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Questions to Ask Your SEO Company

By now, you have probably heard how fantastic SEO can be for you and your business, so you are now prepared to hire someone, but you are still unsure what truly makes an SEO company great.

Selecting the wrong SEO agency for your business can end up being one of the biggest mistakes you’ll make, as it can be costly for you both financially and in time.

To save you the headache, we’ve compiled some of the most critical questions to ask your SEO company to ensure that they are doing the best for you and your business:

Can I see results from your past clients?

If there are no case studies to show the previous work of the SEO company, then we have a straightforward solution for you: run.

You will need someone confident in their work and someone who can prove they are experts in the game. Case studies are a huge part of that, and the best way to get the measure of how legitimate they are.

For example, here at Nautilus, we do our own SEO and constantly improve it for even better results. We have seen impressive results for our own company, so we are 100% confident that we can do the same for your business’ website. We have statistics and real-life people to prove it – take a look at our previous case studies here.

What pricing model does your company follow?

One of the first questions to ask your SEO company is their pricing model. This will help you stray away from lock-in contracts for 6 – 12 months. If an SEO company wants to lock you into a contract, they’re not confident in the results they can achieve for you. SEO is something you should be continually doing for your business, not just for a year.

Here at Nautilus, we have none of that nonsense. We do not have a lock-in period of any sort; we operate with monthly retainer packages, which can be found here – we only ever ask for a months’ notice if our clients decide to leave our services. We think that is the only fair way for both us as a company and the people we work with.

In our experience, our pricing model has put most clients at ease, leading to higher retention than you’d find at many different agencies. A green flag if we do say so ourselves.

What is your SEO process?

From all the questions to ask your SEO company, this might be the most important one.

You should be cautious if a potential SEO company is reluctant to list the work they intend to do for you. Inadequate agencies and sometimes even freelancers tend to hide what they are doing in exchange for the money you’re paying them.

This is why you should always ask what the process is.  If the company you’re speaking to dodge this question, it is more than likely that they are using spammy tactics such as black hat SEO which might damage your website.

Our motto when it comes to SEO is the reverse engineer success approach. We begin with on-page SEO & competitor research – we believe this is the best approach for SEO projects because it can be specifically tailored to the given client and their industry. It also helps us see what the competitors are doing, and this way, we can execute it even better.

Can I rank and beat my competitors’ keywords?

It is essential that your SEO company can target your competitors’ keywords. This will help you see results and produce a good ROI. However, no one can guarantee you the first page ranking on Google. If they do, they are lying to you.

Some niches can be more competitive than others, so it really depends on which industry you’re in. When operating in a fierce niche, going after longtail keywords – the ‘low-hanging fruit’ – in the beginning to get some backing from Google is a smart plan. After you’ve built your site up a bit, you can aim for the heavier ones.

How long Will it take to get a 1st page ranking?

SEO is much like a marathon and not a sprint. Here at Nautilus, we usually estimate what to expect in the first few months of working with us, but we would never guarantee first page rankings simply because it is not feasible in the first months of SEO.

If you are looking for a good SEO company, they will be transparent with you, much like we are with our clients. If you are interested in working with us, make sure to have a look at our reviews on Google, Trust Pilot & Yell.

What monthly deliverables (keyword ranking, traffic) can I expect if I hire your agency?

It would help if you were sure that the SEO company you are hiring could provide you with visible results of the SEO work.

For example, the monthly custom (we don’t just click export, we take all the data and analyse it) report detailing from us will include:

  • Keyword rankings
  • Traffic overview
  • Domain authority
  • Spam score
  • Backlinks
  • Other keywords your website is ranking for
  • Bounce rate
  • Most viewed pages

Try to get a clear picture of what you can expect to receive from the SEO company you choose to work with. It helps avoid disappointment later.

What tools do you use?

This question isn’t the most important, since a lot of the tools will perform the same task. But, it can be an easy way of ascertaining if your SEO company has a strong toolset at their disposal and demonstrates whether they do really know what they’re doing.

Some prime examples of tools used for successful SEO are SEMrush, Moz, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, and Search Console.

If you don’t hear any of these mentioned…well, there best be a VERY good reason.

What do you need from my side after onboarding?

It would help if you always asked what is needed from your side before the service begins; this will help speed things up and help the agency learn more about your business.

We have designed an easy onboarding document with everything we need to get started, which we send over to new clients and start from there. This covers keywords, competitors, and the relevant access we need to start.

Why Choose Us?

  • We provide a secure & fast WordPress migration with minimum downtime.
  • We offer robust, industry-specific & adaptable migration services to SMEs, enterprises & startup businesses across the world.
  • We have performed countless WordPress migrations since 2017.
  • We’re extremely experienced & can offer you standard website migration to your new hosting provider.
  • Whether it’s an old website that you would like to move, or you need a complete website redesign, we are able to assist you migrate your website securely and efficiently.
  • We also offer fully managed WordPress Hosting which is secure, carbon neutral and affordable.


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Announcing our Wix Partner Status

Introduction:

Nautilus Marketing is proud to announce that we are now a preferred partner for Wix.com – a leading cloud-based web development platform. The Wix Partnership Programme allows us to provide our clients with a team of professionals and resources dedicated to creating digital products through Wix technology.

