free.

Facebook for free

Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg back in 2004. It began as a means for college students to communicate online and is now used across the globe for personal and business use, by over 1 billion people. Crikey!

To make the most out of Facebook for your business the first thing you need to do is:
Create a business page

- You’ll need to have a personal Facebook account to be able to create a business page, so if you haven’t one already, go sign up

- When you create your business page, Facebook will allow you to request a web address such as www.facebook.com/clicksubmitlimited This will allow your social page to reflect your domain name/ website, making the transition between the two easy and associable for your users

- Invite your existing clients to ‘Like’ your page. You can contact them directly through Facebook, or send an email letting all your clients know that you’ve arrived on Facebook and to ‘Like’ you for real time updates

- You can create Events on Facebook. So if you’re opening a new shop, why not invite your clients to it via Facebook? Or, if you’re about to launch a new service or product, you can create interest and demand by creating an Event for it

- You could also form a Facebook group. For example, if you have a specific service you want to discuss with a potential client/s, you could create a group to converse through and plough information into. These can be made private so only who you want to see them, will see them

- Facebook Messenger will allow you to contact people directly. For example, a client may hit you with a query on your page and you can respond via Facebook messenger directly and privately
The above points quickly summarize Facebook for business, but for more detailed info have a read here: https://www.facebook.com/business/overview

Twitter for free

Twitter was born in 2004 and allows you to ‘tweet’ a short burst of information to your followers. There are over 500 million users worldwide and hundreds of millions of tweets sent every day.

Sign up and Tweet
Write 140 character messages to engage with your clients. These updates can range from questions, to try and engage clients, links to blogs and news on any updates/ offers available.

Follow existing clients and businesses with shared interests to create a Twitter community.

Like Facebook, you can direct message followers/ those you are following, so you can engage privately through the network too.

This is also a condensed description of Twitter, but for more info on how you can utilize it for your business, head here: https://business.twitter.com/basics

Tip: Two basic symbols to know about for both:

@Name: If you @name e.g. @clicksubmit, you will be directing your message towards them, or tagging that person in the post. For example, I might write: ‘Hey @Clicksubmit, why is your service so affordable?’ Click Submit would be informed of the message and be able to respond to you directly.

#word: You can use a hashtag in a tweet/ update before a relevant word to categorize it. For example, when we blog we always include #seo. This means if anyone is searching for SEO on Twitter/ Facebook, they’ll see our post in the search results.

There are tons of guides online that will assist you in far more detail than we have above (another time!) but we wanted to give you a snippet of ground knowledge to get you started.

Once you have set yourself up, you’ll be eager to gain some followers/ likes and attract some attention. Make sure you use our free and fantastic Like To Follow product to help you do this. All the likes/ follows it generates are from reputable businesses (they’re simply all our clients): https://www.clicksubmit.co.uk/social/like-to-follow-strategy It’s such a popular product and unique in the marketplace. We would never recommend paying for popularity!

Facebook and Twitter are just two of many popular social networks. LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest are following suit and definitely ones to consider when growing your social profile portfolio.

How to use social media to help grow your business

So, you might have managed to get yourself a profile set up but it can be a little overwhelming to know what content to publish, so here are a few ideas on how to engage your followers and use it to help grow your business.

Educate
This is the type of content we prioritise publishing. By producing content that educates our client base, it helps them learn how to use our services effectively whilst also improving their knowledge of online marketing. This could be done via a blog, for example, if you specialise in web development, it would be good to write an article on the difference between template and bespoke built websites. Or, if you know that your clients aren’t utilizing a couple of your products optimally, make them aware of it by sharing more information about them.

Question and Answer
Don’t be afraid to ask your followers questions. As a suggestion; If you’re thinking of upgrading your website, ask your clients what they like most about it already and what keeps them returning time after time. These types of questions will help you learn more about your business from a user perspective and discover what works well and what doesn’t.
The questions don’t always have to be related to your service! Q&A’s are simply a great way to generate interaction. For example, if there’s a series being broadcast on TV that you know a lot of your clients are likely to be watching, ask them about it!

Product development
As your business grows, you are sure to expand on your initial product offerings. Sharing these ideas and new products via social media can be a great way to generate interest and gain feedback too.

Show Off
Social media can be another platform to share your customer testimonials or success. This will be the kind of information potential clients are looking for and you want to persuade them to convert. For example, if you’re an online estate agent, you may share information about properties that you’ve just sold and how much money you have managed to save your client/s!

Let them see YOU
Behind every business are real people, would you believe, and we’re not all that different, really. So it can be good to drop the barrier and give your clients an insight into the people that keep your ship sailing. So if you’re out on a team building day, don’t hesitate to upload a picture of all those happy faces to share with your followers and potential clients. If your followers can put a few faces to the brand, it’ll help gain trust.

Offer Alert
You might want to share news of current offers too. Occasionally, you could share a special deal solely for you Twitter/ Facebook fans. This will help generate business, increase your popularity and also give you an idea of how many people are engaging with you socially.

Another factor to consider is customer service
Your customer support is likely to extend to your social profile. If a client wants a quick response or has a complaint to make, it’s common for them to reach you by posting a public comment. Don’t be put off by this, just make sure that you check your account/s everyday so your response is quick. How quickly and in what manner you respond will impact how other potential clients view the question/ complaint/ concern. If you can rectify the situation and generate a happy outcome, then it will turn even a negative situation into a positive one.
When it comes to deciding how often to update your social media profile, this varies depending on the kind of business you run and how regularly you feel it necessary. Don’t publish content for the sake of it; quality over quantity really comes into play here. We always try to publish one educational post per week and a selection of shorter ones throughout it. If you develop a structure for your posts, you may find some regular followers that will come to anticipate them on particular days and times. Get to know your audience and establish when your posts receive the most traffic and which kind generates the most engagement. Most social networks offer some analytical tools to help you do this.

SEO positive

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, not only will all this hard work and socializing benefit the growth of your business and help strengthen your brand, it will assist your search engine rankings. We are confident that search engines are accommodating social networks in their algorithms and are going to do so more and more. With such a huge amount of people operating within these platforms it would be silly of them not to. Their main goal is to return the most accurate search results possible, so assessing social signals will help them choose what is most relevant to rank.
So, go join the social network and make yourself worthy of that top spot. Have a great week!

Annabelle

PS. Don't forget to follow and like us!