Business Partner Magazine

Tips and advice for entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs

Effective SEO Techniques that will Definitely Work for You

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There is no field today which does not experience competition. In this age of fierce and relentless competition, it is very difficult to survive. One must keep pace with the technology to stay in the competition. SEO help to do so in a very considerable way. SEO is a bunch of techniques that will help you rank higher in the search engines thus helping you stay in the competition.

It is a quantitative, repetitive process that is created to send signals to search engines that the following pages are worth showing in Google’s index. SEO has jumped to become the most popular process that many firms, organization, and company use to gain publicity their page. It also provides an unbiased competition to the firms, hence giving an equal chance of marketing to the start-ups too.

Although SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a very vast topic, here we take up some of the technique that can not only be easily implemented but will work for your business.

  • Refine your existing content

If your existing website was designed some time ago, it is a great idea to refine your existing content. Make your content engaging and include images. You can also work on making existing pages longer as longer content helps in improving search engine ranking.

  • Start creating videos

People find viewing videos more interesting than reading content. They also rank higher in search engine searches. So, you may consider including one or two videos on your website.

  • Build quality backlinks

Backlinks are the links to your site from another site. They are an important ranking factor. But it is important to have high-quality backlinks, for instance, from reputed influencers, high-quality content. Backlink building techniques like Blog commenting and paid links are no longer counted as high-quality backlinks.

  • Blogging, infographics and guest posting

Blogging helps by adding fresh content to your site. This makes the search engine crawl your site often and keeps the traffic coming to your site. Similarly, well-designed infographics also help in attracting traffic as people will engage more with images than to content.

Guest blogging is writing blogs for another site and getting a link to your site from that blog. It is a popular method of creating backlinks and works fine till you have high quality, original content.

  • Optimize content for mobiles

As more and more users have started accessing internet on their smartphones, it is essential that the content is optimized for mobile phones. Mobile friendly websites rank better on the search engines.

  • Use long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are the keywords that describe your business well. They have less traffic but greater conversions. It is easier to compete on long tail keywords than highly competitive head keywords.

  • Concentrate on Local SEO

Local SEO can also act out as a very powerful and reliable search engine such as Google or Bing, that can collect, aggregate, and surrender relevant data for area businesses. One can increase the chances of being located by their potential customers, by working with a local SEO company. As Local SEO services offer a very targeted online marketing approach, so these increments can easily be achieved.

  • Redirect Management

Redirects, particularly 301 redirects, pass the link equity of an old page on a site to a new page. Redirect management helps you to regain its ranking and traffic after the website has gone through a website revamp.  Even the old URL of the page will display a 404 error when the user clicks because they aren’t being redirected.

Conclusion

These are only a few benefits out of many. SEO has gained a huge popularity globally, starting off with USA, UK, Australia, etc. SEO is continuously changing but these do not affect the users and popularity. To stay on top ranking of the searches of what is working, it’s essential to always read, learn, and test new approaches.

About the Author

Ashley Marsh is a Senior- Content Writer at Maan Softwares Inc.  She has been with this company for past four years. She is specialized in the technical writing genre especially in mobile development, web design, and, latest technologies. According to her, it has been a great exposure for her as each day the technology is updating itself resulting in new ideas that keep her fresh daily.

5 Ways Your Small Business Can Grow Online In 2018

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  1. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Everyone is on their mobiles these days – in fact, more than half of search engine queries come from a mobile browser and many people use their phones in place of a desktop or laptop. One way to make sure your small business will grow in 2018 is to have a fast-loading, mobile-optimised site. Potential customers or clients may be using their smartphone to access your site and they could be put off if they have a negative mobile experience. No user wants to struggle to see images or not be able to read content because it won’t load properly. The layout of your website should naturally adapt to a smartphone device and the site should be easy to navigate. Consider the design of your mobile site and make sure that it is engaging for visitors.