More About Wix

With Wix, web developers can create HTML5-based websites and mobile sites with plug-ins, e-commerce, e-mail marketing, contact forms, community forums, and much more. The Wix platform makes web development effortless and straightforward. You can choose from dozens of beautifully designed templates to make your personal blog or online store look unique.

Why We Love Working with Wix

We love offering a cost-effective web development alternative to our clients. Some of the functionalities for the Wix technology is simpler and easier to understand, but this means that we can offer quick and efficient results to our clients and provide them with a platform that they can understand.

By being a Wix partner, we receive great support, which means we can offer an even better service to our clients. Our nerds love learning new and exciting technologies and implementing them into our everyday practices.

Overall, this is a significant step forward for our business, and we are looking forward to working alongside Wix to provide quality web development solutions for our amazing clients.

Get in touch with one of our nerds to begin your Wix web development journey today!

WordPress Migration Services – It’s Worthy and SEO Friendly

Sometimes you need to move your entire website — hosts change, fees go up, and sometimes it becomes prudent for any business or individual to hunt greener digital pastures.

You can choose to bring in an outside team to assist you with your migration, especially if you aren’t particularly tech-savvy. Something to keep in mind, though, is that hiring outsourced developers can often take more time and energy than it’s worth.

Many WordPress migration plugins are user-friendly, easy to install, and can handle all of the lengthy details of site migration without burning out your budget or your hard-earned SEO efforts. It’d be costly to migrate to the new site and lose all of the backlinks and authority that keep your business ranking on Google.

Reasons Why You Need WordPress Migration Services

There are many reasons why you need WordPress migration services, which are important to keep in mind.

  • Content Marketing Features

WordPress is the tool of choice for several marketing teams and publishers and it’s easy to see why – with inbuilt publishing tools including preview, scheduling, revisions, and more it makes publishing content a breeze for marketing teams.

WordPress also has built-in multiple user roles like super admin, admin, editor, author, and contributor in order that many people can have ownership and contribute across your team.

What’s more, its popularity means that there are tons of plugins that can help you. Content marketing teams with a limited knowledge in SEO can use plugins such as Yoast to ensure they’re hitting the marks in SEO with their content. What’s more, because of WordPress’ popularity, you can easily find tutorials and guidance online for practically any plugin you want to use on the site.

WordPress also has built-in multiple user roles like super admin, admin, editor, author, and contributor in order that many people can have ownership and contribute across your team.

  • It’s SEO Ready

Your website should be running on WordPress if you care about SEO. WordPress does a much better job of optimising for search engines than other content management systems. Open-source platforms are typically easier to navigate, and they’re updated more frequently as new features are released.

Another reason why WordPress sites perform better in SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) is because of the numerous SEO tools and plugins that are available for publishers to try. If one SEO plugin isn’t delivering the results, try another. Yoast SEO is widely referred to as the best SEO plugin for publishers, but there are many options available within the WordPress plugin directory.

  • Web Pages Load Faster

Most people surfing the net will abandon any website that takes longer than 2-3 seconds to load. A 3rd of these people will leave if it takes one second to load the page. Having slow load times not only destroys your potential traffic, but Google will also detect the bounce rates, this will in turn affect your search rating.

With WordPress, you get an optimal load time regardless if you’ve got a few users or a couple of thousands loading at a similar time. This is often especially important for smaller to medium websites, those that are yet to achieve their traffic potential.

NitroPack is also a great WordPress plugin which has allowed our website to achieve top website speeds and load within a matter of seconds, this is our top rated WordPress speed optimisation plugin.

  • The Ecosystem is Big

Want a plugin to boost your SEO? WordPress has one. Searching for a website theme that isn’t utilized by a million other businesses? Yep. WordPress has your back. Due to its large user base, a whole ecosystem of supporting features has sprung up around the CMS platform.

Third parties have made tons of money by creating indispensable widgets, plugins, and themes for WordPress users.

With over 49,000 plugins, users have almost unlimited ability to customize their CMS with precisely the features they require, from selling products to reposting old blog content to social media.

  • WordPress Is Mobile Friendly

The concept of having a pleasant and simple experience on your website is that you just want your website visitors to navigate through your site with ease, regardless of what device they access your site.

Older designs tend to render oddly on mobile phones and tablets. But the overwhelming majority of WordPress themes are already mobile-friendly. Theme developers constantly update their themes, and all you have got to do is click a button in your WordPress backend to make sure that you’ve got the most recent version and all its functionality the theme has to offer.

WordPress Migration Services Checklist

Before migrating a WordPress site, here are a few things to keep in mind.

  • Design and User Experience (UX)

The key to a good website is creating it for your customers. Regardless of the budget, there’s a way to achieve this! It’s important to track insights, such as web analytics, bounce rate, and session time.

These insights can give you a good idea of how optimised your website is for your user’s experience. You can also regularly ask customers for feedback, either on a rating section of the specific web page/post, through your social media profiles, or through email.

If anything can be improved for optimisation, even if its minor, it should be. Especially because of the level of competition increasing year on year pretty much across every industry.

  • Check Your New Hosting Provider’s Functionality

Checking the features of the new host is the first and most significant step to be considered before the migration of a website.

Always choose a reliable web host for the migration.

The possibilities of errors will be reduced if you choose a host with similar features as your current host. These features include operating systems, control panels, etc.

Before undertaking the actual migration, try to play around with these areas on your new hosting provider. Watch some tutorials online. Just try to get a feel for the new hosting provider’s functionality so that you’re not hit with any unnecessary surprises later.

  • Ensure All URLs Are the Same

Moving website hosts is an easy process in regards to URLs. It can be done by just moving the files. If the database and URLs are similar you can move by just copying the files and databases. If the database name changes then you need to edit the wp_config.php file.

And if the URL changes then you need to change the home URL and site URL of the database from wp_options from PHPMyAdmin option. When your name changes then there’ll be additional concerns.

Even though the files and database are moved there’ll be some references to the old domain which could remain within the database and might cause an error. So you must take care when changing the URLs. It is important if you are migrating with a new design, that the URL structure and content are the same otherwise you’ll see a decrease in rankings.

  • Maintaining the Traffic

One of the most important considerations for site owners is to ensure that there are no drops in traffic. Which means implementing traffic redirects. Map redirects for the blog posts, custom page types, and general pages to the new site using the proper HTTP redirect status so to preserve accrued SEO value and page rank.

Sometimes redirects are required from one page to a different page, while in other cases, redirects involve one group of paths to another.

A WordPress migration shouldn’t mean a loss in traffic, but you’d be surprised how often this occurs for people who don’t take the steps to prevent it. By working with a competent professional, you’ll avoid this issue.

  • Check Whether to Reinstall Plugins

During WordPress migration, plugins have equal importance. So we need to think about the plugins before migrating to the WordPress site. The plugins that are used at the source might not be compatible with the destination server – creating a conflict during migration. In such cases, you need to reinstall the plugins to avoid conflict.

It can be a good idea to migrate without the plugins and simply reinstall them when you’ve moved over to avoid any trouble. This may cause a bit of menial work in rejigging everything, but it’s better than things breaking and affecting site functionality.

  • Check the File Sizes

You need to take the backup of the files from the old account, before migrating to a WordPress site. For that, you need to check the size of the files and directories. It’ll be difficult to download the files onto the system, if the size of the files is larger in size, as this might cause storage problems.

So to avoid this, use the command to take the backup of files. Before taking the backup you need to remember the size of the files. The backup of the files is stored within the tar format inside the system.

  • Check the Size of the Database

It’s important to take a backup of your database and to ensure the size is exactly the same as what is stored on your current server (no change in size) as you could have missed some files. Plus, if anything goes wrong during the migration, you’ll have a backup right there so that no data has been lost.

You can take a backup of the site via PHPMyAdmin or there are plugins such as ‘All-In-One WP Migration’ which allows you to take a backup of the whole site, including the database.

  • Maintaining Aftercare

Once your site is live on a new host, it’s important to conduct regular maintenance, especially with a CMS like WordPress, as if you have out-dated plugins it could make your website vulnerable and not function in the correct way.

Our nerds provide a monthly maintenance service so you never have to worry about keeping your site up to date ever again!

Rebuilding a Non-WordPress Site in WordPress

Over the last few years many people are seeing the benefits in WordPress as a CMS. It is reliable, easy to scale and has so many functionalities.

We are experienced in rebuilding sites within WordPress, if you have a website built in Squarespace or Wix and looking for additional functionality for example, we can replicate your design within WordPress to make for an easy migration. Some of the technologies we have rebuilt in WordPress include:

  • CraftCMS to WordPress
  • Squarespace to WordPress
  • Webflow to WordPress
  • Wix to WordPress
  • Weebly to WordPress
  • Godaddy to WordPress
  • Shopify to WordPress
  • Joomla to WordPress
  • Magento to WordPress
  • Drupal to WordPress

Rebuilding a non-WordPress site into WordPress can be an arduous task, but it is one we are familiar and comfortable with. Why take your chances on someone less experienced? Your website is one of your most vital assets and should be treated as such.

Why Choose Us?

  • We provide a secure & fast WordPress migration with minimum downtime.
  • We offer robust, industry-specific & adaptable migration services to SMEs, enterprises & startup businesses across the world.
  • We have performed countless WordPress migrations since 2017.
  • We’re extremely experienced & can offer you standard website migration to your new hosting provider.
  • Whether it’s an old website that you would like to move, or you need a complete website redesign, we are able to assist you migrate your website securely and efficiently.
  • We also offer fully managed WordPress Hosting which is secure, carbon neutral and affordable.

We’re sure you’ll be happy with our services, so book a discovery call today to discuss your needs with the nerds!

WordPress Migration Services FAQs

  • How long does it take to migrate a WordPress site?

Generally, it takes 2-3 hours to migrate a WordPress site, depending on the size of the website.

  • How much does it cost to migrate a WordPress site?