  1. Use Social Media Platforms

As a small business in the 21st century, it is not enough to just have a website that you use as a point of contact between you and clients. Social media is a great marketing tool and one way that you can continually engage with your customers and network to find new customers. Building a social media presence is an important way of growing your business and there are countless options when it comes to deciding what platforms you will use and how you will use them. For example, if you’re selling a product, particularly one that is visually or aesthetically pleasing like clothes, plants, healthy snacks or art, then a visual platform like Instagram is an ideal way to showcase your products to the right demographics. Facebook can be a great way to share funny, interesting or informative content that your followers can then share with their friends. Include links to your social media accounts on your website so that customers can find and access them easily. You can even integrate a social media feed onto your site so customers can see your latest status updates.

  1. Create High-Quality Content

Having high-quality content on your website and blog helps to engage visitors and encourage potential customers to return to your site in the future. Create informative and interesting content that relates to your business but that is also going to have relevance to your target audience. Make sure it reflects your business in terms of the tone and style and that you are always adding new content. Constantly producing useful content for your followers or customers helps to add to the credibility and respectability of your brand.

  1. List Your Business

By registering your small businesses on different online directories and Google Places, you will be more ‘searchable’ online. Signing up for these different directories is usually free and means that you become part of a database so potential customers looking for certain services can find you more easily. 

  1. Integrate Different Multimedia Into Your Website

Different types of multimedia and mediums used on your website and social media can help to enhance your online presence and grow your business. Videos are one way that you can attract audiences and engage your customers. Online videos are easy and cheap to produce and can give you great results. In this age, people are more likely to watch a quick video then they are to read a long article. When brainstorming content ideas, consider how you could convert a certain content idea into a video. For example, you might make an audience showing how your product can be used to help solve a problem your demographic might be experiencing. Another good video idea is to interview repeat clients or customers and create a video of testimonials that you can have on your website and share across your social media accounts. This gives you credibility and social proof is a factor customers value.

Infographics are another great way of articulating content ideas and they work well on social media where people are scrolling through their feed and don’t tend to stop to read a lot. Creating interesting infographics is one way to make your website more interesting and engaging and to get the attention of those who might not necessarily be part of your target audience.

In 2018, one of the best ways to ensure your business grows is to make sure that you are using the online world to its full potential. Ensure your website and social media accounts are engaging your customers and you should see your sales increase in no time!

About the Author

Laura Martins is a content manager for RateCity, where you can make smarter financial decisions and compare thousands of financial options. In her time away from RateCity, Laura loves reading about tech and spending time with her dogs.

Google Penalty Removal from SEO Company Experts

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If you violate Google’s best practices and get caught, you will be hit by a Google penalty resulting in a dramatic drop in your rankings. Here’s everything you can do to recover:

As a business owner, you are busy doing everything possible to improve your online presence. You’ve read the books, attended the live webinars and even reached out to experts on LinkedIn. So why, you may ask, is Google punishing me for learning the art of search engine optimisation? The answer is, annoyingly, it’s complicated. The SEO industry is volatile, unpredictable and filled with mixed opinions. You need to follow search engine guidelines carefully – it’s always better to check before you chance it.

A Google penalty will not just take away your site’s organic reach, but your online traffic and leads will drop as a result. It can be a significant setback for a business looking to grow their business and reputation online. There are many reasons why a site can get penalised, including thin content, unnatural backlinks, duplicate content and other spammy SEO tactics. You need to ensure that your marketing strategy complies with Google’s best practices.

Remember, there are key differences between a site penalty and a core Google algorithm update. An algorithm update can wipe out thousands of websites in one simple change to the system. Do your research on Google algorithm updates to ensure you are doing everything possible to grow your business online. A penalty, on the other hand, is targeted specifically at sites that are using black hat SEO to move up the search engine results.