If you want help moving your live WordPress website from one hosting company to a different one, we can help. You don’t need to worry about backups, databases, server config files, or anything else. We’ll get it done for you. It depends on which technology you are migrating your site. We provide custom quotes for migrating a WordPress site. Get in touch with our nerds for a bespoke quote.

  • Should my website be live in order to be migrated?

No, your website doesn’t need to be live in order to be migrated. It could be on a development domain or a backup you might have.

  • Do I need to backup my website before migration?

No, we will take care of this for you. All we need is access to your live site, our nerds can sort the rest!

Local SEO Checklist – Handy Tips to do Local SEO Properly

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a never-ending game of whack-a-mole for digital marketers, so it’s no wonder some tasks fall by the wayside.

Local SEO is on your to-do list, but it keeps getting on the back burner for some reason.

So what are some handy tips for local SEO solutions you can implement to boost your local search ranking?

We’ll review everything you wish to know to track your progress in 2024.

Why You Should Implement Local SEO:

Local SEO allows you to promote your business online to a local audience. Ranking your business in Google’s ‘Local Pack’ for your specific service will help attract local customers who are ready to buy.

The importance of Local SEO

When it involves local SEO, it isn’t all that different from organic SEO – keyword research, content, links, and on-page technical SEO. It just includes a local focus.

These elements are important to urge right for your website and its industry overall to outperform the competition within the SERPs.

However, when optimising for local search these parts contain more of a local focus on searches people are performing within the immediate area surrounding the business (e.g., local city names).

SEO as Part of a Wider Digital Marketing Picture

SEO isn’t just keywords, link building and technical work in the back end of your website. It’s also about using the proper practices as part of a wider digital marketing strategy. This includes creative content marketing across different platforms, including social media, and much, much more.

Here at Nautilus, our nerds have a track record of successfully boosting online presences. We’ve even been voted as one of the top B2B marketing agencies!

Other companies tend to take your money and do little for it, but we’re passionate about providing a fantastic service for our clients and we’re obsessed with winning. This means we work hard to make sure you’re happy with the service we provide.

We also offer a free SEO audit of your website to see how you can improve.

Local SEO Statistics

Outranking national brands in search results was once impossible in the world of SEO. Fortunately, Google gave local businesses a way to compete with the big guys in 2014.

In July 2014, Google rolled out the primary version of their Pigeon update, which gave local businesses the power to compete for search rankings on a local level. In short, Google began to offer a ranking boost to businesses near the searcher in location-specific searches (ex. “pizza near me”, “London contractors”, etc.).

Pigeon invited local businesses to the planet of search engines, and people who were paying attention made out.

  • Nearly one-third of consumers within the UK use the internet to look for local businesses each day.
  • 76% of individuals look for a business nearby visit within 24 hours.
  • 18% of local searches lead to a purchase within 24 hours.
  • 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if they need a mobile-friendly site.
  • 76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
  • 86% of individuals search the location of a business on Google Maps.
  • 50% of people search only on a smartphone.
  • 40% of mobile website visitors will leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
  • Since 2017 searches including the terms “Where to buy” and “near me” have increased by 200%

Benefits of Local SEO:

Focusing your SEO on local markets takes your little fish status out of the large pond and plops you in a more realistically sized pool. Since most small businesses consider local consumers to grow, the benefits of this approach are undebatable.

If you’ve been asking yourself “Should I look into local SEO?”, then here are your reasons to begin.

  • It improves local search online visibility
  • Local shoppers love to recommend a top-notch business by giving good reviews, ultimately business with good local SEO will get more trustability and potential to get ranking higher
  • It will make us stand out with local competitive business
  • It builds a commutative channel toward local customers
  • It generates more relevant web traffic
  • It helps to gain more local repeat customers
  • It builds trust and authority through higher ranking
  • It reduces advertisement cost
  • It Increases direct sales

A Comprehensive Guide to improve Local SEO

For a local business, it is often hard to compete with the large brands online, but if you’re strategic in your approach and have the proper tools, you’ll be able to easily improve your local SEO performance by growing the visibility of your brand and thus increase your sales.

Improving your local SEO means more website traffic, leads, and conversions since the strategy is more relevant to your base of local customers. Consider this focused strategy as to how to assist you to compete more effectively against larger national brands that have unlimited resources to spend.

By focusing on specific local-SEO to-dos, you can neutralise the advantage of larger brands that routinely optimise for broader keywords and rely on brand recognition, rather than value propositions, to increase traffic.

Here are the top 7 tips for making your local SEO successful:

1. Create a Google My Business Account:

Optimising your Google Business Profile is probably the foremost effective way to rank higher on Google Maps in addition to gaining visibility in Google Search local results. To get access to your business profile to create these optimisations, however, you need a Google My Business account related to that profile.

Once you provide all of the requested information in your Google My Business account dashboard, all information is going to be added to your Business Profile, which appears in Google Search local results, the Google Search Knowledge Panel, and Google Maps.

To optimise your Business Profile on Google, make sure that you:

  • Create a Google My Business account and verify ownership of the business
  • Provide accurate and up-to-date information
  • Include your logo, working hours, payment methods, the product or service you sell, and images.
  • Ask your customers to review your business online
  • Give a proper response to customer reviews
  • Publish posts related to announcing products, events, and special offers to your Business Profile using the Google My Business dashboard.

2. Engage in Social Media

Now more than ever, Google considers content shared on social media more important. After you have carved out an awesome looking Google My Business page, share the page on social media, further aligning social and search.

3. Optimise For Voice Search

Nowadays Voice search is growing rapidly and will also grow within the coming years. Therefore, in local SEO, it’s vital to optimise the way people ask questions when they speak into devices, as opposed to how they type out their searches.

People use more long-tail keywords when doing voice searches compared with regular searches. Due to this, you’ll even have to regulate the SEO of your content to suit the more conversational tone of somebody speaking. As an example, you’ll need to add normal question starters like who, what, when, where, why, and how.

It’s also crucial to think about user intent when optimising for voice, as these searches are most frequently performed when the user needs a particular piece of information.

4. Get More Reviews from Your Customers

Getting your customers to write good reviews for your business doesn’t just optimise your Google My Business presence; it also encourages more local customers to shop from you. According to the BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2017 reveals that 85% of consumers believe online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

Here are some tips to encourage customers to leave reviews:

  • Ask for a review in person after closing
  • Send a post-purchase email or text asking customers to write down a review (make sure you’re not approaching dissatisfied customers)
  • Respond to existing reviews professionally, thanking reviewers and addressing complaints in not so favourable reviews.

5. Optimise Your Website for Mobile Devices

A 2018 Stone Temple study that checked out 2017’s mobile vs. desktop trends found that the shift to mobile is going on faster than expected. Mobile visits to websites grew from 57% in 2016 to 63% in 2017, and therefore the overall visits to websites from desktop shrunk from 43% in 2016 to only 37% in 2017

Another 2017 study from Acquisio determined that traffic from local searches is often especially lucrative, with a noteworthy 75% of all mobile searches that exhibit local intent producing in-store, offline visits within 24 hours.

This confirms that you just need to optimise your website for mobile to be a player in local SEO.

We use NitroPack to optimise our website and also our clients to achieve top page speeds!

6. Conduct Keyword Research and Add Relevant Keywords

Doesn’t it make sense that your keywords should be relevant to local customers?

Google’s Keyword Planner allows you to filter keyword searches based on the location you want to target, and you will get an idea of the popular search terms for a given region. This allows you to create a list of locally relevant keywords to target. Once you’ve got them, they must make appearances in your site’s meta content, copy, and URLs.

Also, include mentions of region-specific landmarks and hotspots in your content. As an example, if your local restaurant serves dinner in downtown Seattle, include references to “dining by the Space Needle” or “just steps from the Space Needle” on your site.

7. Make Sure Your NAP Information is Consistent

You need to make it easy for people and search engines to find you. To do this, set up your NAP, which stands for name, address, and telephone number (with area code). This should be included as crawlable HTML text on your website.

Including the NAP within an image is a common mistake and you should avoid it. Search engines can only crawl HTML text and images can’t be crawled. You can add your NAP within the footer or header of the site.

Conclusion

SEO changes quite rapidly. You never know when Google will introduce new features on its SERPs for local searches, but you can calculate these changes coming. That’s why it’s essential to always remain at the top of local SEO. By implementing these 7 actionable items, you’ll make sure that your business doesn’t just benefit from lucrative local searches but also contains a solid foundation when new SEO features are introduced.

Get your free SEO audit report today from our Nauti Nerds!

What to look for in a blog?

The Most Important Things A Blog Must Have

The world of blogging is one that is constantly evolving and adapting.

There are millions of blogs out there. Some are written fantastically, others not so much.

What are the characteristics of a good blog? Why should you care?

Well, by knowing what makes a good blog you can ensure you create good content that helps you rank on search engines as well as educate and inform the reader. Ideally, you want to make sure your blog is the best piece of content on the web for that particular topic.

A tall order, perhaps. But one that is important to your business’ overall digital marketing and web presence.

What is a blog?

Before delving into what to look for in a blog, it’s important to know what a blog is, and the different terms that you’ll come across.

A blog is a singular post, an article or discussion that you have created.

A blog page is the page/website where all of the blogs are kept, it acts as an Index for each blog you write.

1. The Reason for the Blog

A lot of bloggers write blogs to tell a story, or for sharing an experience they have gone through.

You can express yourself and spread a story on a platform where you can connect with your readers.

But –

You need to think about why your user would be reading about your blog post’s topic, and why they’d choose yours over all the other content covering the same topic.

Why have they come to the page? What are they looking to achieve or learn?

Why do you have the blog? Why are you writing this post?

Having a blog is an immensely powerful digital marketing tool, but you need to know why you’re doing it and why readers care.

2. Asking Open Questions

When you are writing blogs, asking questions can be a really great way to interact with your audience.

There is a big difference, however, between asking open questions, and asking closed questions.You should avoid closed questions wherever possible, and stick to more open-ended questions.

A closed question is where there are only a select number of answers the responder can provide. An example would be asking the question – “did you enjoy today’s blog?” That question will only get responses such as “yes” or “no”, one-word answers.