Stay on top of these changes to ensure that your business is forever moving forwards. Don’t have the time? As an SEO company that has personally helped many business owners improve their online presence and reach the top of Google using only ethical practices, we understand the industry more than most. Here are some things we recommend you do to recover from a Google penalty:

Understand the Google penalty types

There are two different types of penalties:

  • A manual update is used by a member of Google’s specialised team. They will have noticed holes in your SEO strategy – possible broken links, duplicate or spun content, bought links, etc. To see your penalty, you will need to visit Google Webmaster Tools and check your notifications.
  • An algorithmic update is far harder to recover from as it’s an automated penalty. This can be identified as a sharp decline in website traffic using Google Analytics. If you notice results like this, it could well be the result of a Google penalty:

How to recover from a Google penalty

The good news is that a penalty doesn’t have to be the end of your online business. In most cases, you can get your website back on track by following the best SEO practices, and not getting drawn into quick wins. The majority of Google penalties occur because of an unnatural backlink profile, which is hardly surprising as link building is the number one ranking factor. There’s going to be some risk attached – it’s about quality over quantity. You should analyse your backlinks to find which ones may have caused a problem. From there, it’s a process of removing them manually.

Step 1) Identify bad/ broken links

Open up Google Webmaster Tools to download your entire list of backlinks. You’ll have to go through every backlink manually, but the results are worth it. You’re looking for sites that are no longer in Google’s index. This usually means they have been hit by a penalty. That poor trust score is then transferred to your website. The second thing to look for is a low domain authority score (lower than 10). Other signs of bad links include blogs with auto-approved comments, sites not relevant to your business, and links created by competitors to knock you off the search results – we call this negative SEO.

Step 2) Manually remove any bad links

Find the contact details of every site owner with a poor quality link pointing at your website. If you have done your research in the first place, you should have a bank of contact details already saved. It can be as simple as looking for an “About Us” or “Contact Page.” But if you are struggling, LinkedIn is an effective alternative. With this platform, you can be sure that every message sent is opened. You can expect either one of the following responses: The owner will oblige with the removal of your link (that was easy!), your email is removed, or they request payment in exchange for removal.

Step 3) Contact Big G!

The alternative is to submit a disavow file. When you do this, you are telling Google that you no longer want to be associated with these links and don’t want them to be considered when your website is crawled. Once you have taken these recovery actions, it’s time to file a request with Google. It often happens that you are rejected several times before getting a positive result. The best advice is to be honest in your actions. Suspect you are a victim of negative SEO? Trusted the wrong SEO provider? Tell them; it may help your case.

Other reasons for a Google penalty

  • Too many reciprocal links. Trading links with other websites sounds like a great deal – win, win, right? Google recognises this as a manipulative tactic, especially if they are from sites that are not relevant in your industry.
  • Duplicate content. The golden SEO rule is to publish only useful, quality content. If your site features the same content across multiple pages, you may receive a penalty.
  • Hidden links. All links on a webpage should be visible to the user. If you are using hidden links that are the same colour as the background, this will arouse suspicion with Google.
  • Over optimisation. So many websites use keywords in every other sentence in an attempt to land that top spot in the rankings. This has long been manipulative and will be penalised.

In conclusion

Despite the countless number of algorithm updates issued over the years, our clients continue to earn impressive results with most of them retaining that top spot. As Google certified professionals, we know exactly how to optimise a website for the best results. Got a question about search engine optimised, or are you struggling to recover from a penalty yourself? Speak to one of our friendly SEO experts on 01226 720 755.

This article was contributed by Senior Marketing Strategist, Emily Cocker, of Bigfoot Digital. She specialises in influencer marketing, link building and outreach campaigns. The company are known for their ethical SEO tactics that have earned clients a position at the top of Google for popular industry terms.

The Positive Impact of Web Design on Customer Experience

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One of the greatest misconceptions about the design and visual aspect of your website lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with overall customer experience. In fact, a lot of people in the world of digital business are firmly convinced that there’s nothing that can be improved on their website whatsoever as long as the CTR is high and there is a moderate amount of conversions. To prove just how false this claim is, we need to explore the positive impact of web design on overall customer experience.

Your CTA Immensely Affects Customer Experience

When it comes to your CTA (call-to-action) button, there are many different factors that you have to take into consideration. For instance, its position, the number of CTAs and similar factors all affect your conversion rate. As you can see, all of these come under the umbrella of web design. Surprisingly, even the color of your CTA is capable of making the difference. For instance, through an elaborate A/B testing effort, it was determined that a red CTA button has about 21 percent greater CTR than its green counterpart. Needless to say, for such a small web design change, the difference in customer experience from the user’s point of view is simply more practical.

Sometimes Less is More in Web Design

Another thing worth keeping in mind is the fact that more is not always better. According to one survey, people who were asked to choose between 24 different varieties of jam had about 10 times smaller chance of actually making a choice than those who were asked to choose between 6 different types. In other words, overwhelming your audience with a plethora of choices on your front page might be a bad practice that can set your brand back significantly.

Web Design Impacts Page Load Time

In the introduction, we mentioned responsiveness as a feature of its own, yet it is important to stress the fact that your web design greatly impacts the responsiveness of your website. More elements always mean more HTTP requests, which in turn slows down your website. This is especially troublesome since the majority of your audience expects your website to load within the first 2 seconds and will feel disappointed, even let down, should you fail to meet this expectation. Because of this, investing in responsive website development needs to become one of your top priorities.

Maintaining a Professional Appearance

As a new brand, you do not have the privilege of having people trust you. So, if people don’t trust you, why should they buy from you or subscribe to your blog? Well, unless you find a way to make yourself more presentable, they definitely won’t be willing to do so. Nonetheless, the design of your website, high-responsiveness, testimonials and associations with brands you’ve already worked with might just help you out in this regard. By appearing more professional, your audience will be more at ease during their first interaction with your brand. Later on, you can rely on this successful first interaction as a reference but, for the time being, all you have is this design.

Importance of Brand Consistency

Finally, your website is a crucial part of your online identity and as such it needs to have some features that stand out. We are talking about things like corporate colors, a unique logo or recognizable animations. A few years ago, Coca-Cola launched a unique campaign during the Ramadan, where they removed the logo from all of their cans. Still, every single consumer out there was able to recognize a can of Coke when they saw it, due to the fact that it was still in the same color and had that white curved line in the middle. This is something that your web design can help you achieve and make your brand easier to recognize in the digital world.

Get Ahead

At the end of the day, when it comes to your online presence, every single bit of advantage definitely counts. In a store, people would look at the edifice, examine rafts, evaluate your neatness and create opinions about your staff. On a blog or an eCommerce website, on the other hand, all you can present is your web design. This is why you need to make sure that it’s solid where it counts the most.

About the Author

Tony Solomon is a former LA-based translator turned writer. Currently, he is one of the senior editors at MediaGurus. Tony is well-versed in doing heavy research while striving to write high-quality content for the web. If you want to stay updated with Tony’s latest posts, feel free to follow him on Twitter.

Blogging – from Personal Journals to Big Business Marketing

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Smart guy sitting at workplace and working with computerWho would have thought that blogging would become so popular from its humble beginnings in the 1990’s?

In 1999 there were an estimated 23 blogs in total!

Compare that to today’s figures and you can see just how far blogging has come – we can now browse through millions of blogs relating to a myriad of different subjects, from sports and baking, to television and technology.

There is a blog for practically any subject you can think of and there are hundreds of different blogging platforms such as Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress that enable users to create detailed and content rich posts in a matter of minutes.

Initially, online blogs were simply used as a form of personal journal – pioneers of blogging such as Jorn Barger and Peter Merholz created the first blogs as a way to share their thoughts and online links.

Today however, blogging has evolved into so much more than that. We use blogs to enhance our business, provide additional information about our products, and even cover things such as online gaming and sports competitions.

Moreover, the actual content and features a blog can include has also evolved – we can include digital media, social sharing buttons, and even comment plugins that allow users to give their thoughts on our articles!

Blogging means business in today’s modern world. If you have a business, you should probably invest in a blog. Statistics show that running an active blog can increase sales and also improve the reputation of your company.

Furthermore, a blog can help build up a bond of trust with your customers, and can enhance your brand reputation – customers become interested in your articles and look forward to reading new content.

Website builder have created an interesting infographic containing a multitude of information relating to the history of blogging and its evolution for your viewing pleasure.