If you were to ask “what do you think about today’s blog?” or “have you learned anything new in today’s blog? If so, what is it?” Then you would be much more likely for a more in-depth answer which can open the lines of communication between you, the blogger, and the reader.

Where you ask the questions is completely up to you. Quite a few people I know only ask the questions at the end of the post, some ask throughout and others simply don’t ask!

For the best approach, try to sprinkle questions throughout your piece to keep the reader engaged and thoughtful throughout the entire article.

3. Listen to Your Readers

Listening is one of the most important things you can do in life and it’s the same with blogs.

Listening to your readers and what they want from your blog page can be a great way to retain a pre-existing audience.

Blogging is a two-way relationship; you write things you enjoy, while also writing things people want to see.

If your readers let you know via comments, your email, or social media that they want you to cover a particular topic – where’s the harm in that?

Even if you have a small readership, if they ask questions you’re off to a good start. It means your audience is engaged and interested in what you have to say.

Repay that in kind by crafting good content that’s been asked for!

4. Selling on a Blog

If you are creating a blog simply to sell things – tread with caution.

It’s fine to have a blog that’s primary goal is to make some sales for you, but try to add some value first. Make posts that inform and educate readers. Catch their attention first.

Trying to sell 24/7 is just going to alienate your readers and won’t result in any sales. By adding value first you will build up trust. Once you’ve got a regular readership and can see that you’re holding their attention – then is the time to sell.

This ties back into point number 1, what is the story of the product?  What is it all about? What is the point of the blog? Simply to sell? To sell and inform?

Think about the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ behind the page before you simply ‘do’.

5. Add Some Variety to Your Topics

Variety is the spice of life as the old saying goes!

While it is best for your blog to have a niche and be somewhat focused, you don’t want to narrow the focus too much.

Readers could become disinterested if you talk about the same thing in the same way all the time. Blogging (and much of digital marketing) is a balancing act between focusing on a topic and introducing new ideas.

6. Avoid Being Biased

There are two sides to every story, something that is very true when it comes to writing and publishing blogs.

When writing about different topics, please try and refrain from including your own biases.

As a blogger you should be taking both sides of the argument, adding in your view and then making a decision.

If somebody does not agree with you, that does not mean that they or you are wrong. There can be a lot of instances where there are no right or wrong answers and it is all down to interpretation. Listen to what each of you is saying, you never know, you could learn something new!

Use your blog page to be kind, spread positive messages, raise awareness. Do not let bias sway your judgement and take you down a road that you won’t even know you are going down.

When you’re more established and are growing an audience, depending on your topic you can start adding some of your own biases in for your social media accounts.

But when it comes to blogs, you should try to craft a top piece of content – that means being as objective as possible and not letting your personal biases influence the value you’re trying to provide for readers.

Keep These Points In Mind When Writing Your Next Blog

Blogging is a great tool for your businesses’ digital marketing efforts. It can also be great for hobbyists to do, though you shouldn’t expect many readers in this case unless you already have a following.

Try to keep the principles outlined here in mind when writing or hiring someone to write your next blog posts.

Content Marketing: Thriving in a recession

At the centre of every great B2B or B2C experience lies a customer journey that provides a certain amount of relevant, contextual, and useful information which inevitably promotes an action or a sequence of actions. The importance of content in the customer journey is paramount as it drives awareness and enables thought-provoking acts.

Amidst an economic recession, content becomes the most valuable asset for enhancing loyalty and buying intention.

If it is so important, why are companies stopping marketing efforts?

Whilst no one knows for sure how long the COVID-19 pandemic will impose its terror; many organisations have already made drastic adjustments to their revenue objectives in anticipation of the economic impact.

Among many things, expenses, opening-hours, and staffing are being constantly monitored and evaluated by firms throughout this pandemic. The unravelling of these unprecedented circumstances is effectively tightening the strain on businesses of all sizes and within all industries. During any financial instability, distress and/or confusion – marketing is the first to be scrutinised and is often the scapegoat.

Content is king, and content is currency. When all is said and done, content (done well and distributed correctly), has incredible ROI.

As can be applied to most things in life; with upward trends will always come the downfall, and after some rain spells emerges a rainbow. Recession and downturns will not last forever. That’s why it is extremely important that a business can continue to keep adding value to their brand during these unsettling times. Content marketing can validate a brand and make consumers at ease – embedding deep-rooted value and messages that resonate with the consumer.

All content is not created equal. Creating content does not mean ‘creating content for the sake of it’. Some firms forget that. Quality supersedes quantity. To foster and maintain the one-to-one relationship, whilst cutting through the noise of competitors – content must be concise, relevant, and benevolent. Redefining and rethinking the way we apply the traditional marketing strategy (with an emphasis on the long-term) is what’s needed. This is what great content marketing is.

Empathy. Compassion. Understanding.

Empathy, compassion, and understanding is also required from modern businesses. If you cannot effectively identify who your buyer is, what they do, and how they are being impacted by current events then it becomes impossible to communicate with them. Your ideal customer now has different challenges, objectives, and trigger points. In the past few months alone a great awakening has happened, and people are becoming more demanding (and rightly so) of corporations to abide by equality (i.e. LGBTQ+ communities, Black Lives Matter Movement and more). Relating to these changes requires marketing to adjust. Focusing efforts on discovering what’s changed, updating your target audience and customer profiles, buyer personas and then aligning everything accordingly.

It’s essential to acknowledge the need for context. Revisit your customers, adapt, stay nimble and be proactive. A good phrasing is – change with the future or get left behind in history. In times of crisis, an empathetic-centric content strategy allows buyers to act despite bleak circumstances. Monitor, Evaluate and Execute. We’ll evolve and become better marketers. We’ll evolve and become better businesses. If you treat the customer right, they will reward you for the effort.

5 top tips to create creative content

As a content writer, developing a robust angle for a story is imperative. Once you have it, you can build on the structure. Always start with a good headline. Followed by a compelling intro, with strong and powerful quotes or phrases, accompanied by a solid closing.

Approach blogs in the same way you would a news headline or a YouTube title. We would also recommend you treat social posts in the same way – as this can generate more impressions.

Below are 5 steps we use when creating content (blogs, articles, and social posts):

HEADLINES

Think in headlines, i.e. if your post were in a newspaper, what would it be? For instance, ‘5 Top Tips to Create Creative Content’. Always aim for active headings, not passive. Something that will evoke curiosity or emotion. If you are struggling, your message needs to be clearer.

Make it concise and Make it catchy. Alliteration can be a fun way to achieve this.

INTRODUCTION

Your intro should attract attention and sum up the main theme of your story. Make it short and snappy. Less is more effective. You may want to picture your introduction as window shop, what key things do you want the onlooker to see. Or perhaps the abstract to a research paper. Really try to dig deep and entice the viewer with good content or useful information.

EYE-CATCHING QUOTES

If you are writing a lengthier article use quotes in the main body or create some powerful phrases to illustrate key points to be used across your marketing. Any good website will feature this technique too. However, be careful when using quotes or illustrations. Remember to reference or gain authority for licence use to avoid any copyright or plagiarism disputes.

ENGAGEMENT

Leave your reader wanting more. Ask an open question or drop in a final thought to ponder. Customer satisfaction is of the upmost priority to you should take the effort to answer any questions or interact with people who leave comments.

FLOW AND FORM

Read your draft and sense check. How does it flow? Does it take you on an interesting journey or do you feel bogged down? Is there a spot that needs fine tuning? Get into the rhythm of your writing. It makes a big difference.

Ultimately, there is no correct way. Over-time algorithms change and so do we as content creators. The best thing you can do as a content creator is to CREATE. Throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Try various forms of media and topics. Keep reading and engaging with other fellow bloggers. Build a community. Develop ideas and build upon your writing style. Monitor, evaluate and adjust.

CONCLUSION

If all this seems a bit of a headache, reach out to our nerds who will be happy to help with creating some fantastic content for your website and social media channels. If you’re a content writer reading this article and looking for your next position, our friends at Jooble post regular new and exciting vacancies!

Can blogging help your business?

Blogging has been around for decades. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, this practice peaked with many companies and individuals regularly blogging on their websites.

As time went on, the medium transformed into vlogs, which is essentially video version of a blog.

So, this ‘late into the game’, you’re probably wondering whether blogging can help your business.

The answer is a resounding yes, and we’ll explain why.

What Is the Point of Blogging?

Firstly, before we go into why you should be blogging for your business, we need to back up and cover what the actual point of it is.

The point is simply to offer content on a consistent basis that your audience finds both valuable and informative. So valuable and informative that they can’t stop reading.

When you can get someone to read a 1000-2000 word blog on your site, you’re doing something right. And the customers who read a blog post of that size are FAR more likely to purchase something from you.

THAT’S the point. A blog does all the work for you of getting a customer to relate and “buy in” to your brand.

How Can Blogging Help Your Business?

There are many ways that blogging helps your business. Here are the main benefits to keep in mind.

1) Increase search engine optimisation (SEO)

Blogging increases your SEO so long as you are providing helpful, valuable, up-to-date content on a consistent basis. There are many factors that go into SEO, not just writing blogs, but the regular posting of blog posts should be considered the cornerstone of your overall SEO strategy.

When your SEO improves, your organic traffic increases along with it. And so long as your content is good, users will read until the end, resulting in a higher Dwell Time for your business. Dwell Time is another metric used by Google to figure out how valuable your site is for its audience.

So it all links and serves to continue improving your business’ SEO standing. Customers find your site, stay and read until the end, so Google serves it to more users. They do the same, and then before you know it you’re climbing up the search engine page results (SERPs) and experiencing exponential growth.

All while converting the users that found you along the way (so long as your content is good).

2) Gives You a Bank Of Repurposable Content

When blogging on your site, you’re likely to have about 500-1000 words on average for each post.

When you’ve got these blog posts, that’s not the end of the content! You can actually repurpose this into shorter social media posts across the profiles you have, or even turn them into emails to your potential and pre-existing customers.

By getting a good amount of blogs set up, you’re covering yourself to keep up with consistently publishing content across all of your channels, not just your site.

3) Build Trust With Your Audience

As we said before, if you can get customers to read through a 1000-2000 word article you’re onto a winner.

But why exactly is that?

Well, aside from increasing your dwell time, you’re also building trust with your audience. Would you read a large blog article from a brand you didn’t trust? Exactly.

People buy from people. This is only becoming truer as time goes on. So by building trust with your audience, you’re ensuring that you not only remain at the forefront of their mind, but are increasing the loyalty amongst your customer base

If You’re Not Using Blogs for Your Business…It’s Time to Start

Blogging can help your business in multiple ways, but we’ve covered the most important ways here.

You should definitely be using blogs for your business even in the modern era. But, it is important to remember that blogging is only one aspect of your business’ marketing strategy, and while it can (and should) be a core pillar of your content strategy, it shouldn’t be the only one.

If you’re looking to start blogging for your business, get in touch today!

Essential Tips For Top Customer Engagement on Facebook

Facebook should be an essential part of any business setup. On your personal account you’re probably only really interested in the reactions of the people you know. However, on your business account you need to be interested in everybody, and you need to be worried about things like Facebook engagement, page traffic, conversion rate, post effectiveness and more. It really can seem a world apart from ‘regular’ Facebook.

POST WHEN YOUR AUDIENCE IS ONLINE
When using Facebook, or any Social Media for business, you need to post when your fans are online. You want your fans to receive your content ‘hot off the press’ so it spends at least some time at the top of their feed (and so they get a notification to remind them that it’s there). For that to happen they need to be online already when you post. Facebook insights is a key asset here, as it will show you just when your fans are most active and when Facebook is primed for providing you with customer engagement.

INCLUDE A CALL TO ACTION
People are more likely to do something if you’re pro-active and simply ask them to do it. The same rule applies with Facebook engagement. So, prompt them to leave that like, recommendation or comment, remembering that it’s not an act of desperation. It’s a reminder to your fans to do something they probably already want to do.

RESPOND TO EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING
When employing Social Media for business purposes, all customers are equal – so you need to treat them that way. If you only respond to certain types of posts or certain people, the others will notice. We would advocate the practice of responding to everyone. Not every post needs to be a novel, but each response opens the door to yet more customer engagement with that person by beginning a conversation.

RECYCLE TOP NOTCH POSTS
There’s nothing wrong with re-using an idea or a post if it has proven to be a success. After all, the golden rule for media has always been ‘Give the people what they want’, and if a post was successful, clearly it was what your audience wanted! You can’t do this every day of course, but it’s fine to dip into your archives and pull out a gem from the past every so often to boost your Facebook engagement!

PROVIDE VALUE
The posts you make on Social Media for business purposes will generate more customer engagement if there is some ‘value’ to them. That value could be new knowledge of some description, a call-to-action, a joke or motivational quote to lift their spirits, or an opportunity to provide feedback (and Facebook engagement) and have their voice heard… In fact, the ‘value’ is anything that leaves your audience better off in some way after reading your post. Finally, don’t forget that customer engagement will still come your way even if you’re just the middle-man.

And there you have it! Of course we will be sending more tips your way via our blog when we can, but if you can’t wait that long, it’s not a problem. We’re happy to provide you with personalised advice anytime! Just get in touch with us via our own Facebook page! We know what we’re doing with Facebook marketing and in fact we’ve just been recognised as one of the Top Facebook Marketing agencies in London!

How to pick the perfect domain?

So your about to start building a brand new fancy website for your business, but before hand you’ve got to pick out a domain name, but your not so sure what makes the perfect domain, here we will teach you what makes the perfect URL.

Firstly why are domain names so important? Well it’s the first thing your customers will see, a good URL will be memorable and leave a lasting impression. A bad domain could easily see your visitors running away before even entering your website…

We just thought we would quickly mention your domain will affect your SEO, having a keyword in your URL can really help boost your website traffic.

TRY PICKING A POPULER EXTENSION

When picking out a domain name, try and get the best extension possible. We are certain that when searching for an extension, .com is still the best. Why? People remember .com because it’s the most common extension. If .com is taken, try .co.uk, .net or .org. If none of these extensions are available, we would suggest brainstorming a new domain.

Side note, we suggest leaving those weird ones alone like, .club, .agency, .music, and so on.

AVOID NUMBERS AND HYPHENS

Your domain should be easy to spell and read, and it shouldn’t have to make people think, your domain needs to be simplified just imagine if when you was typing in eBay there was a hyphen and number within it, a bit like eb-ay3.com… It’s definitely not the easiest thing to remember.

Your main aim and mission should be to make your domain smooth and easy to read/type.

SHORTER IS BETTER… 

Smaller the domain, the better, your domain name should ideally be no longer than 12 characters, our domain name (creativetick.co.uk) is 12 characters exactly, and is perfect for our brand. It’s go no additions or extra words, it’s simply our brand name, and this is something you should aim for when picking out your domain.

There are just a few tips when picking your domain name, if however you get a little bit stuck, we suggest using a domain name generator, we suggest namemesh.com. Or you can always reach out to us for some free support, you can contact us by email or social media, 24 hours a day.